next time Billy or Stevie land on the continent, they can look forward to spending some time visiting with Milosevic.
They are not going to put a CEO in prison because of the actions of a corporation. That is one of the big points in setting up a corporation. The leaders get to hide behind a corporate sheild. The only way the CEO, etc of a corporation would be charged is if they personally commited a crime. Neither Bill nor Stevie own Microsoft, they work for Microsoft like any other MS employee. This is why companies can get away with so much unethical crap. No single person is legally responsible for the "actions" of that corporation.
I agree, but the problem is Joe User. They buy what the media and marketing people sell them. Does it really matter that the switches/routers are mostly *nix? What most people care about is the content on the internet. What happens when websites and multimedia require MS Windows 2009 with IE 10.0 + Palldium? I also would not be too certain about Apple. If it came to their bottom line, they would implement DRM. They already do it with ITMS. It may not be as bad as the other music stores DRM, but it is there and they did it to appease the media giants. If the media giants see that they can get away with more DRM, Apple will have to give in or drown. The only real answer is Open. Apple is not fully Open and that is the weakness for Apple's products to me. I am not talking about free as in cost, but as in free-dom.
Requiring training is a neat idea, though it would never work. Who would do the training/testing and on what OS? What if someone wants to run a Mac or Linux? Now we need governemt approval to run the OS? Is the government going to offer training/testing in ever OS out there? What if a home user wants to use Solaris, FreeBSD, Linux or Mac OS X? Do you think the government would offer testing for those OSes? Oh, I know, we can just remove all consumer choice and have the government only allow one OS. Of course we know MS would drop some of their big buck on all the congress critters and get their OS chosen.
There is no comparision between a car and a computer. A car has a _very_ limited purpose and a _very_ limited set of controls. If you can learn and pass a test to drive a Ford, you can drive a Chevy. It is not the same with different OSes. If you learn to use and pass a test for Mac, it doesn't mean you can use a PC with Linux or MS Windows.
Also, the more deeply the government gets involved in any issue, the more messed up that issue will be. What needs to happen is that sofware companies and end users should be held liable for their actions. With a car, you are required to have insurance. Maybe require home users to get insurance and require software companies to be liable for damages if there is negligence (poor quality) on their part. If MS and the like new that they could be liable for the next major security hole, I bet those release dates would slip even more as they ensured that the product was better. Compare other industries to the software industry. Not one other industry is allow to put out such poor quality products and not be held liable. If Ford put out a car/truck with the quality of an MS OS, many, many poeple would have been hurt/killed and Ford would have had some major law suits filed against them.
The sofwtare industry gets away with far more poor quality products then any other industry. I hear many people blame it on the end-user because they do not take the proper steps to "secure" their OS. Let us contrast that with the automotive industry. Image if you go out an buy a new car/truck. However, before you are allowed to drive it, you are required to replace the breaks, shocks and tires and install your own seat-belts and airbags. How long do you think consumers would allow this to go on? Yet that is exactly the case for the home user using an MS Windows OS. They need firewall, anti-virus and spyware programs to keep their computers from getting destroyed.
I am a programmer and I think I should be held liable as well as all developers and software companies. If I were to make and sell a physical product, say a blender, I would be liable for the quality of that product. If the blade in my blender was always flying off and getting embedded into peoples eyeballs, I would be liable. It should be no different with software.
What good will switching to Apple do? If Apple doesn't put the DRM/Palladium/Trusted computing crap on their systems, then the Mac will be blocked from most of the internet, software and multimedia. All PeeCees are now DRMed/Palladiumed and all software, multimedia and internet sites now require it. You sit down at your Mac and try to do some internet banking and you are greated with this message: "Sorry, this site requires a "secure" computer. Please go here to get one". You want to watch a DVD or listen to your new favorite song and up pops this little message: "Sorry, the MPAA/RIAA does not allow this content to be viewed on "untrusted" computers. Please go here to get one".
Not only that, but the MS PR machine will spin it around and make consumers think that it will make their computers secure and that they can now trust it to not loose those new pictures of grandma. The only real trusting taking place is that MS and the media companies can now trust _your_ computer to abide by their rules.
The sad thing is that if this crap took over the industry, there will be _no_ alternatives. Linux won't be allowed to run and a Mac won't be an option since software, media and most websties will require your computer to be trusted.
What happens if the drive dies out of warranty or you want to upgrade the drive? How long do you have to wait to get your OS CD? I bet they charge you extra for it or at least shipping. Just another way to cut costs and screw the consumer. Oh, and the average user will notice it when something goes wrong and they have no computer for one, two or more weeks while waiting for HP to ship them the OS CD that they PAID FOR when they purchased the computer. I think it is wrong for a company to charge you for the OS license and not deliver it and then require you to request it. Also, those backup partitions are almost never OS isntalls. They are usually images of how the vendor configured the PC with all their extra crap that slows the computer down to a crawl. What if the user wants to do a clean install of the OS without all the extra crap? Removing those extra programs is not a good option under MS Windows since there is almost always extra crap left behind.
Things like this is why I just buy the parts and build it myself. Not only is it cheaper, but I have control over the quality of the parts and the software that goes on the system. To bad for the average user though.
Just use Firefox/Mozilla and download the adblock plugin. Then you can block any content you want. If these ads are coming from http://ads.foo.com, you can block it with *ads.foo.com* or *.foo.com*, etc. If for some strange reason you want to use IE, you can still stop this junk. Under your internet options, go to the security tab and click Custom Level and select prompt for all the Active X options. Then when this thing tries to run just deny it. There are other ways as well. For example, you can put dummy entries in your hosts file for the servers that these ads are coming from, block it with a firewall, etc.
Where do you get info on this myth that make has this continual %5 desktop share? Didn't you read that/. article that Linux has more desktop share now then Mac? And if you count server usage (Linux has 25%), then there is no comparision. According to w3schools
Linux has 2.6% of the desktop market and Mac has 2.4%. In fact, I have never seen any stat that has Mac at 5%.
MS SQL Server 200 is OK. However, it cannot touch Oracle as a large enterprise DB. Oracle's clustering/grid computing is very very good stuff. MS SQL Server just doesn't have it. The fortune 500 I am a senior programmer at uses Oracle ONLY for critical data and it has never let us down. We do have a bunch of MS SQL server boxes up to quad 3.06GHz Xeons with HT, SCSI, etc and they are not bad. Though our DBA's would never stick our critical data in them. They are departmental servers only. We have had issues with MS SQL Server 2000 and memory leaks where the DB had to be brought down to clean up memory. Tons of "transaction logs full" problems even though DTS packages do nightly backups of the DB and transaction logs which should clear them out. It is funny because the transaction logs will be fine for a few weeks and then, wham, they just start to get full and the DTS packages fail. MS SQL Server just flakes and needs to be restarted, or sometimes an OS reboot, then the issue is totally gone for a few more weeks, and it comes back. Oracle may take a little more knowlege to setup, however, once you have that core Oracle skill set, Oracle DB will never let you down. We run Oracle on Linux and Solaris and Oracle just won't die. MS SQL Server also just lost its price advantage over Oracle. Another problem with MS SQL Server 2000 is that it only has failover clustering. In fact MS's next version of SQL Server won't have any better clustering support either. One of the main benefits of clustering is cost/performance.
I will agree that SQL Server is acceptable for departmental, however it is not there yet for the enterprise needs for the company I work at, and it sounds as if the next version will not be ready either.
I am sure it does cost money. However, think of your typical major motion picutre. "Big-time" actors get paid 1 million+ for the movie up front. Why not pay them a small wage up front and pay the actors based on how the film does? I think that would actaully be more fair, since movies like LOTR and The Passion that have brought in mega-bucks would compensate the artists better. Also, at $5 bucks to see a movie in a theatre and $3-$5 to buy it, I think you would get many more people to go and see a movie or purchase them. It is a smaller investment if you don't like the movie. Also, think Home Depot/Walmart/Lowes here. Instead of having 1,000,000 people see a movie at $8-$10, maybe you could draw out 25 - 100 million at $5? I am sure people would purchase more music, and go see more movies if they thought it was a better value for their money, I know I would. The way it is now, I go and see maybe one or two movies a year because I think it is over priced. I remember when I was younger, I would go once a month. I know my wife and I would enjoy doing that again if it was a better value for the money. Oh, and putting less smut in movies would help as well : )
Right now, I'm really stumped as to who to vote for in many elections because I really don't see too much of a choice nowadays...
Exactly. I always hear people whine about "if you don't vote, you have no one to blame but yourslef". However, who in the world would I vote for in this election? Or, any presidential election for the past XX elections? For me, picking between Bush and Kerry is like picking between drowing in mayonaise or ketchup.
Vote for who? Bush? Kerry? Please.... When there is a viable candidate, that is when I will vote. How in the world could I vote for W? Or Kerry the "war hero"? No thanks, I don't want either of them, and sadly, I will be stuck with one or the other for 4 years.
You want to fix the problem? Really? Run for office yourself. It won't pay very well if you're honest. But if you know what is wrong with the system, you are a hypocrite if you don't try to fix it. Yourself.
You cannot play a fair game in which all of the other players are cheating. Go ahead and try to run for office and be honest, not take bribes/contributions, etc. You will not get very far in the current political game. We need more candidates from more politcal parties to be able to run for president. Has there every been a time when there were more then two candidates for president? Or that the only two parties were Republican and Deomcrat? IMO, the only way to fix things is to look into our past and do what our founding fathers did to build a once great nation. That is to revolt. Get our rifles and bring down the current political game. Rebuild on the foundation of the original constitution, and maybe try to make it more "locked tight" as to prevent abuse in the future. I would also create a REAL democracy and not a "represented" one.
Your suggesting that people go without artistic input in their lives? That is silly. Art has been a part of history far, far longer then the RIAA/MPAA, Brittany Spears, Metallica, etc, etc. Art is a very important part of life for many. What right does some scumbag middle man company have to come and hold it hostage and demand eye-gouging prices? It is only because of our corrupted politicians that this has happened. The RIAA/MPAA just bribes the politicians and continually gains more control. The whole original point to copyright was to move works into the public domain. And thanks to bribes of our politicians, we now have 95+ years for works of art to be public domain. Oh, and I would also like to see anyone organize a large number of Americans to boycott the *AA. We Americans are just too lazy. Give us a couch, a TV and McDonald's and we will sit quietly by and watch our rights slowly be taken away.
Your analogy was of new technology coming in and displacing the old. But the analogy is wrong, and it doesn't event make sense, because there is no "new music" coming in and replacing the "old music." What has happened is that technology has given us a way to very easily deny artists compensation for their work.
I think he was talking about a business model and not the technology. It is the RIAA/MPAA business model that needs to go.
The trick in the next century will be to provide people with a way to pay what they think is fair for artistic creations. Then we'll see if the majority of people are fundamentally greedy.
How can someone pay the artist when the RIAA/MPAA strips the artist of all copyrights? The RIAA is a useless middle man and is only there to collect money and enforce an monopoly. It is extremely difficult for a new artist to publish an album on his/her own. So they have no choice but to go to the RIAA and hand over ownership.
Answer this, honestly: is the $10 price of a DVD so unfair, really? Do you really think you should be able to get it free just because there's a convenient technology available to do it? If $10 is too high, what would you pay?
I think $3 - $5 USD would be far more fair. It cost nothing to mass-produce a CD/DVD. Look at Home Depot/Lowes vs. the independent hardware store. The mom-n-pop hardware store wants to sell a screw driver for $10 while Home Depot/Lowes wants to sell 10 screw drivers for $1. Also, are you aware that the MPAA takes just about all of the money made in a movie theatre during the first few months? The only way a movie theatre can survive is by charging us consumers $5 USD for stinking hot dog. You can buy 16 hot dogs for that price. $10 for a bag of popcorn and a soda is not uncommon.
Also, have you noticed that there is no competition in the record/movie industry? It is not like each label/studio tries to compete on album/movie prices. All the albums/movies are about the same price. I think it is fair to call that "price fixing". The most important thing in Capitalism is not a buyer and a seller, but a free market. You cannot have a free market when there is a monopoly. By all the record labels and movie studios joining together, they have eliminated competition for themselves and are free to ask any price. The consumers and artist are the ones getting bent over here.
I also wonder what percentage of total CD/Movie sales goes to the executives vs. the artists? I bet we would all be surprised to see that the money we spend on CDs/Movies does not support the artists, but instead, that money pays for the large homes, boats, vacations, etc of a few over-paid executives.
Your talking out your @ss. I served in the USMC. Sorry, but they just don't pick someone and say, "Here, you are an admin now". Just like any other MOS (I was 0331) you get trained. Oh and NO MS product is allowed to by used in a life or death situation. So there is no MS sofware in any highly critical areas. It is all unix or custom RTOS.
Take your trolling else where.
This is a world where you may have to replace your team of trained administrators because they just got killed, and you need them replaced immediately or more people will die.
Yes, and there are more backup personnel waiting. They just don't pick some random smoe and make him an admin for critical systems or any systems for that matter. Stop talking out your rear.
It takes less time to get a random high-asvab grunt up to speed on a windows NT based system than on a linux system.
Do you have an evidence to back up that claim? Any studies? Documents? Or are you just making up crap as you go?
"Sir, the guy we pulled in after the 6 shop got bombed is saying 'what the fuck is this %> stuff all about?'"
I guess there is no such think as a GUI under Linux? I take it you cannot write GUIapps for Linux? All taks need to be done from a terminal? You are very "Insightful" aren't you?
It is a tough situation. On one hand something needs to be done to stop the MS Monopoly. On the other it is how to deal with issues that you have pointed out. I personally do not have the answer. Though something similar to what most Linux vendors do could work. The "big three" Linux vendors do not include every possible web browser. Usually just the most popular ones are included such as Mozilla, Konquerer, galeon. I don't see a big deal in having a folder on a new users desktop that has 3 - 5 links to scripts to download and install one of those browsers. I know one of the computers I bought had a similar folder with setup applications for MSN, AOL, Netzero and some other ISP.
How is Quicktime/Sorensen any less proprietary then MS Media formats? And how does everyone have Quicktime? Does quicktime run under Linux/FreeBSD? No (Ok, you can use MPLayer and illegal Win32 DLL's for non-DRMed Quicktime/Sorensen and Windows Media). How does Mac have a significant portion of the market? Didn't you read the/. article how Linux passed Mac by a little bit and now has a larger desktop market and a much, much larger server market? Mac and Linux combined have maybe about 6% of the desktop market. I would not call that a "significant portion". Though I do think it is silly for companies to ignore Linux or Mac.
What everyone really needs is an OPEN format. A format that can play on every stinken OS. The format doesn't need to be free as in beer though. There would be no problems with a small fee for each OS that ships it. Look at MP3, while I prefer OGG, MP3 can play on just about any OS and the licensing fees are small. Now if Apple or Microsoft would just open the format so that any user could use them free of charge on any of the OSes out there, then you would hear far less complaints and most of these problems would go away.
If you don't force MS to include a competing product, they willl continue to abuse their monopoly. For example, let us say that MS is forced to remove IE and WMP. MS will give discounts to OEM's that include IE and WMP as the default applications. So that senario will never work or be fair. MS has done tons of crap like this in the past. I have never read that Adobe was a convicted monopoly. I also have never read that Adobe charges OEM's more if that OEM also sells PSP. These are the tactics MS uses to keep their monopoly. MS should be forced to include an competing browser and media player. The most current version of both at the time they build the install disks. They should also not require IE to update a computer. The update function should be a stand-alone app. There is no reason they cannot remove IE. They can keep the DLL's that other apps may require. However, the front-end, IEXPLORE.EXE, should not be allowed to be installed by deafult. Let the user pick. Allowing the OEM to pick what apps to install will never work, since MS will just give discounts to get what they want. I also do not think it is wrong to force a company to distribute a competing product if that company is a convicted monopoly. After all, that anti-competitve monopoly has restricted competion and caused damage to the competing products, and it is only fair that the monopoly give retribution for those damages.
I think you are missing one important point. Media content is big on the web now and will continue to grow fast. All these content makers/distributors want to use a format that will allow them to deliver to the largest audiance. It costs more money to have to deliver in two or more formats. Having Windows Media on every desktop pretty much answers the question for those providers. Microsoft gets an instant monopoly on audio/video formats because of their OS monopoly. Bye-bye competition. Things are already bad now. By allowing MS to control the audio/video format will put too much power in their hands. They will use it like they did with IE and consumers will be forced to by an MS OS to be able to listen/watch content. IE on Windows and IE on MAC had similar features for a while. That is until MS took over the browser market. IE on mac sucks. IE doesn't run under Linux, FreeBSD, etc. MS made proprietary extension for IE specific HTML. They hope that all sites will use it so that one day it may become a reality that to have an enjoyable web experience, one would need to buy an MS OS. This is what MS wants to do with their audio/video formats. If you want content/entertainment, MS wants you to have to an MS OS. Bye-bye user choice.
Why would you need telnet or gopher? Put a simple script on the desktop. One for each browser. The user can just double-click the icon for the browser they want and the script would download and install the browser that the user picks.
How about wget or ftp? A simple script on the desktop which would download a browser. You can have one for different browsers and let the use pick. Fire the script and the browser is installed. Simple.
I have an NVidia GeForce 3 Ti 500 and use it under Linux and Windows XP. The NVidia drivers are leaps-n-bounds better then ATI's drivers. NVidia uses a unified driver which means you have EVERY feature under Linux that Windows driver has (except for DirectX of course). There is a huge difference between my NVidia card and my Radeon under Linux. The Radeon would mess up Americas Army, RTCW and UT. If you want to do any gaming on Linux, you need an NVidia. I personally don't care if an ATI can give me an extra 5-10 FPS. I would rather have good to very good performance with an NVidia that has a top-notch driver and does not muck up the display.
Can it stop a digital camera from taking a picture of the screen? If you can hear/see it, you can copy it. DRM is not effective against those who really want to get at the information. It only causes extra work for those who are stuck with it.
deletes itself after a certain time period
I bet you could run a file recovery program to get the file back. Then you could use a hex editor on the file and take your time getting the information out.
Slashdot Mirror
I agree, but the problem is Joe User. They buy what the media and marketing people sell them. Does it really matter that the switches/routers are mostly *nix? What most people care about is the content on the internet. What happens when websites and multimedia require MS Windows 2009 with IE 10.0 + Palldium? I also would not be too certain about Apple. If it came to their bottom line, they would implement DRM. They already do it with ITMS. It may not be as bad as the other music stores DRM, but it is there and they did it to appease the media giants. If the media giants see that they can get away with more DRM, Apple will have to give in or drown. The only real answer is Open. Apple is not fully Open and that is the weakness for Apple's products to me. I am not talking about free as in cost, but as in free-dom.
Requiring training is a neat idea, though it would never work. Who would do the training/testing and on what OS? What if someone wants to run a Mac or Linux? Now we need governemt approval to run the OS? Is the government going to offer training/testing in ever OS out there? What if a home user wants to use Solaris, FreeBSD, Linux or Mac OS X? Do you think the government would offer testing for those OSes? Oh, I know, we can just remove all consumer choice and have the government only allow one OS. Of course we know MS would drop some of their big buck on all the congress critters and get their OS chosen.
There is no comparision between a car and a computer. A car has a _very_ limited purpose and a _very_ limited set of controls. If you can learn and pass a test to drive a Ford, you can drive a Chevy. It is not the same with different OSes. If you learn to use and pass a test for Mac, it doesn't mean you can use a PC with Linux or MS Windows.
Also, the more deeply the government gets involved in any issue, the more messed up that issue will be. What needs to happen is that sofware companies and end users should be held liable for their actions. With a car, you are required to have insurance. Maybe require home users to get insurance and require software companies to be liable for damages if there is negligence (poor quality) on their part. If MS and the like new that they could be liable for the next major security hole, I bet those release dates would slip even more as they ensured that the product was better. Compare other industries to the software industry. Not one other industry is allow to put out such poor quality products and not be held liable. If Ford put out a car/truck with the quality of an MS OS, many, many poeple would have been hurt/killed and Ford would have had some major law suits filed against them.
The sofwtare industry gets away with far more poor quality products then any other industry. I hear many people blame it on the end-user because they do not take the proper steps to "secure" their OS. Let us contrast that with the automotive industry. Image if you go out an buy a new car/truck. However, before you are allowed to drive it, you are required to replace the breaks, shocks and tires and install your own seat-belts and airbags. How long do you think consumers would allow this to go on? Yet that is exactly the case for the home user using an MS Windows OS. They need firewall, anti-virus and spyware programs to keep their computers from getting destroyed.
I am a programmer and I think I should be held liable as well as all developers and software companies. If I were to make and sell a physical product, say a blender, I would be liable for the quality of that product. If the blade in my blender was always flying off and getting embedded into peoples eyeballs, I would be liable. It should be no different with software.
What good will switching to Apple do? If Apple doesn't put the DRM/Palladium/Trusted computing crap on their systems, then the Mac will be blocked from most of the internet, software and multimedia. All PeeCees are now DRMed/Palladiumed and all software, multimedia and internet sites now require it. You sit down at your Mac and try to do some internet banking and you are greated with this message: "Sorry, this site requires a "secure" computer. Please go here to get one". You want to watch a DVD or listen to your new favorite song and up pops this little message: "Sorry, the MPAA/RIAA does not allow this content to be viewed on "untrusted" computers. Please go here to get one".
Not only that, but the MS PR machine will spin it around and make consumers think that it will make their computers secure and that they can now trust it to not loose those new pictures of grandma. The only real trusting taking place is that MS and the media companies can now trust _your_ computer to abide by their rules.
The sad thing is that if this crap took over the industry, there will be _no_ alternatives. Linux won't be allowed to run and a Mac won't be an option since software, media and most websties will require your computer to be trusted.
What happens if the drive dies out of warranty or you want to upgrade the drive? How long do you have to wait to get your OS CD? I bet they charge you extra for it or at least shipping. Just another way to cut costs and screw the consumer. Oh, and the average user will notice it when something goes wrong and they have no computer for one, two or more weeks while waiting for HP to ship them the OS CD that they PAID FOR when they purchased the computer. I think it is wrong for a company to charge you for the OS license and not deliver it and then require you to request it. Also, those backup partitions are almost never OS isntalls. They are usually images of how the vendor configured the PC with all their extra crap that slows the computer down to a crawl. What if the user wants to do a clean install of the OS without all the extra crap? Removing those extra programs is not a good option under MS Windows since there is almost always extra crap left behind.
Things like this is why I just buy the parts and build it myself. Not only is it cheaper, but I have control over the quality of the parts and the software that goes on the system. To bad for the average user though.
Just use Firefox/Mozilla and download the adblock plugin. Then you can block any content you want. If these ads are coming from http://ads.foo.com, you can block it with *ads.foo.com* or *.foo.com*, etc. If for some strange reason you want to use IE, you can still stop this junk. Under your internet options, go to the security tab and click Custom Level and select prompt for all the Active X options. Then when this thing tries to run just deny it. There are other ways as well. For example, you can put dummy entries in your hosts file for the servers that these ads are coming from, block it with a firewall, etc.
Where do you get info on this myth that make has this continual %5 desktop share? Didn't you read that /. article that Linux has more desktop share now then Mac? And if you count server usage (Linux has 25%), then there is no comparision. According to w3schools
Linux has 2.6% of the desktop market and Mac has 2.4%. In fact, I have never seen any stat that has Mac at 5%.
MS SQL Server 200 is OK. However, it cannot touch Oracle as a large enterprise DB. Oracle's clustering/grid computing is very very good stuff. MS SQL Server just doesn't have it. The fortune 500 I am a senior programmer at uses Oracle ONLY for critical data and it has never let us down. We do have a bunch of MS SQL server boxes up to quad 3.06GHz Xeons with HT, SCSI, etc and they are not bad. Though our DBA's would never stick our critical data in them. They are departmental servers only. We have had issues with MS SQL Server 2000 and memory leaks where the DB had to be brought down to clean up memory. Tons of "transaction logs full" problems even though DTS packages do nightly backups of the DB and transaction logs which should clear them out. It is funny because the transaction logs will be fine for a few weeks and then, wham, they just start to get full and the DTS packages fail. MS SQL Server just flakes and needs to be restarted, or sometimes an OS reboot, then the issue is totally gone for a few more weeks, and it comes back. Oracle may take a little more knowlege to setup, however, once you have that core Oracle skill set, Oracle DB will never let you down. We run Oracle on Linux and Solaris and Oracle just won't die. MS SQL Server also just lost its price advantage over Oracle. Another problem with MS SQL Server 2000 is that it only has failover clustering. In fact MS's next version of SQL Server won't have any better clustering support either. One of the main benefits of clustering is cost/performance. I will agree that SQL Server is acceptable for departmental, however it is not there yet for the enterprise needs for the company I work at, and it sounds as if the next version will not be ready either.
Do use SANS/NAS for your load balanced DB?
I know you can run it in Cygwin. I think you may also be able to run it in the Microsoft Windows Services for UNIX which they now give away for free.
I am sure it does cost money. However, think of your typical major motion picutre. "Big-time" actors get paid 1 million+ for the movie up front. Why not pay them a small wage up front and pay the actors based on how the film does? I think that would actaully be more fair, since movies like LOTR and The Passion that have brought in mega-bucks would compensate the artists better. Also, at $5 bucks to see a movie in a theatre and $3-$5 to buy it, I think you would get many more people to go and see a movie or purchase them. It is a smaller investment if you don't like the movie. Also, think Home Depot/Walmart/Lowes here. Instead of having 1,000,000 people see a movie at $8-$10, maybe you could draw out 25 - 100 million at $5? I am sure people would purchase more music, and go see more movies if they thought it was a better value for their money, I know I would. The way it is now, I go and see maybe one or two movies a year because I think it is over priced. I remember when I was younger, I would go once a month. I know my wife and I would enjoy doing that again if it was a better value for the money. Oh, and putting less smut in movies would help as well : )
Your suggesting that people go without artistic input in their lives? That is silly. Art has been a part of history far, far longer then the RIAA/MPAA, Brittany Spears, Metallica, etc, etc. Art is a very important part of life for many. What right does some scumbag middle man company have to come and hold it hostage and demand eye-gouging prices? It is only because of our corrupted politicians that this has happened. The RIAA/MPAA just bribes the politicians and continually gains more control. The whole original point to copyright was to move works into the public domain. And thanks to bribes of our politicians, we now have 95+ years for works of art to be public domain. Oh, and I would also like to see anyone organize a large number of Americans to boycott the *AA. We Americans are just too lazy. Give us a couch, a TV and McDonald's and we will sit quietly by and watch our rights slowly be taken away.
Also, have you noticed that there is no competition in the record/movie industry? It is not like each label/studio tries to compete on album/movie prices. All the albums/movies are about the same price. I think it is fair to call that "price fixing". The most important thing in Capitalism is not a buyer and a seller, but a free market. You cannot have a free market when there is a monopoly. By all the record labels and movie studios joining together, they have eliminated competition for themselves and are free to ask any price. The consumers and artist are the ones getting bent over here.
I also wonder what percentage of total CD/Movie sales goes to the executives vs. the artists? I bet we would all be surprised to see that the money we spend on CDs/Movies does not support the artists, but instead, that money pays for the large homes, boats, vacations, etc of a few over-paid executives.
Do you have an evidence to back up that claim? Any studies? Documents? Or are you just making up crap as you go?
I guess there is no such think as a GUI under Linux? I take it you cannot write GUI apps for Linux? All taks need to be done from a terminal? You are very "Insightful" aren't you?
It is a tough situation. On one hand something needs to be done to stop the MS Monopoly. On the other it is how to deal with issues that you have pointed out. I personally do not have the answer. Though something similar to what most Linux vendors do could work. The "big three" Linux vendors do not include every possible web browser. Usually just the most popular ones are included such as Mozilla, Konquerer, galeon. I don't see a big deal in having a folder on a new users desktop that has 3 - 5 links to scripts to download and install one of those browsers. I know one of the computers I bought had a similar folder with setup applications for MSN, AOL, Netzero and some other ISP.
What everyone really needs is an OPEN format. A format that can play on every stinken OS. The format doesn't need to be free as in beer though. There would be no problems with a small fee for each OS that ships it. Look at MP3, while I prefer OGG, MP3 can play on just about any OS and the licensing fees are small. Now if Apple or Microsoft would just open the format so that any user could use them free of charge on any of the OSes out there, then you would hear far less complaints and most of these problems would go away.
If you don't force MS to include a competing product, they willl continue to abuse their monopoly. For example, let us say that MS is forced to remove IE and WMP. MS will give discounts to OEM's that include IE and WMP as the default applications. So that senario will never work or be fair. MS has done tons of crap like this in the past. I have never read that Adobe was a convicted monopoly. I also have never read that Adobe charges OEM's more if that OEM also sells PSP. These are the tactics MS uses to keep their monopoly. MS should be forced to include an competing browser and media player. The most current version of both at the time they build the install disks. They should also not require IE to update a computer. The update function should be a stand-alone app. There is no reason they cannot remove IE. They can keep the DLL's that other apps may require. However, the front-end, IEXPLORE.EXE, should not be allowed to be installed by deafult. Let the user pick. Allowing the OEM to pick what apps to install will never work, since MS will just give discounts to get what they want. I also do not think it is wrong to force a company to distribute a competing product if that company is a convicted monopoly. After all, that anti-competitve monopoly has restricted competion and caused damage to the competing products, and it is only fair that the monopoly give retribution for those damages.
I think you are missing one important point. Media content is big on the web now and will continue to grow fast. All these content makers/distributors want to use a format that will allow them to deliver to the largest audiance. It costs more money to have to deliver in two or more formats. Having Windows Media on every desktop pretty much answers the question for those providers. Microsoft gets an instant monopoly on audio/video formats because of their OS monopoly. Bye-bye competition. Things are already bad now. By allowing MS to control the audio/video format will put too much power in their hands. They will use it like they did with IE and consumers will be forced to by an MS OS to be able to listen/watch content. IE on Windows and IE on MAC had similar features for a while. That is until MS took over the browser market. IE on mac sucks. IE doesn't run under Linux, FreeBSD, etc. MS made proprietary extension for IE specific HTML. They hope that all sites will use it so that one day it may become a reality that to have an enjoyable web experience, one would need to buy an MS OS. This is what MS wants to do with their audio/video formats. If you want content/entertainment, MS wants you to have to an MS OS. Bye-bye user choice.
Why would you need telnet or gopher? Put a simple script on the desktop. One for each browser. The user can just double-click the icon for the browser they want and the script would download and install the browser that the user picks.
How about wget or ftp? A simple script on the desktop which would download a browser. You can have one for different browsers and let the use pick. Fire the script and the browser is installed. Simple.
I have an NVidia GeForce 3 Ti 500 and use it under Linux and Windows XP. The NVidia drivers are leaps-n-bounds better then ATI's drivers. NVidia uses a unified driver which means you have EVERY feature under Linux that Windows driver has (except for DirectX of course). There is a huge difference between my NVidia card and my Radeon under Linux. The Radeon would mess up Americas Army, RTCW and UT. If you want to do any gaming on Linux, you need an NVidia. I personally don't care if an ATI can give me an extra 5-10 FPS. I would rather have good to very good performance with an NVidia that has a top-notch driver and does not muck up the display.