I dislike MS as much as anybody, but it simply cannot be denied that this is a great thing, because it can have the same effect as ODF: it can allow 100% interoperability with other applications...
It can be denied quite easily. MS used to publish word and excel formats. This helped to increase their grip on the "market". As competitors added support for word and excel formats it further reinforced that the MS programs were the standard. This is MS' clever tactic to defuse the open doc issue.
... Ultimately, we'll see software and computing industry shift into a business model based on service alone. This way, competition is no longer a race to market the latest and greatest features -- it becomes a competition based upon who best serves the customer...
Thank you for restating the theory and hope behind OSS, now for reality...
MS had previously published Word and Excel formats. They did so as they took over the market, as they destroyed the competition. The competitions support for Word and Excel formats further reinforced those proprams as the defacto standards.
I believe in the USA 75% of police shot are either shot with their own gun or by another policeman, so arming the police is not the answer either.
What these and other similar arguments fail to consider is how often guns are used to save a life. Note that this does not necessarily means that shots were fired or that a weapon even cleared a holster.
When the Lisa first came out (I'm old enough to remember this), the general impression was that Apple had invented this incredible new interface. Apple did NOTHING to dissuade this concept. It has taken years of reminders to make it clear the general concepts originated at Xerox, and Apple, um, 'bought' them and just tweaked them a bit.
All you have really said is that Apple has had competent marketing. Was there ever any doubt over that?
strongly suspect the translator was taking the cushy-nice-guy talk which would earn the soldier zero respect, and -fully- translating it into something the Iraqi police would expect.
I realize the potential for cultural differences but these police are not in the officer's chain of command, they are not his subordiates. It is a joint patrol so diplomacy is required, that is also a lesson for the police to learn.
I'm sure the US officer conducts himself quite differently when one of *his* men screws up. Actually, in a earlier episode when the unit was training at Fort Hood prior to deployment to Iraq he did get excited on an occasion or two.
But it is absolutely to the point where it could be useful in some carefully chosen situations."
I think it is far more useful than many people realize given that many people have too much faith in human translators. I was watching a discovery channel episode of "Off to War" and a US officer had his men hold their fire when they saw armed insurgents because they were not sure where the Iraqi police attached to the unit were. Afterwards the US officer tells the translator to tell the police that he had to hold his fire because he did not know where they were and that they must let him know when they leave the group. Subtitles show that the translator really says something like: You idiots! You completely screwed up the mission... So much for the diplomacy and professionalism the US officer was trying to convey.
Counterpoint to your devil's advocate - the countless project managers, receptionists, engineers, promoters, executives and more are completely replaceable and interchangeable. Not only among their peers, but among the population in general. David Gibbon is the only one who makes David Gibbon music. As such, he is far more valuable than anybody else.
No, he is only irreplacable to a small hard core fan base, he is completely replacable to the "market" at large. If it were not for decade after decade showing this to be true artists would be able to negotiate a larger percentage. The "market" has determined their value, a mutually beneficial trade occurs, both parties are better off but not necessarily happy. Very few artists become irreplacable to the market at large and they do negotiate better deals. The "market" works.
Name three rock bands who made more than a meager living from recorded music even 50 years ago. Name any musician who made any money at all off of recorded music 100 years ago.
So the labels are critically important, or more accurately professional promotions, marketing, and advertising is critical to an artist's short term (in their lifetime?) financial success. The "market" evolved a mutually beneficial trade. The artist's fractions puts more money into their pocket than they could have accumulated through other means. Equitable trades are not necessarily "happy" trades.
By analogy: name three opinion columnists who never were never signed by any newspaper and make a living that way sufficient to quit their day jobs. Or course now they are called bloggers.
Blogger's no longer have day jobs or parents paying their bills?;-)
I'm sorry but you can't redefine civil rights to glorify your operating system politics. Also your examples were pretty naive, the "motivations" you provided were merely rallying cries to motivate the masses. The true motives were to replace absent and hostile rulers with local leaders. If Washington, Jefferson, and Adams went to the masses and said rebel to make us your leaders things would not have went nearly as well. Even "just" wars sometimes need to be "sold".
I'm all for Linux and Open Source but when you equate the OSS movement with civil rights and self rule you trivialize the latter. Put your emotions/politics aside and think about this a little deeper. An operating system, a word processor, and such are pretty trivial and temporary things.
No doubt that the Mini was produced in the hopes of luring Windows customers, but it isn't a "loss leader".
I didn't mean a literal loss leader, that's why I used quotes and the qualification "of sorts". I'm sure Apple is not losing money but I am also sure that Apple chose to receive a smaller margin (profit) on the Mini in order to get more of them into the hands of consumers.
The rumor of a ~$800 iBook came from the same source that indicated a Intel iBook in January.
If Apple saves $200 in costs they are not going to pass it all along to the consumer. Their price points are very strategic. Secondly it is one thing to get engineering info, a candid camera phone photo can tell you alot, you must deal with outsiders in regards to manufacturing, etc. It is something entirely different to get pricing information.
..what's the truth here? Are Intel processors more powerful than Motorola/IBM?
The truth is that Apple told the truth but that it was cleverly phrased by marketing people so that consumers, and/or more importantly zealots, would misinterpret it. The truth is that:
1. Historically and in general a PowerPC CPU is 25-35% faster than an Intel CPU of the *same* clockrate. Apple used phrases like "up to twice as fast" and this was true, you could find a specialized app that greatly benefitted from the RISC architecture of the PowerPC and get to 2X. However clockrates were not the same, clockrate is not the perfect measurement but it does matter.
2. Apple was disingenuous in some of it's comparisons, the comparisons were "rigged" to a certain degree. The ByteMarks comparison where they used an old 486 version on a Pentium CPU. Fudged SPEC comparisons. Gcc "leveling the playing field" when gcc x86 is known to be weaker than gcc ppc and better x86 compilers are used for commercial x86 apps. Apple didn't lie, they did fully disclose all this in the "small print" but few had the technical sophistication to understand. While unacceptable in a paper presented to a scientific journal it was all pretty standard stuff for maketing literature and advertisements.
Also, if the Intel iBooks are really that great, and the price drops a couple hundred dollars (which has been reported), then wouldn't it start to cut into the Mini's market?
With native Intel binaries the Intel based machines will be well loved. The price drop rumors are nonsense. Apple may experience some savings but they are not going to pass it all along to the consumer. If for no other reason than to avoid cannabalizing Mini sales.
I don't think some Mac users realize how important the Mini is to Apple's long-term. The low cost Mini greatly reduces the barrier to try out a Mac. The Mini is a "loss leader" of sorts, Apple is really betting on the second and hopefully "bigger" Mac that Mini owners eventually buy. Apple will not sabotage the Mini(1).
(1) Yes I just predicted rational behavior from Apple. Yes I realize how dangerous this is.:-)
You're right, it's not *THE* civil rights movement, the one with MLK and all that, but it is definitely *A* civil rights movement. Just because you don't care doesn't mean it's not important.
No, it's a commercial right or property rights movement. Civil rights is about the rights a person has as a citizen of a country. Note the word "civil".;-)
How many programs have "fat" binaries, with intel versions?
I believe that purchasers of consumer machines, like the iBook, are more heavily dependent on the bundled software that Apple provides. Keep in mind that the consumer machines come with AppleWorks, a basic suite with word processing, spreadsheet, etc. Coming from Apple all of the bundled software will be native Intel code.
As far as other software, with the exception of games and computationally intensive programs - the latter being odd to find on a consumer machine, emulation will probably work well enough in the short term. While the mobile G4 and the Pentium M'ish CPUs may be too close to each other performance wise to make emulation acceptable in general, if an app was only using a small fraction of the G4 CPU then effective emulation is possible. For example if an app only uses 10% of the G4 but uses 90% of the Pentium M when emulated the user experience will be about the same.
If that binding was transferable, when binding it to you son's computer only your machine was deauthorized, would that have been acceptable? In short to allow only one machine to be activated with a particular key. Now if that key is moving between many machines I could see it being shut down automatically as a stolen/posted key but setting the threshold at a second machine seems too aggressive.
I'm curious, is there any way to tell Steam that an activation key was not stolen, to explain what happened and to have the key made valid once again?
The difference being that even with technically (I mean, by specification, not including whatever funky copy-protection nonsense is on there) identical hardware, Apple wishes to restrict their base.
First, the technically identical hardware is temporary, its convenient, it may be a good feint, etc. Switching to an Intel PCI chipset and Intel CPU *does not* mean you will have PC/AT compatible hardware. Apple has the expertise to design their own motherboards and chipsets. They could do anything from take their current proprietary design and replace the PowerPC with a Pentium to take a stock Intel PCI chipset as a reference and incorporate some of their custom chipset work, or simply leave out legacy PC junk that they have no historical dependency on but the currently shipping Windows does. Apple *did not* say that the current version of Windows would run on their hardware, they said they would not prevent Windows from running on their hardware. This suggests Windows will need to be ported to Apple's x86 hardware. Look back in history, once upon a time MS-DOS machines were not IBM PC compatible, the IBM PC was merely one of various MS-DOS machines. These machines had Intel CPUs and other similar hardware and benefitted from commodity parts as a result. However these systems were fundamentally incompatible, you had to adhere to the MS-DOS API to be safe. I'm leaning towards a repeat of history over a standard off-the-shelf PC design plus a DRM chip.
Secondly, Apple does not wish to restrict their user base, they wish to ensure that they survive in a meaningful sense. Apple fundamentally is a hardware company, they are famous for their software but that software is largely a tool to get people to buy their more expensive hardware(1). Their software is not really their core business, it is their core marketting to some degree. To run Mac OS X on generic PC hardware would kill their hardware business. They tried growing the Mac market by introducing alternative hardware vendors and it nearly killed them. The market did not grow, Apple's sales were cannibalized as existing Mac users flocked to the Mac clones. You can look to Linux as another example. Sun once had a thriving desktop business selling generic (with respect to the functionality that the user needed) unix boxes. Once a generic unix (Linux - again, only addressing people who needed generic unix apps/tools) could be run on inexpensive hardware Sun's desktop market evaporated. Apple would suffer a similar evaporation of their hardware market, suffer a devestating loss in revenue, and be a ghost of their former self. So a PC user may benefit from Mac OS X on generic PC hardware but what is in it for Apple. It has to be a mutually beneficial deal for it to happen, it is not, it won't happen.
(1) I have to note the mini as an exception. Unlike other systems it is pretty damn price competitive, or maybe its just that Apple's proportionately higher markup is being applied to such an inexpensive machine that the difference between the mini and a comparable PC is insignificant. Or maybe the mini's margin is much less than other Macs and the mini is being used as a "loss leader" to draw users into the Apple family. If enough people buy a bigger Mac as their second Mac whenever it comes time to upgrade Apple may have made a very good long term versus short term tradeoff.
"bunch of people of your culture (whatever that is) were displaced to"
Oh I'm sorry , I didn't realise the french government forced them to move
to france. Oh wait , they didn't! So if they didn't like it they could
have quite easily gone home. But they didn't. Funny that. So spare me
the standard issue institutional racism rant , it so full of holes it sinks
every time.
The immigrant parents could theoretically move back(1) to the original country but the second generation that was born and raised in the new country can not. They will most likely be considered foreigners in their parent's homeland, suffer descrimination, etc. Racial similarity will not necessarily help them.
(1) The original immigrants can face discrimination as well if they live abroad "too long".
FWIW, the above is not limitted to North African and Middle Eastern societies. I am a white of European descent (not French). My grandfather moved to the US when he was 20. I traveled with my grandfather on one of his visits to family in Europe. We also traveled around the country a little since I wanted to see some historical sights. In shops and restaurants I would usually speak first using broken language identifying myself as a foreigner, sometimes conversation or my credit card would indicate my ancestry was from this country. My grandfather would usually remain silent and occasionally would here derrogatory comments, this was long before Bush accelerated anti-Americanism. My grandfather was treated with mixed results. Occasionally there was a "you are an American now, you are not one of us" attitude. If he moved back to his home town he would be considered an outsider by some despite having the same race, religion, language, culture, local birth, and growing up locally. Any disagreeing opinion would be instantly discounted.
Given the above treatment in a "more tolerant" European country I could imagine having a different color, religion, or culture in the more xenophobic countries of France, North Africa, or the Middle East. While I can understand the frustration the fires are pure idiocy. I find myself becoming less sympathetic and less tolerant, wondering if the xenophobes were "right" in some ways. The historian in me wonders if this is how the acceptance of the Nazi's began. I expect neo-Nazi groups to have a spike in recruitment. These rioters have know idea how counterproductive their violence may turn out to be.
MS continues to beat up on linux cause they realize more and more what a threat OSS is.
When someone hates on you, take it as a hidden compliment.
Keep drinking that HATER-AID M$, we be loving it.
It's not that Linux presents a new threat to MS, it's more that Linux has displaced traditional Unix vendors. Where MS used to attack Sun and company they now attack Linux. Right now the only people getting killed by Linux are the traditional Unix vendors.
You are correct in that MS probably is taking posts like yours as compliments. Pot. Kettle. Black.:-)
MS source is available to some academics/customers
on
Open Source Not That Open?
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· Score: 2, Informative
I mean, if I were to change the Linux memory manager and ask for support from Red Hat, RH might have an issue with that. And if I were to change the Windows XP memory manager...
Um, where do I get the source code for the Windows XP memory manager?
Strangely enough I have a friend who did just that. Now the research project he was working on had been granted access to Windows NT source after signing NDAs but the license was transferable if the project moved to another university, they were not prohibitted from publishing, etc. It was a pretty reasonable deal.
Some customers have source as well for the very reason many around here trumpet open source, they want the ability to make changes *iff* necessary. I know I've been very fortunate in alwyas being able to get employers to purchase source licenses for libraries we wanted to use, not the less expenside binary only licenses. It always seems to have paid off.
So open source's advantage is not that you get access to source, it is that little guys get access to source. When you are a big enough and you are buying enough everything is negotiable, even access to source code.
I've never, in my career, seen a developer who understands fundamentals because of college, and I've never seen one who lacks skills because he or she didn't go to college.
I side with the other responses strongly disagreeing with this. I too have seen many gifted programmers who had gaping holes in their knowledge because they did not study various uninteresting or seemingly unimportant topics. They were great at what they did study but they were not well rounded, more like a technician in some ways rather than engineers. In my own personal work I have occasionally had answers to technical programs come from completely unexpected sources, from topics I would never had the forsight to have studied on my own initiative.
Your statement is only true for the extremely minute portion of the population that will read *all* the textbooks on their own initiative. It does a great disservice to otherwise intelligent programmers who would benefit from formal training. For example most aspiring game programmers out there might be under the illusion that they just need to read some OpenGL books, maybe some graphics and AI gems, and they are ready. They would never image that the answer to some problem they will run into comes from some boring databases book written in the 80s, or from a microeconomics text, or a psychology class, etc. I emphasized non-computer science but I want to be clear that the "gaping holes" I referred to above was in computer science. The material you cover in a formal degree program is valuable and almost no one has the self discipline to study *all* that material on their own and need the prodding of professors. I did. A friend did not, and he is the rare exception who did not, the rest delude themselves.
World of Warcraft enlarged the "pond"
on
MMORPG Evolution
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· Score: 4, Insightful
Are MMOs doomed to continue fishing from the same pond of players over and over?
While World of Warcraft did take some players away from other MMOs it's success is also due to the fact that it significantly increased the number of MMO players. It made MMOs far more accessible, especially to casual players. In short, it grew that "pond". There is no reason to think that the pond cannot grow some more, it is just a matter of someone introducing something that non-MMO'ers would find a fun use of their time.
Level 60 Elite Tauren Chieftain not a garage band
on
Blizzcon Writeup
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· Score: 2, Informative
"Level 60 Elite Tauren Chieftain" was not exactly a garage band, they were Blizzard employees. That was part of the fun of it.
Slashdot Mirror
I dislike MS as much as anybody, but it simply cannot be denied that this is a great thing, because it can have the same effect as ODF: it can allow 100% interoperability with other applications ...
It can be denied quite easily. MS used to publish word and excel formats. This helped to increase their grip on the "market". As competitors added support for word and excel formats it further reinforced that the MS programs were the standard. This is MS' clever tactic to defuse the open doc issue.
... Ultimately, we'll see software and computing industry shift into a business model based on service alone. This way, competition is no longer a race to market the latest and greatest features -- it becomes a competition based upon who best serves the customer ...
...
Thank you for restating the theory and hope behind OSS, now for reality
MS had previously published Word and Excel formats. They did so as they took over the market, as they destroyed the competition. The competitions support for Word and Excel formats further reinforced those proprams as the defacto standards.
I believe in the USA 75% of police shot are either shot with their own gun or by another policeman, so arming the police is not the answer either.
What these and other similar arguments fail to consider is how often guns are used to save a life. Note that this does not necessarily means that shots were fired or that a weapon even cleared a holster.
When the Lisa first came out (I'm old enough to remember this), the general impression was that Apple had invented this incredible new interface. Apple did NOTHING to dissuade this concept. It has taken years of reminders to make it clear the general concepts originated at Xerox, and Apple, um, 'bought' them and just tweaked them a bit.
All you have really said is that Apple has had competent marketing. Was there ever any doubt over that?
strongly suspect the translator was taking the cushy-nice-guy talk which would earn the soldier zero respect, and -fully- translating it into something the Iraqi police would expect.
I realize the potential for cultural differences but these police are not in the officer's chain of command, they are not his subordiates. It is a joint patrol so diplomacy is required, that is also a lesson for the police to learn.
I'm sure the US officer conducts himself quite differently when one of *his* men screws up. Actually, in a earlier episode when the unit was training at Fort Hood prior to deployment to Iraq he did get excited on an occasion or two.
But it is absolutely to the point where it could be useful in some carefully chosen situations."
... So much for the diplomacy and professionalism the US officer was trying to convey.
I think it is far more useful than many people realize given that many people have too much faith in human translators. I was watching a discovery channel episode of "Off to War" and a US officer had his men hold their fire when they saw armed insurgents because they were not sure where the Iraqi police attached to the unit were. Afterwards the US officer tells the translator to tell the police that he had to hold his fire because he did not know where they were and that they must let him know when they leave the group. Subtitles show that the translator really says something like: You idiots! You completely screwed up the mission
Counterpoint to your devil's advocate - the countless project managers, receptionists, engineers, promoters, executives and more are completely replaceable and interchangeable. Not only among their peers, but among the population in general. David Gibbon is the only one who makes David Gibbon music. As such, he is far more valuable than anybody else.
No, he is only irreplacable to a small hard core fan base, he is completely replacable to the "market" at large. If it were not for decade after decade showing this to be true artists would be able to negotiate a larger percentage. The "market" has determined their value, a mutually beneficial trade occurs, both parties are better off but not necessarily happy. Very few artists become irreplacable to the market at large and they do negotiate better deals. The "market" works.
Name three rock bands who made more than a meager living from recorded music even 50 years ago. Name any musician who made any money at all off of recorded music 100 years ago.
;-)
So the labels are critically important, or more accurately professional promotions, marketing, and advertising is critical to an artist's short term (in their lifetime?) financial success. The "market" evolved a mutually beneficial trade. The artist's fractions puts more money into their pocket than they could have accumulated through other means. Equitable trades are not necessarily "happy" trades.
By analogy: name three opinion columnists who never were never signed by any newspaper and make a living that way sufficient to quit their day jobs. Or course now they are called bloggers.
Blogger's no longer have day jobs or parents paying their bills?
That would be Whiskey
I'm sorry but you can't redefine civil rights to glorify your operating system politics. Also your examples were pretty naive, the "motivations" you provided were merely rallying cries to motivate the masses. The true motives were to replace absent and hostile rulers with local leaders. If Washington, Jefferson, and Adams went to the masses and said rebel to make us your leaders things would not have went nearly as well. Even "just" wars sometimes need to be "sold".
I'm all for Linux and Open Source but when you equate the OSS movement with civil rights and self rule you trivialize the latter. Put your emotions/politics aside and think about this a little deeper. An operating system, a word processor, and such are pretty trivial and temporary things.
The Mini is a "loss leader" of sorts"
No doubt that the Mini was produced in the hopes of luring Windows customers, but it isn't a "loss leader".
I didn't mean a literal loss leader, that's why I used quotes and the qualification "of sorts". I'm sure Apple is not losing money but I am also sure that Apple chose to receive a smaller margin (profit) on the Mini in order to get more of them into the hands of consumers.
The rumor of a ~$800 iBook came from the same source that indicated a Intel iBook in January.
If Apple saves $200 in costs they are not going to pass it all along to the consumer. Their price points are very strategic. Secondly it is one thing to get engineering info, a candid camera phone photo can tell you alot, you must deal with outsiders in regards to manufacturing, etc. It is something entirely different to get pricing information.
..what's the truth here? Are Intel processors more powerful than Motorola/IBM?
The truth is that Apple told the truth but that it was cleverly phrased by marketing people so that consumers, and/or more importantly zealots, would misinterpret it. The truth is that:
1. Historically and in general a PowerPC CPU is 25-35% faster than an Intel CPU of the *same* clockrate. Apple used phrases like "up to twice as fast" and this was true, you could find a specialized app that greatly benefitted from the RISC architecture of the PowerPC and get to 2X. However clockrates were not the same, clockrate is not the perfect measurement but it does matter.
2. Apple was disingenuous in some of it's comparisons, the comparisons were "rigged" to a certain degree. The ByteMarks comparison where they used an old 486 version on a Pentium CPU. Fudged SPEC comparisons. Gcc "leveling the playing field" when gcc x86 is known to be weaker than gcc ppc and better x86 compilers are used for commercial x86 apps. Apple didn't lie, they did fully disclose all this in the "small print" but few had the technical sophistication to understand. While unacceptable in a paper presented to a scientific journal it was all pretty standard stuff for maketing literature and advertisements.
To save typing:
0 09438
"Identical HW temporary, it's not just DRM chip"
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=168003&cid=14
Also, if the Intel iBooks are really that great, and the price drops a couple hundred dollars (which has been reported), then wouldn't it start to cut into the Mini's market?
:-)
With native Intel binaries the Intel based machines will be well loved. The price drop rumors are nonsense. Apple may experience some savings but they are not going to pass it all along to the consumer. If for no other reason than to avoid cannabalizing Mini sales.
I don't think some Mac users realize how important the Mini is to Apple's long-term. The low cost Mini greatly reduces the barrier to try out a Mac. The Mini is a "loss leader" of sorts, Apple is really betting on the second and hopefully "bigger" Mac that Mini owners eventually buy. Apple will not sabotage the Mini(1).
(1) Yes I just predicted rational behavior from Apple. Yes I realize how dangerous this is.
You're right, it's not *THE* civil rights movement, the one with MLK and all that, but it is definitely *A* civil rights movement. Just because you don't care doesn't mean it's not important.
;-)
No, it's a commercial right or property rights movement. Civil rights is about the rights a person has as a citizen of a country. Note the word "civil".
How many programs have "fat" binaries, with intel versions?
I believe that purchasers of consumer machines, like the iBook, are more heavily dependent on the bundled software that Apple provides. Keep in mind that the consumer machines come with AppleWorks, a basic suite with word processing, spreadsheet, etc. Coming from Apple all of the bundled software will be native Intel code.
As far as other software, with the exception of games and computationally intensive programs - the latter being odd to find on a consumer machine, emulation will probably work well enough in the short term. While the mobile G4 and the Pentium M'ish CPUs may be too close to each other performance wise to make emulation acceptable in general, if an app was only using a small fraction of the G4 CPU then effective emulation is possible. For example if an app only uses 10% of the G4 but uses 90% of the Pentium M when emulated the user experience will be about the same.
If that binding was transferable, when binding it to you son's computer only your machine was deauthorized, would that have been acceptable? In short to allow only one machine to be activated with a particular key. Now if that key is moving between many machines I could see it being shut down automatically as a stolen/posted key but setting the threshold at a second machine seems too aggressive.
I'm curious, is there any way to tell Steam that an activation key was not stolen, to explain what happened and to have the key made valid once again?
The difference being that even with technically (I mean, by specification, not including whatever funky copy-protection nonsense is on there) identical hardware, Apple wishes to restrict their base.
First, the technically identical hardware is temporary, its convenient, it may be a good feint, etc. Switching to an Intel PCI chipset and Intel CPU *does not* mean you will have PC/AT compatible hardware. Apple has the expertise to design their own motherboards and chipsets. They could do anything from take their current proprietary design and replace the PowerPC with a Pentium to take a stock Intel PCI chipset as a reference and incorporate some of their custom chipset work, or simply leave out legacy PC junk that they have no historical dependency on but the currently shipping Windows does. Apple *did not* say that the current version of Windows would run on their hardware, they said they would not prevent Windows from running on their hardware. This suggests Windows will need to be ported to Apple's x86 hardware. Look back in history, once upon a time MS-DOS machines were not IBM PC compatible, the IBM PC was merely one of various MS-DOS machines. These machines had Intel CPUs and other similar hardware and benefitted from commodity parts as a result. However these systems were fundamentally incompatible, you had to adhere to the MS-DOS API to be safe. I'm leaning towards a repeat of history over a standard off-the-shelf PC design plus a DRM chip.
Secondly, Apple does not wish to restrict their user base, they wish to ensure that they survive in a meaningful sense. Apple fundamentally is a hardware company, they are famous for their software but that software is largely a tool to get people to buy their more expensive hardware(1). Their software is not really their core business, it is their core marketting to some degree. To run Mac OS X on generic PC hardware would kill their hardware business. They tried growing the Mac market by introducing alternative hardware vendors and it nearly killed them. The market did not grow, Apple's sales were cannibalized as existing Mac users flocked to the Mac clones. You can look to Linux as another example. Sun once had a thriving desktop business selling generic (with respect to the functionality that the user needed) unix boxes. Once a generic unix (Linux - again, only addressing people who needed generic unix apps/tools) could be run on inexpensive hardware Sun's desktop market evaporated. Apple would suffer a similar evaporation of their hardware market, suffer a devestating loss in revenue, and be a ghost of their former self. So a PC user may benefit from Mac OS X on generic PC hardware but what is in it for Apple. It has to be a mutually beneficial deal for it to happen, it is not, it won't happen.
(1) I have to note the mini as an exception. Unlike other systems it is pretty damn price competitive, or maybe its just that Apple's proportionately higher markup is being applied to such an inexpensive machine that the difference between the mini and a comparable PC is insignificant. Or maybe the mini's margin is much less than other Macs and the mini is being used as a "loss leader" to draw users into the Apple family. If enough people buy a bigger Mac as their second Mac whenever it comes time to upgrade Apple may have made a very good long term versus short term tradeoff.
"bunch of people of your culture (whatever that is) were displaced to"
Oh I'm sorry , I didn't realise the french government forced them to move to france. Oh wait , they didn't! So if they didn't like it they could have quite easily gone home. But they didn't. Funny that. So spare me the standard issue institutional racism rant , it so full of holes it sinks every time.
The immigrant parents could theoretically move back(1) to the original country but the second generation that was born and raised in the new country can not. They will most likely be considered foreigners in their parent's homeland, suffer descrimination, etc. Racial similarity will not necessarily help them.
(1) The original immigrants can face discrimination as well if they live abroad "too long".
FWIW, the above is not limitted to North African and Middle Eastern societies. I am a white of European descent (not French). My grandfather moved to the US when he was 20. I traveled with my grandfather on one of his visits to family in Europe. We also traveled around the country a little since I wanted to see some historical sights. In shops and restaurants I would usually speak first using broken language identifying myself as a foreigner, sometimes conversation or my credit card would indicate my ancestry was from this country. My grandfather would usually remain silent and occasionally would here derrogatory comments, this was long before Bush accelerated anti-Americanism. My grandfather was treated with mixed results. Occasionally there was a "you are an American now, you are not one of us" attitude. If he moved back to his home town he would be considered an outsider by some despite having the same race, religion, language, culture, local birth, and growing up locally. Any disagreeing opinion would be instantly discounted.
Given the above treatment in a "more tolerant" European country I could imagine having a different color, religion, or culture in the more xenophobic countries of France, North Africa, or the Middle East. While I can understand the frustration the fires are pure idiocy. I find myself becoming less sympathetic and less tolerant, wondering if the xenophobes were "right" in some ways. The historian in me wonders if this is how the acceptance of the Nazi's began. I expect neo-Nazi groups to have a spike in recruitment. These rioters have know idea how counterproductive their violence may turn out to be.
As others have pointed MS will just make OpenDocument one of their output formats and those who care will use it. Few will switch from MS Word.
Alternatively MS may just marginalize OpenDocument by publishing the Word/Excel/etc document formats. They used to, they could do so again.
MS continues to beat up on linux cause they realize more and more what a threat OSS is. When someone hates on you, take it as a hidden compliment. Keep drinking that HATER-AID M$, we be loving it.
:-)
It's not that Linux presents a new threat to MS, it's more that Linux has displaced traditional Unix vendors. Where MS used to attack Sun and company they now attack Linux. Right now the only people getting killed by Linux are the traditional Unix vendors.
You are correct in that MS probably is taking posts like yours as compliments. Pot. Kettle. Black.
I mean, if I were to change the Linux memory manager and ask for support from Red Hat, RH might have an issue with that. And if I were to change the Windows XP memory manager... Um, where do I get the source code for the Windows XP memory manager?
Strangely enough I have a friend who did just that. Now the research project he was working on had been granted access to Windows NT source after signing NDAs but the license was transferable if the project moved to another university, they were not prohibitted from publishing, etc. It was a pretty reasonable deal.
Some customers have source as well for the very reason many around here trumpet open source, they want the ability to make changes *iff* necessary. I know I've been very fortunate in alwyas being able to get employers to purchase source licenses for libraries we wanted to use, not the less expenside binary only licenses. It always seems to have paid off.
So open source's advantage is not that you get access to source, it is that little guys get access to source. When you are a big enough and you are buying enough everything is negotiable, even access to source code.
I've never, in my career, seen a developer who understands fundamentals because of college, and I've never seen one who lacks skills because he or she didn't go to college.
I side with the other responses strongly disagreeing with this. I too have seen many gifted programmers who had gaping holes in their knowledge because they did not study various uninteresting or seemingly unimportant topics. They were great at what they did study but they were not well rounded, more like a technician in some ways rather than engineers. In my own personal work I have occasionally had answers to technical programs come from completely unexpected sources, from topics I would never had the forsight to have studied on my own initiative.
Your statement is only true for the extremely minute portion of the population that will read *all* the textbooks on their own initiative. It does a great disservice to otherwise intelligent programmers who would benefit from formal training. For example most aspiring game programmers out there might be under the illusion that they just need to read some OpenGL books, maybe some graphics and AI gems, and they are ready. They would never image that the answer to some problem they will run into comes from some boring databases book written in the 80s, or from a microeconomics text, or a psychology class, etc. I emphasized non-computer science but I want to be clear that the "gaping holes" I referred to above was in computer science. The material you cover in a formal degree program is valuable and almost no one has the self discipline to study *all* that material on their own and need the prodding of professors. I did. A friend did not, and he is the rare exception who did not, the rest delude themselves.
Are MMOs doomed to continue fishing from the same pond of players over and over?
While World of Warcraft did take some players away from other MMOs it's success is also due to the fact that it significantly increased the number of MMO players. It made MMOs far more accessible, especially to casual players. In short, it grew that "pond". There is no reason to think that the pond cannot grow some more, it is just a matter of someone introducing something that non-MMO'ers would find a fun use of their time.
"Level 60 Elite Tauren Chieftain" was not exactly a garage band, they were Blizzard employees. That was part of the fun of it.