So I glaned over the article, and while it mainly focused on EFI being done for IA-64, it also hinted that EFI was available for x86. Does anyone know of any reasonable priced motherboards that use this as opposed to an older BIOS? I'm looking for the hinted at x86 support, as I don't feel like buying an Itanium. Also, while we are on the subject, is this an Intel only thing or does AMD have a say in the matter?
It seems your refridgerator is out of date. I had the same situation occur last weekend and my fridge not only told me to avoid the milk, but it also recommended I buy cottage cheese.
Without a doubt this will happen. However, just because the source is open, that doesn't mean that companies using the source in commercial products are excused from paying royalties.
In fact, the standards organizations in charge of these things (the MPEG group, for example) could go after Xvid, MPlayer, etc for distributing implementations without paying royalties. However, there is obviously not much money in going after a group of volunteers. They will however, go after companies distributing this code that are turning a profit.
Well, it is an open standard, but that doesn't mean that it is royalty free. It's similar to MPEG in that the specification is known, but if you implement and sell it you are required to pay a royalty (to Microsoft in the case of Windows Media).
Essentially, with the mandate of this requirement for HD-DVD certification, it ensures that Microsoft will get a small fee from every HD-DVD certified player that is sold.
I don't understand your problem with new disc formats. The great thing about them is that disc players are generally backwards compatible. DVD players can play CDs, for example. So, your DVD collection doesn't really lose any value because you can play them on HD-DVD or Blu-Ray players.
This is different from VHS tapes, that are completely obsolete and unplayable on modern hardware. Plus discs are much smaller and more convienient for storage purposes.
I'm all for better disc formats as long as the hardware can continue to play the old ones.
I'm very disappointed. I was under the impression that open source and the ingenuity of a team of dedicated, enthusiastic developers could finally push Rapid NameChange(TM) technology into the mainstream.
Well, that was the plan for this release, but unfortunately the initials RNC were already being used by an altogether much more slow moving organization. They took issue with our tendencies towards rapid progress.
As such, we are working out naming issues right now and you can expect to see this in a future release.
The biggest problem in naming it the Java Desktop System is that you are making your product lines vague and ambiguous. Didn't you learn anything from watching the whole Microsoft.NET hilarity as that ensued.
Why not name it the Linux Desktop System, thereby keeping naming distinct between OS and development technologies? Sure, it's good to tie them together, but you need some focus and clarity among the things you are trying to push.
Now, somewhat more contraverial, is you also need to recognize the contributions of the many people who's code you are selling. It would seem a responsible thing for a member of the community to acknowledge their participation by helping promote the name (Linux, GNOME, whatever). I'm not trying to flame Sun, because they've done some nice things with ATK and OO.o, etc. However, as a Linux supporter, why should I go with Sun over IBM or Red Hat when both of those put forth more effort to evangalize open source?
You can bet your tail this device is only the beginning and can probably offer hints to the next iPod revision: wireless and remote-control modes.
What I'm about to say may have been your intention, but if not, you may have hit on a huge selling point for these things.
A fair amount of complaints about this device have been the fact that it has no local display and can only be controlled from a computer with iTunes. What if the next gen iPod could act like a remote (using IP over WiFi) for this thing? You could turn on your iPod, select the "Stereo" menu and see what's playing, queue up new songs (likely only those stored on you computer, since you'd want to shut off the iPod to avoid draining battery), etc all from the spiffy iPod interface.
With something like that, Apple would be offering the ultimate music experience and give tons of people a reason to drop money into Apple's bank account. Get a Mac to organize all your tunes (or stick with the PC, if you like that sort of thing), buy a few of the devices for all your stereos/rooms, blanket your house in WiFi all the time, then buy an iPod for you/spouse/kids, etc that they can use to hear their favorite music wherever they are in the house. When you go out, you've got a portable jukebox as well.
Apple is well on the way to revolutionizing the music experience. They are just a few steps away from the ultimate in convienice.
Make it a better development platform
on
The GNOME Roadmap
·
· Score: 5, Insightful
Here is my take. Linux will succeed on the desktop when more developers and ISVs jump on board. This won't happen until GNOME is a better development platform. How can you make it better? Well, I'll share my opinion (even if you didn't ask.)
Developers want to quickly build applications. Right now, a lot of the development focus for GNOME apps is using C. That's a generalization, but a fairly accurate one. They have bindings for many other languages, but they usually don't get the spotlight. Fold the bindings projects into the main project. For example, fold Gtkmm (C++ bindings) into the bigger GTK effort. Likewise for other language bindings and other libraries. Make sure these bindings are as identical as possible accross target languages, so the learning curve from one language to the next isn't so great. Right now its easy for a newcoming developer to find the main project (ie Gtk), but no so easy to find information on how to use it with his/her preferred language.
Once that has happened, stress the fact that using GNOME you can develop apps in a wide variety of languages. Lay the whole Java/C# thing to rest and support both. Linux has an opportunity to become the premier development platform (which should rest nicely with geek and open source ideals). Everyone says choice is key, but then they try to rope you into a development methodology. This isn't necessary. Build incredible libraries (likely in C) and then bind them to as many higher languages as possible, and always keep these bindings current with the mainline. Developmers will come in droves, and make great applications, if they can pick and choose the most appropriate technology rather than having it dictated to them.
There may be workarounds, but there will also be a fair number of people who will not want to put forth the effort to deal with such workarounds. It is a matter of convenience.
yep, goddamn that stupid fscking shift key. that's why i never use capital letters, too inconvenient.
Ahh, I like your sig. I was beginning to think that I was the only one bothered by that statement. By the way, I believe the exact statement is as follows:
"I need a better way to buy what I need."
I think its best that sentences don't both begin and end with the same posessive.
CompactFlash is alright, but it is too large to be used in a variety of devices. Mobile phones and PDAs being two that are obvious. I want one flash format that all my devices use so I can swap in and out my investment in memory. SD is the best choice in my opinion.
You make some good points. However, I still disagree in many respects. First off is this "high quality" Sony stuff you refer to. I once bought into this argument and had it backfire big time. 5-6 years ago I bought a VAIO laptop that cost me a pretty penny. 1 month out of the year long warranty it took a shit bigger than its intestines and died forever.
I've had DVD players from them quit reading discs in the middle of playback and never read them again. Its very easy to find others with similar experience. Sony hardware consistently fails quicker than that from Pioneer, Philips, Toshiba, etc.
They have the clout to create a defacto standard, and they're gonna do it.
A defacto standard is one that everyone uses. If Sony put any effort into getting others to adopt their formats, I would lay my argument to rest. As it is, only Sony uses Sony formats, so it is not a standard. Any brain dead fuck can build stuff and use it without regard for anyone else. As it stands, myself and many other people I know won't buy Sony equipment because it locks them into more expensive and restrictive choices. I want choice. If I buy a CLIE, I need a Sony camera to use my flash memory. I might buy both devices if they used more standard memory, but as it is I won't buy either because what if I want a non-Sony SD device down the line.
The sucessess you list all point to instances where Sony adopted an open format. With Trinitron, that is just a TV tube technology meant to display images. You don't need "Trinitron-compatible" cable from your company to use a TV tube. The Walkman used casettes and later CDs, open standards. I don't see many MiniDisc NetWalkmans around. Those aren't standard. Compact disc, developed with Philips I believe and opened as a standard.
The Playstation is good, granted. The game console market is remarkable different than the general consumer electronics market however. It's much more accepting of single-vendor solutions.
They could be Apple x 10, if they didn't use proprietary hardware?
I knew my comment would draw this sort of reaction. It's horribly out of date. First off, I own a G5 and a PowerBook, so call me biased if you want to. But, lets take a look at what can be found on them:
FireWire 400/800 - Standard. Used in computers and new set-top boxes USB 2.0 - Standard. Ethernet - Standard. Gigabit too, no less. 802.11g - Standard. SATA Hard Drives - Standard. AGP - Standard PCI - Standard DVI - Standard. You might pick a bone with ADC, but that thing is cool. Power, USB and DVI in one cable saves tons of wiring mess.
So, I suspect your argument comes down to their use of the Power processor. It's a huge misconception that this is proprietary. Sure, Apple is the only PC manufacturer to use them, but PPC chips are found in all kinds of embedded devices. PPC gets used, and it gets used a lot. IBM and Freescale (ie Motorola) make them and it wouldn't surprise me if other smaller companies did too.
That said, I also prefer PPC processors to x86 ones. The design is much more sensible and also gives much better performance to power used ratio. I'm sorry, but I don't want the latest AMD or Intel monstrosity sucking juice from my outlet like it was a keg at a frat party.
In short. Apple uses very little proprietary stuff these days. Yes, there are exceptions. However, what they do usually is done in the sake of ease of use for the consumer, wheras Sony does it to treat you like a criminal who is out to steal and cheat them.
I want to like Sony, I really do. But, they consistently fuck up the things they say they are going to do. Here's my armchair analysis:
Sony could be a dominant technology and media company. They own record labels, movie studios, and make what could otherwise be decent computers and electronics equipment. They could tie all this stuff together in an incredibly elegant package. I'm thinking something along the lines of Apple times 10. But, they insist on using proprietary hardware and software.
Note to Sony bigwigs: First off, ditch the memory stick. Give me SD slots on all your devices. They are smaller (physically) and cheaper (monetarily). Second, quit insisting on using your shitty ATRAC3 audio format. Or, alternatively, you can use it but make your hardware support MP3 as well. AAC would be nice, but I'm not asking a lot. I have a ton of MP3 files and I will not reencode to ATRAC3. So, that means I will not buy your damn music devices. Time and time again your formats fail. Betamax, Memory Stick, MiniDisc, SACD, ATRAC3, and on and on and on. Give it up. I want to buy your devices but you insist on making non standard stuff.
Now, the Cell processor is interesting. I sense Sony wants to change, but they refuse to go all out. Open up this Cell processor so a bunch of home devices use it and let the network effect rake in the money. The Playstation division of Sony has a really good vision if only they could make the rest of the company follow. Cell I'm willing to accept, because it sounds interesting. Jury is still out. UMD also seems like a decent mobile solution for games/audio/video. I'm disapointed that it uses Memory Stick, however. As an mobile media player, the thing will have a chastity belt tighter than the pope's daughter, which pisses me off because I don't want to go through that much trouble to USE THE FUCKING MEDIA I OWN.
The above was pretty incoherant I'm sure. I just see so much potential locked up in Sony that never gets realized and it really irks me.
That sounds exactly like what I've always wanted. There have been numerous times when I've been rumaging around my apartment looking for some small item I've misplaced (keys, screwdriver, etc.) thinking to myself "I wish I could google my apartment."
I'd have saved time and money. I now have a small collection of screwdrivers after fruitless hour long searches that only put myself in the hardware store check out lane.
If you use OpenShiiva on Mac OS X to do your video encoding, it writes xvid to an.mp4 file container. Ever since leaving the Windows world for my encoding, I don't use DivX, so I can't speak to that.
I wasn't speaking for all MPEG-4 videos, just xvid ones. Every movie I've ever encoded using xvid has been playable by QuickTime. And yes, QuickTime's MPEG-4 component is notoriously shitty. That said, if a bad decoder can handle xvid, it stands to reason that the others (which should be better) should handle xvid as well.
Well, since it is MPEG-4 conformant, it is supported commercially. QuickTime can play xvid encoded movie files with the included MPEG-4 plugin. I haven't tried many other players, but as long as their MPEG-4 implementation isn't completely borked, then they should play it as well.
DRM is wholly different from the codec. Anyone can take and make a DRM wrapper around MPEG (and hence xvid) without too many problems. An analagous example would be Apple's DRM around AAC (which is part of MPEG-4, I believe).
Think of it as being included for free and quit your complaining. Is it really such a problem that you are getting more for your money? If you don't want to use it, don't plug a network cable into it. Then it will behave exactly like your "old school" PS2.
I could understand complaining if they started not including essential things like controllers, but this is just rediculous.
Of all the companies that Microsoft has ever competed agains, Google is the first one where Microsoft is fighting a battle in enemy territory.
Microsoft's victories come in the software front (Netscape, Quicken, Office, etc.) where they can leverage their operating system dominance.
Google's home turf is massively scalable, reliable web services. Even though much of it is secret, all signs point to an incredible advanced platform that keeps these things running. Its highly redundant and distributed, using some cutting edge research and open source technologies. If Microsoft were to try to utilize Windows to power such a platform, their developers would soon discover how laughable Windows is for such a solution. Not that Microsoft isn't smart, but the culture of Google lends itself much better to success in this field than the culture of Microsoft.
I am, however, looking forward to Microsoft going up against them, as it will allow us to point out yet another failure in them trying to move beyond their core business.
In a related story, I plan to file suit against all readers of Slashdot who did not by the DaHat SuperFoo as I feel that you are all conspiring against me and it to make it fail and that it has nothing to do with the fact that the price per SuperFoo is more then any of you would want to pay.
If said SuperFoo can break up the sentence above into something understandable, I will pay any price. Really.
Rambus believes that RDRAM was not the success it should have been because chip makers did not want to pay their royalties.
So, this it is clearly the chipmakers fault then, huh?
Rambus should learn some basic business strategy. If someone comes out with a slightly less quality product, but sells it for a lot cheaper, that product will win. So, recognize the problem and lower your prices or significantly raise the benefits of paying them. In either case, don't resort to frivilous lawsuits if things don't go your way.
Slashdot Mirror
So I glaned over the article, and while it mainly focused on EFI being done for IA-64, it also hinted that EFI was available for x86. Does anyone know of any reasonable priced motherboards that use this as opposed to an older BIOS? I'm looking for the hinted at x86 support, as I don't feel like buying an Itanium. Also, while we are on the subject, is this an Intel only thing or does AMD have a say in the matter?
It seems your refridgerator is out of date. I had the same situation occur last weekend and my fridge not only told me to avoid the milk, but it also recommended I buy cottage cheese.
Now, that is a sweet fridge.
Without a doubt this will happen. However, just because the source is open, that doesn't mean that companies using the source in commercial products are excused from paying royalties.
In fact, the standards organizations in charge of these things (the MPEG group, for example) could go after Xvid, MPlayer, etc for distributing implementations without paying royalties. However, there is obviously not much money in going after a group of volunteers. They will however, go after companies distributing this code that are turning a profit.
Well, it is an open standard, but that doesn't mean that it is royalty free. It's similar to MPEG in that the specification is known, but if you implement and sell it you are required to pay a royalty (to Microsoft in the case of Windows Media).
Essentially, with the mandate of this requirement for HD-DVD certification, it ensures that Microsoft will get a small fee from every HD-DVD certified player that is sold.
I don't understand your problem with new disc formats. The great thing about them is that disc players are generally backwards compatible. DVD players can play CDs, for example. So, your DVD collection doesn't really lose any value because you can play them on HD-DVD or Blu-Ray players.
This is different from VHS tapes, that are completely obsolete and unplayable on modern hardware. Plus discs are much smaller and more convienient for storage purposes.
I'm all for better disc formats as long as the hardware can continue to play the old ones.
I'm very disappointed. I was under the impression that open source and the ingenuity of a team of dedicated, enthusiastic developers could finally push Rapid NameChange(TM) technology into the mainstream.
Well, that was the plan for this release, but unfortunately the initials RNC were already being used by an altogether much more slow moving organization. They took issue with our tendencies towards rapid progress.
As such, we are working out naming issues right now and you can expect to see this in a future release.
The biggest problem in naming it the Java Desktop System is that you are making your product lines vague and ambiguous. Didn't you learn anything from watching the whole Microsoft .NET hilarity as that ensued.
Why not name it the Linux Desktop System, thereby keeping naming distinct between OS and development technologies? Sure, it's good to tie them together, but you need some focus and clarity among the things you are trying to push.
Now, somewhat more contraverial, is you also need to recognize the contributions of the many people who's code you are selling. It would seem a responsible thing for a member of the community to acknowledge their participation by helping promote the name (Linux, GNOME, whatever). I'm not trying to flame Sun, because they've done some nice things with ATK and OO.o, etc. However, as a Linux supporter, why should I go with Sun over IBM or Red Hat when both of those put forth more effort to evangalize open source?
(imagine what people would say if Sun created a 3rd environment in Java!)
Man, that was uncalled for. My head is spinning with comments. Must not read Slashdot thread for other's jokes.
Seriously folks, lets keep this on topic and confine these things to a single thread that is easily ignorable. Replying to this would be a good start.
You can bet your tail this device is only the beginning and can probably offer hints to the next iPod revision: wireless and remote-control modes.
What I'm about to say may have been your intention, but if not, you may have hit on a huge selling point for these things.
A fair amount of complaints about this device have been the fact that it has no local display and can only be controlled from a computer with iTunes. What if the next gen iPod could act like a remote (using IP over WiFi) for this thing? You could turn on your iPod, select the "Stereo" menu and see what's playing, queue up new songs (likely only those stored on you computer, since you'd want to shut off the iPod to avoid draining battery), etc all from the spiffy iPod interface.
With something like that, Apple would be offering the ultimate music experience and give tons of people a reason to drop money into Apple's bank account. Get a Mac to organize all your tunes (or stick with the PC, if you like that sort of thing), buy a few of the devices for all your stereos/rooms, blanket your house in WiFi all the time, then buy an iPod for you/spouse/kids, etc that they can use to hear their favorite music wherever they are in the house. When you go out, you've got a portable jukebox as well.
Apple is well on the way to revolutionizing the music experience. They are just a few steps away from the ultimate in convienice.
Here is my take. Linux will succeed on the desktop when more developers and ISVs jump on board. This won't happen until GNOME is a better development platform. How can you make it better? Well, I'll share my opinion (even if you didn't ask.)
Developers want to quickly build applications. Right now, a lot of the development focus for GNOME apps is using C. That's a generalization, but a fairly accurate one. They have bindings for many other languages, but they usually don't get the spotlight. Fold the bindings projects into the main project. For example, fold Gtkmm (C++ bindings) into the bigger GTK effort. Likewise for other language bindings and other libraries. Make sure these bindings are as identical as possible accross target languages, so the learning curve from one language to the next isn't so great. Right now its easy for a newcoming developer to find the main project (ie Gtk), but no so easy to find information on how to use it with his/her preferred language.
Once that has happened, stress the fact that using GNOME you can develop apps in a wide variety of languages. Lay the whole Java/C# thing to rest and support both. Linux has an opportunity to become the premier development platform (which should rest nicely with geek and open source ideals). Everyone says choice is key, but then they try to rope you into a development methodology. This isn't necessary. Build incredible libraries (likely in C) and then bind them to as many higher languages as possible, and always keep these bindings current with the mainline. Developmers will come in droves, and make great applications, if they can pick and choose the most appropriate technology rather than having it dictated to them.
There may be workarounds, but there will also be a fair number of people who will not want to put forth the effort to deal with such workarounds. It is a matter of convenience.
yep, goddamn that stupid fscking shift key. that's why i never use capital letters, too inconvenient.
Ahh, I like your sig. I was beginning to think that I was the only one bothered by that statement. By the way, I believe the exact statement is as follows:
"I need a better way to buy what I need."
I think its best that sentences don't both begin and end with the same posessive.
I noticed you used zero ( 0 ) instead of oh ( O ).
There's some form of irony there, considering this is slashdot.
CompactFlash is alright, but it is too large to be used in a variety of devices. Mobile phones and PDAs being two that are obvious. I want one flash format that all my devices use so I can swap in and out my investment in memory. SD is the best choice in my opinion.
You make some good points. However, I still disagree in many respects. First off is this "high quality" Sony stuff you refer to. I once bought into this argument and had it backfire big time. 5-6 years ago I bought a VAIO laptop that cost me a pretty penny. 1 month out of the year long warranty it took a shit bigger than its intestines and died forever.
I've had DVD players from them quit reading discs in the middle of playback and never read them again. Its very easy to find others with similar experience. Sony hardware consistently fails quicker than that from Pioneer, Philips, Toshiba, etc.
They have the clout to create a defacto standard, and they're gonna do it.
A defacto standard is one that everyone uses. If Sony put any effort into getting others to adopt their formats, I would lay my argument to rest. As it is, only Sony uses Sony formats, so it is not a standard. Any brain dead fuck can build stuff and use it without regard for anyone else. As it stands, myself and many other people I know won't buy Sony equipment because it locks them into more expensive and restrictive choices. I want choice. If I buy a CLIE, I need a Sony camera to use my flash memory. I might buy both devices if they used more standard memory, but as it is I won't buy either because what if I want a non-Sony SD device down the line.
The sucessess you list all point to instances where Sony adopted an open format. With Trinitron, that is just a TV tube technology meant to display images. You don't need "Trinitron-compatible" cable from your company to use a TV tube. The Walkman used casettes and later CDs, open standards. I don't see many MiniDisc NetWalkmans around. Those aren't standard. Compact disc, developed with Philips I believe and opened as a standard.
The Playstation is good, granted. The game console market is remarkable different than the general consumer electronics market however. It's much more accepting of single-vendor solutions.
They could be Apple x 10, if they didn't use proprietary hardware?
I knew my comment would draw this sort of reaction. It's horribly out of date. First off, I own a G5 and a PowerBook, so call me biased if you want to. But, lets take a look at what can be found on them:
FireWire 400/800 - Standard. Used in computers and new set-top boxes
USB 2.0 - Standard.
Ethernet - Standard. Gigabit too, no less.
802.11g - Standard.
SATA Hard Drives - Standard.
AGP - Standard
PCI - Standard
DVI - Standard. You might pick a bone with ADC, but that thing is cool. Power, USB and DVI in one cable saves tons of wiring mess.
So, I suspect your argument comes down to their use of the Power processor. It's a huge misconception that this is proprietary. Sure, Apple is the only PC manufacturer to use them, but PPC chips are found in all kinds of embedded devices. PPC gets used, and it gets used a lot. IBM and Freescale (ie Motorola) make them and it wouldn't surprise me if other smaller companies did too.
That said, I also prefer PPC processors to x86 ones. The design is much more sensible and also gives much better performance to power used ratio. I'm sorry, but I don't want the latest AMD or Intel monstrosity sucking juice from my outlet like it was a keg at a frat party.
In short. Apple uses very little proprietary stuff these days. Yes, there are exceptions. However, what they do usually is done in the sake of ease of use for the consumer, wheras Sony does it to treat you like a criminal who is out to steal and cheat them.
I want to like Sony, I really do. But, they consistently fuck up the things they say they are going to do. Here's my armchair analysis:
Sony could be a dominant technology and media company. They own record labels, movie studios, and make what could otherwise be decent computers and electronics equipment. They could tie all this stuff together in an incredibly elegant package. I'm thinking something along the lines of Apple times 10. But, they insist on using proprietary hardware and software.
Note to Sony bigwigs: First off, ditch the memory stick. Give me SD slots on all your devices. They are smaller (physically) and cheaper (monetarily). Second, quit insisting on using your shitty ATRAC3 audio format. Or, alternatively, you can use it but make your hardware support MP3 as well. AAC would be nice, but I'm not asking a lot. I have a ton of MP3 files and I will not reencode to ATRAC3. So, that means I will not buy your damn music devices. Time and time again your formats fail. Betamax, Memory Stick, MiniDisc, SACD, ATRAC3, and on and on and on. Give it up. I want to buy your devices but you insist on making non standard stuff.
Now, the Cell processor is interesting. I sense Sony wants to change, but they refuse to go all out. Open up this Cell processor so a bunch of home devices use it and let the network effect rake in the money. The Playstation division of Sony has a really good vision if only they could make the rest of the company follow. Cell I'm willing to accept, because it sounds interesting. Jury is still out. UMD also seems like a decent mobile solution for games/audio/video. I'm disapointed that it uses Memory Stick, however. As an mobile media player, the thing will have a chastity belt tighter than the pope's daughter, which pisses me off because I don't want to go through that much trouble to USE THE FUCKING MEDIA I OWN.
The above was pretty incoherant I'm sure. I just see so much potential locked up in Sony that never gets realized and it really irks me.
That is all.
That sounds exactly like what I've always wanted. There have been numerous times when I've been rumaging around my apartment looking for some small item I've misplaced (keys, screwdriver, etc.) thinking to myself "I wish I could google my apartment."
I'd have saved time and money. I now have a small collection of screwdrivers after fruitless hour long searches that only put myself in the hardware store check out lane.
If you use OpenShiiva on Mac OS X to do your video encoding, it writes xvid to an .mp4 file container. Ever since leaving the Windows world for my encoding, I don't use DivX, so I can't speak to that.
I wasn't speaking for all MPEG-4 videos, just xvid ones. Every movie I've ever encoded using xvid has been playable by QuickTime. And yes, QuickTime's MPEG-4 component is notoriously shitty. That said, if a bad decoder can handle xvid, it stands to reason that the others (which should be better) should handle xvid as well.
Well, since it is MPEG-4 conformant, it is supported commercially. QuickTime can play xvid encoded movie files with the included MPEG-4 plugin. I haven't tried many other players, but as long as their MPEG-4 implementation isn't completely borked, then they should play it as well.
DRM is wholly different from the codec. Anyone can take and make a DRM wrapper around MPEG (and hence xvid) without too many problems. An analagous example would be Apple's DRM around AAC (which is part of MPEG-4, I believe).
Think of it as being included for free and quit your complaining. Is it really such a problem that you are getting more for your money? If you don't want to use it, don't plug a network cable into it. Then it will behave exactly like your "old school" PS2.
I could understand complaining if they started not including essential things like controllers, but this is just rediculous.
Of all the companies that Microsoft has ever competed agains, Google is the first one where Microsoft is fighting a battle in enemy territory.
Microsoft's victories come in the software front (Netscape, Quicken, Office, etc.) where they can leverage their operating system dominance.
Google's home turf is massively scalable, reliable web services. Even though much of it is secret, all signs point to an incredible advanced platform that keeps these things running. Its highly redundant and distributed, using some cutting edge research and open source technologies. If Microsoft were to try to utilize Windows to power such a platform, their developers would soon discover how laughable Windows is for such a solution. Not that Microsoft isn't smart, but the culture of Google lends itself much better to success in this field than the culture of Microsoft.
I am, however, looking forward to Microsoft going up against them, as it will allow us to point out yet another failure in them trying to move beyond their core business.
In a related story, I plan to file suit against all readers of Slashdot who did not by the DaHat SuperFoo as I feel that you are all conspiring against me and it to make it fail and that it has nothing to do with the fact that the price per SuperFoo is more then any of you would want to pay.
If said SuperFoo can break up the sentence above into something understandable, I will pay any price. Really.
Rambus believes that RDRAM was not the success it should have been because chip makers did not want to pay their royalties.
So, this it is clearly the chipmakers fault then, huh?
Rambus should learn some basic business strategy. If someone comes out with a slightly less quality product, but sells it for a lot cheaper, that product will win. So, recognize the problem and lower your prices or significantly raise the benefits of paying them. In either case, don't resort to frivilous lawsuits if things don't go your way.