By your logic, everyone uses Office because they need to read Office documents; so that would mean Office file format compatibility is a significant feature worth paying money for. If Star Office could read a word file, do you think everyone would flock to start using it? I personally don't think so. Hell, I can't remember the last time I read anything other than email from people outside my company when I'm in the office. Nor at home for that matter.
Microsoft doesn't hide the fact that the format is proprietry. And everyone knows that the format changes with each release of Office. Yet that hasn't stopped people from figuring out the format and reading it. It's not like having an undocumented file format is something new to the computing world. I remember "back in the day" there were tons of applications whose only purpose was to convert files from format a to format b. Why do you think that there aren't so many conversion utils anymore? You would say "it's too hard", but I say that's a BS excuse. I think the real reason is "nobody cares anymore."
I remember buying WordPerfect in college. MS is evil right? And hey, it was $20 cheaper than Office in the book store... I got home and installed it on my computer, and everything seemed great. For the first half hour. It crashed. And it did so every freeking half hour. And if you did anything more complicated than standard word processing the odds of a crashing increased greatly.
A proprietry file format isn't the primary reason people use Office. They use it because it's BETTER than the competition.
"Properly written" is the key word. How many lazy coders do you think thought to themselves "we'll never have to worry about this"? I don't think I really want to get into the potential problems with badly casted pointers...
MacOS Apps are likely to have the same problems as unix apps the first time they're built on platform different than the one they're coded on...
Endianness of x86 and PPC CPUs are different. Any app that needs to work with binary data will need some work. That's just the tip of the iceberg...many other more subtle problems are likely to crop up.
Ooh, wow, someone made a design decision to make stuff work faster. That must have been tough... Apple should apply for a patent. That'd put 'em right up there with Amazon and 1-click shopping...
MS's new graphics layer is still in the experimentatal phases. They're still playing around with ideas on how to present information. The only thing that's really been decided is some of the basic underlying structure... Try cry "they're copying quartz!" is a bit premature at this point.
Ok, suppose for a minute that you can see the keys. Now, let me suggest that the DRM keys work in a similar matter as the win activation stuff. Ie: change something around and the same key doesn't work. The button still has no use.
Not saying that's how it works, but if MS was determined to screw the customer and lock them in, the button would be no problem to work around.
And for that matter, what makes you think that there won't be some sort of app that allows you to see the keys on your system?
Who the hell wants to press a frick'in button every time they want to do something? Reminds me of the dongle copy protection devices in the old days...
You can not prove a negative. It is a logical impossibility. You can disprove a negative, but you cannot prove it.
Having access to the source, examining it, and not finding it, would only prove that it was not coded in a manner obvious enough to be found by the people examining it; and if you suggest that it would, I would propose that code reviews would find 100% of all software defects (which we know isn't true).
If you were able to examine the code you'd be reasonably certain that something didn't happen, but you could never be 100% certain, and thus you wouldn't be able to prove the negative.
So you've seen the source, and you're reasonably certain that the source doesn't have naughty things in it because the people who examined it said so (let's face it, there's no way and hell one person is ever going to get through that code in a reasonable amount of time). So, do you trust the people who examined it? Who is to say that the compiler doesn't insert the naught bits? So what about the computer's BIOS -- maybe it inserts the naughty bits. Perhaps there is a secret conspiracy between harddrive manufacturers to modify the binary that it reads off of the disk.
I could keep going like this, but you get the point...
This is the trap conspiracy theorists continually fall into. They think that something is true because nobody can prove that it isn't.
DR's GEM failed because of Apple. Apple sued over just about every single feature DR put in GEM. When Apple was done with them, you couldn't even have windows that overlapped...
Though curiously, Apple didn't fret much about the version of GEM in Atari computers...
If the system on the other end is compromised, they have access to the keys used to decrypt the software.
DRM's purpose is to give control over who can view and do what with documents. Believe it or not, it isn't being done for the media giants -- Microsoft doesn't make any money off of them, so there is no benefit for them to add it for the media giants. It's being done for the corporate enviornment. You know, to keep that document that was meant for the upper management folks from being accidentilly sent to all of the peons. To keep internal documents internal. To keep an employee from changing documentation that they have no business writing (but do have business reading). Etc. Microsoft makes most of their money off of software running in corporate environments, not stuff running in your home.
For those that are afraid of media companies jumping on the boat and using the DRM features to keep you from playing content on other computers, burning cd's or whatever else, don't use it. "But I can't get it in a different format." So what? Like you can get it in a different format (legally) now... DRM isn't going to suddenly keep non DRM content from working.
Isn't the whole point of this stuff -- aside from all of the paranoia about what some people think it might do -- to prevent unsigned software (aka, a worm) from running without your knowledge?
And yet if they were to be included tomorrow, a bunch of people would complain about how evil microsoft is trying to squeeze the little guy out of the software industry.
The major costs/risks associated with upgrading arn't the liscensing costs, but rather the migration costs. The OS is free, but getting everything to work exactly the same as it did before the upgrade is another story.
And a lot of those retail versions are feature complete - what could MS Word 2010 possibly offer us in terms of features? In reality, is there anything you need from a word processor that WordStar in 1985 didn't offer?
That's like saying that nothing had really changed in the automotive industry since the Model-T -- I mean, all cars still have an engine and 4 wheels...
Sorry, the presence of "Vulcans", "Klingons", and a ship called "Enterprise" must have confused me... it's a trek series. The fact that it doesn't have "Star Trek: Enterprise" as a title doesn't change that.
If you want to create a star trek series that takes place at an earlier point in time than other trek series, and you want to throw out anything established in those series, don't call it star trek.
Stupid little things I can forgive. A turning point in "history" I cannot. It'd be like blowing up the death star in star wars episode 3. It doesn't make any sense. It's dumb. And shows complete and utter lack of imagination from an author resorting to a formula designed to generate ratings by appealing to stupid people.
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By your logic, everyone uses Office because they need to read Office documents; so that would mean Office file format compatibility is a significant feature worth paying money for. If Star Office could read a word file, do you think everyone would flock to start using it? I personally don't think so. Hell, I can't remember the last time I read anything other than email from people outside my company when I'm in the office. Nor at home for that matter.
Microsoft doesn't hide the fact that the format is proprietry. And everyone knows that the format changes with each release of Office. Yet that hasn't stopped people from figuring out the format and reading it. It's not like having an undocumented file format is something new to the computing world. I remember "back in the day" there were tons of applications whose only purpose was to convert files from format a to format b. Why do you think that there aren't so many conversion utils anymore? You would say "it's too hard", but I say that's a BS excuse. I think the real reason is "nobody cares anymore."
I remember buying WordPerfect in college. MS is evil right? And hey, it was $20 cheaper than Office in the book store... I got home and installed it on my computer, and everything seemed great. For the first half hour. It crashed. And it did so every freeking half hour. And if you did anything more complicated than standard word processing the odds of a crashing increased greatly.
A proprietry file format isn't the primary reason people use Office. They use it because it's BETTER than the competition.
This certain proof that MS has a monopoloy in office suites.
No it isn't. It means that the alternative office packages don't offer enough compared to MS Office to justify charging money for it.
I'm glad some people and use Star Office and find it useful. I personally think it is a pain in the ass to use.
You can write a version of kill that will kill services. It requires a few extra function calls, and the running user must have Admin rights.
"Properly written" is the key word. How many lazy coders do you think thought to themselves "we'll never have to worry about this"? I don't think I really want to get into the potential problems with badly casted pointers ...
MacOS Apps are likely to have the same problems as unix apps the first time they're built on platform different than the one they're coded on...
Endianness of x86 and PPC CPUs are different. Any app that needs to work with binary data will need some work. That's just the tip of the iceberg...many other more subtle problems are likely to crop up.
The fact that something is better doesn't mean anything if you can't afford to buy it in the first place...
People want the best, but buy what they can afford. If that wasn't true, I'd be driving around in an exotic italian sports car...
Ooh, wow, someone made a design decision to make stuff work faster. That must have been tough ... Apple should apply for a patent. That'd put 'em right up there with Amazon and 1-click shopping...
MS's new graphics layer is still in the experimentatal phases. They're still playing around with ideas on how to present information. The only thing that's really been decided is some of the basic underlying structure... Try cry "they're copying quartz!" is a bit premature at this point.
Apple didn't have crap until '84. You're thinking of Xerox's research labs.
Ok, suppose for a minute that you can see the keys. Now, let me suggest that the DRM keys work in a similar matter as the win activation stuff. Ie: change something around and the same key doesn't work. The button still has no use.
Not saying that's how it works, but if MS was determined to screw the customer and lock them in, the button would be no problem to work around.
And for that matter, what makes you think that there won't be some sort of app that allows you to see the keys on your system?
Who the hell wants to press a frick'in button every time they want to do something? Reminds me of the dongle copy protection devices in the old days...
You can not prove a negative. It is a logical impossibility. You can disprove a negative, but you cannot prove it.
Having access to the source, examining it, and not finding it, would only prove that it was not coded in a manner obvious enough to be found by the people examining it; and if you suggest that it would, I would propose that code reviews would find 100% of all software defects (which we know isn't true).
If you were able to examine the code you'd be reasonably certain that something didn't happen, but you could never be 100% certain, and thus you wouldn't be able to prove the negative.
So you've seen the source, and you're reasonably certain that the source doesn't have naughty things in it because the people who examined it said so (let's face it, there's no way and hell one person is ever going to get through that code in a reasonable amount of time). So, do you trust the people who examined it? Who is to say that the compiler doesn't insert the naught bits? So what about the computer's BIOS -- maybe it inserts the naughty bits. Perhaps there is a secret conspiracy between harddrive manufacturers to modify the binary that it reads off of the disk.
I could keep going like this, but you get the point...
This is the trap conspiracy theorists continually fall into. They think that something is true because nobody can prove that it isn't.
DR's GEM failed because of Apple. Apple sued over just about every single feature DR put in GEM. When Apple was done with them, you couldn't even have windows that overlapped...
Though curiously, Apple didn't fret much about the version of GEM in Atari computers...
The DOJ didn't rule on crap. They just brought up the charges.
If the system on the other end is compromised, they have access to the keys used to decrypt the software.
DRM's purpose is to give control over who can view and do what with documents. Believe it or not, it isn't being done for the media giants -- Microsoft doesn't make any money off of them, so there is no benefit for them to add it for the media giants. It's being done for the corporate enviornment. You know, to keep that document that was meant for the upper management folks from being accidentilly sent to all of the peons. To keep internal documents internal. To keep an employee from changing documentation that they have no business writing (but do have business reading). Etc. Microsoft makes most of their money off of software running in corporate environments, not stuff running in your home.
For those that are afraid of media companies jumping on the boat and using the DRM features to keep you from playing content on other computers, burning cd's or whatever else, don't use it. "But I can't get it in a different format." So what? Like you can get it in a different format (legally) now... DRM isn't going to suddenly keep non DRM content from working.
But it would be rather difficult to prove that they didn't/couldn't.
You can't prove a negative...
Isn't the whole point of this stuff -- aside from all of the paranoia about what some people think it might do -- to prevent unsigned software (aka, a worm) from running without your knowledge?
Longhorn is a consumer release of windows (think Windows XP), not a server release (Win2kX).
The next server version of windows will probably be due a year or two before Win2k reaches EOL.
And yet if they were to be included tomorrow, a bunch of people would complain about how evil microsoft is trying to squeeze the little guy out of the software industry.
The major costs/risks associated with upgrading arn't the liscensing costs, but rather the migration costs. The OS is free, but getting everything to work exactly the same as it did before the upgrade is another story.
And a lot of those retail versions are feature complete - what could MS Word 2010 possibly offer us in terms of features? In reality, is there anything you need from a word processor that WordStar in 1985 didn't offer?
That's like saying that nothing had really changed in the automotive industry since the Model-T -- I mean, all cars still have an engine and 4 wheels...
Sorry, the presence of "Vulcans", "Klingons", and a ship called "Enterprise" must have confused me ... it's a trek series. The fact that it doesn't have "Star Trek: Enterprise" as a title doesn't change that.
If you want to create a star trek series that takes place at an earlier point in time than other trek series, and you want to throw out anything established in those series, don't call it star trek.
Stupid little things I can forgive. A turning point in "history" I cannot. It'd be like blowing up the death star in star wars episode 3. It doesn't make any sense. It's dumb. And shows complete and utter lack of imagination from an author resorting to a formula designed to generate ratings by appealing to stupid people.
Sucked is an understatement. Lack of plot, stories that made any sense, or the flair that made the series interesting...
It's been getting a BIT better, but the interaction between the characters that made the first season or two awesome still isn't there.
Yup. The Borg show up in the series way before they were ever in that sector of the galaxy in the first place.
But we all know that Berman doesn't give a crap about continuity with other series in the genre.
You can apply patches automatically on Win2k and WinXP as well...