This has to be a first step for Microsoft to move towards subscription based software.
The administration sees its deal with Microsoft as a donation. The critics say the gift is not free: they estimate that the fees Microsoft will collect, which are not specified in the contract, will exceed $30 million.
The fees may initially be just for consultancy to install their own software but I would be highly suspicious of Microsoft's long term intentions towards the installed software base.
Once the software is installed and Microsoft has royalties, it would be almost impossible to bring in alternatives. The cost of a change to another product would be higher than the royalty and why would you want to when you always have the latest and greatest from Microsoft on your desktop.
Unless this strategy is stopped in it's tracks, we will be facing an almost insurmoutable barrier to entry for any other system.
Boy are we onto dodgy territory here! If we have a boot disk ad-aware package we could end up with software from the other companies which require you to insert a floppy to give the software a key which it needs to run. The floppy could contain the ad-software which is part of the "key". Basically, you would have to launch the ad-software from floppy in order to launch the application you have downloaded.
As far as I can tell there is no software workaround to this problem as long as you are using applications like RadLight, you will be saddled with these problems.
It is clear that software houses are finding it harder to make income from their products and have to resort to this type of approach. This situation can only get worse as the use of open source software increases. The margins available to vendors are (and will continue) to contract. Even the mighty Microsoft are looking at other methods to make a buck i.e. Software Rental or Pay-per-use strategies. Ultimately even these models are flawed. If we go back 10 or so years (in the UK) televisions and VCRs could be rented from several high street stores, however as the number of people who could afford the systems outright increased, the market for rental dropped and these stores have all but gone.
In the software realm the number of people who can "afford" software has increased because the amount of software that is "affordable" has increased. Therefore the number of people willing to pay for applications will drop. Combine this with the "End of Free" transition that is taking place on the internet, where companies are increasingly charging for content, there is even less disposable income available for frivalous applications.
In my opinion the only way through this minefield, as a user, is to BUY yourself an open source distro, or donate cash to open source projects, and only use open source software. This way you avoid the ethical, moral and legal minefield that is Intellectual Property.
As an investor I would make a slow but measured transition of my stock-holding from closed-source vendors to open vendors. I would include the likes of IBM or SUN in this, at least they are moving in the right direction.
I think this article should be withdrawn. An apology should be made to to the families of the allied forces soldiers who lost their lives during the Afghanistan conflict. This is an offensive, bigoted and racist article with little or no understanding of humanity.
Oh thanks. First I make a comment about/. being a bit US centric and now they abuse my name. I am starting to feel like I am being picked on here! Yes I am from Scotland, yes my name Jock.
Good point, and I must agree with the concerns that are expressed. However this case has already been contested in Scotland (which has a separate legal system to England) and was thrown out. I suspect that the courts did not fully understand the implications of their actions but at least/.ers would have been pleased with the outcome. As has been listed in an earlier article it appears that the whole DVD thing is being contested in Europe as a whole. The outcome from this will have many implications for the future.
OK, and you base your arguments on what? At least I can back up my statements with fact, try http://www.icl.com/sjournal/v9i2/v9i2a10.html and then make your statement.
I will concede that my second paragraph was unecessary, however having just completed an install of Oracle 8i with a choice of either English or English(UK) as my languages I am a bit peeved!
This is another case of the victors rewriting history. I don't want to start a flame war here but the first business computer was actually British, owned by the Lyons Tea Company. Leo (as it was called) began life in the late 40's and ran for many many years. Just like most of the other articles I have been reading recently, the US has a habit of being very perocial.
If a law is passed in the US is does not make a blind bit of difference to the rest of the world. We do not care what censorship laws are passed and things like DeCSS are NOT illegal over here. Please remember that/. is popular in more countries than the US and a broader point of view should be taken.
This is another case of the victors rewriting history. I don't want to start a flame war here but the first business computer was actually British, owned by the Lyons Tea Company. Leo (as it was called) began life in the late 40's and ran for many many years. Just like most of the other articles I have been reading recently, the US has a habit of being very perocial.
If a law is passed in the US is does not make a blind bit of difference to the rest of the world. We do not care what censorship laws are passed and things like DeCSS are NOT illegal over here. Please remember that/. is popular in more countries than the US and a broader point of view should be taken.
lovely in principle but you try getting legacy apps or monsters sucha s cadence 434/442 to play and it becomes a nightmare. I like the idea of gnome coming to solaris because I am loosing users to windows by the week. Gnome will interest users more than CDE and will make my like easier for converting the OpenWindows menus over. Have you ever tried to write menu scripts for CDE? Foul. I aplaud Sun and the Gnome foundation for this effort. All is not lost on the desktop and this could save Linux from being the latest in a set of also-rans.
In the UK the Consumer Protection Act clearly states that a product must be "fit for purpose". All retailers MUST adhere to this law therefore if the CD you bought in "good faith" fails to play on your CD player is not "fit for purpose". Your retailer is obliged by law to either refund you or supply you with a similar product.
Going out on a limb here I would suggest that the CD's in question are not of "marketable quality" and should be removed from circulation.
Hi, I shall be attempting to drink a bottle of port which is alcohol based and sold amungst other drinks at the bar. My aim is to get an epoch sized hangover and send gibberish to slashdot.
If you think this is a bad idea or wan't to join me at the bar then please send your comments via the porcelain telephone.
I accept that you will need to test to make sure that the disks are not the problem but you will need to do it the right way.
Firstly vmstat tells you very little about disk i/o. What it is good for is the processes. Look at the output from vmstat 5 for example. The first three colums are r b w, running, blocked and waiting. If there are blocked processes look at WHY processes are blocked. Use top to get the i/o wait information. If there is a lot of io wait then look at the disks. Use iostat -D to get percentage utilisation of the disks. If there is a lot of disk wait then you may need to either add more disks or spread the load.
It is interesting to note the relative speeds of devices: If cpu takes 3 seconds to do a job then, Level 1 cache takes 10 seconds Level 2 cache takes 1 minute Memory takes 10 minutes Disk takes 7.7 months Network takes 6.5 years
Get stuff off your disks better! Monitor your cache hit rate to get information on efficiency. Use vmstat or sar or stuff from the se toolkit. Get the se toolkit from http://www.sun.com/sun-on/net/performance. Run zoom.se to monitor your system. Run virtual_adrian.se to tune your system. Use the right tools and don't just add more memory, identify the bottleneck, fix the bottleneck, re-test and repeat until the performance is satisfactory.
First try iostat -D -l (numberof disks+2) 5 to get percentage utilisation in 5 second intervals.
This is my favourite tool for disk analysis. Secondly go to http://www.sun.com/sun-on-net/performance read what you feel is important but download the se toolkit.
Run zoom.se to get a professional analysis of your system. Run virtual_adrian.se to get a virtual professional to tune your box.
I recommend you do this BEFORE spending any money. I have an E3000 with 2Gb RAM and 2% processor utilisation because nobody checked the system properly.
If it is your disks I recommend sun kit even though it is expensive and RAID 5. Don't worry about people telling you about it being slower, compared to a thrashing single spindle it is extremely fast and as importantly reliable. Tinker and learn!
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The fees may initially be just for consultancy to install their own software but I would be highly suspicious of Microsoft's long term intentions towards the installed software base.
Once the software is installed and Microsoft has royalties, it would be almost impossible to bring in alternatives. The cost of a change to another product would be higher than the royalty and why would you want to when you always have the latest and greatest from Microsoft on your desktop.
Unless this strategy is stopped in it's tracks, we will be facing an almost insurmoutable barrier to entry for any other system.
As far as I can tell there is no software workaround to this problem as long as you are using applications like RadLight, you will be saddled with these problems.
It is clear that software houses are finding it harder to make income from their products and have to resort to this type of approach. This situation can only get worse as the use of open source software increases. The margins available to vendors are (and will continue) to contract. Even the mighty Microsoft are looking at other methods to make a buck i.e. Software Rental or Pay-per-use strategies. Ultimately even these models are flawed. If we go back 10 or so years (in the UK) televisions and VCRs could be rented from several high street stores, however as the number of people who could afford the systems outright increased, the market for rental dropped and these stores have all but gone.
In the software realm the number of people who can "afford" software has increased because the amount of software that is "affordable" has increased. Therefore the number of people willing to pay for applications will drop. Combine this with the "End of Free" transition that is taking place on the internet, where companies are increasingly charging for content, there is even less disposable income available for frivalous applications.
In my opinion the only way through this minefield, as a user, is to BUY yourself an open source distro, or donate cash to open source projects, and only use open source software. This way you avoid the ethical, moral and legal minefield that is Intellectual Property.
As an investor I would make a slow but measured transition of my stock-holding from closed-source vendors to open vendors. I would include the likes of IBM or SUN in this, at least they are moving in the right direction.
This test is not actually sensible at it compared the W2K Os against the entire distro of RedHat. In order to be fair we should really compare either:
1. A base linux install, enough to get a window manager, against W2K, OR
2. All pieces of software available for W2K against a fully installed RedHat distro.
Basically the results make absolutely no sense and no real meaning can be taken from it.
I think this article should be withdrawn. An apology should be made to to the families of the allied forces soldiers who lost their lives during the Afghanistan conflict. This is an offensive, bigoted and racist article with little or no understanding of humanity.
Oh thanks. First I make a comment about /. being a bit US centric and now they abuse my name. I am starting to feel like I am being picked on here! Yes I am from Scotland, yes my name Jock.
Damn yanks.........
Good point, and I must agree with the concerns that are expressed. However this case has already been contested in Scotland (which has a separate legal system to England) and was thrown out. I suspect that the courts did not fully understand the implications of their actions but at least /.ers would have been pleased with the outcome. As has been listed in an earlier article it appears that the whole DVD thing is being contested in Europe as a whole. The outcome from this will have many implications for the future.
OK, and you base your arguments on what? At least I can back up my statements with fact, try http://www.icl.com/sjournal/v9i2/v9i2a10.html and then make your statement.
I will concede that my second paragraph was unecessary, however having just completed an install of Oracle 8i with a choice of either English or English(UK) as my languages I am a bit peeved!
This is another case of the victors rewriting history. I don't want to start a flame war here but the first business computer was actually British, owned by the Lyons Tea Company. Leo (as it was called) began life in the late 40's and ran for many many years. Just like most of the other articles I have been reading recently, the US has a habit of being very perocial.
/. is popular in more countries than the US and a broader point of view should be taken.
If a law is passed in the US is does not make a blind bit of difference to the rest of the world. We do not care what censorship laws are passed and things like DeCSS are NOT illegal over here. Please remember that
This is another case of the victors rewriting history. I don't want to start a flame war here but the first business computer was actually British, owned by the Lyons Tea Company. Leo (as it was called) began life in the late 40's and ran for many many years. Just like most of the other articles I have been reading recently, the US has a habit of being very perocial.
/. is popular in more countries than the US and a broader point of view should be taken.
If a law is passed in the US is does not make a blind bit of difference to the rest of the world. We do not care what censorship laws are passed and things like DeCSS are NOT illegal over here. Please remember that
lovely in principle but you try getting legacy apps or monsters sucha s cadence 434 /442 to play and it becomes a nightmare. I like the idea of gnome coming to solaris because I am loosing users to windows by the week. Gnome will interest users more than CDE and will make my like easier for converting the OpenWindows menus over. Have you ever tried to write menu scripts for CDE? Foul. I aplaud Sun and the Gnome foundation for this effort. All is not lost on the desktop and this could save Linux from being the latest in a set of also-rans.
In the UK the Consumer Protection Act clearly states that a product must be "fit for purpose". All retailers MUST adhere to this law therefore if the CD you bought in "good faith" fails to play on your CD player is not "fit for purpose". Your retailer is obliged by law to either refund you or supply you with a similar product.
Going out on a limb here I would suggest that the CD's in question are not of "marketable quality" and should be removed from circulation.
Hi,
I shall be attempting to drink a bottle of port which is alcohol based and sold amungst other drinks at the bar. My aim is to get an epoch sized hangover and send gibberish to slashdot.
If you think this is a bad idea or wan't to join me at the bar then please send your comments via the porcelain telephone.
I accept that you will need to test to make sure that the disks are not the problem but you will need to do it the right way.
Firstly vmstat tells you very little about disk i/o. What it is good for is the processes. Look at the output from vmstat 5 for example. The first three colums are r b w, running, blocked and waiting. If there are blocked processes look at WHY processes are blocked. Use top to get the i/o wait information. If there is a lot of io wait then look at the disks. Use iostat -D to get percentage utilisation of the disks. If there is a lot of disk wait then you may need to either add more disks or spread the load.
It is interesting to note the relative speeds of devices:
If cpu takes 3 seconds to do a job then,
Level 1 cache takes 10 seconds
Level 2 cache takes 1 minute
Memory takes 10 minutes
Disk takes 7.7 months
Network takes 6.5 years
Get stuff off your disks better! Monitor your cache hit rate to get information on efficiency. Use vmstat or sar or stuff from the se toolkit. Get the se toolkit from http://www.sun.com/sun-on/net/performance. Run zoom.se to monitor your system. Run virtual_adrian.se to tune your system. Use the right tools and don't just add more memory, identify the bottleneck, fix the bottleneck, re-test and repeat until the performance is satisfactory.
First try iostat -D -l (numberof disks+2) 5 to get percentage utilisation in 5 second intervals.
This is my favourite tool for disk analysis. Secondly go to http://www.sun.com/sun-on-net/performance read what you feel is important but download the se toolkit.
Run zoom.se to get a professional analysis of your system. Run virtual_adrian.se to get a virtual professional to tune your box.
I recommend you do this BEFORE spending any money. I have an E3000 with 2Gb RAM and 2% processor utilisation because nobody checked the system properly.
If it is your disks I recommend sun kit even though it is expensive and RAID 5. Don't worry about people telling you about it being slower, compared to a thrashing single spindle it is extremely fast and as importantly reliable. Tinker and learn!