I wonder what this "music mogul" thinks of compulsory licensing and statutory license fees (http://www.soundexchange.com/rates.html) and Harry Fox and the averaged/staticstical licensing model employed by ASCAP and (afaik) BMI, and 1000 other circumstances in which averaged pricing for content is used.
$0.99 per song is an average price, and comprehends both Top 40 and Bottom 100,000. The music industry simply wants to get this average price in addition to a premium on the Top 40 stuff that's already rolled into the average. If they want to re-negotiate the average price, that would be "reasonable" (in music industry terms, anyway), but this is blatant double-dipping.
I also got a DVD playback update and an iSync update. Here's hoping it fixes the annoying iSync menubar icon problem - the menubar icon only wants to sync.Mac accounts now (utterly useless imo), whereas in Panther it would sync my cell phone.
I agree. Believe it or not, MS Office 2k4 for Mac is some of the very best software Microsoft has produced. It works, it works really well, and it doesn't kill my powerbook while using it.
I can't speak for NeoOffice, but OOo doesn't come close to providing the Mac experience, and Microsoft has done the job pretty darn well.
It just goes to show you that smart coders can code cool stuff if they aren't shackled by two decades of brain-dead architectural assumptions and backward compatibility restrictions.
I just paid a lot of money for Tiger. I also sell software for a living.
I know apple is a hardware company, but I think "there would be no osx" is a dramatic overstatement. It's gotta be profitable. You could even make an argument that apple would make more selling software than hardware.
I think the whole thing is a shame. I love my G5 computers, and I love my x86 boxes too, but more than anything, I love the diversity. I'm glad someone out there was pushing a real, honest-to-god alternative to x86 that was actually getting used.
Diversity is important for tons of reasons - security, a healthy computing ecosystem, and because I just like it that way.
Are you saying that you disagree with the basic premise that most of the dead OSes are basically server OSes? Or that most workstation OSes that attained reasonable market success are still being supported or re-implemented?
People are willing and able to port server apps / daemons / etc from platform to platform, but the fundamental way of interaction with the computer is trickier to port from OS to OS. Also, end-user apps tend to be more tied to an OS than daemons.
What ever happened to that lawsuit Be had against microsoft over anti-trust issues? Last I checked (a month or two ago), they were continuing to run the corp for the purpose of pursuing litigation. Read the dissolution statement on the website - it goes out of its way to preserve the right of the Be shareholders to file lawsuits.
I'll betcha there's something in the works, otherwise they wouldn't have spent the time keeping the corp running.
The key distinction here is that those are server OSes. The poster was referring to that thing that's actually running on your computer, that you type directly into on a daily basis. Linux, Amiga, Be, Mac (with sub-zealout categories including OS 9 and OS X), and Linux (KDE, Gnome, WindowMaker, Enlightenment, twm:-) and so on).
The thing IMHO that won the browser war for MS was not the fact that IE was shipped with the OS, but that IE was *free*. Netscape cost $40 or something. Microsoft pulled the old loss-leader trick with IE, which they were in the position to do since they had such significant revenue streams from everywhere else. Netscape had nothing other than their servers, and I guess they didn't support making the browser free at the time.
So yes, I agree, Netscape, Sun, and others could have done much more than they did to prevent the death of Navigator, but MS isn't exactly innocent. They knew what they were doing when they made the browser free.
It's been up on the kernel.org site for a while now, and it only sends binary diffs, so it's quite light. The overhead is like 1%, plus the diffs. In fact, Tridge wrote this exact case (rsyncing the linux kernel) up in one of his early papers on the need for rsync. rsync.samba.org for more information.
...because it would probably have worked. They had several customers at that range in Phoenix, AZ for several years. The published limit was 35 miles, but with the right terrain, it went quite a bit farther. In fact, they routinely picked up an interfering MMDS signal from Tucson at the Phoenix cell site.
Also, IANA RF engineer, but there are 2.4GHz (unlicensed) microwave dishes on the market in the neighboorhood of $25k each side, running DS-3 speeds, and maybe faster by now. Check American Multiplex (IIRC). It's unlicensed, but because it's a point-to-point shot with high-gain dish antennas at each side, interference is usually pretty manageable.
First and foremost, my heart goes out to everyone personally affected by this tragedy. It's a terrible attack on the entire "free world".
Probably redundant, but I am struck by the reality check. I manage a small team of talented programmers, working 60-100 hours a week. I was pondering how to increase our effeciency the other day as we race toward our deadline, and I thought about throwing my two cents in the other day in the management and quality article. Then I fall asleep for a (long) while after a 36-hour coding binge, and I wake up to this.
I'm all for letting the punishment fit the crime, but this is not the solution. That's reminiscent of the government telling us that all operating systems have to support digital copy protection mechanisms. I'm not thrilled by the microsoft's behavior, but I don't think it's logically consistent to have the government tell MS what to do with its API when it suits me and bitch about the very same thing when it doesn't...
Plus, do you really want the government handing down technology decisions like this? Just look at some of the other idiotic technology-related government mandates... DMCA, anybody? Awarding a patent for one-click shopping? etc etc....
Oh yeah, go donate to the EFF...
-sd
Aptitude vs. Intelligence vs. Effectiveness
on
Bobby Fischer Online?
·
· Score: 5, Interesting
Bobby Fischer is an interesting case study in differences among these. I suspect he was a smart guy, but could he really find the String Theory equations in physics, write the next Hamlet, or solve P == NP? The inverse is an interesting question, too: could Richard Feynman have beaten Bobby Fischer if he had dedicated his life to chess in the same way Fischer did? Doubtful IMHO, due to the thing Fischer had that Feynman ostensibly did not have: a remarkable aptitude for chess.
There's also an interesting analogy in sports. The strongest, fastest player does not necessarily lead to the best player. To be the best, you have to have some natural talent, i.e. aptitude.
Effectiveness, i.e. being really good at something, requires both intelligence and aptitude. Intelligence, of which I'm sure Fischer had his share, helps get you to a certain level, just as being fast and strong helps in sports, but to be truly great requires aptitude, which is altogether different.
By the same token, being really good at something like chess does not necessarily mean you're particularly intelligent. Maybe, but not necessarily.
...my humble programmer's opinion is that looking for accountability from a corporation for it's toolkit is just wishful thinking. Agreed; I'm talking about a manager's perspective, i.e. does it install and run with a minimum of fuss, and if it doesn't, can I sue? We're past the toolkit stage at this point, so I guess I should have pointed my comments at Gnome/KDE rather than at GTK/QT. At least with open source you can fix the bug yourself.You could do it; IT managers couldn't.
Actually, I was referring to the good ol' days when they were competing with DEC. IBM was quite successful at selling its mainframe systems by planting that seed of doubt in managers' minds - "You know it will work if you buy it from us; you're really taking a risk if you buy from them, though." I wasn't referring to PCs.
- What do you think that QT & GTK are missing to be a true replacement of Motif?
Short answer: a price tag.
Long answer: Corporate America wants somebody to blame when it doesn't work. Linux is only starting to catch on in IT departments because so many companies provide support or endorsement - companies like IBM and Dell. For all of its benefit, Free Software in general lacks the ability to give a non-technical manager that warm fuzzy feeling that buying from, e.g., IBM can give. There's a reason why IBM's FUD tactics worked so well, and it's precisely the same reason that GTK won't catch on until it gains some serious corporate backing.
Wow, this is just what will be needed to ensure that our graduating college students are well-prepared for taking direction from "superior" individuals/corporations/governments rather than being able to think for themselves. What is this, 8th grade? 9th grade? *When* is this? 1955? 1957? INTERNET FILTERS?? I thought we were finally getting past this stuff. Guess not.
Slashdot Mirror
I wonder what this "music mogul" thinks of compulsory licensing and statutory license fees (http://www.soundexchange.com/rates.html) and Harry Fox and the averaged/staticstical licensing model employed by ASCAP and (afaik) BMI, and 1000 other circumstances in which averaged pricing for content is used.
$0.99 per song is an average price, and comprehends both Top 40 and Bottom 100,000. The music industry simply wants to get this average price in addition to a premium on the Top 40 stuff that's already rolled into the average. If they want to re-negotiate the average price, that would be "reasonable" (in music industry terms, anyway), but this is blatant double-dipping.
Jobs is right: they're being greedy.
I also got a DVD playback update and an iSync update. Here's hoping it fixes the annoying iSync menubar icon problem - the menubar icon only wants to sync .Mac accounts now (utterly useless imo), whereas in Panther it would sync my cell phone.
I agree. Believe it or not, MS Office 2k4 for Mac is some of the very best software Microsoft has produced. It works, it works really well, and it doesn't kill my powerbook while using it.
I can't speak for NeoOffice, but OOo doesn't come close to providing the Mac experience, and Microsoft has done the job pretty darn well.
It just goes to show you that smart coders can code cool stuff if they aren't shackled by two decades of brain-dead architectural assumptions and backward compatibility restrictions.
I just paid a lot of money for Tiger. I also sell software for a living.
I know apple is a hardware company, but I think "there would be no osx" is a dramatic overstatement. It's gotta be profitable. You could even make an argument that apple would make more selling software than hardware.
Diversity is important for tons of reasons - security, a healthy computing ecosystem, and because I just like it that way.
Too bad. :-(
that this makes their PowerBook 17" waaaaay faster?
:-)
Yeah, me neither.
...has some more discussion:
5 _04.html#008054
http://weblogs.mozillazine.org/hyatt/archives/200
Don't speed bumps usually slow things down? :-)
Are you saying that you disagree with the basic premise that most of the dead OSes are basically server OSes? Or that most workstation OSes that attained reasonable market success are still being supported or re-implemented?
People are willing and able to port server apps / daemons / etc from platform to platform, but the fundamental way of interaction with the computer is trickier to port from OS to OS. Also, end-user apps tend to be more tied to an OS than daemons.
What ever happened to that lawsuit Be had against microsoft over anti-trust issues? Last I checked (a month or two ago), they were continuing to run the corp for the purpose of pursuing litigation. Read the dissolution statement on the website - it goes out of its way to preserve the right of the Be shareholders to file lawsuits.
I'll betcha there's something in the works, otherwise they wouldn't have spent the time keeping the corp running.
The key distinction here is that those are server OSes. The poster was referring to that thing that's actually running on your computer, that you type directly into on a daily basis. Linux, Amiga, Be, Mac (with sub-zealout categories including OS 9 and OS X), and Linux (KDE, Gnome, WindowMaker, Enlightenment, twm :-) and so on).
So yes, I agree, Netscape, Sun, and others could have done much more than they did to prevent the death of Navigator, but MS isn't exactly innocent. They knew what they were doing when they made the browser free.
Positive Networks - Remote VPN access done right.
Just imagine if this were free.... goatse.cx links are just the beginning!
It's been up on the kernel.org site for a while now, and it only sends binary diffs, so it's quite light. The overhead is like 1%, plus the diffs. In fact, Tridge wrote this exact case (rsyncing the linux kernel) up in one of his early papers on the need for rsync. rsync.samba.org for more information.
...because it would probably have worked. They had several customers at that range in Phoenix, AZ for several years. The published limit was 35 miles, but with the right terrain, it went quite a bit farther. In fact, they routinely picked up an interfering MMDS signal from Tucson at the Phoenix cell site.
Also, IANA RF engineer, but there are 2.4GHz (unlicensed) microwave dishes on the market in the neighboorhood of $25k each side, running DS-3 speeds, and maybe faster by now. Check American Multiplex (IIRC). It's unlicensed, but because it's a point-to-point shot with high-gain dish antennas at each side, interference is usually pretty manageable.
Wow.
First and foremost, my heart goes out to everyone personally affected by this tragedy. It's a terrible attack on the entire "free world".
Probably redundant, but I am struck by the reality check. I manage a small team of talented programmers, working 60-100 hours a week. I was pondering how to increase our effeciency the other day as we race toward our deadline, and I thought about throwing my two cents in the other day in the management and quality article. Then I fall asleep for a (long) while after a 36-hour coding binge, and I wake up to this.
There's more to life than deadlines and code.
Wow...
-sd
I'm all for letting the punishment fit the crime, but this is not the solution. That's reminiscent of the government telling us that all operating systems have to support digital copy protection mechanisms. I'm not thrilled by the microsoft's behavior, but I don't think it's logically consistent to have the government tell MS what to do with its API when it suits me and bitch about the very same thing when it doesn't...
Plus, do you really want the government handing down technology decisions like this? Just look at some of the other idiotic technology-related government mandates... DMCA, anybody? Awarding a patent for one-click shopping? etc etc....
Oh yeah, go donate to the EFF...
-sd
Bobby Fischer is an interesting case study in differences among these. I suspect he was a smart guy, but could he really find the String Theory equations in physics, write the next Hamlet, or solve P == NP? The inverse is an interesting question, too: could Richard Feynman have beaten Bobby Fischer if he had dedicated his life to chess in the same way Fischer did? Doubtful IMHO, due to the thing Fischer had that Feynman ostensibly did not have: a remarkable aptitude for chess.
There's also an interesting analogy in sports. The strongest, fastest player does not necessarily lead to the best player. To be the best, you have to have some natural talent, i.e. aptitude.
Effectiveness, i.e. being really good at something, requires both intelligence and aptitude. Intelligence, of which I'm sure Fischer had his share, helps get you to a certain level, just as being fast and strong helps in sports, but to be truly great requires aptitude, which is altogether different.
By the same token, being really good at something like chess does not necessarily mean you're particularly intelligent. Maybe, but not necessarily.
General realativity, wormholes, space-time warping, etc. http://www.hawking.org.uk/lectures/warps.html.
-sd
...my humble programmer's opinion is that looking for accountability from a corporation for it's toolkit is just wishful thinking. Agreed; I'm talking about a manager's perspective, i.e. does it install and run with a minimum of fuss, and if it doesn't, can I sue? We're past the toolkit stage at this point, so I guess I should have pointed my comments at Gnome/KDE rather than at GTK/QT. At least with open source you can fix the bug yourself. You could do it; IT managers couldn't.
Actually, I was referring to the good ol' days when they were competing with DEC. IBM was quite successful at selling its mainframe systems by planting that seed of doubt in managers' minds - "You know it will work if you buy it from us; you're really taking a risk if you buy from them, though." I wasn't referring to PCs.
- What do you think that QT & GTK are missing to be a true replacement of Motif?
Short answer: a price tag.
Long answer: Corporate America wants somebody to blame when it doesn't work. Linux is only starting to catch on in IT departments because so many companies provide support or endorsement - companies like IBM and Dell. For all of its benefit, Free Software in general lacks the ability to give a non-technical manager that warm fuzzy feeling that buying from, e.g., IBM can give. There's a reason why IBM's FUD tactics worked so well, and it's precisely the same reason that GTK won't catch on until it gains some serious corporate backing.
Wow, this is just what will be needed to ensure that our graduating college students are well-prepared for taking direction from "superior" individuals/corporations/governments rather than being able to think for themselves. What is this, 8th grade? 9th grade? *When* is this? 1955? 1957? INTERNET FILTERS?? I thought we were finally getting past this stuff. Guess not.
I, for one, am voting for the man who invented the Internet! BTW, do the zeros after his name on the bumper stickers mean anything?
- SD