That has always been the microsoft strategy, and it has always paid off...
MS-DOS was never as good as CP/M, or MacOS, or AmigaOS, or Unix... Windows was never as good as MacOS, Unix or AmigaOS... Word was never as good as WordPerfect... Excel was never as good as Lotus 123... Windows NT / LanMan was never as good as Netware or Unix...
Hyper-V will never be as good as VMware or Xen, but it will be heavily marketed, tied to existing successful products, pushed as part of existing business relationships and given away free if necessary while the competitors product will be slandered and intentionally crippled when used in conjunction with any other ms products (ie future versions of windows running very slow in vmware)... Whatever it takes to take over the market, anything short of actually releasing a superior product.
It's quite inevitable really, both Citrix/Xen and VMware actually depend on MS for the management of their virtualization infrastructure, so if you have to buy ms anyway you can bet they will push hyper-v along for the ride, and not using hyper-v will always end up more expensive because neither vmware nor citrix have any control over ms pricing.
VMware and the commercial Xen are unlikely to be considered in pure unix environments where ms has no influence, simply because their management tools require ms systems (i had to evaluate several such options lately and opted for a kvm based setup because i can manage it entirely using ssh, a browser and a standard vnc client, which also enables me to manage the setup from my phone. the citrix/vmware options required proprietary clients).
The sooner handwriting dies, the better... I had to fill out a very long form by hand last week, and my hand still hurts from doing so. Not only that, but there is a high chance the form will be returned or queried because they cannot read some or all of it. It would have been much simpler, not to mention quicker and cheaper, to fill out this form online...
A signature is a totally ridiculous thing to base a legal agreement on... Whenever i'm expected to sign anything, i just make a random mark, different every time... Noone has ever said anything. It is also extremely common for people to sign things on behalf of others (with their full knowledge and consent)... The idea of using a signature to verify anything is entirely pointless, and nothing more than a minor inconvenience (minor since anyone can make an arbitrary mark to get round the inconvenience).
Most people aren't aware of the requirement for a warrant, and will let them in (you don't need a warrant if the occupant invites you in)... Or you can invite them in if you're sure you have nothing to hide, since they won't find anything and this might satisfy them enough to leave you alone.
There are display devices which are incapable of receiving broadcast signals, they are generally called monitors...
Vehicle tax is simpler than paying individually for every toll road, and if you don't drive your own car you don't pay vehicle tax. You are free to walk, take trains, ride a bike (on the roads no less), or even take a taxi/bus but then you are indirectly paying for their road tax.
Intel are not the problem... I doubt they like x86 very much, but they are stuck supporting all that legacy cruft... They tried to move to IA64 remember.
It is closed source software which is the problem... You have old apps which are no longer developed, good luck getting those ported. The catch-22 situation with commercial apps, no users = not viable to port apps, no apps = no users...
If you want to run open source, non x86 architectures are great, if you want commercial apps then non x86 is pretty useless these days.
The Nokia N800 has a 300mhz ARM, and a linux port of flash which can play youtube videos, it's fast enough for the standard videos, i doubt the HD stuff would work but the screen isnt big enough anyway.
There are already ARM based laptops, and most of them come with windows ce... I know a handful of people who bought them, and all of them saw "windows" and assumed it would be the same as they have on their desktop, boy were they disappointed. None of those people still uses their windows ce machine and several people tried to return them.
Depends how you market them... If you market them as "small laptops", people will expect familiarity with big laptops, but they're also likely to be disappointed with the performance (many existing netbook users have been disappointed with how they perform).. Instead, you need to target them as something new....
Imagine an ARM based machine running ubuntu which instead of being marketed as a small laptop, is marketed as a big ipod... There is already competition among phones and music players, so a new unfamiliar interface won't be unexpected so long as it looks pretty and is simple/intuitive enough. Such a machine would do everything an ipod does, but have a bigger screen and a qwerty keyboard, so typing anything, browsing, video playing etc would be easier. Sure it won't be pocket sized, but it's portable enough. You could also market the ubuntu package management application as "the app store", linux has had convenient package management for years, and people would love it if they only knew it existed... Apple did effectively the same thing but wrapped it up in a friendlier interface and marketed it.
Porting windows is not the issue, there is no question that current NT based versions of windows would be relatively easy to port to ARM. The problem is applications, the vast majority of windows users run precompiled binary applications which currently only exist for x86... While it's true there have been various non x86 NT versions, they have either failed and been dropped (alpha, ppc, mips) or are in the process of dying (ia64), largely because there were little or no third party applications available for them.
I didn't realise it was even possible to install a 32bit Solaris kernel on modern SPARC hardware, i thought that options went away with Solaris 8, and 32bit support was dropped completely with 10. Most Solaris machines use a 64bit kernel, combined with a mostly 32bit userland, and i have never encountered compatibility problems using a 64bit kernel except with kernel drivers, and since 64bit Solaris has been around for so many years now, i doubt any Solaris kernel drivers written in the last 10 years are 32bit only.
Servers with lots of ram are generally used for either virtualization or databases... If you have an extremely low power server, you could put many more of them in the same space using the same power. Power is expensive these days, and a lot of places use virtualization to run a large number of virtual machines with far less than 4gb of ram.
Doing so incurs a performance hit, quite a significant one, as well as using extra memory.... When DEC did it with the Alpha, current Alpha processors were hugely faster than any available x86 so even with the performance hit you got comparable or better performance than using a real x86 system. ARM processors are not as fast as current x86, and the performance would be so poor as to eliminate the benefits ARM has over Atom.
Even in countries where Dell sell the Ubuntu based machines, they are only available on a very small subset of systems, for instance in the UK there are a handful of lowend laptops which offer it, no higher end laptops or desktops of any kind.
Ofcourse as like anywhere else these days, all of the servers have the option of coming with linux.
I looked at those devices a while ago, but was unable to get hold of one in the UK... You can order from the US, but the shipping costs as much as the unit itself, and there doesn't seem to be any european distributor.
If everyone who visits China buys a new cellphone and laptop for the trip... Where were those cellphones and laptops likely manufactured? China... China stands to make quite a profit from people doing this.
The article asks why they didn't do ASLR, especially since snow leopard is touted as a "performance and reliability" update... Since when does ASLR improve performance or reliability? If anything, it would decrease performance and could cause compatibility issues with some badly written code (and exploits) and thus decrease reliability too...
Also, the article talks about windows but doesn't mention that linux had dep and aslr long before windows did, and still has a far more complete implementation.
Being mandated is not what caused cars to become computerised, high end manufacturers already had computerised systems in their cars and others were moving that way.
The legislation simply required that they all follow the same standard, and this new legislation exists because the original standard didn't go far enough.
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That has always been the microsoft strategy, and it has always paid off...
MS-DOS was never as good as CP/M, or MacOS, or AmigaOS, or Unix...
Windows was never as good as MacOS, Unix or AmigaOS...
Word was never as good as WordPerfect...
Excel was never as good as Lotus 123...
Windows NT / LanMan was never as good as Netware or Unix...
Hyper-V will never be as good as VMware or Xen, but it will be heavily marketed, tied to existing successful products, pushed as part of existing business relationships and given away free if necessary while the competitors product will be slandered and intentionally crippled when used in conjunction with any other ms products (ie future versions of windows running very slow in vmware)... Whatever it takes to take over the market, anything short of actually releasing a superior product.
It's quite inevitable really, both Citrix/Xen and VMware actually depend on MS for the management of their virtualization infrastructure, so if you have to buy ms anyway you can bet they will push hyper-v along for the ride, and not using hyper-v will always end up more expensive because neither vmware nor citrix have any control over ms pricing.
VMware and the commercial Xen are unlikely to be considered in pure unix environments where ms has no influence, simply because their management tools require ms systems (i had to evaluate several such options lately and opted for a kvm based setup because i can manage it entirely using ssh, a browser and a standard vnc client, which also enables me to manage the setup from my phone. the citrix/vmware options required proprietary clients).
The problem is when they make stupid uninformed decisions that result in countless problems, for which you get the blame...
The sooner handwriting dies, the better...
I had to fill out a very long form by hand last week, and my hand still hurts from doing so. Not only that, but there is a high chance the form will be returned or queried because they cannot read some or all of it.
It would have been much simpler, not to mention quicker and cheaper, to fill out this form online...
A signature is a totally ridiculous thing to base a legal agreement on...
Whenever i'm expected to sign anything, i just make a random mark, different every time... Noone has ever said anything.
It is also extremely common for people to sign things on behalf of others (with their full knowledge and consent)... The idea of using a signature to verify anything is entirely pointless, and nothing more than a minor inconvenience (minor since anyone can make an arbitrary mark to get round the inconvenience).
Perhaps he needed to change his status to "robbing a house"...
Buy with cash and give a false address, most retailers wont verify the details you give them.
Most people aren't aware of the requirement for a warrant, and will let them in (you don't need a warrant if the occupant invites you in)... Or you can invite them in if you're sure you have nothing to hide, since they won't find anything and this might satisfy them enough to leave you alone.
There are display devices which are incapable of receiving broadcast signals, they are generally called monitors...
Vehicle tax is simpler than paying individually for every toll road, and if you don't drive your own car you don't pay vehicle tax. You are free to walk, take trains, ride a bike (on the roads no less), or even take a taxi/bus but then you are indirectly paying for their road tax.
Intel are not the problem... I doubt they like x86 very much, but they are stuck supporting all that legacy cruft... They tried to move to IA64 remember.
It is closed source software which is the problem...
You have old apps which are no longer developed, good luck getting those ported.
The catch-22 situation with commercial apps, no users = not viable to port apps, no apps = no users...
If you want to run open source, non x86 architectures are great, if you want commercial apps then non x86 is pretty useless these days.
The Nokia N800 has a 300mhz ARM, and a linux port of flash which can play youtube videos, it's fast enough for the standard videos, i doubt the HD stuff would work but the screen isnt big enough anyway.
I have the eee 901 which was advertised as having 8 hours with xp, and 5 hours with linux... The reality seems to be around 5 hours with either.
There are already ARM based laptops, and most of them come with windows ce... I know a handful of people who bought them, and all of them saw "windows" and assumed it would be the same as they have on their desktop, boy were they disappointed. None of those people still uses their windows ce machine and several people tried to return them.
Depends how you market them...
If you market them as "small laptops", people will expect familiarity with big laptops, but they're also likely to be disappointed with the performance (many existing netbook users have been disappointed with how they perform)..
Instead, you need to target them as something new....
Imagine an ARM based machine running ubuntu which instead of being marketed as a small laptop, is marketed as a big ipod...
There is already competition among phones and music players, so a new unfamiliar interface won't be unexpected so long as it looks pretty and is simple/intuitive enough.
Such a machine would do everything an ipod does, but have a bigger screen and a qwerty keyboard, so typing anything, browsing, video playing etc would be easier. Sure it won't be pocket sized, but it's portable enough.
You could also market the ubuntu package management application as "the app store", linux has had convenient package management for years, and people would love it if they only knew it existed... Apple did effectively the same thing but wrapped it up in a friendlier interface and marketed it.
Porting windows is not the issue, there is no question that current NT based versions of windows would be relatively easy to port to ARM. The problem is applications, the vast majority of windows users run precompiled binary applications which currently only exist for x86...
While it's true there have been various non x86 NT versions, they have either failed and been dropped (alpha, ppc, mips) or are in the process of dying (ia64), largely because there were little or no third party applications available for them.
Pity that these ARM based developer systems are so difficult to get in the UK, despite ARM being a UK company...
I didn't realise it was even possible to install a 32bit Solaris kernel on modern SPARC hardware, i thought that options went away with Solaris 8, and 32bit support was dropped completely with 10.
Most Solaris machines use a 64bit kernel, combined with a mostly 32bit userland, and i have never encountered compatibility problems using a 64bit kernel except with kernel drivers, and since 64bit Solaris has been around for so many years now, i doubt any Solaris kernel drivers written in the last 10 years are 32bit only.
PAE is an x86 thing, i'm not sure if ARM has anything like it, or how suited the architecture is for a 64bit transition.
Servers with lots of ram are generally used for either virtualization or databases...
If you have an extremely low power server, you could put many more of them in the same space using the same power. Power is expensive these days, and a lot of places use virtualization to run a large number of virtual machines with far less than 4gb of ram.
Doing so incurs a performance hit, quite a significant one, as well as using extra memory.... When DEC did it with the Alpha, current Alpha processors were hugely faster than any available x86 so even with the performance hit you got comparable or better performance than using a real x86 system. ARM processors are not as fast as current x86, and the performance would be so poor as to eliminate the benefits ARM has over Atom.
Even in countries where Dell sell the Ubuntu based machines, they are only available on a very small subset of systems, for instance in the UK there are a handful of lowend laptops which offer it, no higher end laptops or desktops of any kind.
Ofcourse as like anywhere else these days, all of the servers have the option of coming with linux.
I looked at those devices a while ago, but was unable to get hold of one in the UK...
You can order from the US, but the shipping costs as much as the unit itself, and there doesn't seem to be any european distributor.
Same thing happens with dvds, clothes, and all manner of other things... And yet they still try to claim counterfeit copies are inferior?
If everyone who visits China buys a new cellphone and laptop for the trip...
Where were those cellphones and laptops likely manufactured? China...
China stands to make quite a profit from people doing this.
The article asks why they didn't do ASLR, especially since snow leopard is touted as a "performance and reliability" update...
Since when does ASLR improve performance or reliability? If anything, it would decrease performance and could cause compatibility issues with some badly written code (and exploits) and thus decrease reliability too...
Also, the article talks about windows but doesn't mention that linux had dep and aslr long before windows did, and still has a far more complete implementation.
Being mandated is not what caused cars to become computerised, high end manufacturers already had computerised systems in their cars and others were moving that way.
The legislation simply required that they all follow the same standard, and this new legislation exists because the original standard didn't go far enough.