Reading all of the "Microsoft copied this, copied that" posts, it stretches the imagination to discover that discerning between OS X and Vista seems pretty easy for you...so I imagine it's rather easy to tell the difference between the OS's after all, which probably doesn't bode well for the "copy" conspiracies. My favorite such conspiracy, though, tells of how Apple "copied" Microsoft's support for x86 cpus--not to mention ide, agp, pci, etc., ad infinitum..;)
Personally, I just don't understand the "copy" conspiracy lingo at all. It's not like Apple, after all, invented either the GUI or even the concept of the GUI. Those things clearly predate both Apple and Microsoft. Talking about a GUI is to me like talking about a wheel. All of the automobile manufacturers on earth employ the wheel as a foundational concept, and all of them do it in similar ways, but rationally no one ever thinks that "GM owns the wheel and it isn't fair that Toyota copied GM," etc. Such sentiment would be ridiculous, imo.
Such is the same in personal computerdom--exactly. The concepts that are foundational to the industry--and the GUI is merely one of them--belong to *nobody* and thus are never, ever "copied"--but merely shared. The difference is in the implementation of those concepts, and that's exactly where you can see the differences between what Microsoft and Apple are doing. I believe the differences are stark and very easy to see.
I guess it's you who is in denial...;) Since when does a 50-hour work week = a 100-hour work week? IMO, "crunch time" wouldn't happen at all if the people who manage and work in the game companies didn't spend ~20 or so hours per week of every week leading up to the month before release "talking at the water cooler" and "taking coffee breaks" and "scratching their nuts" and "Internet surfing" and etc., ad infinitum...;)
Basically, "crunch time" looks to me as the game developer saying to itself and its employees, "OK, we've all had a lot of fun for the last year and a half, haven't we? But now we are six weeks out from shipping and it's time to take this work very seriously, isn't it? So, we're going to have to work our asses off to make up for what we didn't do that we should have done over the last eighteen months!"
I think, though, that "crunch time" is likely inevitable and unavoidable in any process that takes what is essentially a highly creative venture and seeks to internally inject regimention, discipline, and scheduling into it at the same time. You're going to have to flow creatively in the process of crafting a game for as long as you can so as to create a decent game, but eventually there comes a time when the rubber meets the road and you have to *finish and ship.* I think it's the nature of the beast, frankly. I also think that professionals in the business for a long time understand this, whereas other people just don't. And there's the rub, isn't it?
Not to worry. If working hard is a scary thing for you, you can always flip burgers at McDonalds on a part-time basis, thereby assuring yourself of as many free hours per week as you want to pick your nose and sleep...;)
The great thing about working in a country with as low an unemployment rate as the US is that you have no shortage of jobs to pick from if you're qualified. So, you can work as long or as little as you like, and take whatever job you like. The government doesn't put a gun to the head of employers as to whom they hire *or* employees as to whom they work for. You are free to choose your own employment destiny.
Not surprisingly, however, being able to obtain a lucrative employment position depends very much on how much you enjoy working in the first place. In the US you can become a bum or a prince, just depends on what you choose to do. The government isn't going to hassle you for your own personal decisions in that regard.
So, what's the solution to US working conditions you may encounter but don't like? Get another job, or another profession, basically. It's pretty simple. You should know, though, that in the US "going on strike" is just another way of telling your employer that you don't want to work for him (because if you did you'd find some other way of talking to him apart from not showing up for work, wouldn't you?), and more often than not he's liable to take your cue literally and simplify the whole process by firing you so that you can look for work that you find more appealing.
Re:This is so Not good for Apple and OSX...
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Going To Boot Camp
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· Score: 1
Why not just say that this might not be "so good" for the *traditional* Mac community? Has it ever occurred to you that Apple might *want to outgrow* the fierce growth restraints inherent in the "traditional" Mac community?
Look, if you were Apple and wanted above all other things to make your money selling *hardware*--which is obviously what Apple's always been about--would you forever want to be stuck in a 2%-market-share niche? Or, would you like to break out of that mold and seek new audiences, new horizons, and new "communities"? Look, if x86 Windows compatability was something Apple *didn't want* then do you think for ten seconds the company would have dumped its entire hardware PPC heritage to date to jump on the x86/Intel bandwagon? There would scarecely have been any point to that whatever had Apple not wanted native x86 Windows compatability very, very badly.
You lament that Apple "might" become "just a Dell," etc., without understanding apparently that in Steve Jobs' most passionate wet dreams he sees Apple one day *supassing* Dell in terms of unit shipments and revenue! Jobs stated the same a few years ago, although at that time his "secret" plan to go x86 was as of yet unknown--to everyone except himself, it would seem...;)
Look, change is the one constant to life, and so is growth. When you stop changing and growing--you die. It's as true for companies as it is for people. Apple isn't arrogant about OSX at all--they know that at present it's more of a niche OS with a smaller installed base than Linux, and that it's losing developers every day, and that Apple as a company cannot be put into the position of one day having to itself write every important application that exists for OSX, just to keep people interested in OSX. Apple doesn't want to go there because Apple doesn't want to be a *software company.* That's the bottom line, isn't it? Look--if Apple wanted to be a software company and compete with the likes of Microsoft then Apple would *open OSX up to the entire x86 world* instead of keeping it tied to Apple hardware, as if OSX was something to be hoarded. There's just no getting around the fact that nothing Apple has said or done to date during this entire transition indicates that Apple desires to compete with Microsoft for x86 OS market share. Realize that Apple has *not* unchained OSX to compete in the larger, world x86 marketplaces, but that Apple has *invited* Windows in to compete with OSX inside the generic x86 Intel hardware platform that *is* today's Mac (I call today's Mac a "MacIntel.")
It really doesn't matter much what the traditional Mac community wants or desires, does it? I mean, *if it did* I seriously doubt Apple would have made the major decisions it's made in the last couple of years. What matters to Apple is what Apple--it's shareholders and its managers--want the company to be. And I for one think that Jobs wants to leave the community on a much different footing than it is on now or ever has been, and to do that Apple's got to start building bridges like crazy and tearing down all those troublesome walls the company has unwisely spent so much time and money building for so many years.
When you ponder the Apple of today think primarily about change and realize that the Apple of yesteryear is all but dead and buried. Whether or not this is something you can accept is a decision that neither I, nor Apple, can make for you.
It's kind of like this in a nutshell: Apple is thinking that if it has to trade every traditional MacIntosh customer for *two* new x86/Windows customers, then although the company doesn't want to lose you it *will* lose you if that's what it takes to grow the company past its present market-share boundaries. The Apple of today is looking ahead and not behind and that's the most remarkable change of all.
Again, I see no similarity at all between an experimental OS written to support multiple cpus and limited cross-platform hardware environments, and a Mac which is no longer incompatible with Windows at the level of the cpu. Not just *a* Mac, but all Macs from here on out will be running x86 cpus.
"Except that it isn't."
From what I've read, the only hardware level at which this is presently true is at the bios level. At the level of the cpu and core logic on up, the MacIntel is indeed 100% Windows-compatible ROOB. Even the components, buses, and peripheral hardware is of x86 design and function and supported by Windows at present. This is a state of Windows compatability which has never existed for any non-x86 Mac ever made, and as such represents a major difference between the MacIntosh and the MacIntel.
Even Apple has stated on numerous public occasions that they've done *nothing* to prevent a MacIntel from booting and running Windows natively, and that the company has no objections to anyone who wishes to do so. In that light, just how long do you think it will be before EFI support drivers are developed for Windows--certainly Microsoft has no reason not to do it, imo, as Apple has already stated it has no objections to MacIntels running Windows.
The MacIntel is not your father's MacIntosh, don't ya' know...;)
...but by comparison, x86/Windows drivers are the most common and highly developed hardware drivers in the industry today by far. WinXP is commonplace and is used currently by a body of international users thousands, if not millions, of times larger than the early, fledgling WinNT PPC experimenters. Not to mention the drastic differences in the amount of available commercial software between the two OSes.
BTW, which Apple-built PCI PowerMac was it that featured an Intel x86 cpu? Really can't remember that one... But of course, the new MacIntels will *all* sport Intel x86 cpus, won't they?
I think there's a big difference between an OS which supports multiple cpus as PPC WinNT initially attempted and the MacIntel, which is literally Windows-compatible ROOB.
I agree...the argument falls flat when characterized as "Apple will switch to Windows" because Apple has already switched to 100% Windows-compatible hardware--a fact all too eagerly dismissed by apologists who wish only to see differences between the platforms while ignoring the similarities. With the advent of the MacIntel, the similarities far outweigh the differences.
This has never been true of the Mac hardware environment before. I think the reason traditional Mac users so readily ignore the new status quo is that they are simply creatures of habit--and new habits take time to become ingrained. Plus, the number of Windows-incompatible Macs in play still far outweighs the number of Windows-compatible Macs in use. In the years ahead the dynamics behind the MacIntel will become clear to even the most hardened of today's Mac apologist.
So...the issue isn't what "Apple will do" because Apple's already done it. The question is what Mac *users* will do with Windows now that their hardware platform of choice will run Windows natively.
Just imagine the savings for Apple if and when OSX development dies on the vine due to a simple lack of interest by MacIntel purchasers. Apple could then shift the burden--a considerable burden--of OS development and support to Microsoft--and realize gigantic R&D & support cost savings. Such an eventuality puts an entirely new dynamic on the fateful words Jobs uttered a few years ago, "We're coming for you Michael," in reference to Apple's posture relative to Dell. Doesn't it?
Also, a few years ago Jobs was ready and willing to abandon the Mac clone project, and he stated publicly that the "battle has already been decided" and that "it was too late" and by that he meant that he believed Apple had no chance in trying to foster a Mac standard in the general marketplace to rival or unseat the x86 hardware standard. How much more does he "secretly" think today that the OS battle has already been lost as well?
Best possible posture for observers relative to Apple is "Never say never again"...;) As for Dvorak--my goodness--with each article he proves himself infinitely unqualified to write technology columns. Good grief--he needed a *psychologist* to explain technical matters to him? That's so pathetic that I simply do not believe him. Rather, I think the "psychologist" gambit was merely a device to lend a patina of "credibility" to a set of facts that are as plain and obvious as the nose on his face. He simply lacked the guts to say it himself, more or less, is what I believe.
...and we've known for a long, long time that the earth has experienced several ice ages punctuated by warming periods throughout its history as revealed by the geologic record. Interestingly enough, none of the previous warming periods was ever caused or induced by "greenhouse gases of man-made origin"--because there weren't any, of course...;)
Indeed, the rise of current civilization has occurred exclusively within one of those natural warming periods between ice ages. Fancy that. Sure looks like "global warming" is the friend of man as opposed to being his enemy, doesn't it? I mean, unless you can picture New York City inside of an ice cave then I think you'll have to agree.
So, what causes these climate changes? Nobody knows, although theories abound ranging from tilts of the earth's axis to erratic changes in the sun's output, to practically anything you want to name. Heck, just a mere 30 years ago the *prevailing scientific opinion* was that we were heading not towards global warming but towards another ice age--and publications as esteemed as National Geographic ran stories about "the coming ice age" at the time. Pretty funny--as it is never brought up how wrong popular "science" was 30 years ago, and so nobody much questions pop-science today...;) Only those of us with a little lifespan under our belts seem to know better, more's the pity.
The fact is that science and politics reach an unholy state of matrimony inside idiot theories that state that since man caused global warming man can stop global warming. Problem is, global warming is not new at all, and man never caused any of the previous periods of global warming to occur because man wasn't needed or required in any capacity for natural global warming to occur in the first place. So what's changed?
Man is here, and his ego knows no bounds, it would seem. He's just *got* to sit at the center of the universe somehow no matter the topic. A few hundred years ago man fancied the earth sat at the center of the universe--today man fancies that man sits at the center of global climate change. What's clear to me is that man is as stupid now as he was then...;)
Unfortunately, Slashdotters will fall for just about anything they'd like or desire to hear...;)
I was very amused by the sentiment as it's been at least four years since I've had a virus and probably eight years since my last case of "malware" and I've never had "spyware" at all--and I've been using x86/Windows boxes the entire time.
I do, however, use a hardware firewall, a software firewall, and regularly scan for virii (never find any) with a virus checker, so--golly--I guess the SPA thinks I must be using a Mac???
NOT. Heh...;) Macs crash entirely too often to suit my tastes, are over-priced and underpowered, and are severely lacking in both hardware and software choice of the type necessary to draw my attention.
It's always nice to see the RDF alive and well surrounding Apple as it just reinforces the validity of the decision I made years ago to forego anything with Apple's name on it...;)
...but it really doesn't make a whole lot of sense for me to want to update an OS which I'm *not running.*...;) It stands to reason that an emulator is distinct and separate from the OS it is emulating--at least, that has always been my direct experience with "emulations."
Keeping that in mind, it seems reasonable to suggest that it is the responsibility of the parties making and selling/distributing OS emulations to keep those emulations current. I wasn't even aware that Windows update was *capable* of updating emulations of itself in the first place, or that MS had made such an announcement *about* Windows update.
Ah-ha, then, it seems here is yet another case of someone trying to hammer a square peg into a round hole and complaining that it won't fit--even though *he thinks* it should...;) Remarkable, really.
Of course, this is probably just someone's idea of how to criticize MS's OS validation through a back door called Wine. OK, when these people start criticizing Intel for distributing "genuine Pentium" check and evaluation software (which Intel has done for about a decade, IIRC) then maybe at least I can consider them Equal Opportunity square-pegs-into-round-wholers, if nothing else...;)
...and the people who choose to look at the company's products and policies as if it does are fated to never understand the nature and role of M$.
M$ is merely a cog in the wheel of the much larger international industry known as "x86." It's a synergy of hardware and software companies, such as Intel, AMD, ATi, nVidia, Maxtor, Dell, Samsung, Electronic Arts, Adobe and Microsoft (just to provide singular examples from each category of company involved internationally in x86), and it has been the efforts over the last 15 years of these companies (and the hundreds more who also serve the x86 markets) that have created the *economies of scale* that have produced the much lower software *and* hardware prices that we enjoy today, not to mention the vastly increased quality and capability of general x86 software and hardware that we enjoy today as well.
Simply put, to analyze M$ independently of the whole of the x86 industry is to join the blind leading the blind and all such conclusions will take a person straight into the ditch...;)
...behind the recording industry's approach to digital distribution. By making sure that the retail price per digital song/album is higher than the retail physical media price, the industry can preserve the efficacy of its traditional distribution channels (retail sales in stores) and in the process preserve the present status quo of the industry (the dominance of the member companies fronting the money to the RIAA, etc.)
I believe that the traditional recording companies are running scared that people will figure out that with the Internet's potential for market penetration and distribution the role of the traditional recording companies serving as middlemen and promoters will become increasingly irrelevant. The attack on "file sharing" is merely window dressing for what I think the real goals of the RIAA and MPAA and other such groups are: to throw as many roadblocks as possible at the entire gamut of digital media distribution with the idea of perpetually stalling it or derailing it completely if possible.
I don't think the prospect of copyright violation per se frightens them nearly as much the prospect of musicians and other artists/entertainers who realize they can now literally promote themselves and their own music and sell and distribute their own media without the need to pay the recording companies large percentages of the income those products generate.
What happens, for instance, when "Internet Recording and Media Distribution" companies arise, which are independent of the RIAA member companies, and offer musicians and others an opportunity to have their music recorded and distributed digitally via the Internet for a much smaller fee than is presently the practice with the traditional recording companies? I think this question is the seat of the angst the traditional media companies feel about digital media distribution via the Internet. These guys are locked in panic mode in protecting their turf, but not from twelve year-old girls downloading songs they couldn't afford to buy anyway, but from the competitive pressure they fear arising from independent digital media distribution companies.
The open source, open standards scam is a strategy
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SCO Licenses Now Available
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· Score: 2, Interesting
I'm sure that most people here recall what Rambus did with JEDEC--how the company pretended to be a part of the JEDEC process during the development of DDR SDRAM standards, and how RAMBUS withheld critical info from the other members of JEDEC as to patents it had already filed which it considered pertinent to the developing DDR SDRAM standard it was helping to formulate with the other JEDEC members. Then, long after the DDR SDRAM standard was adopted by the JEDEC members, and the stuff started shipping in quantity from JEDEC member companies, wham! Rambus comes along and says "Surprise! Guess what guys--we own the rights to this stuff and you're going to have to pay us!"
No doubt this was the Rambus revenge on the market for rejecting Rdram, and a secondary strategy the company employed as a backup in case their Intel-backed Rdram initiative failed, which it did. Although suffering some initial judicial setbacks, Rambus still has its eye on the prize and is quietly working through a variety of appeals courts in several countries. Although what Rambus did with repsect to JEDEC was obviously and highly immoral, Rambus continues to pursue the proposition that their actions were not, however, illegal with respect to the application of existing patent law.
Enter SCO, using much the same approach and srategy Rambus publicized, in relation to the use of of its undescribed, undefined unix code.
The idea here, and the strategy here, is pretty much a "sucker-bait" or "bait and switch" tactic that a number of companies are attempting to inflict upon their respective markets. As a strategy what it involves is offering so-called "free Open Source" standards or software to the markets for an extended period of time so that an appreciable market penetration occurs, and then the ax falls--or at least tries to fall...;)
Out of the blue, people everywhere who have been using oss, and have become accustomed to it and have integrated it into their business environments are told by SCO: "Surprise! It wasn't really free or open to begin with, and we're sorry you didn't realize this, but now we're telling you, so pay up!"
Contrast this way of doing business with the traditional method of informing your customers in advance that you are selling proprietary software at a price that is to be negotiated prior to the sale of licenses, the way that Microsoft, for instance, has always done things (or Apple with OS X, etc., and every other commercial software company you might think of.)
The situation relative to JEDEC and its open standards hardware committees is fairly easy to correct, providing that JEDEC member companies are willing to sign written, stringent agreements designed to eliminate the possibility of a Rambus repeat in the future. I would assume as the other JEDEC companies have never before pulled a Rambus that they would be willing to do so as it is in their direct interests. But if not, it's difficult to see much of a future for sensible concepts like JEDEC in light of the abuses Rambus has inflicted on the concept.
The so-called "open source" software situation is, however, not nearly as clear cut, imo. The main thing for people to realize and ponder is that "Open Source Software" is not manna from heaven. It doesn't fall out of the sky, and lots of people who contribute to it spend appreciable amounts of time and resources doing so. It is certainly not unreasonable to expect, therefore, that the various contributors to oss code have sometimes very different motivations for their contributions, and some of them may well have longer-range plans for it similar to what has developed with SCO. I really think it is quite unreasonable given the present circumstances to think otherwise.
From what I've seen of the SCO positions as publicized, SCO doesn't actually have a position other than the idea of winning the day in court somewhere through a process of attrition, based on the notion that statements that would seem ludicrous and absurd to the technology sector might s
This is quite amusing...:) Software pirates instituting their own anti-piracy procedures to make profits by way of dongles, and then other pirates cracking the dongle-protected cracks. Heh...;)
This illustrates what I've believed for years: inflated software prices are the bane of the software industry and the chief spur to software piracy. The only way to run the corporate bootleggers out of business on a global basis is to price them out of their markets. Drastically lowering the retail MSRP of all software will remove most of the incentive for commercial piracy, and I would imagine that over time as much lower pricing tiers work their way into the markets and bootleggers move on to something else because most of the profit from software bootlegging is gone, the actual revenue software companies will enjoy will increase drastically as volume sales of legitimate software skyrocket.
First of all, make no mistake that to the corporations and government, the average person is little more than a veal calf. You are merely a by-product of what they desire, and of course managing that takes time and energy away from them, so naturally they will regard the common citizen with a certain degree of contempt. After all, don't you feel a little ripped off when you have to pay your taxes? Corporatists feel a little ripped off when they have to share liberty and dignity with you. They regard themselves as the exceptional few, the elite, the have's. And the rest of you? Well... There you are.
This is one of the most amusing posts I've read in a while...;) So, I wanted to respond...
To governments the "average person" is a tax payer and a voter; to corporations, he's a customer. I cannot see that governments which levy taxes by decree, and enforce tax collection at the point of a gun, and routinely spend far more money annually than they collect in taxes by running up huge debts which will be paid by future generations are any better than corporations who compete among themselves to offer the "average person" a wide choice of goods and services, which are available to the average person on a completely voluntary, elective basis. In other words, I don't have to ever buy a GM car if I choose not to--but try that trick with the government where your taxes are concerned...;) The government won't sieze your property and put you in jail if you don't vote, however--that only happens if you decide to "opt out" on your taxes...:)
The other logical fallacy I see in your comment here is that "government" and "corporations" employ hundreds of millions of exactly the kind of "average people" you describe. We use abstract expressions like "government" and "corporations" to describe the *people* who administer them. Without those people the abstractions have no meaning.
Are you saying that we need to abolish governments and corporations? If so, what comes next?..;)
So the corporatists have overtaken the government with layers of lobbyists. They have convinced the "elected" leaders that they have the nations best interests at heart. They use you as a pawn, and they see the nuclear family as their greatest ad campaign. All that remains is to keep this little secret less than obvious.
You might like to think of what it is that these lobbyists use in their "convincing"...;) It's often money, isn't it? The problem for your analogy here, too, is that it overlooks the difference between what is voluntary and what is not. All corporations do not lobby, and all elected officials do not compromise their integrity by improperly capitulating to lobbyists. So in that sense it might be more accurate for you to say that "The government is overrun by greedy politicians who allow themselves to be improperly influenced by lobbyists."
Keep them watching those sports channels, the so-called reality based TV, and the endless parade of entertainment provided by the cable TV and TiVo. It keeps them off the streets, and ensures that the rabble stay out from under their agenda. Turn up the noise, and keep them riveted to the latest episode of "Survivor". If they have a tech fetish, let them watch Star Trek knock-offs, but never again show anything that might force them to think.
You might not be aware of it, but watching TV is entirely voluntary...:) I hate much of it personally, and rarely watch anymore. Unlike the compulsion the government uses to collect taxes, no one who doesn't want one has to own a TV, let alone watch it. What I get from your remarks is that you apparently watch way too much TV yourself--so do what I do--don't watch TV and do something else instead.
This technology we contrived does most of the work for us. But it's ingeniously engineered to have a drone standing over a mind-numbing machine for eight hours or more. This kills two birds with one stone: It keeps our standards artificially high, and keeps that drone occupied
USB is an Intel standard--not Apple--and x86 clone makers were shipping USB machines and motherboards 18 months before the iMac shipped(I know from experience.) Apple used USB at the expense of everything else to save money with the iMac. There's nothing wrong with that, of course, but please drop the fiction that USB in any way required Apple to take off, as it would have done so had Apple never adopted it at all. It was well on the road before the first iMac shipped. USB, along with PCI/AGP/IDE, etc., is just one more x86 technology Apple adopted in order to save money. No sin there, as the custom hardware route long ago became too inefficient and unprofitable to allow Apple to serve the general consumer markets without the widescale adoption of x86 tech.
Apple had a great opportunity with Firewire, but they screwed the pooch with Job's greed once again coming to the fore, and charged licensing fees for Firewire--which killed its widespread adoption as a standard in the larger markets. When Apple realized its mistake and rescinded the licensing fee, it was too late for Firewire to become the standard it could have been, as the industry had moved on.
Home video editing became popular after Apple worked with it and made it easy.
I was doing "Home Video Editing and Production" back in the late 80's and early 90's on Amigas & VideoToasters in 24-bit RGB, preemptively multitasking, while the single-tasking Mac was still monochrome and ran on tiny, 12" B&W monitors that were incredibly overpriced. There was nothing comparable for the Mac at any price at the time, and that's where "Home Video Editing" actually got its start within the personal computer industry. Please, I understand that Mac fans have a fantasy that if it's any good it has to be made by Apple or else adopted by Apple--but that's just a fantasy.
By Palm ignoring a trend setting platform it runs the risk of writing itself out of history. Just as in luxury cars the high end features eventually trickle down to every day models. Palm will be lost. Now the funny thing to happen would be Microsoft making their Pocket PC fully syncable and compatible with Mac Office products and Mac OS.
Companies do not seek to support "trend setters" and "styles" and "fashion" for their own sake. They seek to support markets where they can make money. If they drop a market, like Apple, it's not because they are trying to make a political statement, but because they aren't making any money in the Mac market and, most likely, are losing money in it. That's the only reason companies support a given market only to later withdraw that support. Think about it--nothing else makes any sense, does it? Companies do not abandon the profitable markets they serve.
How many earth microbes and organisms do you know of which could survive the massive extremes of cold and heat, not to mention radiation, that any earth-borne microorganisms would have encountered over the six-month, several-hundred-million-mile voyage to Mars? This is not to mention, of course, the utter lack of anything for them to eat for six months along the way (even organisms on earth which survive near steam/lava vents on the ocean floor, or deep under the ice, must have food to survive.) So unless you know of an organism native to earth capable of surviving such temperature extremes, and able to feed on radiation and exist in a vacuum, my guess would be that if any microorganisms survived lift off they'd have been long dead before reaching Mars. Then, of course, there's the life-killing Martian extremes of temperature and radiation to consider as well, not to mention the hardship they'd endure during the entry and landing on Mars.
I suppose I could envision some sort of strange stew that could have eaten the spacecraft along the way if it could survive on metal and pastic and survive the temperature and radiation extremes of the journey in a vacuum--but then, even in that case, the space craft (or critical parts of it) would have been eaten prior to landing on Mars--and the landing would never have taken place, would it?...:)
I think we are pretty safe from seeing the "Martian Andromeda Strain" anytime soon on our local newscasts...:) Of course, later on when we get to Terraforming Mars, we'll have to introduce a lot of earth-borne stuff, including microbes, won't we?
Check out the alien skull...
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News from Mars
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Look at the rock in the bottom center of the screen--talk about optical illusions--looks like an inverted skull--missing/ragged jawbone pointing north. Below it are ocular sockets to either side, with a nasal socket in between (eye & nose sockets filled with Martian dust/soil), and note the striations on the "forehead." This *looks* like a single rock, and is much different from any others in the images in terms of size and shape.
Re:Looks like a painting!
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News from Mars
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That was exactly my thought on viewing these images in high-res, as well. They have definitely been processed and enhanced--by hand. It's fairly obvious. I read the text to see if they'd explained their post-processing techniques, but they didn't make any mention of them. I can only think the actual images were so rough and pixellated, maybe, that they felt compelled to retouch them by hand for release. Very odd.
Excuse me, but I see nothing in your response except an allegation. I see nothing in your response to support that allegation. Pardon me for saying so, but popularly held, politically inspired cultural impressions such as yours are usually utterly bereft of fact when examined, and are generally myths.
My point was simply that that all civilized nations employ search warrants--all of them--in which citizens have their property searched and seized. The case here is of one (1) such incident, the facts of which have been *alleged* as opposed to corroborated independently, and therefore any such argument of the kind you make pertaining to "worse/much worse than other federal police groups in the world" is absolutely not sustainable on the basis of this single, alleged (as opposed to verified) account. How you could make such a mountain out of such a molehill is beyond me, I'm afraid...:)
Assuming for convenience that the story relating to this thread is true in all its particulars...
The central hypocrisy here...is the notion that "search and seizure" of private property is only morally wrong when it is the government doing the searching and seizing. Well, if it is "wrong" for the government to do it under the legal sanction of "probable cause and due process," how is it "right" for the hacker to search and seize the property of others without any legal sanction whatsoever?
I cannot see how searching Valve's computers and seizing Valve's source code without Valve's consent might be considered less of an affront than the hacker having his own property searched and seized by the FBI without his consent.
Turnabout is fair play, isn't it? If you think it is OK to search and seize the property of others without their consent, then you should not object to your property being searched and seized in a similar manner, it seems to me.
Heh...:) Of course, hackers of the type who stole the HL2 source aren't concerned with the rights of others in the first place, else they wouldn't have done what they did. That is why, when you hear such people discuss "rights," it is only their own which they find of compelling interest.
Personally, I wish this experience as it is alleged to have occurred might happen to all hackers who search and seize the property of others without consent. Perhaps this kind of thing is the only way to pierce the numbing shroud of rationalization and equivocation afflicting such people, so that they will finally know what it feels like to have their privacy invaded and their property searched and seized against their will. I would only hold out the dubious hope that they might learn something from such an experience. Doubtful, but at least conceivable.
I was amused to see numerous "move to Canada" suggestions, as well as "America is a police state" warnings provided to this person in comments relating to this person's allegations as printed on the person's web site. Evidently I was misinformed when told that Canada, and, indeed, every civilized nation on earth, has prisons full of convicts who got there as a result of being arrested by the police, including some who were convicted in trials by the weight of evidence seized with search warrants.
I'm in debt to those authentically brainy people who've set me straight about Canada, reminding me that Canada has no laws, no prisons, no convicts, no courts or trials, no police, and of course...no such thing as search warrants. And I guess the same is true of other European nations whose citizens reacted with shock and horror at this person's account, because like Canada, those nations, too, have no laws to break, no courts to convict, and of course no police forces to serve search warrants, not to mention no judges to sign such a warrant even if such a thing was possible in those countries. Yes, thanks to all of the "big brains" out there who have enlightened me in my ignorance. Naturally, if you hail from a country with no laws and no police and no search warrants, such a tale would have to inspire nothing short of dread and terror and a certain specter of a "police state."
And, too, I have to bow to the indisputable logic of those who insist that Valve has no moral right whatever to be incensed that its servers were broken into and its source code stolen--rather, as these people most brilliantly postulate for my poor benefit, Valve would be better served by throwing a party for the hackers, congratulating them an a job well done, and even, possibly, mailing them a big fat check for the service these unselfish, altruistic hackers have done them. How foolish of me to think it natural to want to involve the police when one's personal property is stolen--how foolish, indeed. Double foolish, really, but what can one expect from a poor underling such as I who has been raised in a country with laws, prisons, crimes, and search warrants? Since other countries, like Canada, have no need for such primitive mechanisms, it's no wonder I thought of this issue as I originally did. Woe is me.
But, to tell you the absolute truth, until I see some independent corroboration of the events alleged to have taken place, I must wonder if...
(a) Such alleged events ever occurred
(b) Such events occurred for the purpose this person has alleged
Even though I am not all that bright, really, as you can tell from my misapprehensions as to other countries having laws and prisons and search warrants, it nevertheless seems to me that...
(1) It is a simple thing to manufacture, or change, such "search warrants," using commonly available programs such as Photoshop
(2) It would be a simple thing to simply add "Valve" to a search warrant issued for another purpose, such as some kind of credit card fraud involving the use of computers
It occurs to me that this person might have had data belonging to other people on his machines prior to seizure, and that the "Valve" story is simply that--a story contrived, with the aid of Photoshop or something like it, to explain to his friends why their data, if not some of their computers, have been seized by the authorities.
Gosh, sometimes it's just so hard to think, and my head hurts...:) But it also occurs to me that possibly, just possibly, it might not always be a good idea to believe everything one sees printed on the Internet. Yea, right--what could I possibly know?...:)
It's exactly the same thing as "DDR 400"--the ram runs at 200MHz actual speed, the "400" is its "effective" speed versus SDR SDRAM (which would have to run at 400MHz to equal the throughput.)
The problem is it is setup on a 128-bit bus, which gives it a theoretical max throughput of ~16 gigs/sec versus ATI's 9700P theoretical max throughput of ~19 gigs/sec (because the width of ATI's dram bus is 2x as wide as nVidia's, at 256 bits.) To equal the 9700P's current dram throughput the GF FX's DDRII ram bus would have to be clocked at 620MHz (x2 = 1.24GHz.)
First of all, the modern x86 bioses are self-configuring and can be safely ignored if the end user wishes to do so. However, a bios offers *hardware configuration options* that I personally find invaluable and could not imagine doing without. Suppose that I want to adjust the motherboard voltage regulation and raise or lower the voltage the motherboard provides to the cpu, the ram, the AGP bus, I/O--etc? (Whether or not a person thinks this is "necessary" is utterly irrelevant *chuckle* so please don't go off on that silly tangent.) The fact is that these are the kinds of hardware configuration options, among many, many more, which a modern bios provides.
If you don't have a bios you are autoconfigured and the bios is still there--it's just hidden from you completely and you have no control over it whatever. This is progress? I think not.
Ten years ago on an Amiga 3000 I was booting a bios image to ram from hard drive and using the MMU of the 68030 to point the system to it--whoopee-doo--big deal *chuckle* It was maybe marginally quicker to change out the file as opposed to flashing a bios--but the priciple is exactly the same--and the bios is a lot less cumbersome than something like I used with the Amiga (temporarily as I went back to the standard bios after failing to discern a benefit--ram and HD space was very limited in those days--plus I wanted to use the 68030 MMU for other things.) I see no advantage to something like that at all (though I dearly loved my Amigas!)
PCs use a bios still because of the enormous hardware choices available in the x86 marketplace that do not exist for small, closed hardware companies like Apple, for instance. Sometimes it's very nice to go into the the bios and configure a piece of hardware you've installed as opposed to packing up the system and dropping it off at the dealer's and telling him to fix it--just because the system locks the end user out of some of the internals. OpenBoot wouldn't work well at all in the x86 desktop market (I don't think) because you have so very many more hardware choices than these other cpu markets support.
What exactly do CD keys and registration requirements indicate if not a complete distrust of the end user's good intentions?
Actually, CD keys are *reasonable* and non-invasive steps a software company could and should take with its software. As the software companies are quite aware that a single valid CD key could indeed athenticate scads of bootleg copies, they are in fact trusting the end user to a very great extent, CD key or no.
Take the recent story on Quicken's Turbo Tax program, where Quicken removed your option to print returns on a computer other than the one the software was originally activated on. Do you think maybe Quicken did this because they don't trust you?
No, I think Quicken did this out of a fevered, greed-drenched imagination which caused them to hallucinate losing billions of $ to software piracy. Greed, not trust, is the issue here.
Why would Microsoft do this if they trusted their customers? Hint: they wouldn't.
Ironically, however, Microsoft has no trouble trusting corporations who buy as few as 5 licenses, since they do not have to jump through the product activation hoops at all. I'm sure you knew that. Microsoft simply did this to penalize the small user (who has little clout individually with the company because he doesn't buy thousands of licenses at a time) who has 2-3 machines at home and was installing a single legitimately purchased copy to both machines--and Microsoft wanted to double its money. Greed again (not necessarily intelligence for the long haul.)
Bottom line: software companies do not trust you.
True, no doubt. However it is more an issue of greed than I think it is one of trust. After all, Microsoft got very, very rich before the first copy of Product Activated WinXP was sold (all their "piracy estimates" notwithstanding.)
Don't like this? Buy/support/use software that does not constrain you. That's your option. Boycotting AMI or TCPA-enabled motherboards does not solve the problem; those manufacturers are responding to a demand from software developers and content owners.
What a load...;) There is no reason any bios company has to stop selling its non-TCPA builds. They can sell both, and the idea that they would have "no demand" for non-TCPA formats is ludicrous. After all, who is the ultimate customer of the bios company--hint: it's not the software developers, it's not the content owners--it's the *end users who buy the motherboards.* Was it the "content owners" which influenced bios companies to start making bios versions with all kinds of adjustable parameters, parameters that for years were excluded from the user CMOS interface (ram timings, voltage regulation, etc?) *chuckle* Hardly (snicker)
Companies large and small who forget who their actual cutomer base is will regret it, I predict, because their customers will go elsewhere. There's an old capitalist adage that businesses today would be well-advised to heed: the customer is always right. It would appear that some companies today are so confused they don't even know who their customers actually are--they think the middlemen they sell to are their customers. However, it's the needs and demands of the end user that shape the order of the middlemen companies. If the last guy in the chain loses his business (in this case the motherboard makers) then everybody upriver loses theirs, too. I shouldn't even have to say any of this it's so obvious.
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Reading all of the "Microsoft copied this, copied that" posts, it stretches the imagination to discover that discerning between OS X and Vista seems pretty easy for you...so I imagine it's rather easy to tell the difference between the OS's after all, which probably doesn't bode well for the "copy" conspiracies. My favorite such conspiracy, though, tells of how Apple "copied" Microsoft's support for x86 cpus--not to mention ide, agp, pci, etc., ad infinitum..;)
Personally, I just don't understand the "copy" conspiracy lingo at all. It's not like Apple, after all, invented either the GUI or even the concept of the GUI. Those things clearly predate both Apple and Microsoft. Talking about a GUI is to me like talking about a wheel. All of the automobile manufacturers on earth employ the wheel as a foundational concept, and all of them do it in similar ways, but rationally no one ever thinks that "GM owns the wheel and it isn't fair that Toyota copied GM," etc. Such sentiment would be ridiculous, imo.
Such is the same in personal computerdom--exactly. The concepts that are foundational to the industry--and the GUI is merely one of them--belong to *nobody* and thus are never, ever "copied"--but merely shared. The difference is in the implementation of those concepts, and that's exactly where you can see the differences between what Microsoft and Apple are doing. I believe the differences are stark and very easy to see.
I guess it's you who is in denial...;) Since when does a 50-hour work week = a 100-hour work week? IMO, "crunch time" wouldn't happen at all if the people who manage and work in the game companies didn't spend ~20 or so hours per week of every week leading up to the month before release "talking at the water cooler" and "taking coffee breaks" and "scratching their nuts" and "Internet surfing" and etc., ad infinitum...;)
Basically, "crunch time" looks to me as the game developer saying to itself and its employees, "OK, we've all had a lot of fun for the last year and a half, haven't we? But now we are six weeks out from shipping and it's time to take this work very seriously, isn't it? So, we're going to have to work our asses off to make up for what we didn't do that we should have done over the last eighteen months!"
I think, though, that "crunch time" is likely inevitable and unavoidable in any process that takes what is essentially a highly creative venture and seeks to internally inject regimention, discipline, and scheduling into it at the same time. You're going to have to flow creatively in the process of crafting a game for as long as you can so as to create a decent game, but eventually there comes a time when the rubber meets the road and you have to *finish and ship.* I think it's the nature of the beast, frankly. I also think that professionals in the business for a long time understand this, whereas other people just don't. And there's the rub, isn't it?
Not to worry. If working hard is a scary thing for you, you can always flip burgers at McDonalds on a part-time basis, thereby assuring yourself of as many free hours per week as you want to pick your nose and sleep...;)
The great thing about working in a country with as low an unemployment rate as the US is that you have no shortage of jobs to pick from if you're qualified. So, you can work as long or as little as you like, and take whatever job you like. The government doesn't put a gun to the head of employers as to whom they hire *or* employees as to whom they work for. You are free to choose your own employment destiny.
Not surprisingly, however, being able to obtain a lucrative employment position depends very much on how much you enjoy working in the first place. In the US you can become a bum or a prince, just depends on what you choose to do. The government isn't going to hassle you for your own personal decisions in that regard.
So, what's the solution to US working conditions you may encounter but don't like? Get another job, or another profession, basically. It's pretty simple. You should know, though, that in the US "going on strike" is just another way of telling your employer that you don't want to work for him (because if you did you'd find some other way of talking to him apart from not showing up for work, wouldn't you?), and more often than not he's liable to take your cue literally and simplify the whole process by firing you so that you can look for work that you find more appealing.
Why not just say that this might not be "so good" for the *traditional* Mac community? Has it ever occurred to you that Apple might *want to outgrow* the fierce growth restraints inherent in the "traditional" Mac community?
Look, if you were Apple and wanted above all other things to make your money selling *hardware*--which is obviously what Apple's always been about--would you forever want to be stuck in a 2%-market-share niche? Or, would you like to break out of that mold and seek new audiences, new horizons, and new "communities"? Look, if x86 Windows compatability was something Apple *didn't want* then do you think for ten seconds the company would have dumped its entire hardware PPC heritage to date to jump on the x86/Intel bandwagon? There would scarecely have been any point to that whatever had Apple not wanted native x86 Windows compatability very, very badly.
You lament that Apple "might" become "just a Dell," etc., without understanding apparently that in Steve Jobs' most passionate wet dreams he sees Apple one day *supassing* Dell in terms of unit shipments and revenue! Jobs stated the same a few years ago, although at that time his "secret" plan to go x86 was as of yet unknown--to everyone except himself, it would seem...;)
Look, change is the one constant to life, and so is growth. When you stop changing and growing--you die. It's as true for companies as it is for people. Apple isn't arrogant about OSX at all--they know that at present it's more of a niche OS with a smaller installed base than Linux, and that it's losing developers every day, and that Apple as a company cannot be put into the position of one day having to itself write every important application that exists for OSX, just to keep people interested in OSX. Apple doesn't want to go there because Apple doesn't want to be a *software company.* That's the bottom line, isn't it? Look--if Apple wanted to be a software company and compete with the likes of Microsoft then Apple would *open OSX up to the entire x86 world* instead of keeping it tied to Apple hardware, as if OSX was something to be hoarded. There's just no getting around the fact that nothing Apple has said or done to date during this entire transition indicates that Apple desires to compete with Microsoft for x86 OS market share. Realize that Apple has *not* unchained OSX to compete in the larger, world x86 marketplaces, but that Apple has *invited* Windows in to compete with OSX inside the generic x86 Intel hardware platform that *is* today's Mac (I call today's Mac a "MacIntel.")
It really doesn't matter much what the traditional Mac community wants or desires, does it? I mean, *if it did* I seriously doubt Apple would have made the major decisions it's made in the last couple of years. What matters to Apple is what Apple--it's shareholders and its managers--want the company to be. And I for one think that Jobs wants to leave the community on a much different footing than it is on now or ever has been, and to do that Apple's got to start building bridges like crazy and tearing down all those troublesome walls the company has unwisely spent so much time and money building for so many years.
When you ponder the Apple of today think primarily about change and realize that the Apple of yesteryear is all but dead and buried. Whether or not this is something you can accept is a decision that neither I, nor Apple, can make for you.
It's kind of like this in a nutshell: Apple is thinking that if it has to trade every traditional MacIntosh customer for *two* new x86/Windows customers, then although the company doesn't want to lose you it *will* lose you if that's what it takes to grow the company past its present market-share boundaries. The Apple of today is looking ahead and not behind and that's the most remarkable change of all.
"I didn't say it used an Intel x86 CPU."
Again, I see no similarity at all between an experimental OS written to support multiple cpus and limited cross-platform hardware environments, and a Mac which is no longer incompatible with Windows at the level of the cpu. Not just *a* Mac, but all Macs from here on out will be running x86 cpus.
"Except that it isn't."
From what I've read, the only hardware level at which this is presently true is at the bios level. At the level of the cpu and core logic on up, the MacIntel is indeed 100% Windows-compatible ROOB. Even the components, buses, and peripheral hardware is of x86 design and function and supported by Windows at present. This is a state of Windows compatability which has never existed for any non-x86 Mac ever made, and as such represents a major difference between the MacIntosh and the MacIntel.
Even Apple has stated on numerous public occasions that they've done *nothing* to prevent a MacIntel from booting and running Windows natively, and that the company has no objections to anyone who wishes to do so. In that light, just how long do you think it will be before EFI support drivers are developed for Windows--certainly Microsoft has no reason not to do it, imo, as Apple has already stated it has no objections to MacIntels running Windows.
The MacIntel is not your father's MacIntosh, don't ya' know...;)
...but by comparison, x86/Windows drivers are the most common and highly developed hardware drivers in the industry today by far. WinXP is commonplace and is used currently by a body of international users thousands, if not millions, of times larger than the early, fledgling WinNT PPC experimenters. Not to mention the drastic differences in the amount of available commercial software between the two OSes.
BTW, which Apple-built PCI PowerMac was it that featured an Intel x86 cpu? Really can't remember that one... But of course, the new MacIntels will *all* sport Intel x86 cpus, won't they?
I think there's a big difference between an OS which supports multiple cpus as PPC WinNT initially attempted and the MacIntel, which is literally Windows-compatible ROOB.
I agree...the argument falls flat when characterized as "Apple will switch to Windows" because Apple has already switched to 100% Windows-compatible hardware--a fact all too eagerly dismissed by apologists who wish only to see differences between the platforms while ignoring the similarities. With the advent of the MacIntel, the similarities far outweigh the differences.
This has never been true of the Mac hardware environment before. I think the reason traditional Mac users so readily ignore the new status quo is that they are simply creatures of habit--and new habits take time to become ingrained. Plus, the number of Windows-incompatible Macs in play still far outweighs the number of Windows-compatible Macs in use. In the years ahead the dynamics behind the MacIntel will become clear to even the most hardened of today's Mac apologist.
So...the issue isn't what "Apple will do" because Apple's already done it. The question is what Mac *users* will do with Windows now that their hardware platform of choice will run Windows natively.
Just imagine the savings for Apple if and when OSX development dies on the vine due to a simple lack of interest by MacIntel purchasers. Apple could then shift the burden--a considerable burden--of OS development and support to Microsoft--and realize gigantic R&D & support cost savings. Such an eventuality puts an entirely new dynamic on the fateful words Jobs uttered a few years ago, "We're coming for you Michael," in reference to Apple's posture relative to Dell. Doesn't it?
Also, a few years ago Jobs was ready and willing to abandon the Mac clone project, and he stated publicly that the "battle has already been decided" and that "it was too late" and by that he meant that he believed Apple had no chance in trying to foster a Mac standard in the general marketplace to rival or unseat the x86 hardware standard. How much more does he "secretly" think today that the OS battle has already been lost as well?
Best possible posture for observers relative to Apple is "Never say never again"...;) As for Dvorak--my goodness--with each article he proves himself infinitely unqualified to write technology columns. Good grief--he needed a *psychologist* to explain technical matters to him? That's so pathetic that I simply do not believe him. Rather, I think the "psychologist" gambit was merely a device to lend a patina of "credibility" to a set of facts that are as plain and obvious as the nose on his face. He simply lacked the guts to say it himself, more or less, is what I believe.
...and we've known for a long, long time that the earth has experienced several ice ages punctuated by warming periods throughout its history as revealed by the geologic record. Interestingly enough, none of the previous warming periods was ever caused or induced by "greenhouse gases of man-made origin"--because there weren't any, of course...;)
Indeed, the rise of current civilization has occurred exclusively within one of those natural warming periods between ice ages. Fancy that. Sure looks like "global warming" is the friend of man as opposed to being his enemy, doesn't it? I mean, unless you can picture New York City inside of an ice cave then I think you'll have to agree.
So, what causes these climate changes? Nobody knows, although theories abound ranging from tilts of the earth's axis to erratic changes in the sun's output, to practically anything you want to name. Heck, just a mere 30 years ago the *prevailing scientific opinion* was that we were heading not towards global warming but towards another ice age--and publications as esteemed as National Geographic ran stories about "the coming ice age" at the time. Pretty funny--as it is never brought up how wrong popular "science" was 30 years ago, and so nobody much questions pop-science today...;) Only those of us with a little lifespan under our belts seem to know better, more's the pity.
The fact is that science and politics reach an unholy state of matrimony inside idiot theories that state that since man caused global warming man can stop global warming. Problem is, global warming is not new at all, and man never caused any of the previous periods of global warming to occur because man wasn't needed or required in any capacity for natural global warming to occur in the first place. So what's changed?
Man is here, and his ego knows no bounds, it would seem. He's just *got* to sit at the center of the universe somehow no matter the topic. A few hundred years ago man fancied the earth sat at the center of the universe--today man fancies that man sits at the center of global climate change. What's clear to me is that man is as stupid now as he was then...;)
Unfortunately, Slashdotters will fall for just about anything they'd like or desire to hear...;)
I was very amused by the sentiment as it's been at least four years since I've had a virus and probably eight years since my last case of "malware" and I've never had "spyware" at all--and I've been using x86/Windows boxes the entire time.
I do, however, use a hardware firewall, a software firewall, and regularly scan for virii (never find any) with a virus checker, so--golly--I guess the SPA thinks I must be using a Mac???
NOT. Heh...;) Macs crash entirely too often to suit my tastes, are over-priced and underpowered, and are severely lacking in both hardware and software choice of the type necessary to draw my attention.
It's always nice to see the RDF alive and well surrounding Apple as it just reinforces the validity of the decision I made years ago to forego anything with Apple's name on it...;)
...but it really doesn't make a whole lot of sense for me to want to update an OS which I'm *not running.*...;) It stands to reason that an emulator is distinct and separate from the OS it is emulating--at least, that has always been my direct experience with "emulations."
Keeping that in mind, it seems reasonable to suggest that it is the responsibility of the parties making and selling/distributing OS emulations to keep those emulations current. I wasn't even aware that Windows update was *capable* of updating emulations of itself in the first place, or that MS had made such an announcement *about* Windows update.
Ah-ha, then, it seems here is yet another case of someone trying to hammer a square peg into a round hole and complaining that it won't fit--even though *he thinks* it should...;) Remarkable, really.
Of course, this is probably just someone's idea of how to criticize MS's OS validation through a back door called Wine. OK, when these people start criticizing Intel for distributing "genuine Pentium" check and evaluation software (which Intel has done for about a decade, IIRC) then maybe at least I can consider them Equal Opportunity square-pegs-into-round-wholers, if nothing else...;)
...and the people who choose to look at the company's products and policies as if it does are fated to never understand the nature and role of M$.
M$ is merely a cog in the wheel of the much larger international industry known as "x86." It's a synergy of hardware and software companies, such as Intel, AMD, ATi, nVidia, Maxtor, Dell, Samsung, Electronic Arts, Adobe and Microsoft (just to provide singular examples from each category of company involved internationally in x86), and it has been the efforts over the last 15 years of these companies (and the hundreds more who also serve the x86 markets) that have created the *economies of scale* that have produced the much lower software *and* hardware prices that we enjoy today, not to mention the vastly increased quality and capability of general x86 software and hardware that we enjoy today as well.
Simply put, to analyze M$ independently of the whole of the x86 industry is to join the blind leading the blind and all such conclusions will take a person straight into the ditch...;)
...behind the recording industry's approach to digital distribution. By making sure that the retail price per digital song/album is higher than the retail physical media price, the industry can preserve the efficacy of its traditional distribution channels (retail sales in stores) and in the process preserve the present status quo of the industry (the dominance of the member companies fronting the money to the RIAA, etc.)
I believe that the traditional recording companies are running scared that people will figure out that with the Internet's potential for market penetration and distribution the role of the traditional recording companies serving as middlemen and promoters will become increasingly irrelevant. The attack on "file sharing" is merely window dressing for what I think the real goals of the RIAA and MPAA and other such groups are: to throw as many roadblocks as possible at the entire gamut of digital media distribution with the idea of perpetually stalling it or derailing it completely if possible.
I don't think the prospect of copyright violation per se frightens them nearly as much the prospect of musicians and other artists/entertainers who realize they can now literally promote themselves and their own music and sell and distribute their own media without the need to pay the recording companies large percentages of the income those products generate.
What happens, for instance, when "Internet Recording and Media Distribution" companies arise, which are independent of the RIAA member companies, and offer musicians and others an opportunity to have their music recorded and distributed digitally via the Internet for a much smaller fee than is presently the practice with the traditional recording companies? I think this question is the seat of the angst the traditional media companies feel about digital media distribution via the Internet. These guys are locked in panic mode in protecting their turf, but not from twelve year-old girls downloading songs they couldn't afford to buy anyway, but from the competitive pressure they fear arising from independent digital media distribution companies.
I'm sure that most people here recall what Rambus did with JEDEC--how the company pretended to be a part of the JEDEC process during the development of DDR SDRAM standards, and how RAMBUS withheld critical info from the other members of JEDEC as to patents it had already filed which it considered pertinent to the developing DDR SDRAM standard it was helping to formulate with the other JEDEC members. Then, long after the DDR SDRAM standard was adopted by the JEDEC members, and the stuff started shipping in quantity from JEDEC member companies, wham! Rambus comes along and says "Surprise! Guess what guys--we own the rights to this stuff and you're going to have to pay us!"
No doubt this was the Rambus revenge on the market for rejecting Rdram, and a secondary strategy the company employed as a backup in case their Intel-backed Rdram initiative failed, which it did. Although suffering some initial judicial setbacks, Rambus still has its eye on the prize and is quietly working through a variety of appeals courts in several countries. Although what Rambus did with repsect to JEDEC was obviously and highly immoral, Rambus continues to pursue the proposition that their actions were not, however, illegal with respect to the application of existing patent law.
Enter SCO, using much the same approach and srategy Rambus publicized, in relation to the use of of its undescribed, undefined unix code.
The idea here, and the strategy here, is pretty much a "sucker-bait" or "bait and switch" tactic that a number of companies are attempting to inflict upon their respective markets. As a strategy what it involves is offering so-called "free Open Source" standards or software to the markets for an extended period of time so that an appreciable market penetration occurs, and then the ax falls--or at least tries to fall...;)
Out of the blue, people everywhere who have been using oss, and have become accustomed to it and have integrated it into their business environments are told by SCO: "Surprise! It wasn't really free or open to begin with, and we're sorry you didn't realize this, but now we're telling you, so pay up!"
Contrast this way of doing business with the traditional method of informing your customers in advance that you are selling proprietary software at a price that is to be negotiated prior to the sale of licenses, the way that Microsoft, for instance, has always done things (or Apple with OS X, etc., and every other commercial software company you might think of.)
The situation relative to JEDEC and its open standards hardware committees is fairly easy to correct, providing that JEDEC member companies are willing to sign written, stringent agreements designed to eliminate the possibility of a Rambus repeat in the future. I would assume as the other JEDEC companies have never before pulled a Rambus that they would be willing to do so as it is in their direct interests. But if not, it's difficult to see much of a future for sensible concepts like JEDEC in light of the abuses Rambus has inflicted on the concept.
The so-called "open source" software situation is, however, not nearly as clear cut, imo. The main thing for people to realize and ponder is that "Open Source Software" is not manna from heaven. It doesn't fall out of the sky, and lots of people who contribute to it spend appreciable amounts of time and resources doing so. It is certainly not unreasonable to expect, therefore, that the various contributors to oss code have sometimes very different motivations for their contributions, and some of them may well have longer-range plans for it similar to what has developed with SCO. I really think it is quite unreasonable given the present circumstances to think otherwise.
From what I've seen of the SCO positions as publicized, SCO doesn't actually have a position other than the idea of winning the day in court somewhere through a process of attrition, based on the notion that statements that would seem ludicrous and absurd to the technology sector might s
This is quite amusing...:) Software pirates instituting their own anti-piracy procedures to make profits by way of dongles, and then other pirates cracking the dongle-protected cracks. Heh...;)
This illustrates what I've believed for years: inflated software prices are the bane of the software industry and the chief spur to software piracy. The only way to run the corporate bootleggers out of business on a global basis is to price them out of their markets. Drastically lowering the retail MSRP of all software will remove most of the incentive for commercial piracy, and I would imagine that over time as much lower pricing tiers work their way into the markets and bootleggers move on to something else because most of the profit from software bootlegging is gone, the actual revenue software companies will enjoy will increase drastically as volume sales of legitimate software skyrocket.
First of all, make no mistake that to the corporations and government, the average person is little more than a veal calf. You are merely a by-product of what they desire, and of course managing that takes time and energy away from them, so naturally they will regard the common citizen with a certain degree of contempt. After all, don't you feel a little ripped off when you have to pay your taxes? Corporatists feel a little ripped off when they have to share liberty and dignity with you. They regard themselves as the exceptional few, the elite, the have's. And the rest of you? Well... There you are.
This is one of the most amusing posts I've read in a while...;) So, I wanted to respond...
To governments the "average person" is a tax payer and a voter; to corporations, he's a customer. I cannot see that governments which levy taxes by decree, and enforce tax collection at the point of a gun, and routinely spend far more money annually than they collect in taxes by running up huge debts which will be paid by future generations are any better than corporations who compete among themselves to offer the "average person" a wide choice of goods and services, which are available to the average person on a completely voluntary, elective basis. In other words, I don't have to ever buy a GM car if I choose not to--but try that trick with the government where your taxes are concerned...;) The government won't sieze your property and put you in jail if you don't vote, however--that only happens if you decide to "opt out" on your taxes...:)
The other logical fallacy I see in your comment here is that "government" and "corporations" employ hundreds of millions of exactly the kind of "average people" you describe. We use abstract expressions like "government" and "corporations" to describe the *people* who administer them. Without those people the abstractions have no meaning.
Are you saying that we need to abolish governments and corporations? If so, what comes next?..;)
So the corporatists have overtaken the government with layers of lobbyists. They have convinced the "elected" leaders that they have the nations best interests at heart. They use you as a pawn, and they see the nuclear family as their greatest ad campaign. All that remains is to keep this little secret less than obvious.
You might like to think of what it is that these lobbyists use in their "convincing"...;) It's often money, isn't it? The problem for your analogy here, too, is that it overlooks the difference between what is voluntary and what is not. All corporations do not lobby, and all elected officials do not compromise their integrity by improperly capitulating to lobbyists. So in that sense it might be more accurate for you to say that "The government is overrun by greedy politicians who allow themselves to be improperly influenced by lobbyists."
Keep them watching those sports channels, the so-called reality based TV, and the endless parade of entertainment provided by the cable TV and TiVo. It keeps them off the streets, and ensures that the rabble stay out from under their agenda. Turn up the noise, and keep them riveted to the latest episode of "Survivor". If they have a tech fetish, let them watch Star Trek knock-offs, but never again show anything that might force them to think.
You might not be aware of it, but watching TV is entirely voluntary...:) I hate much of it personally, and rarely watch anymore. Unlike the compulsion the government uses to collect taxes, no one who doesn't want one has to own a TV, let alone watch it. What I get from your remarks is that you apparently watch way too much TV yourself--so do what I do--don't watch TV and do something else instead.
This technology we contrived does most of the work for us. But it's ingeniously engineered to have a drone standing over a mind-numbing machine for eight hours or more. This kills two birds with one stone: It keeps our standards artificially high, and keeps that drone occupied
USB became popular because Apple pushed it.
USB is an Intel standard--not Apple--and x86 clone makers were shipping USB machines and motherboards 18 months before the iMac shipped(I know from experience.) Apple used USB at the expense of everything else to save money with the iMac. There's nothing wrong with that, of course, but please drop the fiction that USB in any way required Apple to take off, as it would have done so had Apple never adopted it at all. It was well on the road before the first iMac shipped. USB, along with PCI/AGP/IDE, etc., is just one more x86 technology Apple adopted in order to save money. No sin there, as the custom hardware route long ago became too inefficient and unprofitable to allow Apple to serve the general consumer markets without the widescale adoption of x86 tech.
Apple had a great opportunity with Firewire, but they screwed the pooch with Job's greed once again coming to the fore, and charged licensing fees for Firewire--which killed its widespread adoption as a standard in the larger markets. When Apple realized its mistake and rescinded the licensing fee, it was too late for Firewire to become the standard it could have been, as the industry had moved on.
Home video editing became popular after Apple worked with it and made it easy.
I was doing "Home Video Editing and Production" back in the late 80's and early 90's on Amigas & VideoToasters in 24-bit RGB, preemptively multitasking, while the single-tasking Mac was still monochrome and ran on tiny, 12" B&W monitors that were incredibly overpriced. There was nothing comparable for the Mac at any price at the time, and that's where "Home Video Editing" actually got its start within the personal computer industry. Please, I understand that Mac fans have a fantasy that if it's any good it has to be made by Apple or else adopted by Apple--but that's just a fantasy.
By Palm ignoring a trend setting platform it runs the risk of writing itself out of history. Just as in luxury cars the high end features eventually trickle down to every day models. Palm will be lost. Now the funny thing to happen would be Microsoft making their Pocket PC fully syncable and compatible with Mac Office products and Mac OS.
Companies do not seek to support "trend setters" and "styles" and "fashion" for their own sake. They seek to support markets where they can make money. If they drop a market, like Apple, it's not because they are trying to make a political statement, but because they aren't making any money in the Mac market and, most likely, are losing money in it. That's the only reason companies support a given market only to later withdraw that support. Think about it--nothing else makes any sense, does it? Companies do not abandon the profitable markets they serve.
How many earth microbes and organisms do you know of which could survive the massive extremes of cold and heat, not to mention radiation, that any earth-borne microorganisms would have encountered over the six-month, several-hundred-million-mile voyage to Mars? This is not to mention, of course, the utter lack of anything for them to eat for six months along the way (even organisms on earth which survive near steam/lava vents on the ocean floor, or deep under the ice, must have food to survive.) So unless you know of an organism native to earth capable of surviving such temperature extremes, and able to feed on radiation and exist in a vacuum, my guess would be that if any microorganisms survived lift off they'd have been long dead before reaching Mars. Then, of course, there's the life-killing Martian extremes of temperature and radiation to consider as well, not to mention the hardship they'd endure during the entry and landing on Mars.
I suppose I could envision some sort of strange stew that could have eaten the spacecraft along the way if it could survive on metal and pastic and survive the temperature and radiation extremes of the journey in a vacuum--but then, even in that case, the space craft (or critical parts of it) would have been eaten prior to landing on Mars--and the landing would never have taken place, would it?...:)
I think we are pretty safe from seeing the "Martian Andromeda Strain" anytime soon on our local newscasts...:) Of course, later on when we get to Terraforming Mars, we'll have to introduce a lot of earth-borne stuff, including microbes, won't we?
http://marsrovers.jpl.nasa.gov/gallery/press/spiri t/20040120a/2P127438461IOFP2269L456C6_V3-A17R1_br. jpg
Look at the rock in the bottom center of the screen--talk about optical illusions--looks like an inverted skull--missing/ragged jawbone pointing north. Below it are ocular sockets to either side, with a nasal socket in between (eye & nose sockets filled with Martian dust/soil), and note the striations on the "forehead." This *looks* like a single rock, and is much different from any others in the images in terms of size and shape.
That was exactly my thought on viewing these images in high-res, as well. They have definitely been processed and enhanced--by hand. It's fairly obvious. I read the text to see if they'd explained their post-processing techniques, but they didn't make any mention of them. I can only think the actual images were so rough and pixellated, maybe, that they felt compelled to retouch them by hand for release. Very odd.
Excuse me, but I see nothing in your response except an allegation. I see nothing in your response to support that allegation. Pardon me for saying so, but popularly held, politically inspired cultural impressions such as yours are usually utterly bereft of fact when examined, and are generally myths.
My point was simply that that all civilized nations employ search warrants--all of them--in which citizens have their property searched and seized. The case here is of one (1) such incident, the facts of which have been *alleged* as opposed to corroborated independently, and therefore any such argument of the kind you make pertaining to "worse/much worse than other federal police groups in the world" is absolutely not sustainable on the basis of this single, alleged (as opposed to verified) account. How you could make such a mountain out of such a molehill is beyond me, I'm afraid...:)
Assuming for convenience that the story relating to this thread is true in all its particulars...
The central hypocrisy here...is the notion that "search and seizure" of private property is only morally wrong when it is the government doing the searching and seizing. Well, if it is "wrong" for the government to do it under the legal sanction of "probable cause and due process," how is it "right" for the hacker to search and seize the property of others without any legal sanction whatsoever?
I cannot see how searching Valve's computers and seizing Valve's source code without Valve's consent might be considered less of an affront than the hacker having his own property searched and seized by the FBI without his consent.
Turnabout is fair play, isn't it? If you think it is OK to search and seize the property of others without their consent, then you should not object to your property being searched and seized in a similar manner, it seems to me.
Heh...:) Of course, hackers of the type who stole the HL2 source aren't concerned with the rights of others in the first place, else they wouldn't have done what they did. That is why, when you hear such people discuss "rights," it is only their own which they find of compelling interest.
Personally, I wish this experience as it is alleged to have occurred might happen to all hackers who search and seize the property of others without consent. Perhaps this kind of thing is the only way to pierce the numbing shroud of rationalization and equivocation afflicting such people, so that they will finally know what it feels like to have their privacy invaded and their property searched and seized against their will. I would only hold out the dubious hope that they might learn something from such an experience. Doubtful, but at least conceivable.
I was amused to see numerous "move to Canada" suggestions, as well as "America is a police state" warnings provided to this person in comments relating to this person's allegations as printed on the person's web site. Evidently I was misinformed when told that Canada, and, indeed, every civilized nation on earth, has prisons full of convicts who got there as a result of being arrested by the police, including some who were convicted in trials by the weight of evidence seized with search warrants.
I'm in debt to those authentically brainy people who've set me straight about Canada, reminding me that Canada has no laws, no prisons, no convicts, no courts or trials, no police, and of course...no such thing as search warrants. And I guess the same is true of other European nations whose citizens reacted with shock and horror at this person's account, because like Canada, those nations, too, have no laws to break, no courts to convict, and of course no police forces to serve search warrants, not to mention no judges to sign such a warrant even if such a thing was possible in those countries. Yes, thanks to all of the "big brains" out there who have enlightened me in my ignorance. Naturally, if you hail from a country with no laws and no police and no search warrants, such a tale would have to inspire nothing short of dread and terror and a certain specter of a "police state."
And, too, I have to bow to the indisputable logic of those who insist that Valve has no moral right whatever to be incensed that its servers were broken into and its source code stolen--rather, as these people most brilliantly postulate for my poor benefit, Valve would be better served by throwing a party for the hackers, congratulating them an a job well done, and even, possibly, mailing them a big fat check for the service these unselfish, altruistic hackers have done them. How foolish of me to think it natural to want to involve the police when one's personal property is stolen--how foolish, indeed. Double foolish, really, but what can one expect from a poor underling such as I who has been raised in a country with laws, prisons, crimes, and search warrants? Since other countries, like Canada, have no need for such primitive mechanisms, it's no wonder I thought of this issue as I originally did. Woe is me.
But, to tell you the absolute truth, until I see some independent corroboration of the events alleged to have taken place, I must wonder if...
(a) Such alleged events ever occurred
(b) Such events occurred for the purpose this person has alleged
Even though I am not all that bright, really, as you can tell from my misapprehensions as to other countries having laws and prisons and search warrants, it nevertheless seems to me that...
(1) It is a simple thing to manufacture, or change, such "search warrants," using commonly available programs such as Photoshop
(2) It would be a simple thing to simply add "Valve" to a search warrant issued for another purpose, such as some kind of credit card fraud involving the use of computers
It occurs to me that this person might have had data belonging to other people on his machines prior to seizure, and that the "Valve" story is simply that--a story contrived, with the aid of Photoshop or something like it, to explain to his friends why their data, if not some of their computers, have been seized by the authorities.
Gosh, sometimes it's just so hard to think, and my head hurts...:) But it also occurs to me that possibly, just possibly, it might not always be a good idea to believe everything one sees printed on the Internet. Yea, right--what could I possibly know?...:)
It's DDR II running at 500MHz (x2 = 1 GHz.)
It's exactly the same thing as "DDR 400"--the ram runs at 200MHz actual speed, the "400" is its "effective" speed versus SDR SDRAM (which would have to run at 400MHz to equal the throughput.)
The problem is it is setup on a 128-bit bus, which gives it a theoretical max throughput of ~16 gigs/sec versus ATI's 9700P theoretical max throughput of ~19 gigs/sec (because the width of ATI's dram bus is 2x as wide as nVidia's, at 256 bits.) To equal the 9700P's current dram throughput the GF FX's DDRII ram bus would have to be clocked at 620MHz (x2 = 1.24GHz.)
...would ask this question.
First of all, the modern x86 bioses are self-configuring and can be safely ignored if the end user wishes to do so. However, a bios offers *hardware configuration options* that I personally find invaluable and could not imagine doing without. Suppose that I want to adjust the motherboard voltage regulation and raise or lower the voltage the motherboard provides to the cpu, the ram, the AGP bus, I/O--etc? (Whether or not a person thinks this is "necessary" is utterly irrelevant *chuckle* so please don't go off on that silly tangent.) The fact is that these are the kinds of hardware configuration options, among many, many more, which a modern bios provides.
If you don't have a bios you are autoconfigured and the bios is still there--it's just hidden from you completely and you have no control over it whatever. This is progress? I think not.
Ten years ago on an Amiga 3000 I was booting a bios image to ram from hard drive and using the MMU of the 68030 to point the system to it--whoopee-doo--big deal *chuckle* It was maybe marginally quicker to change out the file as opposed to flashing a bios--but the priciple is exactly the same--and the bios is a lot less cumbersome than something like I used with the Amiga (temporarily as I went back to the standard bios after failing to discern a benefit--ram and HD space was very limited in those days--plus I wanted to use the 68030 MMU for other things.) I see no advantage to something like that at all (though I dearly loved my Amigas!)
PCs use a bios still because of the enormous hardware choices available in the x86 marketplace that do not exist for small, closed hardware companies like Apple, for instance. Sometimes it's very nice to go into the the bios and configure a piece of hardware you've installed as opposed to packing up the system and dropping it off at the dealer's and telling him to fix it--just because the system locks the end user out of some of the internals. OpenBoot wouldn't work well at all in the x86 desktop market (I don't think) because you have so very many more hardware choices than these other cpu markets support.
What exactly do CD keys and registration requirements indicate if not a complete distrust of the end user's good intentions?
Actually, CD keys are *reasonable* and non-invasive steps a software company could and should take with its software. As the software companies are quite aware that a single valid CD key could indeed athenticate scads of bootleg copies, they are in fact trusting the end user to a very great extent, CD key or no.
Take the recent story on Quicken's Turbo Tax program, where Quicken removed your option to print returns on a computer other than the one the software was originally activated on. Do you think maybe Quicken did this because they don't trust you?
No, I think Quicken did this out of a fevered, greed-drenched imagination which caused them to hallucinate losing billions of $ to software piracy. Greed, not trust, is the issue here.
Why would Microsoft do this if they trusted their customers? Hint: they wouldn't.
Ironically, however, Microsoft has no trouble trusting corporations who buy as few as 5 licenses, since they do not have to jump through the product activation hoops at all. I'm sure you knew that. Microsoft simply did this to penalize the small user (who has little clout individually with the company because he doesn't buy thousands of licenses at a time) who has 2-3 machines at home and was installing a single legitimately purchased copy to both machines--and Microsoft wanted to double its money. Greed again (not necessarily intelligence for the long haul.)
Bottom line: software companies do not trust you.
True, no doubt. However it is more an issue of greed than I think it is one of trust. After all, Microsoft got very, very rich before the first copy of Product Activated WinXP was sold (all their "piracy estimates" notwithstanding.)
Don't like this? Buy/support/use software that does not constrain you. That's your option. Boycotting AMI or TCPA-enabled motherboards does not solve the problem; those manufacturers are responding to a demand from software developers and content owners.
What a load...;) There is no reason any bios company has to stop selling its non-TCPA builds. They can sell both, and the idea that they would have "no demand" for non-TCPA formats is ludicrous. After all, who is the ultimate customer of the bios company--hint: it's not the software developers, it's not the content owners--it's the *end users who buy the motherboards.* Was it the "content owners" which influenced bios companies to start making bios versions with all kinds of adjustable parameters, parameters that for years were excluded from the user CMOS interface (ram timings, voltage regulation, etc?) *chuckle* Hardly (snicker)
Companies large and small who forget who their actual cutomer base is will regret it, I predict, because their customers will go elsewhere. There's an old capitalist adage that businesses today would be well-advised to heed: the customer is always right. It would appear that some companies today are so confused they don't even know who their customers actually are--they think the middlemen they sell to are their customers. However, it's the needs and demands of the end user that shape the order of the middlemen companies. If the last guy in the chain loses his business (in this case the motherboard makers) then everybody upriver loses theirs, too. I shouldn't even have to say any of this it's so obvious.