The underlying architecture of windows is not the problem. The problem is the bloat that is layered on top of it. Essential services that guzzle RAM and cant be turned off. Programs like MSN Messenger that load at startup and require 3rd party tools to disable or remove. etc
Besides, microsoft couldnt change kernels even if they wanted to. There are far too many hardware drivers written for the NT kernel to switch.
Firstly, WMP is the front end and the skins and stuff (i.e. what is behind the "windows media player" icon) Secondly, it is the DirectShow/ActiveMovie/etc stuff that lets applications use WMP codecs (e.g. Rollercoaster Tycoon 3 uses it for WMA music). And thirdly, it is a set of codecs that come with windows for playing WMA, WMV, ASF and whatever else microsoft includes with windows.
The question is, which of the 3 bits is microsoft removing in this "cut down" version. I suspect all 3 bits are being removed (which breaks the embedded videos)
However, if you just remove the first bit (the UI) and leave the codecs and DirectShow components there, it wont break embedded stuff but WMP will be gone. (look at the program XPLite to see just what can be removed from Windows XP without breaking stuff, that includes an option to remove just the Windows Media Player frontend without removing the backend components that works just great)
relogions and religious leaders have been opposing/complaining about/putting down/etc science and scientists since the days of Galilao (and even before that). And they will continue to do so.
Is it simply because the GPL prevents them from doing an "embrace and extend" on the code? (is there any GPL code out there that would even be of much use to microsoft anyway?) Or is there some other reason they are so anti-GPL?
I would do that if I could. But unfortunatly, the new graphics card I am going to buy wont be like that because no vendor makes a graphics card good enough to play the games I want to play on it that is "open".:(
If every US slashdotter donated 20 bucks to their local member with a nice letter attached opposing the rediculious copyright, patent and trademark system in america and calling for real reform of the system to benifit everyone (not just greedy dinosaur corperations who wont wake up and embrace the 21st centuary and the new technology), it might actually get the politions to sit up and take notice. Also, in the letter people should state state that they will vote for whichever polition does the most towards true reform of copyrights, trademarks and patents.
Although, naturally, the more money you include, the more likely the politions are to listen to you.
Heck, if small churches in small towns no-one has heard of are able to muster up votes and support for the politions who support their conservative religious views, surely a popular site like Slashdot could muster up a latter writing campaign pledging votes to any and all politions who support true reforn of the patent, copyright and trademark laws to the benifit of everyone.
The other thing that people here need to stop doing is being hypocritical. Everyone here says "The GPL is great, anyone who violates it should be sued for everything they own" yet those same people willingly admit to violating the copyright of the big corperations (which is just as valid and legally binding as the copyright on software under the GPL). If Slashdotters (and "geeks" generally) stopped the whole "it is ok to violate copyright as long as its a big corperation who is affected and not a small programmer" thing, mabie people would be more likely to listen.
The media cartels have no preference for any particular polition. They only picked Orin Hatch because he is the US equivlent of what us australians call a "safe seat". He has so much support from the religious conservatives in utah that there is little chance of him being voted out (either by those opposed to his support of the media cartels or for any other reason). This means that they can count on him being around long enough to help get whatever new laws they have bought through Contress.
How is the decision being made as to what is "for adults only" and what is "ok for everyone" and what is "violent" and what is "not violent" and etc.
If they are following the ESRB ratings, I have no problems with that. But, when a government decides to regulate games in a way that is outside of and/or different (perhaps more strict than) the ESRB system, thats when I have a problem. If some politition who only knows about through what the idiot moral conservatives who are ruining the country have told him thinks they are in a better position to decide if the game is or isnt ok for kids to play than an industry self-regulatory body like the ESRB, said politition needs his head examined.
The ESRB exists to classify games and make decisions on what is and isnt ok for different age groups to play. If someone thinks the ESRB is not strict enough, they should go complain to the ESRB, not try to end-run around it with new laws.
What do the cable companies stand to loose from CableCard enabled devices? (with the new broadcast flag, they cant claim "CableCard allows people to copy our stuff" anymore).
They still get your (ever increasing) subscription fee $$$ every month.
Now if only there was a CableCard standard here in oz so you could use Foxtel/Austar on other boxes:P Oh and make it sattelite enabled too:P
Simple, produce the "locked down" media boxes and consoles for the sheeple to buy and use for playing their crap movies. AND produce the no DRM no Trusted Computing boxes "Real Computers" for those who dont want this Trusted Computing thing.
Also, remember that without IBM, apple is nothing. If IBM decided to add Trusted Computing to the PPC line of chips, apple would have no option other than to implement it.
Only problem is, sites like banks, online stores, online auction sites, online casions and probobly even things like email providers will start requiring trusted clients (pushing the "security" angle). Plus, sites that deal with news and articles (such as online newspapers and others like CNN and cnet) are going to require Trusted clients to prevent people "stealing" their content. Plus, any site that makes money of internet ads are going to require trusted clients to make it harder for people to avoid their advertising.
Unless something is done about this NOW, it will soon become impossible to use the internet and access the "important" sites with an untrusted browser (as soon as enough people are using Trusted Computing even search engines like yahoo, MSN and even google could start requiring trusted computing to access)
What I dont get is where the benifit for the hardware vendors is.
The hardware vendors know the consumer (especially the more knowledgable consumer and those who the knowledgable people recommend stuff to) wont like the restrictions and that (as the parent said) it will be bad PR.
Why dont the hardware vendors just gang up and tell Big Media to get stuffed. The hardware vendors are more than big enough collectivly to tell Big Media to go jump. And they could probobly out-bribe Congress too if it came down to that.
Why dont they form an TIAA (Technology Industry Association of America, comprising all the big tech companies like Intel, IBM, Dell, AMD, Creative Labs, Apple, NVIDIA, ATI etc.) Such a group would be able to stomp on the big media companies.
Why did microsoft disable HD on XBOX for PAL? Why did sony disable HD support in PAL releases of games?
Given the various standards involved, I seriously doubt that it was techincal (i.e. "these games require extra coding to work on PAL HDTVs" that we cant afford to do). Especially in the case of the XBOX (where it should be up to the game maker to decide if they want to invest the $$$ to make their game HDTV aware in PAL regions)
Actually, in australia, unlimited accounts are very thin on the ground (at least when I looked for the broadband account I am on) Most accounts are either limited bandwidth then pay extra or unlimited but you get shaped back to 64k or something after you use a certain amount.
How to make sure any released "derived works" of their JRE, JVM and JDK are 100% compatible with their official releases. Look at what happened with microsoft, they took the sun JVM and did an "embrace, extend and break 3rd party compatibility" act on it and so Microsoft (up until sun forced Microsoft to remove it) was shipping a JVM that was incompatible with the official VM from sun (and people actually built java apps that only work on the Microsoft VM)
What sun should do (IMO) is to release the code under an Open Source licence. BUT, if you want to use the sun java trademark (e.g. to represent that what you have released is a java VM or whatever), you need to pass a compatibility test and get a stamp from sun. Then, they could release the compatibility test to the world so that everyone can test their code before it goes to sun for approval. The same test could apply to any java VM or compiler (e.g. GCJ).
People who want to modify (and share modifications to) the JDK, JRE and JVM can do so. (e.g. people wanting to port the JRE/JDK/JVM to a new platform/OS) People who want to try out "unapproved" modifications can do so (with the full knowledge that they arent official and may not be 100% compatible with the official sun releases) People who want "java" so they can run java apps can feel safe and only download stuff approved by sun. If the licence was like GPL where source must be released if binaries are released, it would help prevent what happened with Microsoft and the MSJVM (since any incompatible modifications would mean that you wouldnt get approval and couldnt call it "java" and also any modifications you make would need to be returned to the community).
Because of the rules for the use of the java name, there would be every incentive for anyone making changes to the JRE/JDK/JVM to do the compatibility test and get their changes approved (the licence, the trademark licence and the other factors would work against any incompatible forks showing up especially since companies like MS with an interest in incompatible forks would not want to use code under a licence like the one I suggest)
Developers would have a big incentive to write 100% compatible java code (since they would be instantly able to see that their development setup is not "compatible" and unless there is a good reason to use that incompatible VM (e.g. like what happened with the MS VM being used because it was shipped with windows, IE etc), they would be more likely to choose one that had the "java" name and sun "seal of approval".
And by having a dual licence and/or a "copyright assignment" like OpenOffice/StarOffice, they could also continue offering commercial licences for java like they do now (just like they use outside code contributions to OpenOffice in the commercial StarOffice product)
There are probobly holes in my plan somewhere through, something I havent thought of.
Actually, its probobly more like the change between Classic MacOS and OSX.
Its a totally new windows API with the old API being supported only through backwards compatibility layers (I assume its basicly something like WINE but better and able to use bits of the windows source code where needed)
Change Geocities free webpages so the bandwidth usage is metered less often. You get 3gb per month, it shouldnt matter how the usage of that 3gb (or part thereof if a site uses less than 3gb in a given month) is used throught the month.
I almost never directly visit a YAHOO! page (although i did visit the yahoo.com front page just now to see if it is as cluttered as much as people say) for that very reason. Plus, for those times when I do visit it (e.g. when I am following links to things on yahoo), I have blocked all the really annoying ads (FlashBlock for mozilla readlly helps with the worst offenders)
Try Miranda. Its what I use and it is fairly lightweight and does all the things I need in an IM client (including MSN, ICQ and AIM). Plenty of plugins available. And its fully Open Source (just like GAIM). Plus, its a native windows app with a proper windows UI. (I too loathe GTK on windows and only tolerate it because no-one has nade a usable Open Source paint program for windows other than GIMP)
Broadband isnt as bad as all that here in Oz, if you live in a major city and are close enough to the Telstra exchange you can probobly get 1500/256 or so (although that can be expensive and/or limited)
What would be usefull is if the cmd.exe replacement from WINE or ReactOS could be fixed up, made to do all the things that Microsoft cmd.exe does (or at least the stuff important enough to matter), made to work oob on windows and released as a cmd.exe replacement for those using Windows 2000/XP/etc and who like using a CLI and want one that that is better than the version MS ships.
Its been said before and I will say it again here. The shuttle has to go. It should have been replaced years ago with not one but two new spacecraft. One would be a heavy lift launcher capable of launching things like parts for the international space station etc. The ideal solution here is just a big rocket engine (or engines) designed to be as cheap as possible to make and launch without the need for fancy systems.
Should have a low turn-around time so that once one is launched the time it takes to get ready for another launch is low.
The second vehicle would be designed to carry crew, tools, equipment, instruments, docking modules (so it can link with space stations like the ISS) and so on. It would be reusable (with as few components needing replacement after each use as possible). Such a vehicle would not need the design compromises that make the space shuttle the way it is.
Slashdot Mirror
The underlying architecture of windows is not the problem.
The problem is the bloat that is layered on top of it.
Essential services that guzzle RAM and cant be turned off.
Programs like MSN Messenger that load at startup and require 3rd party tools to disable or remove.
etc
Besides, microsoft couldnt change kernels even if they wanted to. There are far too many hardware drivers written for the NT kernel to switch.
Firstly, WMP is the front end and the skins and stuff (i.e. what is behind the "windows media player" icon)
Secondly, it is the DirectShow/ActiveMovie/etc stuff that lets applications use WMP codecs (e.g. Rollercoaster Tycoon 3 uses it for WMA music).
And thirdly, it is a set of codecs that come with windows for playing WMA, WMV, ASF and whatever else microsoft includes with windows.
The question is, which of the 3 bits is microsoft removing in this "cut down" version. I suspect all 3 bits are being removed (which breaks the embedded videos)
However, if you just remove the first bit (the UI) and leave the codecs and DirectShow components there, it wont break embedded stuff but WMP will be gone. (look at the program XPLite to see just what can be removed from Windows XP without breaking stuff, that includes an option to remove just the Windows Media Player frontend without removing the backend components that works just great)
Anyone got a mirror for the program or the blog entry?
relogions and religious leaders have been opposing/complaining about/putting down/etc science and scientists since the days of Galilao (and even before that).
And they will continue to do so.
Is it simply because the GPL prevents them from doing an "embrace and extend" on the code? (is there any GPL code out there that would even be of much use to microsoft anyway?)
Or is there some other reason they are so anti-GPL?
I would do that if I could. :(
But unfortunatly, the new graphics card I am going to buy wont be like that because no vendor makes a graphics card good enough to play the games I want to play on it that is "open".
If every US slashdotter donated 20 bucks to their local member with a nice letter attached opposing the rediculious copyright, patent and trademark system in america and calling for real reform of the system to benifit everyone (not just greedy dinosaur corperations who wont wake up and embrace the 21st centuary and the new technology), it might actually get the politions to sit up and take notice.
Also, in the letter people should state state that they will vote for whichever polition does the most towards true reform of copyrights, trademarks and patents.
Although, naturally, the more money you include, the more likely the politions are to listen to you.
Heck, if small churches in small towns no-one has heard of are able to muster up votes and support for the politions who support their conservative religious views, surely a popular site like Slashdot could muster up a latter writing campaign pledging votes to any and all politions who support true reforn of the patent, copyright and trademark laws to the benifit of everyone.
The other thing that people here need to stop doing is being hypocritical.
Everyone here says "The GPL is great, anyone who violates it should be sued for everything they own" yet those same people willingly admit to violating the copyright of the big corperations (which is just as valid and legally binding as the copyright on software under the GPL).
If Slashdotters (and "geeks" generally) stopped the whole "it is ok to violate copyright as long as its a big corperation who is affected and not a small programmer" thing, mabie people would be more likely to listen.
The media cartels have no preference for any particular polition.
They only picked Orin Hatch because he is the US equivlent of what us australians call a "safe seat".
He has so much support from the religious conservatives in utah that there is little chance of him being voted out (either by those opposed to his support of the media cartels or for any other reason). This means that they can count on him being around long enough to help get whatever new laws they have bought through Contress.
How is the decision being made as to what is "for adults only" and what is "ok for everyone" and what is "violent" and what is "not violent" and etc.
If they are following the ESRB ratings, I have no problems with that.
But, when a government decides to regulate games in a way that is outside of and/or different (perhaps more strict than) the ESRB system, thats when I have a problem. If some politition who only knows about through what the idiot moral conservatives who are ruining the country have told him thinks they are in a better position to decide if the game is or isnt ok for kids to play than an industry self-regulatory body like the ESRB, said politition needs his head examined.
The ESRB exists to classify games and make decisions on what is and isnt ok for different age groups to play. If someone thinks the ESRB is not strict enough, they should go complain to the ESRB, not try to end-run around it with new laws.
What do the cable companies stand to loose from CableCard enabled devices? (with the new broadcast flag, they cant claim "CableCard allows people to copy our stuff" anymore).
:P :P
They still get your (ever increasing) subscription fee $$$ every month.
Now if only there was a CableCard standard here in oz so you could use Foxtel/Austar on other boxes
Oh and make it sattelite enabled too
Simple, produce the "locked down" media boxes and consoles for the sheeple to buy and use for playing their crap movies.
AND produce the no DRM no Trusted Computing boxes "Real Computers" for those who dont want this Trusted Computing thing.
Also, remember that without IBM, apple is nothing.
If IBM decided to add Trusted Computing to the PPC line of chips, apple would have no option other than to implement it.
Only problem is, sites like banks, online stores, online auction sites, online casions and probobly even things like email providers will start requiring trusted clients (pushing the "security" angle). Plus, sites that deal with news and articles (such as online newspapers and others like CNN and cnet) are going to require Trusted clients to prevent people "stealing" their content.
Plus, any site that makes money of internet ads are going to require trusted clients to make it harder for people to avoid their advertising.
Unless something is done about this NOW, it will soon become impossible to use the internet and access the "important" sites with an untrusted browser (as soon as enough people are using Trusted Computing even search engines like yahoo, MSN and even google could start requiring trusted computing to access)
What I dont get is where the benifit for the hardware vendors is.
The hardware vendors know the consumer (especially the more knowledgable consumer and those who the knowledgable people recommend stuff to) wont like the restrictions and that (as the parent said) it will be bad PR.
Why dont the hardware vendors just gang up and tell Big Media to get stuffed. The hardware vendors are more than big enough collectivly to tell Big Media to go jump. And they could probobly out-bribe Congress too if it came down to that.
Why dont they form an TIAA (Technology Industry Association of America, comprising all the big tech companies like Intel, IBM, Dell, AMD, Creative Labs, Apple, NVIDIA, ATI etc.) Such a group would be able to stomp on the big media companies.
Why did microsoft disable HD on XBOX for PAL?
Why did sony disable HD support in PAL releases of games?
Given the various standards involved, I seriously doubt that it was techincal (i.e. "these games require extra coding to work on PAL HDTVs" that we cant afford to do). Especially in the case of the XBOX (where it should be up to the game maker to decide if they want to invest the $$$ to make their game HDTV aware in PAL regions)
Actually, in australia, unlimited accounts are very thin on the ground (at least when I looked for the broadband account I am on)
Most accounts are either limited bandwidth then pay extra or unlimited but you get shaped back to 64k or something after you use a certain amount.
How to make sure any released "derived works" of their JRE, JVM and JDK are 100% compatible with their official releases.
Look at what happened with microsoft, they took the sun JVM and did an "embrace, extend and break 3rd party compatibility" act on it and so Microsoft (up until sun forced Microsoft to remove it) was shipping a JVM that was incompatible with the official VM from sun (and people actually built java apps that only work on the Microsoft VM)
What sun should do (IMO) is to release the code under an Open Source licence. BUT, if you want to use the sun java trademark (e.g. to represent that what you have released is a java VM or whatever), you need to pass a compatibility test and get a stamp from sun. Then, they could release the compatibility test to the world so that everyone can test their code before it goes to sun for approval. The same test could apply to any java VM or compiler (e.g. GCJ).
People who want to modify (and share modifications to) the JDK, JRE and JVM can do so. (e.g. people wanting to port the JRE/JDK/JVM to a new platform/OS)
People who want to try out "unapproved" modifications can do so (with the full knowledge that they arent official and may not be 100% compatible with the official sun releases)
People who want "java" so they can run java apps can feel safe and only download stuff approved by sun.
If the licence was like GPL where source must be
released if binaries are released, it would help prevent what happened with Microsoft and the MSJVM (since any incompatible modifications would mean that you wouldnt get approval and couldnt call it "java" and also any modifications you make would need to be returned to the community).
Because of the rules for the use of the java name, there would be every incentive for anyone making changes to the JRE/JDK/JVM to do the compatibility test and get their changes approved (the licence, the trademark licence and the other factors would work against any incompatible forks showing up especially since companies like MS with an interest in incompatible forks would not want to use code under a licence like the one I suggest)
Developers would have a big incentive to write 100% compatible java code (since they would be instantly able to see that their development setup is not "compatible" and unless there is a good reason to use that incompatible VM (e.g. like what happened with the MS VM being used because it was shipped with windows, IE etc), they would be more likely to choose one that had the "java" name and sun "seal of approval".
And by having a dual licence and/or a "copyright assignment" like OpenOffice/StarOffice, they could also continue offering commercial licences for java like they do now (just like they use outside code contributions to OpenOffice in the commercial StarOffice product)
There are probobly holes in my plan somewhere through, something I havent thought of.
Actually, its probobly more like the change between Classic MacOS and OSX.
Its a totally new windows API with the old API being supported only through backwards compatibility layers (I assume its basicly something like WINE but better and able to use bits of the windows source code where needed)
Change Geocities free webpages so the bandwidth usage is metered less often. You get 3gb per month, it shouldnt matter how the usage of that 3gb (or part thereof if a site uses less than 3gb in a given month) is used throught the month.
I almost never directly visit a YAHOO! page (although i did visit the yahoo.com front page just now to see if it is as cluttered as much as people say) for that very reason. Plus, for those times when I do visit it (e.g. when I am following links to things on yahoo), I have blocked all the really annoying ads (FlashBlock for mozilla readlly helps with the worst offenders)
Try Miranda.
Its what I use and it is fairly lightweight and does all the things I need in an IM client (including MSN, ICQ and AIM). Plenty of plugins available. And its fully Open Source (just like GAIM). Plus, its a native windows app with a proper windows UI. (I too loathe GTK on windows and only tolerate it because no-one has nade a usable Open Source paint program for windows other than GIMP)
Broadband isnt as bad as all that here in Oz, if you live in a major city and are close enough to the Telstra exchange you can probobly get 1500/256 or so (although that can be expensive and/or limited)
But will it be compatible with the old one as far as what commands it supports, how they work etc etc etc?
Because thats what matters to me.
What would be usefull is if the cmd.exe replacement from WINE or ReactOS could be fixed up, made to do all the things that Microsoft cmd.exe does (or at least the stuff important enough to matter), made to work oob on windows and released as a cmd.exe replacement for those using Windows 2000/XP/etc and who like using a CLI and want one that that is better than the version MS ships.
Its been said before and I will say it again here.
The shuttle has to go.
It should have been replaced years ago with not one but two new spacecraft.
One would be a heavy lift launcher capable of launching things like parts for the international space station etc. The ideal solution here is just a big rocket engine (or engines) designed to be as cheap as possible to make and launch without the need for fancy systems.
Should have a low turn-around time so that once one is launched the time it takes to get ready for another launch is low.
The second vehicle would be designed to carry crew, tools, equipment, instruments, docking modules (so it can link with space stations like the ISS) and so on. It would be reusable (with as few components needing replacement after each use as possible). Such a vehicle would not need the design compromises that make the space shuttle the way it is.