Movie DVDs accomplish the task of displaying a movie. So they are movies, not software.
When you go to a cinema with Digital Dolby or THX, you believe you are renting software, right?
How about teaming with Sega / Sony / Etc?
on
Last Word on Loki
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· Score: 1
I think it would make sense for console manufacturers to have all games Linux compatible. Why? Because it's the only way they can leverage their profits without losing the gains to Microsoft (that will crush the otherwise).
* It's called dumping, where you destroy your competition with prices below real cost. $0 cost is the WORST CASE of dumping activities.
An example: You NEED windows. You then BUY Windows. But you won't buy Netscape because you have already paid for a brower (and it's a good one ineed). Do you think that IE was developed by volunteers in their spare time? Now, Netscape must close and we have another Monopoly in the browser market.
Letting people easily pirate Windows or Office is another way of dumping. But I guess the law is too blind to see that. We wouldn't have a Monopoly if Microsoft hadn't been focusing on Windows pirateablility.
If a court could force them to include a pirate checker (made by an audited third party software producer) in every Windows and forcing them to shut it down, Microsoft would die in 1 year.
I hope this makes sense to you, because it's pretty straightforward to me.
I get the point, and agree. The point is Microsoft is not evil. We all agree that profits and world domination are desireable goals of any competing firm.
However, I think they can push each and every Microsoft product on consumers because they own the OS and have a team of 1000 creative/devilish guys figuring out how to create dependancies between the OS and every other non-OS market.
Say Integrating IE, then Outlook Express, then Hotmail becomimng default email account. Then MSN Messenger using the same account as the default email. Then adding your contacts to your MS address book. By then, you are already using MS Passport, and are ready for their.NET services. They are very polite and friendly, but you don't really have many choices. And the ones that can chose are the advanced users. They can't just go and install 30 3rd party products and they won't, if the have the MS version installed by default.
They are kind of a private goverment in virtualland, where the only rule is that they can change the virtualand rules as they see fit (maximize revenue).
I think Microsoft is doing the right thing (from their shareholders perspective). The problem is not them but the Justice Deparment or Antritrust laws. The market is them whether we like it or not. And they control law in virtualland.
They should force an OS + nonOS separation. If the just. dep. could see the OS is the playground for eBusiness and not a "product" per-se, then things would be more competitive and fair.
NVidia is partly and secretly funded by Microsoft. I have the information because I used to talk with people working in Nvidia and 3Dfx after they released the NV1. They sold their souls after the NV1 fiasco. By that time 3Dfx won a contract to power Sega next console.
After some misterious "...something", everything changed:
1) Sega dropped the 3Dfx contract for NO reason.
2) Nvidia got lots of funds to automagically recover from disaster. What did they do? Target they new chip (RIVA) for Direct3D (before direct3D was really usefull).
3) 3Dfx lost a lot of the initial momentum and the masterminds quit the company (when they still where #1!)
And now we have the X-Box which houses a Nvidia chipset and 3Dfx is owned by NVidia.
That's so true. I think what chess can't teach is unfair playing. Say you have a strategy, a very well thought out strategy. Your competition has a stupid strategy, but they have big bucks...
Life is like playing chess with an ever changing board. You could play against joe average chesser but he may have 10 queens. Of course, you'll have to choose if you want a pleasent chess (or life) and play fair games (i have this kind of specific job, i don't get paid much) or a fully killer chess game (life) where you are betting your ass and you can win or lose no matter how you play. Of course, the better you are the more chances you will have. And the more games you play the more you'll learn (about what is winnable or not given different boards setups)...
That's the human brain pulling things into the background. The pattern is hardwired into available neurons for future use. You can retrain the neurons in an ever slowing down speed as time passes by. You could train the brain to do EVERYTHING. It doesn't just learn how to do it, it learns how to do it without actually having to bother your conscious ever again.
That's how we can read without thinking of the letters, drive without thinking of the brakes/clutch,etc. Talk without thinking of the language or sounds (if you are fluent in more that one language you will attest that some times you just CANT remember if "that" book you have read was in english or whatever...).
Well, 1 min. vs 5 min. is not really and advantage if he can also "think" during "your 5 minutes". For example, if you had 20 minutes and the master had 10 seconds he'd still beat you.
It would be different if he was playing against a computer that played exaclty like you (your level) but could deliver the move in 1 second. He'd be screwed!
Another idea:
Someone could write a litte app that could append the patches on demand (and have them catched).
When you need a new Kernel you'd follow this steps:
1) Tell what's the latest kernel source you have
2) Tell what Kernel you are need to downlaod
(simple script runs on kernel.org)
3) Download a single patch..
1) You probably don't need a 2 ghz computer, but you just can't sell 1 ghz one either anymore.
2) Given mostly everyone will have 2 ghz computers (in say 2 years) numerous services will assume you have that speed.
This is no diffent. The supply (of cheap client bandwidth) creates the demand (for server bandwidth).
Well, in some countries the don't even have food. But you can't feed everyone, generate electricity for them, etc.
The topic of development and poor countries obviously includes a digital divide and an "whatever divide".
The digital divide needs innovation in the tech sector not gifts. Gifts do NOT work. You can only hope that a PC or the equivalent to surf the web becomes incredibly cheap.
This is already happening. We now have $70 computers that can do everything abeit slow (say a Dreamcast or PlayStation).
Fede
IIS is there in XP Home and next windowses
on
Apache 2.0 vs. IIS
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· Score: 1
It's just that MS has a new strategy for software bundling. Windows will come barebones installed in the next 2/4 years and everything will be plugged from.net.
So they will not get sued for monopoly as everyone will be installing IE, IIS, OFFICE, etc from the net n a matter of seconds.
Of course, they key point is that only MS products will be able to keep the pace of their.net strategy.
Everything else that is a competition against Microsoft will have a hard time finding a place, similar to what we have seen in the past with Wordperfect, Quattro Pro, Novell, Netscape, etc. etc.:
- MS has privileged access to sources of new version and have a time/quiality advantage.
- MS can integrate stuff easily by creating dependancies to key basic stuff that ultimately force you to use their stuff.
- MS will control the "install" front end.
- MS can make free whatever they want untill they competitor dies (if he does not pledge as a MS servant) so there is no revenue model for producers unless they are MS slaves.
- MS patents and licesing costs will harm free/opensource products, just like RSA harmed free SSH clients, etc.
Ultimately, everyone would be forced to "voluntarily" install everything Microsoft wants...and everything will be tuned so as to "voluntarily" maximize MS revenues.
I think of this not as a prediction, but a possible near future scenario. This is independant of whether we like this or not to happen.
Forgot to mention, but that's ultimately why Microsoft has not be found guilty yet. Because the MS monopoly profits more from the rest of the world done does harm to the US tax payer.
The US is exporting a Monopoly to the rest of the world and benefiting from that rent localy, because the money cycle ends there...
Do some figures and you'll see internation sales projections of MS products are several times larger than domestic sales.
Bottom line: USA guys, you are better of with Microsoft's monopoly than without it. Why do you complain then?
Law is just another economic variable. They will always infringe as long as the benefit from infringing is larger than the cost.
And this will always be true for Microsoft. No court will stop or slow them down. Only we customers and the wanabe competition can fight them.
The non US world has a better chance to rule out Microsoft because they affect them most:they pay the monopolistic fee, help spread the monopoly into other areas AND that money does not help their countries. It goes to the US straight away...in a forever lasting capital outflows.
And software costs are really expensive. For example, if brasil had no piracy and had 1 computer for every 5 brazilians, they'd need to license 50 million copies of the OS + Office, every 2 years, just to stay current. That'd be like 7 billion bucks a year (OS $100, Office $200)... not an option.
Because all the Monopoly theory deals with diminishing returns to scale. Software is ruled by the increasing returns to scale. So to be fair, the correct price would be a regulated price. That means "you can profit 20% per year" (simplistic answer) or something like that.
So the best would be to separate the company into the OS vs. everything else. But MS strategy was geared to making this imposible...
Kind of like merging the Kernel with Mozilla and Bash...etc.
What if Sun or whoever had patented Symlinks? They couldn't be patenting this enhanced madness. This is rediculous they are trying to fuck everyone in the near future.
Of course everything can be thought up and may have an application in the future. But patents are for true inventions and innovation, and not stupid generalizations. Of course symlinks of every kind will be usefull and everyone could have named them.
So what microsoft numbered them and we'll have to pay royalties to MS shareholders for the next 50 years no matter if Windows exists or not...?
Poor Schumpeter if he had guessed all this he'd have commited suicide...
All true. But you are missing a fifth group. People that like Windows but want a more challenging OS. Linux is more challenging and it has nice features.
Certainly, i want to be in that group. That doesn't mean i'll never run Windows again if i have to. I am ok with Linux now i can replace what Windows had broken and still keep a nice GUI (gnome).
It's not only you. On a P100 machine i can compile the kernel and listen to mp3 and some other nasty stuff with Riks VM.
Andreas VM doesn't pay in that setup. Everything skips and is less "inteligent". Linus ran out of patience...that may be a reson, but what i really think is that he got scared because of the complexity of Riks solution.
They will have the same problem in the future, needing a better VM. They only advantage is that as AA VM is simple, it's more easy to replace.
Microsoft will surelly be rolling some other security ideas in the very near future.
They don't really believe in what they say, you can bet on that. What they say now is what they think will minimize the bad PR.
And you have point. It's better to be exploitable by anyone that by a single entity. Surelly the one that discovers the flaw can make a worm and take the world by surprise.
What would we don then? Wait for the patch while wondering why all our server are formated and all our banks account are drained?
There should be a security advisory as to what is considered safe for what. Just as much as there are standards to as what can be trusted to be an OS for military servers.
MS should be responsible for any loses or damage if they promote a service/server for a certain task and it's later proven to be completely flawless.
They can avoid any damage by stating, for example IIS is only suitable to personal home pages. Open Source (free) programs would be released with no warranty at all (ie: marked as "it doesn't qualify for anything") so there should be no problem.
Smart people will know what to trust and clueless ones wouldn't matter much. They'll use warrantied software and if it's broken, they can sue them.
If it's not Windows CE what f---ed Palm, then what is it? You have Office CE and you have a company that has the resources to crush any OS company no matter what they do.
Microsoft can put $10 or $100 or $500. Eventually, they will force the competition out of bussiness by either integrating things with Windows or making Windows incompatible with the other OS. Or by pressing the hardware manufacturer. Or by PR. Or by price "dumping" the prices.
But eventually, If Microsoft succeeds they will be fucking "your" (whatever it is) bussiness and THAT fact will make me less sad. At least there are thouthands of stupid naive idiots that didn't see it coming.
The DoJ can apply a very simple rule to benefit the users and Microsoft. Force Redmond to test whenever a user enter MSN or Hotmail if it's using IE and see if it has vulnerabilities.
Then pop up a Windows saying: YOU SYSTEM IS UNSECURE: FOLLOW THIS LINK TO THE PATCH...
"Erh, ah no that'd be bad PR. Better had A. Joe have his HD formated. We can blame the guy that discovered the bug or the lazy sysadmins!"
"Mhh....and also, AV software is a profitable market we've created and we'll support it. We are creating jobs not like that OS comunist that want to destroy american way of life"...
Oh you can also remove TCP/IP stack and install some other stack, or you can run Apache insted of IIS, or PHP for s.s. scripting...
So then there are no security vulnerabilities in Windows? You are indeed a brilliant mastermind, i couldn't have reached your conclusion so elegantly...
Slashdot Mirror
Movie DVDs accomplish the task of displaying a movie. So they are movies, not software.
When you go to a cinema with Digital Dolby or THX, you believe you are renting software, right?
I think it would make sense for console manufacturers to have all games Linux compatible. Why? Because it's the only way they can leverage their profits without losing the gains to Microsoft (that will crush the otherwise).
Fede
Yes, that they don't want to release the source code. Drivers, for example. If they can't release the source they can't make into the kernel.
Fede
If you are beign sincere here is the answer:
* It's called dumping, where you destroy your competition with prices below real cost. $0 cost is the WORST CASE of dumping activities.
An example: You NEED windows. You then BUY Windows. But you won't buy Netscape because you have already paid for a brower (and it's a good one ineed). Do you think that IE was developed by volunteers in their spare time? Now, Netscape must close and we have another Monopoly in the browser market.
Letting people easily pirate Windows or Office is another way of dumping. But I guess the law is too blind to see that. We wouldn't have a Monopoly if Microsoft hadn't been focusing on Windows pirateablility.
If a court could force them to include a pirate checker (made by an audited third party software producer) in every Windows and forcing them to shut it down, Microsoft would die in 1 year.
I hope this makes sense to you, because it's pretty straightforward to me.
Federico
I get the point, and agree. The point is Microsoft is not evil. We all agree that profits and world domination are desireable goals of any competing firm.
.NET services. They are very polite and friendly, but you don't really have many choices. And the ones that can chose are the advanced users. They can't just go and install 30 3rd party products and they won't, if the have the MS version installed by default.
However, I think they can push each and every Microsoft product on consumers because they own the OS and have a team of 1000 creative/devilish guys figuring out how to create dependancies between the OS and every other non-OS market.
Say Integrating IE, then Outlook Express, then Hotmail becomimng default email account. Then MSN Messenger using the same account as the default email. Then adding your contacts to your MS address book. By then, you are already using MS Passport, and are ready for their
They are kind of a private goverment in virtualland, where the only rule is that they can change the virtualand rules as they see fit (maximize revenue).
I think Microsoft is doing the right thing (from their shareholders perspective). The problem is not them but the Justice Deparment or Antritrust laws. The market is them whether we like it or not. And they control law in virtualland.
They should force an OS + nonOS separation. If the just. dep. could see the OS is the playground for eBusiness and not a "product" per-se, then things would be more competitive and fair.
NVidia is partly and secretly funded by Microsoft. I have the information because I used to talk with people working in Nvidia and 3Dfx after they released the NV1. They sold their souls after the NV1 fiasco. By that time 3Dfx won a contract to power Sega next console.
After some misterious "...something", everything changed:
1) Sega dropped the 3Dfx contract for NO reason.
2) Nvidia got lots of funds to automagically recover from disaster. What did they do? Target they new chip (RIVA) for Direct3D (before direct3D was really usefull).
3) 3Dfx lost a lot of the initial momentum and the masterminds quit the company (when they still where #1!)
And now we have the X-Box which houses a Nvidia chipset and 3Dfx is owned by NVidia.
Do you expect to get Linux support from NVidia?
That's so true. I think what chess can't teach is unfair playing. Say you have a strategy, a very well thought out strategy. Your competition has a stupid strategy, but they have big bucks...
Life is like playing chess with an ever changing board. You could play against joe average chesser but he may have 10 queens. Of course, you'll have to choose if you want a pleasent chess (or life) and play fair games (i have this kind of specific job, i don't get paid much) or a fully killer chess game (life) where you are betting your ass and you can win or lose no matter how you play. Of course, the better you are the more chances you will have. And the more games you play the more you'll learn (about what is winnable or not given different boards setups)...
That's the human brain pulling things into the background. The pattern is hardwired into available neurons for future use. You can retrain the neurons in an ever slowing down speed as time passes by. You could train the brain to do EVERYTHING. It doesn't just learn how to do it, it learns how to do it without actually having to bother your conscious ever again.
That's how we can read without thinking of the letters, drive without thinking of the brakes/clutch,etc. Talk without thinking of the language or sounds (if you are fluent in more that one language you will attest that some times you just CANT remember if "that" book you have read was in english or whatever...).
Well, 1 min. vs 5 min. is not really and advantage if he can also "think" during "your 5 minutes". For example, if you had 20 minutes and the master had 10 seconds he'd still beat you.
It would be different if he was playing against a computer that played exaclty like you (your level) but could deliver the move in 1 second. He'd be screwed!
Another idea: Someone could write a litte app that could append the patches on demand (and have them catched). When you need a new Kernel you'd follow this steps: 1) Tell what's the latest kernel source you have 2) Tell what Kernel you are need to downlaod (simple script runs on kernel.org) 3) Download a single patch..
Wrong view but valid point. Example...
1) You probably don't need a 2 ghz computer, but you just can't sell 1 ghz one either anymore.
2) Given mostly everyone will have 2 ghz computers (in say 2 years) numerous services will assume you have that speed.
This is no diffent. The supply (of cheap client bandwidth) creates the demand (for server bandwidth).
I think that for certain industries, the software vendor should be forced to be liable. Or not sell the product as say "safe for transactions", etc.
If Microsoft wants to avoid liabilities they should forget the non Average Joe market or risk getting sued.
Well, in some countries the don't even have food. But you can't feed everyone, generate electricity for them, etc.
The topic of development and poor countries obviously includes a digital divide and an "whatever divide".
The digital divide needs innovation in the tech sector not gifts. Gifts do NOT work. You can only hope that a PC or the equivalent to surf the web becomes incredibly cheap.
This is already happening. We now have $70 computers that can do everything abeit slow (say a Dreamcast or PlayStation).
Fede
It's just that MS has a new strategy for software bundling. Windows will come barebones installed in the next 2/4 years and everything will be plugged from .net.
.net strategy.
So they will not get sued for monopoly as everyone will be installing IE, IIS, OFFICE, etc from the net n a matter of seconds.
Of course, they key point is that only MS products will be able to keep the pace of their
Everything else that is a competition against Microsoft will have a hard time finding a place, similar to what we have seen in the past with Wordperfect, Quattro Pro, Novell, Netscape, etc. etc.:
- MS has privileged access to sources of new version and have a time/quiality advantage.
- MS can integrate stuff easily by creating dependancies to key basic stuff that ultimately force you to use their stuff.
- MS will control the "install" front end.
- MS can make free whatever they want untill they competitor dies (if he does not pledge as a MS servant) so there is no revenue model for producers unless they are MS slaves.
- MS patents and licesing costs will harm free/opensource products, just like RSA harmed free SSH clients, etc.
Ultimately, everyone would be forced to "voluntarily" install everything Microsoft wants...and everything will be tuned so as to "voluntarily" maximize MS revenues.
I think of this not as a prediction, but a possible near future scenario. This is independant of whether we like this or not to happen.
Silly you... the why 90% of the people like to use Word even though they have Notepad for free?
A "Printable HTML" format standard (XML based maybe) would be great. HTML is great but it doesn't know about paper sizes, per-page footnotes, etc.
Federico
Forgot to mention, but that's ultimately why Microsoft has not be found guilty yet. Because the MS monopoly profits more from the rest of the world done does harm to the US tax payer.
The US is exporting a Monopoly to the rest of the world and benefiting from that rent localy, because the money cycle ends there...
Do some figures and you'll see internation sales projections of MS products are several times larger than domestic sales.
Bottom line: USA guys, you are better of with Microsoft's monopoly than without it. Why do you complain then?
Law is just another economic variable. They will always infringe as long as the benefit from infringing is larger than the cost.
And this will always be true for Microsoft. No court will stop or slow them down. Only we customers and the wanabe competition can fight them.
The non US world has a better chance to rule out Microsoft because they affect them most:they pay the monopolistic fee, help spread the monopoly into other areas AND that money does not help their countries. It goes to the US straight away...in a forever lasting capital outflows.
And software costs are really expensive. For example, if brasil had no piracy and had 1 computer for every 5 brazilians, they'd need to license 50 million copies of the OS + Office, every 2 years, just to stay current. That'd be like 7 billion bucks a year (OS $100, Office $200)... not an option.
Because all the Monopoly theory deals with diminishing returns to scale. Software is ruled by the increasing returns to scale. So to be fair, the correct price would be a regulated price. That means "you can profit 20% per year" (simplistic answer) or something like that.
So the best would be to separate the company into the OS vs. everything else. But MS strategy was geared to making this imposible...
Kind of like merging the Kernel with Mozilla and Bash...etc.
What if Sun or whoever had patented Symlinks? They couldn't be patenting this enhanced madness. This is rediculous they are trying to fuck everyone in the near future.
Of course everything can be thought up and may have an application in the future. But patents are for true inventions and innovation, and not stupid generalizations. Of course symlinks of every kind will be usefull and everyone could have named them.
So what microsoft numbered them and we'll have to pay royalties to MS shareholders for the next 50 years no matter if Windows exists or not...?
Poor Schumpeter if he had guessed all this he'd have commited suicide...
All true. But you are missing a fifth group. People that like Windows but want a more challenging OS. Linux is more challenging and it has nice features.
Certainly, i want to be in that group. That doesn't mean i'll never run Windows again if i have to. I am ok with Linux now i can replace what Windows had broken and still keep a nice GUI (gnome).
It's not only you. On a P100 machine i can compile the kernel and listen to mp3 and some other nasty stuff with Riks VM.
Andreas VM doesn't pay in that setup. Everything skips and is less "inteligent". Linus ran out of patience...that may be a reson, but what i really think is that he got scared because of the complexity of Riks solution.
They will have the same problem in the future, needing a better VM. They only advantage is that as AA VM is simple, it's more easy to replace.
Fede
Microsoft will surelly be rolling some other security ideas in the very near future.
They don't really believe in what they say, you can bet on that. What they say now is what they think will minimize the bad PR.
And you have point. It's better to be exploitable by anyone that by a single entity. Surelly the one that discovers the flaw can make a worm and take the world by surprise.
What would we don then? Wait for the patch while wondering why all our server are formated and all our banks account are drained?
There should be a security advisory as to what is considered safe for what. Just as much as there are standards to as what can be trusted to be an OS for military servers.
MS should be responsible for any loses or damage if they promote a service/server for a certain task and it's later proven to be completely flawless.
They can avoid any damage by stating, for example IIS is only suitable to personal home pages. Open Source (free) programs would be released with no warranty at all (ie: marked as "it doesn't qualify for anything") so there should be no problem.
Smart people will know what to trust and clueless ones wouldn't matter much. They'll use warrantied software and if it's broken, they can sue them.
Fede
If it's not Windows CE what f---ed Palm, then what is it? You have Office CE and you have a company that has the resources to crush any OS company no matter what they do.
Microsoft can put $10 or $100 or $500. Eventually, they will force the competition out of bussiness by either integrating things with Windows or making Windows incompatible with the other OS. Or by pressing the hardware manufacturer. Or by PR. Or by price "dumping" the prices.
But eventually, If Microsoft succeeds they will be fucking "your" (whatever it is) bussiness and THAT fact will make me less sad. At least there are thouthands of stupid naive idiots that didn't see it coming.
Fede
The DoJ can apply a very simple rule to benefit the users and Microsoft. Force Redmond to test whenever a user enter MSN or Hotmail if it's using IE and see if it has vulnerabilities.
Then pop up a Windows saying: YOU SYSTEM IS UNSECURE: FOLLOW THIS LINK TO THE PATCH...
"Erh, ah no that'd be bad PR. Better had A. Joe have his HD formated. We can blame the guy that discovered the bug or the lazy sysadmins!"
"Mhh....and also, AV software is a profitable market we've created and we'll support it. We are creating jobs not like that OS comunist that want to destroy american way of life"...
Fede
Oh you can also remove TCP/IP stack and install some other stack, or you can run Apache insted of IIS, or PHP for s.s. scripting...
So then there are no security vulnerabilities in Windows? You are indeed a brilliant mastermind, i couldn't have reached your conclusion so elegantly...