In the case when your business depends upon a single item that only one vendor can supply, the vendor can and will demand things, and you have no choice but to comply. Your business is completely at the mercy of that one vendor, not a very sound position to be in.
More likely there is no demand because there is no supply... People who want to buy Linux machines buy from one of the other vendors, or want to install it themselves... People who might buy Linux, but don't realise it exists because the companies selling them computers don't offer or advertise it.
Casual Copying / Fair Use
on
The DRM Scorecard
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· Score: 2, Insightful
DRM doesn't exist to stop the big organised cracking groups who release media online (they try to do this with lawsuits). Nor does it try to prevent the street sellers, who mostly buy their stuff from the above, mass duplicate and sell cheaply.
What it's intended for, is to screw more money out of the average consumer. When i was a kid, my parents would buy me music on vinyl records, and record them to audio cassette for me to play, because being a kid i would invariably ruin the media at some point. When that happened, they would make me another copy. Similarly, they would make copies to play in the car (tapes often got damaged if they were left on the dashboard in hot sunny weather, and i doubt there are many cars which can play vinyl).
DRM will stop these law abiding citizens from making their own personal-use copies, and force them to buy multiple copies of their media, and there are even more reasons to format-shift now: CDs - to play in the car CDs - for kids to destroy Digital files - to play on a media center Digital files - for an ipod or cellphone
Ofcourse, those who pirate media will continue to do so, and will be better off than those who don't. Eventually more of those people will choose to pirate media instead so that they gain the benefits of drm-free media.
Microsoft do profit from compatibility, compatibility with themselves and nothing else. They use proprietary protocols, formats etc, so that it's hard for third parties to be compatible with them, so customers have no choice but to use the microsoft offerings because their data and third party apps are being held to ransom.
Microsoft will only implement standards if they have no other choice (TCP/IP etc), because a standard is already established. Where there is no existing standard, or the existing standard is new and not dominant in it's field they will try to create their own proprietary system instead, sometimes this technique fails (netbeui?) and sometimes it succeeds, but the end goal is always the same - to create lock-in.
So not even a case of not invented here, they simply don't support it at all? Or maybe they dont support it because it's openly documented but not widely used yet, preferring to create something closed and proprietary instead.
Well, you could put your logs into a modified database... You only need INSERT and SELECT, no UPDATE or DELETE functions. How hard would it be to modify something like mysql to work in this way?
Yes, i create such documents using pdflatex, and missed the bookmarks in openoffice... I have tried making PDFs with openoffice using proper styles, and it didnt create bookmarks (this might have changed since) but did have clickable links. Also, the TOC is quirky in openoffice, you can use headings and it will automatically create one but you can also manually define styles and give them a level in the heirarchy, however only the former will create clickable links in the TOC. I know it's a kludgy thing to do, mixing different methods of creating the TOC but i come across a lot of files created by word in this way.
How about a modified tape drive without a rewind capability... The logs only need to be written in serial, so a tape would work nicely for this, and tapes usually have huge storage. If you want to reuse the tapes, you can put them into a seperate device to rewind them.
Also you could chop the logfiles into chunks of a certain size, and print out the md5/sha1 hashes of them, so if the logs are modified there is proof that they were.
There are plenty of fonts out there which are freely redistributable, no issue with you embedding those... You shouldn't be sending out documents that rely on non freely distributable elements anyway. Have you ever read the msoffice eula? It states that you may not send the supplied clipart outside of your organization, but many people stil do this.
Well, PDF files are typically smaller than word files, unless you used a really half-assed pdf creation tool that turns all the text into a large image.
So buy staroffice from Sun... You won't be able to sue them either, you'l still get all the advantages of openoffice except the lack of cost (tho its still cheaper than ms, and your boss wants to spend money anyway), but you'l also get commercial support (ms dont give you this when you buy, you have to pay extra for support).
It still doesnt create a proper TOC tho (pdf bookmarks)... A well structured PDF has the contents listed in a panel at the side and you can jump to any page you want instantly
Err, "the" pdf viewer? You mean Adobe's acrobat reader, which is just one of many PDF viewers and happens to be one of the worst? I use Preview on OSX, and it works nicely, loads quickly, displays the TOC properly (if the created PDF even has one), on Linux i usually use Kpdf (part of kde) which is similar, relatively lightweight, fast, etc... I have tried the adobe reader programs, and they do suck badly... I fail to see why people think they're stuck with this crap, when there are plenty of better pdf viewers out there.
But hidden text in coments is easily stripped out in a text editor... You can also trivially write a tool to remove comments from HTML... Same for ODF, you know the format specs so removing metadata is trivial.
Re:You don't need MS Office to create .doc files
on
Does ODF Have a Future?
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· Score: 2, Interesting
The other problem, is that word uses an undocumented binary format, thus it's much easier to hide malware or 0day exploits in it, and much harder for your filtering system to weed them out. At least with ODF or PDF the format is known, so you can parse it in a sandboxed environment on your mail filter, and remove anything that shouldnt be there. Sure there are still risks, but they are greatly reduced, any exploit against an ODF application would need to work without breaking the XML schema. Also with a standard format, you're less assured of what application the end user will be running (thus making 0day attacks less likely).
The windows print server model is fundamentally broken anyway... CUPS, as used by Linux, OSX, and i'm sure more unixes works far better... The clients send standard postscript to the server, which then converts the postscript into whatever the printer requires. None of the clients require any drivers at all, only the server, and the clients can be running any OS you want without problems. Also, if you turn on broadcast mode, any machine running cups in the local subnet will automatically pick up the printer and allow you to use it. We have a setup like that here, a server running cups and a collection of clients running various linux distributions (64 and 32bit) and macos. There are a few windows clients, served by a samba service running on the cups server but windows still requires you to have drivers and won't pick the printer up automaticaly.
I used it for a few days, didn't hate it or have any major problems, all my hardware was compatible (having changed some things around so i could run 64bit xp). What i did do tho, was turn off the aero interface (found it annoying and resource hungry), and turned off UAC (found it incredibly annoying), and installed firefox to replace the crappy built in browser. In the end tho, it didn't really provide me any benefits while running slightly slower and using more space, so i went back to 64bit XP. As a caveat tho, the sole purpose of the windows machine is to run games, i have no other use for it.
Say what you like about XP, but it was still a huge step up from 98/ME... If you were running 2000 there was little reason to update it, but 98/ME were total crap. There are very few instances where someone would want to roll back, plenty of people went back to 2000 however.
Actually, you'd expect the 2% who are already running vista to also come under the "stick with their existing version(s) of windows" category... Unless ofcourse that having used vista, they are considering rolling back or migrating away from it to osx/linux.
The BSD API is the easiest one to reimplement, there are already plenty of BSD implementations available under the BSD license, which you can reuse... The Cocoa APIs are already partially implemented by GNUStep... Carbon is considered obsolete and being deprecated, it might not even be worth implementing. And funny you mentioned BrandZ, you could run Darwin/OSX binaries on Linux in much the same way you can run Linux binaries on solaris... The architecture is the same, just the syscalls you need to change... As for CoreImage etc, are they not built on top of OpenGL? Linux already has an implementation of OpenGL... Once you retarget the calls Aqua makes to target the Linux GL libs it shouldn't be that hard to get running. Remember you don't need to reimplement all the libraries to make it useable, you reimplement the kernel and run the original libraries on top of it (thats how solaris does linux binaries).
Why would you need coherence for Linux? You can use the native OSX X server, and run the apps "remotely" from the virtual instance of Linux. You can do the same with Solaris etc too... Similarly if your running a Linux host, and a unix-like guest OS, you can do exactly the same thing with your native X server as the display for your virtualized apps. Coherence is merely an attempt to provide windows users with functionality that already existed on unix.
Because it's not a proprietary machine... It's a proprietary implementation of the open and documented x86 compatible specification. And it's no more proprietary than a Dell, HP or any other pre-assembled system. I have a Macbook, it's fully capable of running Linux and all of the hardware works, the SATA is an Intel chipset, as is the video.. the wireless is Atheros, the sound is Intel too. Everything works with linux, in contrast to some other laptops which often use strange proprietary wireless chipsets. Higher end macs use nvidia or ati video, which can be more of a problem especially in the case of ati, but their drivers are aparrently going to be improving soon...
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In the case when your business depends upon a single item that only one vendor can supply, the vendor can and will demand things, and you have no choice but to comply. Your business is completely at the mercy of that one vendor, not a very sound position to be in.
More likely there is no demand because there is no supply...
People who want to buy Linux machines buy from one of the other vendors, or want to install it themselves...
People who might buy Linux, but don't realise it exists because the companies selling them computers don't offer or advertise it.
DRM doesn't exist to stop the big organised cracking groups who release media online (they try to do this with lawsuits).
Nor does it try to prevent the street sellers, who mostly buy their stuff from the above, mass duplicate and sell cheaply.
What it's intended for, is to screw more money out of the average consumer.
When i was a kid, my parents would buy me music on vinyl records, and record them to audio cassette for me to play, because being a kid i would invariably ruin the media at some point. When that happened, they would make me another copy. Similarly, they would make copies to play in the car (tapes often got damaged if they were left on the dashboard in hot sunny weather, and i doubt there are many cars which can play vinyl).
DRM will stop these law abiding citizens from making their own personal-use copies, and force them to buy multiple copies of their media, and there are even more reasons to format-shift now:
CDs - to play in the car
CDs - for kids to destroy
Digital files - to play on a media center
Digital files - for an ipod or cellphone
Ofcourse, those who pirate media will continue to do so, and will be better off than those who don't. Eventually more of those people will choose to pirate media instead so that they gain the benefits of drm-free media.
Microsoft do profit from compatibility, compatibility with themselves and nothing else. They use proprietary protocols, formats etc, so that it's hard for third parties to be compatible with them, so customers have no choice but to use the microsoft offerings because their data and third party apps are being held to ransom.
Microsoft will only implement standards if they have no other choice (TCP/IP etc), because a standard is already established. Where there is no existing standard, or the existing standard is new and not dominant in it's field they will try to create their own proprietary system instead, sometimes this technique fails (netbeui?) and sometimes it succeeds, but the end goal is always the same - to create lock-in.
So not even a case of not invented here, they simply don't support it at all?
Or maybe they dont support it because it's openly documented but not widely used yet, preferring to create something closed and proprietary instead.
A lot of lenovo laptops are still sold under the IBM branding...
Plus lenovo branded laptops haven't been around for as long as all the other brands.
Well, you could put your logs into a modified database...
You only need INSERT and SELECT, no UPDATE or DELETE functions. How hard would it be to modify something like mysql to work in this way?
Yes, i create such documents using pdflatex, and missed the bookmarks in openoffice...
I have tried making PDFs with openoffice using proper styles, and it didnt create bookmarks (this might have changed since) but did have clickable links.
Also, the TOC is quirky in openoffice, you can use headings and it will automatically create one but you can also manually define styles and give them a level in the heirarchy, however only the former will create clickable links in the TOC. I know it's a kludgy thing to do, mixing different methods of creating the TOC but i come across a lot of files created by word in this way.
Is the physical device capable of writing less than a sector in one go?
As for the FS, you dont need one, just a raw stream of data.
How about a modified tape drive without a rewind capability...
The logs only need to be written in serial, so a tape would work nicely for this, and tapes usually have huge storage. If you want to reuse the tapes, you can put them into a seperate device to rewind them.
Also you could chop the logfiles into chunks of a certain size, and print out the md5/sha1 hashes of them, so if the logs are modified there is proof that they were.
There are plenty of fonts out there which are freely redistributable, no issue with you embedding those...
You shouldn't be sending out documents that rely on non freely distributable elements anyway.
Have you ever read the msoffice eula? It states that you may not send the supplied clipart outside of your organization, but many people stil do this.
Well, PDF files are typically smaller than word files, unless you used a really half-assed pdf creation tool that turns all the text into a large image.
So buy staroffice from Sun...
You won't be able to sue them either, you'l still get all the advantages of openoffice except the lack of cost (tho its still cheaper than ms, and your boss wants to spend money anyway), but you'l also get commercial support (ms dont give you this when you buy, you have to pay extra for support).
It still doesnt create a proper TOC tho (pdf bookmarks)... A well structured PDF has the contents listed in a panel at the side and you can jump to any page you want instantly
Err, "the" pdf viewer?
You mean Adobe's acrobat reader, which is just one of many PDF viewers and happens to be one of the worst?
I use Preview on OSX, and it works nicely, loads quickly, displays the TOC properly (if the created PDF even has one), on Linux i usually use Kpdf (part of kde) which is similar, relatively lightweight, fast, etc...
I have tried the adobe reader programs, and they do suck badly... I fail to see why people think they're stuck with this crap, when there are plenty of better pdf viewers out there.
But hidden text in coments is easily stripped out in a text editor...
You can also trivially write a tool to remove comments from HTML...
Same for ODF, you know the format specs so removing metadata is trivial.
The other problem, is that word uses an undocumented binary format, thus it's much easier to hide malware or 0day exploits in it, and much harder for your filtering system to weed them out.
At least with ODF or PDF the format is known, so you can parse it in a sandboxed environment on your mail filter, and remove anything that shouldnt be there. Sure there are still risks, but they are greatly reduced, any exploit against an ODF application would need to work without breaking the XML schema. Also with a standard format, you're less assured of what application the end user will be running (thus making 0day attacks less likely).
The windows print server model is fundamentally broken anyway...
CUPS, as used by Linux, OSX, and i'm sure more unixes works far better...
The clients send standard postscript to the server, which then converts the postscript into whatever the printer requires. None of the clients require any drivers at all, only the server, and the clients can be running any OS you want without problems.
Also, if you turn on broadcast mode, any machine running cups in the local subnet will automatically pick up the printer and allow you to use it.
We have a setup like that here, a server running cups and a collection of clients running various linux distributions (64 and 32bit) and macos. There are a few windows clients, served by a samba service running on the cups server but windows still requires you to have drivers and won't pick the printer up automaticaly.
I used it for a few days, didn't hate it or have any major problems, all my hardware was compatible (having changed some things around so i could run 64bit xp).
What i did do tho, was turn off the aero interface (found it annoying and resource hungry), and turned off UAC (found it incredibly annoying), and installed firefox to replace the crappy built in browser.
In the end tho, it didn't really provide me any benefits while running slightly slower and using more space, so i went back to 64bit XP.
As a caveat tho, the sole purpose of the windows machine is to run games, i have no other use for it.
Say what you like about XP, but it was still a huge step up from 98/ME...
If you were running 2000 there was little reason to update it, but 98/ME were total crap. There are very few instances where someone would want to roll back, plenty of people went back to 2000 however.
Actually, you'd expect the 2% who are already running vista to also come under the "stick with their existing version(s) of windows" category...
Unless ofcourse that having used vista, they are considering rolling back or migrating away from it to osx/linux.
The BSD API is the easiest one to reimplement, there are already plenty of BSD implementations available under the BSD license, which you can reuse...
The Cocoa APIs are already partially implemented by GNUStep...
Carbon is considered obsolete and being deprecated, it might not even be worth implementing.
And funny you mentioned BrandZ, you could run Darwin/OSX binaries on Linux in much the same way you can run Linux binaries on solaris... The architecture is the same, just the syscalls you need to change...
As for CoreImage etc, are they not built on top of OpenGL? Linux already has an implementation of OpenGL... Once you retarget the calls Aqua makes to target the Linux GL libs it shouldn't be that hard to get running.
Remember you don't need to reimplement all the libraries to make it useable, you reimplement the kernel and run the original libraries on top of it (thats how solaris does linux binaries).
Why would you need coherence for Linux?
You can use the native OSX X server, and run the apps "remotely" from the virtual instance of Linux.
You can do the same with Solaris etc too...
Similarly if your running a Linux host, and a unix-like guest OS, you can do exactly the same thing with your native X server as the display for your virtualized apps.
Coherence is merely an attempt to provide windows users with functionality that already existed on unix.
Because it's not a proprietary machine...
It's a proprietary implementation of the open and documented x86 compatible specification. And it's no more proprietary than a Dell, HP or any other pre-assembled system.
I have a Macbook, it's fully capable of running Linux and all of the hardware works, the SATA is an Intel chipset, as is the video.. the wireless is Atheros, the sound is Intel too. Everything works with linux, in contrast to some other laptops which often use strange proprietary wireless chipsets. Higher end macs use nvidia or ati video, which can be more of a problem especially in the case of ati, but their drivers are aparrently going to be improving soon...