They already have Matlab for Mac OS 7/8, and for Linux. Unfortunately the linux version is x86 only, and I'm not sure whether OS X supports OS 8 applications. It doesn't look like they have a native PPC version.
How many models of consumer-grade operating systems are there: Microsoft has a few (>85% share), Apple has a couple (>15% share) ,... hmmm, that is about it.
This is awful narrow-minded of you. What about Linux (Debian, SuSE, Slackware, RedHat, Caldera...) , BSD (FreeBSD, NetBSD, OpenBSD), BeOS, Solaris, AIX, HP-UX, NeXT, OS/2... (Don't expect me to remember them all).
Also, no one is forced to buy a new car. A technically-inclined person can go scavenge a junk yard and rebuild a classic. The laws work so that he can get by with older technology, too, with just a few restrictions.
A technically-inclined person could build an OS, too. (But you can't download a free copy of a car.) Sure, some Open Source OSes might be a couple of years behind MS OSes, but has MS really done that much since Win98? (Other than try to add stability... where it still doesn't compete with the BSDs and Linuxes.)
The car-road interface has been standardized well enough.... In software, however... only Microsoft...
The Computer-computer interface has standardized pretty well over the last few years, too. It's called TCP/IP (maybe you've heard of it). MS only has a monopoly only because we think that the have something that the others don't. We believe the MS marketing dept when they tell us that MS is better than anything else out there. What makes it "better"? Is it more reliable? More flexible? Cheaper? MS doesn't know what I want.
Look around, people. There are plenty of good options out there. If you think that MS is the only option, then you have been wearing the blinders that Bill has been handing out.
(Technologies such as RealPC (formerly Wabi) and VirtualPC free us from the bondage of the x86 architecture as well.)
PHP includes a module for LDAP (search for 'ldap' in your php config file). I'm using LDAP with the win32 binary distribution, running as an ISAPI module for IIS 5, and it works great. (Well, the PHP part works great, anyway)
Re Step 425, "Crypto Server Traps Event",
Grail said, There is a catch here - perhaps you could argue that, in order to be covered by this patent, the crypto package would have to intercept the "File/Save" event before that event actually got to the application. You are correct. They are trapping when the user selects "save" from the application menu, NOT when the file is written to disk.
They probably meant to say that the system intercepted reads/writes to particular files on the filesystem. That's how SafeHouse (the product they're suing) does it. Oh well, too late to change the patent now. <g>
I also liked
Step 420: Command is translated into an event.
Waddaya mean translated? Modern operating systems handle this as an event by default.
Step 430: Should document be encrypted?
Funny that this decision seems to be made without interaction from the user. In other words, the user doesn't decide which documents are or are not encrypted. (at least not at run time).
The description of the technology in the patent is vague enough that I wonder if they had actually implemented this at the time. Oh, another funny thing... Maz Technology doesn't seem to have a product that does what this patent claims to do. Hmm.... You're not allowed to patent someone else's invention. <g>
Maz does have this product called IntelliGuard, which has a great marketing description, but to me the description seems rather... lite. I wonder if they've actually implemented anything even now. (It also claims to provide an infinite number of customer's options. At least they got the infinity problem licked.)
-gh
DISCLAIMER: this post is a statement of opinion and not of fact. (Just in case any laywers are reading...)
They have only one product* that is worth buying, and that is the OS, which costs $199 a pop. All of their other products are bundled in to the operating system as "free" add-ons. (At least until they gain enough market share for that add-on to sell it as a seperate product. Ever wonder why "WinWord" and "Outlook Express" are bundled with the OS... It's not out of the goodness of M$'s heart. It's a stepping stone to M$ Office.) Sure, these add-ons are useful and great, but try to get them to work on any other operating system.
These add-ons are sold with the operating system (and therefore their development cost is subsidised by the $199 cost of the OS), but they are not (er, do not need to be) part of the OS. There is also no _technical_ reason why they shouldn't work on any other OS. (It just needs to be linked against the right libraries...) Now you might think that these add-ons should be free (and I agree), but they do take money to develop, and thus it would take money to develop a competing product**. Netscape started selling for nearly $50 a copy, but then Internet Explorer came along, and it was "free" (as long as you paid $199 for Windows). This isn't freedom of choice, and it doesn't foster innovation and creativity.
You might say that the $199 that I paid for my OS is a great lifetime subscription to hundreds of useful little tools that work great*** on my computer, with new ones coming every year. I would almost agree, except that M$ comes out with another OS every two years, and charges another $99 for an upgrade.
If these "add-on" utilities**** really are "free" and not "part" of the "OS", then I sould be able to run them on any OS I choose. (And I should be able to reverse-engineer them, or write other clients that speak the same protocol, or write other servers that speak the same protocol... Don't get me started about M$'s back-stabbing tactics when it comes to protocol standards...)
I could use Linux for about 97% of what I do, but the other 3%... It takes too much effort to reboot back and forth, and vmware is too expensive.
* I maintain that all other M$ products leverage off of the M$ brand name in order to get a following. None of them would survive a year if the OS got out of the way. ** Open Source not included. *** Except for BSOD. **** Some of you have referred to these add-ons as "middleware", but see this page for a definition of middleware.
Actuall, Solaris is free, as long as you run it on a box with 4 or fewer CPU's, and since Solaris 8 will run on Intel, it's nearly as good as Linux. And if you've ever run Solaris 8 (or 9), you'd almost think that it was a Linux machine (unless you run uname). Solaris 9 will even run Linux binaries (even on Sparc). Oh, and perhaps the reason that Solaris 9 isn't made for x86, is because it would be Linux. So instead of spending $$ to develop something that they can't sell anyway, they suggest that you use Linux on your x86 boxes, (and then buy an e10k to stick in the middle of your Linux cluster). Sun is a big supporter of Linux, they just can't get it to work on their big boxes. IBM has clearly done their homework here.
I agree, a CD-RW/DVD combo drive for recording Video CD's and playing DVD movies would make this much cooler.
The other thing that would make these cooler is a larger capacity. 30 hours is nothing. I spend more time at work each week. Multiply that by a hundred channels... There's a lot of good TV out there!
The original Tivo held 30 hours of content, nearly 3 years ago. Since then, hard drives have increased in size 10 fold. So where is my 300 or 3000 hour model?
At first I didn't buy one because I thought the company wouldn't be around in a year. Now, I don't want to waste my money on 3 year old technology. I don't want to go out and spend $500 on a 3 year old VCR any more than I would buy a 3 year old computer.
I'm waiting for the upgraded model. Someday it will come.
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They already have Matlab for Mac OS 7/8, and for Linux. Unfortunately the linux version is x86 only, and I'm not sure whether OS X supports OS 8 applications. It doesn't look like they have a native PPC version.
This is awful narrow-minded of you. What about Linux (Debian, SuSE, Slackware, RedHat, Caldera...) , BSD (FreeBSD, NetBSD, OpenBSD), BeOS, Solaris, AIX, HP-UX, NeXT, OS/2... (Don't expect me to remember them all).
Also, no one is forced to buy a new car. A technically-inclined person can go scavenge a junk yard and rebuild a classic. The laws work so that he can get by with older technology, too, with just a few restrictions.
A technically-inclined person could build an OS, too. (But you can't download a free copy of a car.) Sure, some Open Source OSes might be a couple of years behind MS OSes, but has MS really done that much since Win98? (Other than try to add stability... where it still doesn't compete with the BSDs and Linuxes.)
The car-road interface has been standardized well enough.... In software, however... only Microsoft...
The Computer-computer interface has standardized pretty well over the last few years, too. It's called TCP/IP (maybe you've heard of it). MS only has a monopoly only because we think that the have something that the others don't. We believe the MS marketing dept when they tell us that MS is better than anything else out there. What makes it "better"? Is it more reliable? More flexible? Cheaper? MS doesn't know what I want.
Look around, people. There are plenty of good options out there. If you think that MS is the only option, then you have been wearing the blinders that Bill has been handing out.
(Technologies such as RealPC (formerly Wabi) and VirtualPC free us from the bondage of the x86 architecture as well.)
PHP includes a module for LDAP (search for 'ldap' in your php config file). I'm using LDAP with the win32 binary distribution, running as an ISAPI module for IIS 5, and it works great. (Well, the PHP part works great, anyway)
Except I wouldn't pay $35. There are plenty of places that charge less. Check internic.net for the full list.
You can also transfer an existing domain to another registrar to save money, but you need to transfer it before it expires.
Re Step 425, "Crypto Server Traps Event", Grail said, There is a catch here - perhaps you could argue that, in order to be covered by this patent, the crypto package would have to intercept the "File/Save" event before that event actually got to the application. You are correct. They are trapping when the user selects "save" from the application menu, NOT when the file is written to disk.
They probably meant to say that the system intercepted reads/writes to particular files on the filesystem. That's how SafeHouse (the product they're suing) does it. Oh well, too late to change the patent now. <g>
I also liked
Step 420: Command is translated into an event.
Waddaya mean translated? Modern operating systems handle this as an event by default.
Step 430: Should document be encrypted?
Funny that this decision seems to be made without interaction from the user. In other words, the user doesn't decide which documents are or are not encrypted. (at least not at run time).
The description of the technology in the patent is vague enough that I wonder if they had actually implemented this at the time. Oh, another funny thing... Maz Technology doesn't seem to have a product that does what this patent claims to do. Hmm.... You're not allowed to patent someone else's invention. <g>
Maz does have this product called IntelliGuard, which has a great marketing description, but to me the description seems rather... lite. I wonder if they've actually implemented anything even now. (It also claims to provide an infinite number of customer's options. At least they got the infinity problem licked.)
-gh
DISCLAIMER: this post is a statement of opinion and not of fact. (Just in case any laywers are reading...)
For the full text of the patent, visit USPTO Search Page and enter the patent number 6185681.
See also a sci.crypt discussion on google groups
They have only one product* that is worth buying, and that is the OS, which costs $199 a pop. All of their other products are bundled in to the operating system as "free" add-ons. (At least until they gain enough market share for that add-on to sell it as a seperate product. Ever wonder why "WinWord" and "Outlook Express" are bundled with the OS... It's not out of the goodness of M$'s heart. It's a stepping stone to M$ Office.) Sure, these add-ons are useful and great, but try to get them to work on any other operating system.
These add-ons are sold with the operating system (and therefore their development cost is subsidised by the $199 cost of the OS), but they are not (er, do not need to be) part of the OS. There is also no _technical_ reason why they shouldn't work on any other OS. (It just needs to be linked against the right libraries...) Now you might think that these add-ons should be free (and I agree), but they do take money to develop, and thus it would take money to develop a competing product**. Netscape started selling for nearly $50 a copy, but then Internet Explorer came along, and it was "free" (as long as you paid $199 for Windows). This isn't freedom of choice, and it doesn't foster innovation and creativity.
You might say that the $199 that I paid for my OS is a great lifetime subscription to hundreds of useful little tools that work great*** on my computer, with new ones coming every year. I would almost agree, except that M$ comes out with another OS every two years, and charges another $99 for an upgrade.
If these "add-on" utilities**** really are "free" and not "part" of the "OS", then I sould be able to run them on any OS I choose. (And I should be able to reverse-engineer them, or write other clients that speak the same protocol, or write other servers that speak the same protocol... Don't get me started about M$'s back-stabbing tactics when it comes to protocol standards...)
I could use Linux for about 97% of what I do, but the other 3%... It takes too much effort to reboot back and forth, and vmware is too expensive.
* I maintain that all other M$ products leverage off of the M$ brand name in order to get a following. None of them would survive a year if the OS got out of the way.
** Open Source not included.
*** Except for BSOD.
**** Some of you have referred to these add-ons as "middleware", but see this page for a definition of middleware.
Actuall, Solaris is free, as long as you run it on a box with 4 or fewer CPU's, and since Solaris 8 will run on Intel, it's nearly as good as Linux. And if you've ever run Solaris 8 (or 9), you'd almost think that it was a Linux machine (unless you run uname). Solaris 9 will even run Linux binaries (even on Sparc). Oh, and perhaps the reason that Solaris 9 isn't made for x86, is because it would be Linux. So instead of spending $$ to develop something that they can't sell anyway, they suggest that you use Linux on your x86 boxes, (and then buy an e10k to stick in the middle of your Linux cluster). Sun is a big supporter of Linux, they just can't get it to work on their big boxes. IBM has clearly done their homework here.
I agree, a CD-RW/DVD combo drive for recording Video CD's and playing DVD movies would make this much cooler. The other thing that would make these cooler is a larger capacity. 30 hours is nothing. I spend more time at work each week. Multiply that by a hundred channels... There's a lot of good TV out there! The original Tivo held 30 hours of content, nearly 3 years ago. Since then, hard drives have increased in size 10 fold. So where is my 300 or 3000 hour model? At first I didn't buy one because I thought the company wouldn't be around in a year. Now, I don't want to waste my money on 3 year old technology. I don't want to go out and spend $500 on a 3 year old VCR any more than I would buy a 3 year old computer. I'm waiting for the upgraded model. Someday it will come.