It's already a very risky business buying microsoft, because it's not compatible with anything else you've got no exit strategy, nowhere you can turn if microsoft goes belly up etc. Unlike with hardware, where you have multiple vendors for every single component.
If microsoft threaten to pull out of the market, it will just reinforce the view that they're volatile and it would be horrendously stupid to make your business dependant upon their proprietary products.
And since their products encourage lock-in, and are not compatible with anything else, buyers would have no choice but to seek alternatives.
Exactly... Keeping people buying your shoddy products because they have no other choice is much easier than making good products that the customers actually choose on a level playing field.
A private person wouldn't be given the opportunity to negotiate a punishment, or to pay daily fines until their punishment was carried out, why should a company be any different?
The EU should decide on a suitable punishment without negotiations with the guilty, and then enforce the punishment. Failure to comply with the ruling results in contempt of court and additional punishment.
The EU should put those in charge of microsoft within the EU in jail until such time as the company complies with the court ruling.
It's not XML which is the problem, converting that excel file to the openoffice xml format usually results in a considerably smaller file... It's microsoft's inefficient implementation of an xml based format.
Yes, the K7 does copy a lot from the P6... But the P6 takes a lot of ideas from the nexgen 5x86 designs (now owned by AMD) and the DEC Alpha designs (at least partially licensed by AMD, and DEC successfully sued intel over ripping off the alpha designs)
And Intel's new chips are based on the Pentium-M, which is still heavily based on the Pentium-PRO that dates from the early 90s... Intel's attempt to produce a new architecture (netburst/p4) resulted in an underperforming overheating mess, so they're going back to one that works.
Being paid for actually doing some work is one thing, nothing wrong with that...
Being paid for the 1000th time for some work you did years ago, that's extortion, and is no better than these rich-at-birth "elite" you talk about.
Me, i charge by the hour to turn up at customer sites and perform tasks for them (maintenence, installation etc)... Due to the nature of this work, i have to be physically in the country and therefore will always be able to earn enough to live here. If i have to write some code for a client, i do so and charge them by the hour for it.
So sell it to them at around the same price as competing products... And when they complain about the cost and come asking for discounts, give them huge discounts:)
You shouldn't have to pay $200 for a pair of shoes... And 30c is still considerably more than it costs to reproduce a stream of bytes.
Aside from that, despite the 30c production cost (assuming it's so small, which i imagine it's not) those shoes and the raw materials have to be transported to and from the sweatshop where they're assembled.
And finally, you do have a choice, there are much cheaper shoes available which don't have the "nike" branding, but which were likely produced in the same sweatshops using the same raw materials.
As for the slave class, it's a problem of poverty that people are willing to work for so little. Each and every nike shoe requires raw materials, and a person's time and effort to assemble it. There are recurring costs EVERY TIME A SHOE IS PRODUCED. The fact that people will work for such a small amount of money is a completely seperate issue.
Software doesn't need to have ANY RECURRING COSTS.
I feel very much insulted paying for something and recieving no effort in return. At least if i pay for a pair of shoes, i know that i will receive some raw materials, and someone's effort in putting them together.
Imagine paying $1000 for a computer half way round the world to execute a simple algorithm and return you a 32-byte string. Is it really worth it? That's all you get for your $1000.
What gives you the right to continue charging people $100 for something you've not spent any effort on for years?
And yes, now that people in india will develop software for a pittance, your ability to extort money from people will come to an end. That's called capitalism, if you don't like it, move to cuba.
Routers have security problems and need patching too...
Also, using a generic piece of hardware gives you more scope for future change without buying new hardware.
On the other hand, a pci-based architecture which saturates the bus with interrupts for each packet, won't handle a flood of small packets... It will fall flat on it's back.
And if you run cheap nasty machines, expect to have a redundant cluster and a stack of spares waiting nearby (not that you wouldn't also want redundancy with dedicated routers)... If it's important you'd be more likely to buy expensive higher quality machines, with redundant disks and power supplies etc.
It's only really the highend ciscos which have dedicated hardware... Even mid-end stuff like the 7200VXR uses a pci-bus style architecture.
The problem with a bus like PCI is interrupts, each packet generates an interrupt (or several, with some cheap nasty NICs) and sends it over the bus... It's quite easy to saturate the bus using small packets. That's why the higher end cisco routers have more in common with the catalyst switches than earlier pci-based routers.
Well, when doing a security audit, RDP (terminal services) is considered an issue, whereas SSH is not (unless it happens to be an old version of SSH with known flaws)
Reasons:
RDP doesn't do host authentication (whereas SSH checks host keys, so you can tell if there's an imposter host or a man in the middle attack) RDP advertises the OS, hostname and potentially a domain name to any connecting client BEFORE authentication takes place
Yes, local security holes are an issue... But a much worse issue, would be simply running as a privileged user already (no privilege escalation necessary). So no matter how many local privilege escalation holes OSX has, it's still not as bad for an end user as default installs of windows are.
Hence the idea for runtime loadable/installable modules... And if you open a document that requires a module your not using, it can tell you, and offer to load it if it's installed but not loaded.
There are already such libraries, libgaim for instance, which support AIM and many other protocols, and which are open source and cross platform.
Having the sourcecode to libraries is incredibly usefull, if you already developing an app then you presumeably have a reasonable knowlege of atleast one programming language, so you can read the source to the library and get a better understanding of why it performs in a particular way...
I've quite often beat my head against a wall, trying to debug why something didn't behave exactly as the documentation said it should.
That's a very short sighted attitude, but MS know that and this is why they keep changing the interface... However changing the interface also confuses the most clueless of end users, and also makes it more difficult to use multiple versions (also intentional).
And they have concentrated on adding new (useless) features rather than correcting bugs... There was a bug in the way macros count lines (they count lines with bullet points differently to normal lines) which existed in word 97, and has been known about, documented and reported to microsoft since this time... Word 2003 still has the same issue, and now it's 2006 and this issue still hasn't been fixed, 9 years later.
There are many more such bugs, just google for them.
Actually it is purely software-vending which is a flawed business model. Why? because software can and will be made available for free, and free market competition will eventually push the cost down to 0. Software only has an up front development cost, after that it can be sold infinite times at extortionate levels of markup, once customers realise just how much they're being ripped off the ability to sell software for $100+ will disappear... Software will be available for free download, on physical media for little more than the cost of the media (and any manuals it comes with)
Infact, software companies have been getting progressively worse... A few years ago you'd have got a thick printed manual to go with the installation media, so you atleast got something to hold in your hand... Nowadays you may not even get a CD, you might just get a "license code", completely intangible and gives people the feeling of being completely ripped off.
Services, Support and Hardware however, can never cost nothing. You have to pay someone to sit around and provide support on an ongoing basis, and hardware will always have recurring raw materials and production cost for every unit produced.
Perhaps openoffice should gain a configuration tool, like the "make menuconfig" of linux and the ability to load features as modules...
That way, you could build a minimalist version and add the features you want, while leaving off what you don't.. It would be very usefull for secure environments too, where support for such things as macros will need to be removed.
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It's already a very risky business buying microsoft, because it's not compatible with anything else you've got no exit strategy, nowhere you can turn if microsoft goes belly up etc. Unlike with hardware, where you have multiple vendors for every single component.
If microsoft threaten to pull out of the market, it will just reinforce the view that they're volatile and it would be horrendously stupid to make your business dependant upon their proprietary products.
And since their products encourage lock-in, and are not compatible with anything else, buyers would have no choice but to seek alternatives.
Exactly...
Keeping people buying your shoddy products because they have no other choice is much easier than making good products that the customers actually choose on a level playing field.
A private person wouldn't be given the opportunity to negotiate a punishment, or to pay daily fines until their punishment was carried out, why should a company be any different?
The EU should decide on a suitable punishment without negotiations with the guilty, and then enforce the punishment. Failure to comply with the ruling results in contempt of court and additional punishment.
The EU should put those in charge of microsoft within the EU in jail until such time as the company complies with the court ruling.
It's not XML which is the problem, converting that excel file to the openoffice xml format usually results in a considerably smaller file...
It's microsoft's inefficient implementation of an xml based format.
Yes, the K7 does copy a lot from the P6...
But the P6 takes a lot of ideas from the nexgen 5x86 designs (now owned by AMD) and the DEC Alpha designs (at least partially licensed by AMD, and DEC successfully sued intel over ripping off the alpha designs)
Dell did used to have their own distribution of UNIX, many years ago...
And Intel's new chips are based on the Pentium-M, which is still heavily based on the Pentium-PRO that dates from the early 90s...
Intel's attempt to produce a new architecture (netburst/p4) resulted in an underperforming overheating mess, so they're going back to one that works.
Did anyone else notice that the AMD motherboard didn't detect the processor correctly?
Being paid for actually doing some work is one thing, nothing wrong with that...
Being paid for the 1000th time for some work you did years ago, that's extortion, and is no better than these rich-at-birth "elite" you talk about.
Me, i charge by the hour to turn up at customer sites and perform tasks for them (maintenence, installation etc)... Due to the nature of this work, i have to be physically in the country and therefore will always be able to earn enough to live here. If i have to write some code for a client, i do so and charge them by the hour for it.
So sell it to them at around the same price as competing products... :)
And when they complain about the cost and come asking for discounts, give them huge discounts
You shouldn't have to pay $200 for a pair of shoes...
And 30c is still considerably more than it costs to reproduce a stream of bytes.
Aside from that, despite the 30c production cost (assuming it's so small, which i imagine it's not) those shoes and the raw materials have to be transported to and from the sweatshop where they're assembled.
And finally, you do have a choice, there are much cheaper shoes available which don't have the "nike" branding, but which were likely produced in the same sweatshops using the same raw materials.
As for the slave class, it's a problem of poverty that people are willing to work for so little. Each and every nike shoe requires raw materials, and a person's time and effort to assemble it. There are recurring costs EVERY TIME A SHOE IS PRODUCED. The fact that people will work for such a small amount of money is a completely seperate issue.
Software doesn't need to have ANY RECURRING COSTS.
I feel very much insulted paying for something and recieving no effort in return. At least if i pay for a pair of shoes, i know that i will receive some raw materials, and someone's effort in putting them together.
Imagine paying $1000 for a computer half way round the world to execute a simple algorithm and return you a 32-byte string. Is it really worth it? That's all you get for your $1000.
What gives you the right to continue charging people $100 for something you've not spent any effort on for years?
And yes, now that people in india will develop software for a pittance, your ability to extort money from people will come to an end. That's called capitalism, if you don't like it, move to cuba.
But that's multiple physical processors on a single board, that's no more sophisticated than a dual processor motherboard.
Routers have security problems and need patching too...
Also, using a generic piece of hardware gives you more scope for future change without buying new hardware.
On the other hand, a pci-based architecture which saturates the bus with interrupts for each packet, won't handle a flood of small packets... It will fall flat on it's back.
And if you run cheap nasty machines, expect to have a redundant cluster and a stack of spares waiting nearby (not that you wouldn't also want redundancy with dedicated routers)... If it's important you'd be more likely to buy expensive higher quality machines, with redundant disks and power supplies etc.
It's only really the highend ciscos which have dedicated hardware...
Even mid-end stuff like the 7200VXR uses a pci-bus style architecture.
The problem with a bus like PCI is interrupts, each packet generates an interrupt (or several, with some cheap nasty NICs) and sends it over the bus... It's quite easy to saturate the bus using small packets. That's why the higher end cisco routers have more in common with the catalyst switches than earlier pci-based routers.
Well, when doing a security audit, RDP (terminal services) is considered an issue, whereas SSH is not (unless it happens to be an old version of SSH with known flaws)
Reasons:
RDP doesn't do host authentication (whereas SSH checks host keys, so you can tell if there's an imposter host or a man in the middle attack)
RDP advertises the OS, hostname and potentially a domain name to any connecting client BEFORE authentication takes place
Yes, local security holes are an issue...
But a much worse issue, would be simply running as a privileged user already (no privilege escalation necessary). So no matter how many local privilege escalation holes OSX has, it's still not as bad for an end user as default installs of windows are.
A mac mini is *NOT* a typical server, it's intended as a workstation.
This would have made more sense if they'd installed the version of OSX which is designated as being for servers.
Actually OSX has a number of UDP services open externally by default, but no TCP.
Hence the idea for runtime loadable/installable modules...
And if you open a document that requires a module your not using, it can tell you, and offer to load it if it's installed but not loaded.
There are already such libraries, libgaim for instance, which support AIM and many other protocols, and which are open source and cross platform.
Having the sourcecode to libraries is incredibly usefull, if you already developing an app then you presumeably have a reasonable knowlege of atleast one programming language, so you can read the source to the library and get a better understanding of why it performs in a particular way...
I've quite often beat my head against a wall, trying to debug why something didn't behave exactly as the documentation said it should.
Because of the installed userbase... AIM is established and already has millions of users... Jabber is growing tho, especially with gtalk opening up.
That's a very short sighted attitude, but MS know that and this is why they keep changing the interface...
However changing the interface also confuses the most clueless of end users, and also makes it more difficult to use multiple versions (also intentional).
And they have concentrated on adding new (useless) features rather than correcting bugs...
There was a bug in the way macros count lines (they count lines with bullet points differently to normal lines) which existed in word 97, and has been known about, documented and reported to microsoft since this time...
Word 2003 still has the same issue, and now it's 2006 and this issue still hasn't been fixed, 9 years later.
There are many more such bugs, just google for them.
Actually it is purely software-vending which is a flawed business model. Why? because software can and will be made available for free, and free market competition will eventually push the cost down to 0.
Software only has an up front development cost, after that it can be sold infinite times at extortionate levels of markup, once customers realise just how much they're being ripped off the ability to sell software for $100+ will disappear... Software will be available for free download, on physical media for little more than the cost of the media (and any manuals it comes with)
Infact, software companies have been getting progressively worse... A few years ago you'd have got a thick printed manual to go with the installation media, so you atleast got something to hold in your hand...
Nowadays you may not even get a CD, you might just get a "license code", completely intangible and gives people the feeling of being completely ripped off.
Services, Support and Hardware however, can never cost nothing. You have to pay someone to sit around and provide support on an ongoing basis, and hardware will always have recurring raw materials and production cost for every unit produced.
Perhaps openoffice should gain a configuration tool, like the "make menuconfig" of linux and the ability to load features as modules...
That way, you could build a minimalist version and add the features you want, while leaving off what you don't.. It would be very usefull for secure environments too, where support for such things as macros will need to be removed.