[pinches self] Yep, this is definitely Slashdot. Possibly the only place in the world where a COWARD can call someone else a "Puss". Well maybe with the exception of the U. of Michigan football field...;P
Yep. When I first saw Second Life I was reminded of my forays into VRML sites (usually Java based) back between 1995 and 1997. I can't see what the difference is other than the client, more CPU and GPU power and higher bandwidth. Beyond that it's basically IRC with a 3D environment that passes for a GUI. The way I see it, Second Life is a lot like going through real life with the use of one eye, one ear and one finger. Hmmm... sounds kinda like a dalek. Anyway, I think I'll be more interested in something like Second Life when the environment is fully immersive. By that, I mean, I should feel like I'm somewhere else and have full function of my entire body. I shouldn't see the room I'm sitting in. And physical actions in the space should correlate to certain real things in real life. Being that the kind of technology to pull that off is probably 75-100 years off, I don't think I'll be seeing it.
What ARE you talking about? "Insanely complex"? I was forced to move from Beryl to Compiz-fusion because of the merge and I'm REALLY missing everything about Beryl a lot. There was so much flexibility. The compiz-settings-manager is so limited. And there's so many Compiz features missing. I loved being able to rotate the desktop cube by just middle click-dragging instead of the Ctrl-Alt-Left Mouse Drag that you have to do in Compiz. I also loved the tranparent cube caps so I could rotate to the top of the cube and watch all four sides at once (it enhances productivity when you have a way to see multiple windows at a glance without needing a larger screen). I miss the 3D window plugin that popped the windows off of the cube to give everything a more polished 3D feel. There's nothing like being able to have a window wrap around the corner of the cube but be pushed out from the cube. That way you can watch events in one window while just waiting for another window to complete it's task with your peripheral vision. The transparent feature when rotating the cube was beautiful as well. Yet another way to see all your open apps at once and be stylish while doing it. Hopefully Compiz-fusion will reach the level of maturity that Beryl was at sooner than later. Otherwise, I think 3D GUIs on Linux took a huge step backwards.
I know you're trolling but before incorrect assumptions abound, let's just say the file selector in GNOME blows away any other file selector I've ever dealt with except the file selector in Mac OS X apps. I love the GNOME file selector in GNOME apps. It's so flexible and restrictive. It allow you to do absolutely anything you want within sane parameters. Instead of loading up with tons of useless junk and options it only gives you what you need. The ultimate in options: only what you need, not what you want.
Well sorta... The gaming part I can see. But I don't consider gamers to be desktop users. As far as multimedia apps, I have to disagree. I have a custom built Linux based media center. The ONLY media I can't play are DRM restricted media (DVDs excluded). That's what I use virtualization for. The rest I can play easily with Xine and/or MPlayer. I can also streamrip stuff from the net to a local file (this is how I grab my favorite global radio shows for listening to on my digital music player).
Just to illustrate the point that the Linux kernel does fine for multimedia as it is today, I started off building my media center around a Pentium 4 system back in 2004. It worked great and did everything I wanted. Then it got hit with a power surge and I hadn't yet gotten it on a UPS. So I had to downgrade to the only other systrem I had free in the house. A P4 era Celeron 400 Mhz system. I think a lot people who don't know what they're talking about would argue that this system wouldn't be able to play much media reliably. They'd be wrong. The system has 512 megs of RAM, a Hauppauge PVR-250 video capture card that offloads compression from the CPU, and an NVidia GeForce 4 AGP card with DVI out to drive the 1080p LCD monitor in the living room. The motherboard is an old Shuttle MB from around 2003. I myself was a little doubtful about what this sytem could handle when I was forced to move to it. The only things I lost in the move were having to disable the TV Time realtime de-interlacing in Xine as well as realtime color correction. Other than that this system works great. I even got it to run Beryl with only slight jerkiness. Sure this is all annecdotal, but I don't know how we take something like this and make it stand up as real stats. If I can use a four year old system to play modern media (including HD content) with good performance, then I think the idea that the Linux kernel isn't good for desktop applications is BS.
I'm also a pro audio guy. Former Mac user, moved to Windows (and hated it for Audio) and then discovered circa 2005 that pro audio on the Linux desktop had finally arrived. I use Ardour for all my multitrack audio needs. Audacity for rough mixes. And Rezound for mastering work. Outside of a handful of plugins that I loved on the Mac from Steinberg and WAVES, there is nothing missing these days. But I wasn't able to make that move until 2005. The responsiveness of the Linux kernel when it's tweaked for realtime, beats anything that Windows or Macintosh workstations offer until you move to outboard gear.
Video (from the production perspective) is so-so, agreed. But it's usable. I use Cinelerra for my editing work and ffmpeg to do the final rendering to a properly scaled format.
In short, I would say the only place that desktop Linux is lacking is gaming and that's not a function of the mainline kernel. NVidia hooks their driver in kernel space. But I can guarantee that their driver is not impacted by any of the "big iron" features of the kernel. If they'd just open up their driver (which I know they can't for various legit reasons), I think the remaining performance hurdles could be eliminated. Said performance hurdles are pretty minimal to begin with. And regarding DirectX. Other than lazy developers who chose to be locked into a proprietary API, why would anyone want that on Linux? Marketshare and profit should never drive development...
I'm really curious about what people seem to think is missing from the Linux kernel that impacts the desktop experience? I ask because I've been using Linux on the desktop since 1997 and I'd say starting around 2001 is when it reached parity with MS Windows. Keep in mind we're speaking strictly about performance here and not marketshare (whatever that means for a kernel that is the base of many OS distributions that are free of charge). Today, I would say that the Linux kernel provides features that the MS Windows kernel will eventually provide within the next decade. They just added Xen support to the mainline kernel which is ahead of Microsoft's hypervisor planned for Longhorn. And you know that within two to four years of the hypervisor appearing in Longhorn, it will wind up in whatever MS releases as their next desktop OS. Meanwhile, Linux will have already had it for at least half a decade.
Now you might argue, "why does Joe user need a hypervisor for virtualization in his OS, that's just big iron stuff". To which I say, BS. I've been working with virtualization on the x86 platform since the first public release of VMWare. It's allowed me to use applications on my chosen platform (Linux) without needing to run Windows natively. And for all the complaints about performance hits with virtualization, again I say, doing what? Back in 2000 I was running Windows 2000 in VMWare on a RedHat 9 laptop. I was able to play back media files with no lag, skipping or any other sort of artifact. Today, I have a Windows XP VM I run on Xen at home so that I can gain access to media that won't work in Linux. But it works the other way too. Joe user would stand to gain a lot from running VMs. And Microsoft backs me on this as they are actually going a step further and virtualizing applications rather than the whole OS (which is what Linux virtualization should be focusing on as well).
Another example is network block devices. There is no equivalent in the Windows world, but you can bet that Joe user would love it if there was. As it is, in Linux I can export the DVD drive (not a file share, but the actual device itself) in my laptop to my Linux media center so that it appears to the media center that the DVD device is locally attached. There is something similar in Windows Home Server, but it's not quite the same thing and it limits you to the hard drives in the server.
The big iron features of yesterday are commonplace on the home PCs of today. So why not skip ahead a little and actually make use of the big iron features? I also still have yet to run into any kind of performance problems caused by the Linux kernel that make my desktop experience slower than one on Windows. I think all this talk of forking the kernel is someone's personal axe being ground in public. To that blogger, screw you and your ignorance.
Yeah... wake me up when it can actually boot and do something. I tried Slowlaris as the Nexenta OS (I wanted as desktop version of the OS) and it... well it never booted. Kept complaining about the IDE device timing out. So much for the kernel being all the good. I've NEVER had Linux kernel fail to boot. Not once.
I'm glad someone pointed this simple fact out. For those of us who compile our own kernels (if you can write a Perl script, Bash script or a decent CMD script in Windows, and you know how to identify the hardware in your system by chipset, you can easily compile you're own kernel) the Linux kernel works ANYWHERE we want it to as long as the CPU architecture is supported. I set my folks up with custom boxes based on RedHat 9 back in 2002. Custom kernels all the way since the boxes I gave them were older. By adding the patches I needed to give them the best user experience, I basically gave then an "Accelerated Desktop" kernel. I can't believe the levels some people get to (specifically that blogger) while carrying a vast sack of ignorance along with them.
What did Linux ever do to you!!? Why do you people have to be SOOOOOO MEAN!!!!!?? LEAVE LINUX USERS ALONE GODDAMMIT!!!! They're just human beings exactly like you are!! And Walt Mossberg has to do and get all mean all over Ubuntu for what?!! Why does he have to be so mean!!? Leave Linux Users Alone!! Linux developers didn't even have to write the kernel, base apps and GUI for you. You're even lucky Linux exists! Just leave Linux users alone! Anyone who is going to diss and hate on Linux is going to have to deal with me first!!! Leave Linux Users Alone!!!
More fucking proof that no one actually learns to write anymore. Kids are allowed to get away with making videos in grade school as "reports". Kids are allowed to use calculators in math class. It's pathetic. They're all a bunch of lazy bastards who are proud of their ignorance.
I guess I'm a commie socialist then... I'm all for capitalism, as long as people making money off of millions of idiots out there don't impose their idiotic schemes on me without my ability to, a) think about the service that is being "offered", and b) flatly reject said stupid offer.
I'm quoting a troll here: "*sniff* I smell a communist". Advertising is specifically created to change the way you think. So, your point 'a' is completely contradictory to the purpose of capitalism. If you think about a service being offered, then you're flying in the face of your assigned role as a consumer. You're not supposed to think. And point 'b' is just about at the level of treason. If you are deluded enough to think that you have some kind of bizarre "right" to reject things that are being sold to you, then you are obviously happily willing to trample all over the rights of business people everywhere to successfully market to you.
So am I to presume that Vista is then overpriced? If this patent goes through, shouldn't Vista be "reduced price or even free"? That's the problem with the Microsoft Capitalism; having everything is not enough. Not only do they want to generate millions of dollars in ad revenue (that does nothing for the end user, mind you), they also want to continue charging hundreds of dollars for an OS than enables said revenue generation.
Wow. Just... wow. Microsoft, Novell, Redhat, or pretty much any other business in our capitalist economy have every right to charge whatever they want for their software products. The market will decide if they succeed or fail. But, if they play the ad game properly, they'll make a bundle on convincing people that their products are the only product worth buying at ANY price. There is no such thing as a free lunch, as they say. And... you get what you pay for. If it's inexpensive, then the product is going to be crap. The only way to ensure quality is to pay enormous amounts of money to the most popular brands. Then you can be sure no one will be making fun of you because you will be the winner. Even better if you buy tons of stock in the companies who sell the products and services you buy. Because then you're essentially getting the products for free since everything you buy comes back to you through the stocks since you're also a company owner.
[removes hat of insanity] Man... did I just write all that? Really? I think I need to throw this hat away.
I don't think this is about users. Users aren't going to be Microsoft's main customers in a few years. Advertisers will and users will be the commodity. Microsoft is doing this to position itself as the next logical progression from television to the much talked about "convergence" device. Just because TV is becoming less and less relevant, doesn't mean that ads are going away.
Read my lips people. We live in the U.S.A. Anyone who lives in any other backwards countries need not apply to this discussion. Here in the U.S. we have this system called capitalism. It allows us to have a high standard of living and the best thing of all, it's FREE! We're trying to get the rest of the world to use the same system since it does wonders for the standard of living and politics. The U.S. is brimming with opportunity thanks to capitalism. Anyone can become a millionaire and what Microsoft is proposing is just giving everyone (who matters) a new tool with which to make even more money by showing your service or product to trillions of people on the planet. I think anyone who doesn't see this is probably just some backwards communist or socialist who wants to steal my property and redistribute it to people who don't matter. Kudos to Microsoft for arming capitalist with another powerful way of getting at other people's cash in exchange for our great services and products!
It almost sounds like the industry is a total farking mess and they have 15 standards for any given thing.
When there's more than a handful of "standards" you can't really call them standards anymore. And THAT is the problem. Too many of the businesses involved want the biggest slice of the pie. So they impose all sorts of artificial restrictions and incompatibility in the hopes that they will rule the system. So much for "letting the market decide".
That's the "solution": buy a new laptop with a newer WiFi chip in it? Did I miss something. I'll be the first to admit, that WiFi is very difficult to set up in most Linux distros is you don't have the right chip (A lot of Broadcom chips are a bear to set up with NDIS Wrapper, although I have done so successfully every time. It's not for the beginning user), but I think that telling someone to buy a new laptop is an even bigger turn-off. It's basically the capitalist equivalent of RTFM. Frankly, I think WiFi for ALL platforms including Linux would be better off if the WiFi card was virtualized by the system BIOS or firmware as a standard generic wired NIC like the Novell PCI 2000 NIC. The SSID and key settings could be stuck in the BIOS (with a user space application in the OS that has access to change those settings after a boot). That way, networking-wise the OS never has to deal with a WiFi device.
There is no benefit to tying the radio portion of the WiFi to the network portion of it at the OS level. In fact, it creates a LOT of needless confusion. Here's how it would work if it were done right:
1. The Radio portion of the WiFi would be in the BIOS (all settings like ESSID, WEP keys, AP mac addresses, etc...) 2. There would be an application to manage the radio portion of the WiFi chip at the OS level, but there would be no "driver" per say. Just read/write access to the "registers" in BIOS space that store the settings. This would allow the settings to be changed on the fly manually, or... automatically if desired. The manner of changing the settings would merely be a software problem at that point. 3. The IP portion of the WiFi chip would then be presented as an NE2000 PCI NIC (10/100) or some other fairly common and cross-platform supported hardware. Or maybe a totally new, NIC specifically used to present ONLY the IP portion of WiFi to the OS. (ie. the "NIC driver" wouldn't deal with ANY of the radio functionality. It would strictly involve IP only)
This would present much more functionality right off the bat. It would be possible to have promiscuous mode on any WiFi card, since that would be a problem residing in the IP driver domain. At that point, virtual machines that fake MAC addresses, or sniffing traffic over a WiFi device become a LOT simpler. But, this will never happen since it would break with the already established (and needlessly complex) systems in place already. Not to mention, it's not a problem to the average user if they're using the very easy, but substandard WiFi software for a certain commonplace OS...
That's true... remote controls were for rich folks when I was a kid. This was back in the era when remote controls would send ultrasonic signals to the TV which would then cause a motor to turn the analog knob on the TV set. (I'm not kidding) I remember this one family that my mom did cleaning for who had a set up like that. There were buttons to turn the TV on and off, change the channel and raise or lower the volume. Everything was motorized. My family didn't have a remote controlled TV until 1999 (although we had a remote for the VCR in 1984).
Slashdot Mirror
[pinches self] Yep, this is definitely Slashdot. Possibly the only place in the world where a COWARD can call someone else a "Puss". Well maybe with the exception of the U. of Michigan football field... ;P
Yep. When I first saw Second Life I was reminded of my forays into VRML sites (usually Java based) back between 1995 and 1997. I can't see what the difference is other than the client, more CPU and GPU power and higher bandwidth. Beyond that it's basically IRC with a 3D environment that passes for a GUI. The way I see it, Second Life is a lot like going through real life with the use of one eye, one ear and one finger. Hmmm... sounds kinda like a dalek. Anyway, I think I'll be more interested in something like Second Life when the environment is fully immersive. By that, I mean, I should feel like I'm somewhere else and have full function of my entire body. I shouldn't see the room I'm sitting in. And physical actions in the space should correlate to certain real things in real life. Being that the kind of technology to pull that off is probably 75-100 years off, I don't think I'll be seeing it.
Ahhh... I'm missing the extras package. No wonder it seems so spare. I'll have to build it over the weekend (Gentoo here).
What ARE you talking about? "Insanely complex"? I was forced to move from Beryl to Compiz-fusion because of the merge and I'm REALLY missing everything about Beryl a lot. There was so much flexibility. The compiz-settings-manager is so limited. And there's so many Compiz features missing. I loved being able to rotate the desktop cube by just middle click-dragging instead of the Ctrl-Alt-Left Mouse Drag that you have to do in Compiz. I also loved the tranparent cube caps so I could rotate to the top of the cube and watch all four sides at once (it enhances productivity when you have a way to see multiple windows at a glance without needing a larger screen). I miss the 3D window plugin that popped the windows off of the cube to give everything a more polished 3D feel. There's nothing like being able to have a window wrap around the corner of the cube but be pushed out from the cube. That way you can watch events in one window while just waiting for another window to complete it's task with your peripheral vision. The transparent feature when rotating the cube was beautiful as well. Yet another way to see all your open apps at once and be stylish while doing it. Hopefully Compiz-fusion will reach the level of maturity that Beryl was at sooner than later. Otherwise, I think 3D GUIs on Linux took a huge step backwards.
I know you're trolling but before incorrect assumptions abound, let's just say the file selector in GNOME blows away any other file selector I've ever dealt with except the file selector in Mac OS X apps. I love the GNOME file selector in GNOME apps. It's so flexible and restrictive. It allow you to do absolutely anything you want within sane parameters. Instead of loading up with tons of useless junk and options it only gives you what you need. The ultimate in options: only what you need, not what you want.
And why do their life savings vanish? What's the leading cause? [rim shot] CORPORATE CORRUPTION!!! You're welcome for letting me school you. HAND.
"Fork the Linux Kernel so it can be ready for the desktop!"
About as constructive as:
"Get rid of X window system and build a new GUI into the kernel"!
or this classic gem:
"Get rid of network transparency from X window system because it makes X slow"!
Learn something about the system before you go spouting off idiocy like the above.
Well sorta... The gaming part I can see. But I don't consider gamers to be desktop users. As far as multimedia apps, I have to disagree. I have a custom built Linux based media center. The ONLY media I can't play are DRM restricted media (DVDs excluded). That's what I use virtualization for. The rest I can play easily with Xine and/or MPlayer. I can also streamrip stuff from the net to a local file (this is how I grab my favorite global radio shows for listening to on my digital music player).
Just to illustrate the point that the Linux kernel does fine for multimedia as it is today, I started off building my media center around a Pentium 4 system back in 2004. It worked great and did everything I wanted. Then it got hit with a power surge and I hadn't yet gotten it on a UPS. So I had to downgrade to the only other systrem I had free in the house. A P4 era Celeron 400 Mhz system. I think a lot people who don't know what they're talking about would argue that this system wouldn't be able to play much media reliably. They'd be wrong. The system has 512 megs of RAM, a Hauppauge PVR-250 video capture card that offloads compression from the CPU, and an NVidia GeForce 4 AGP card with DVI out to drive the 1080p LCD monitor in the living room. The motherboard is an old Shuttle MB from around 2003. I myself was a little doubtful about what this sytem could handle when I was forced to move to it. The only things I lost in the move were having to disable the TV Time realtime de-interlacing in Xine as well as realtime color correction. Other than that this system works great. I even got it to run Beryl with only slight jerkiness. Sure this is all annecdotal, but I don't know how we take something like this and make it stand up as real stats. If I can use a four year old system to play modern media (including HD content) with good performance, then I think the idea that the Linux kernel isn't good for desktop applications is BS.
I'm also a pro audio guy. Former Mac user, moved to Windows (and hated it for Audio) and then discovered circa 2005 that pro audio on the Linux desktop had finally arrived. I use Ardour for all my multitrack audio needs. Audacity for rough mixes. And Rezound for mastering work. Outside of a handful of plugins that I loved on the Mac from Steinberg and WAVES, there is nothing missing these days. But I wasn't able to make that move until 2005. The responsiveness of the Linux kernel when it's tweaked for realtime, beats anything that Windows or Macintosh workstations offer until you move to outboard gear.
Video (from the production perspective) is so-so, agreed. But it's usable. I use Cinelerra for my editing work and ffmpeg to do the final rendering to a properly scaled format.
In short, I would say the only place that desktop Linux is lacking is gaming and that's not a function of the mainline kernel. NVidia hooks their driver in kernel space. But I can guarantee that their driver is not impacted by any of the "big iron" features of the kernel. If they'd just open up their driver (which I know they can't for various legit reasons), I think the remaining performance hurdles could be eliminated. Said performance hurdles are pretty minimal to begin with. And regarding DirectX. Other than lazy developers who chose to be locked into a proprietary API, why would anyone want that on Linux? Marketshare and profit should never drive development...
I'm really curious about what people seem to think is missing from the Linux kernel that impacts the desktop experience? I ask because I've been using Linux on the desktop since 1997 and I'd say starting around 2001 is when it reached parity with MS Windows. Keep in mind we're speaking strictly about performance here and not marketshare (whatever that means for a kernel that is the base of many OS distributions that are free of charge). Today, I would say that the Linux kernel provides features that the MS Windows kernel will eventually provide within the next decade. They just added Xen support to the mainline kernel which is ahead of Microsoft's hypervisor planned for Longhorn. And you know that within two to four years of the hypervisor appearing in Longhorn, it will wind up in whatever MS releases as their next desktop OS. Meanwhile, Linux will have already had it for at least half a decade.
Now you might argue, "why does Joe user need a hypervisor for virtualization in his OS, that's just big iron stuff". To which I say, BS. I've been working with virtualization on the x86 platform since the first public release of VMWare. It's allowed me to use applications on my chosen platform (Linux) without needing to run Windows natively. And for all the complaints about performance hits with virtualization, again I say, doing what? Back in 2000 I was running Windows 2000 in VMWare on a RedHat 9 laptop. I was able to play back media files with no lag, skipping or any other sort of artifact. Today, I have a Windows XP VM I run on Xen at home so that I can gain access to media that won't work in Linux. But it works the other way too. Joe user would stand to gain a lot from running VMs. And Microsoft backs me on this as they are actually going a step further and virtualizing applications rather than the whole OS (which is what Linux virtualization should be focusing on as well).
Another example is network block devices. There is no equivalent in the Windows world, but you can bet that Joe user would love it if there was. As it is, in Linux I can export the DVD drive (not a file share, but the actual device itself) in my laptop to my Linux media center so that it appears to the media center that the DVD device is locally attached. There is something similar in Windows Home Server, but it's not quite the same thing and it limits you to the hard drives in the server.
The big iron features of yesterday are commonplace on the home PCs of today. So why not skip ahead a little and actually make use of the big iron features? I also still have yet to run into any kind of performance problems caused by the Linux kernel that make my desktop experience slower than one on Windows. I think all this talk of forking the kernel is someone's personal axe being ground in public. To that blogger, screw you and your ignorance.
Yeah... wake me up when it can actually boot and do something. I tried Slowlaris as the Nexenta OS (I wanted as desktop version of the OS) and it... well it never booted. Kept complaining about the IDE device timing out. So much for the kernel being all the good. I've NEVER had Linux kernel fail to boot. Not once.
I'm glad someone pointed this simple fact out. For those of us who compile our own kernels (if you can write a Perl script, Bash script or a decent CMD script in Windows, and you know how to identify the hardware in your system by chipset, you can easily compile you're own kernel) the Linux kernel works ANYWHERE we want it to as long as the CPU architecture is supported. I set my folks up with custom boxes based on RedHat 9 back in 2002. Custom kernels all the way since the boxes I gave them were older. By adding the patches I needed to give them the best user experience, I basically gave then an "Accelerated Desktop" kernel. I can't believe the levels some people get to (specifically that blogger) while carrying a vast sack of ignorance along with them.
What did Linux ever do to you!!? Why do you people have to be SOOOOOO MEAN!!!!!?? LEAVE LINUX USERS ALONE GODDAMMIT!!!! They're just human beings exactly like you are!! And Walt Mossberg has to do and get all mean all over Ubuntu for what?!! Why does he have to be so mean!!? Leave Linux Users Alone!! Linux developers didn't even have to write the kernel, base apps and GUI for you. You're even lucky Linux exists! Just leave Linux users alone! Anyone who is going to diss and hate on Linux is going to have to deal with me first!!! Leave Linux Users Alone!!!
...or "do" as in "copulate with". Because if it's the later, I'm glad to hear they aren't going the route of Microsoft developers. ;P
If the Newton hadn't been born, we wouldn't have clever jokes about really awful handwriting recognition on early PDAs. Your point?
Any time I see "punitive damages" I am always reminded of the classic Sol Rosenberg: http://www.soundclick.com/bands/pagemusic.cfm?bandID=187358 (Scroll down for "punitive damages")
More fucking proof that no one actually learns to write anymore. Kids are allowed to get away with making videos in grade school as "reports". Kids are allowed to use calculators in math class. It's pathetic. They're all a bunch of lazy bastards who are proud of their ignorance.
Hear hear! I second that emotion! The current administration is a bunch of treasonous traitorous bastards. They've destroyed my country.
I guess I'm a commie socialist then... I'm all for capitalism, as long as people making money off of millions of idiots out there don't impose their idiotic schemes on me without my ability to, a) think about the service that is being "offered", and b) flatly reject said stupid offer.
I'm quoting a troll here: "*sniff* I smell a communist". Advertising is specifically created to change the way you think. So, your point 'a' is completely contradictory to the purpose of capitalism. If you think about a service being offered, then you're flying in the face of your assigned role as a consumer. You're not supposed to think. And point 'b' is just about at the level of treason. If you are deluded enough to think that you have some kind of bizarre "right" to reject things that are being sold to you, then you are obviously happily willing to trample all over the rights of business people everywhere to successfully market to you.
So am I to presume that Vista is then overpriced? If this patent goes through, shouldn't Vista be "reduced price or even free"? That's the problem with the Microsoft Capitalism; having everything is not enough. Not only do they want to generate millions of dollars in ad revenue (that does nothing for the end user, mind you), they also want to continue charging hundreds of dollars for an OS than enables said revenue generation.
Wow. Just... wow. Microsoft, Novell, Redhat, or pretty much any other business in our capitalist economy have every right to charge whatever they want for their software products. The market will decide if they succeed or fail. But, if they play the ad game properly, they'll make a bundle on convincing people that their products are the only product worth buying at ANY price. There is no such thing as a free lunch, as they say. And... you get what you pay for. If it's inexpensive, then the product is going to be crap. The only way to ensure quality is to pay enormous amounts of money to the most popular brands. Then you can be sure no one will be making fun of you because you will be the winner. Even better if you buy tons of stock in the companies who sell the products and services you buy. Because then you're essentially getting the products for free since everything you buy comes back to you through the stocks since you're also a company owner.
[removes hat of insanity]
Man... did I just write all that? Really? I think I need to throw this hat away.
I don't think this is about users. Users aren't going to be Microsoft's main customers in a few years. Advertisers will and users will be the commodity. Microsoft is doing this to position itself as the next logical progression from television to the much talked about "convergence" device. Just because TV is becoming less and less relevant, doesn't mean that ads are going away.
Read my lips people. We live in the U.S.A. Anyone who lives in any other backwards countries need not apply to this discussion. Here in the U.S. we have this system called capitalism. It allows us to have a high standard of living and the best thing of all, it's FREE! We're trying to get the rest of the world to use the same system since it does wonders for the standard of living and politics. The U.S. is brimming with opportunity thanks to capitalism. Anyone can become a millionaire and what Microsoft is proposing is just giving everyone (who matters) a new tool with which to make even more money by showing your service or product to trillions of people on the planet. I think anyone who doesn't see this is probably just some backwards communist or socialist who wants to steal my property and redistribute it to people who don't matter. Kudos to Microsoft for arming capitalist with another powerful way of getting at other people's cash in exchange for our great services and products!
CEO and Christ Figure
of PhilthyLucre.com
When there's more than a handful of "standards" you can't really call them standards anymore. And THAT is the problem. Too many of the businesses involved want the biggest slice of the pie. So they impose all sorts of artificial restrictions and incompatibility in the hopes that they will rule the system. So much for "letting the market decide".
That's the "solution": buy a new laptop with a newer WiFi chip in it? Did I miss something. I'll be the first to admit, that WiFi is very difficult to set up in most Linux distros is you don't have the right chip (A lot of Broadcom chips are a bear to set up with NDIS Wrapper, although I have done so successfully every time. It's not for the beginning user), but I think that telling someone to buy a new laptop is an even bigger turn-off. It's basically the capitalist equivalent of RTFM. Frankly, I think WiFi for ALL platforms including Linux would be better off if the WiFi card was virtualized by the system BIOS or firmware as a standard generic wired NIC like the Novell PCI 2000 NIC. The SSID and key settings could be stuck in the BIOS (with a user space application in the OS that has access to change those settings after a boot). That way, networking-wise the OS never has to deal with a WiFi device.
There is no benefit to tying the radio portion of the WiFi to the network portion of it at the OS level. In fact, it creates a LOT of needless confusion. Here's how it would work if it were done right:
1. The Radio portion of the WiFi would be in the BIOS (all settings like ESSID, WEP keys, AP mac addresses, etc...)
2. There would be an application to manage the radio portion of the WiFi chip at the OS level, but there would be no "driver" per say. Just read/write access to the "registers" in BIOS space that store the settings. This would allow the settings to be changed on the fly manually, or... automatically if desired. The manner of changing the settings would merely be a software problem at that point.
3. The IP portion of the WiFi chip would then be presented as an NE2000 PCI NIC (10/100) or some other fairly common and cross-platform supported hardware. Or maybe a totally new, NIC specifically used to present ONLY the IP portion of WiFi to the OS. (ie. the "NIC driver" wouldn't deal with ANY of the radio functionality. It would strictly involve IP only)
This would present much more functionality right off the bat. It would be possible to have promiscuous mode on any WiFi card, since that would be a problem residing in the IP driver domain. At that point, virtual machines that fake MAC addresses, or sniffing traffic over a WiFi device become a LOT simpler. But, this will never happen since it would break with the already established (and needlessly complex) systems in place already. Not to mention, it's not a problem to the average user if they're using the very easy, but substandard WiFi software for a certain commonplace OS...
...that's unconstitutional!!! He can't do that unless the president says he can!!!
...of the movie Aliens where that internal mouth comes out of the main mouth? What's a redundant?
That's true... remote controls were for rich folks when I was a kid. This was back in the era when remote controls would send ultrasonic signals to the TV which would then cause a motor to turn the analog knob on the TV set. (I'm not kidding) I remember this one family that my mom did cleaning for who had a set up like that. There were buttons to turn the TV on and off, change the channel and raise or lower the volume. Everything was motorized. My family didn't have a remote controlled TV until 1999 (although we had a remote for the VCR in 1984).