If you have years of slackware experience, why would you need a "user friendly" distro?
Package management rocks. Large, hiqh quality package repositories rock even more.
On Slackware I can have the system I want after 3 days of configuring, compiling and hunting down dependencies. I don't know maybe 30 or 40 programs, plus the little things to be configured, dev rules to be added, etc.
Now I use the *buntu family distros. All my hardware is new enough, I don't really notice a difference in performance. The bug to configuration ratio is low. For instance. In Ubuntu auto-creation of mount points just work. But I have to create my own Midnight Commander profile for Konqueror. Not a big deal. In Slackware, I get the Midnight Commander profile for Konqueror. But I have to write my own udev rules and configure things to get automounting to work. Ubuntu makes my life easier.
There are only 4 or 5 programs I have to compile by hand in Ubuntu. (To bad I am addicted to dock apps). Everything is in the repos or the software maintainer has an *buntu deb package on their site.
I like slack but Ubuntu lets me spend more time working. I hate to say it, but in my experience. Usability bugs for desktop users are more likely to be worked out in Ubuntu than in Slackware.
Agreed - I tried Linux because I wanted a desktop that had similar capabilities as the systems I administer at work - Solaris, AIX, and Red Hat Enterprise Linux. I went and bought a Mac because I was sick of constantly tweaking my Fedora install to keep it running. If Linux supporters think MacOS is anything but a direct competitor to Linux on the desktop, you're fooling yourself.
Yes, but the cost of linux is as low as free. THe hardware linux can be run on is more varied than the Mac. People can leverage their investment in other hardware. Also the removal of the stigma that "Everyone runs Windows" wont hurt. After all. If you can approach any group of people and it turns out 7 run window, 2 mac and 1 linux. Linux is much less strange.Than it is now. Which is Lin what?
And for all the people postulating that somehow MacOS' increased market share will lead to an "increased awareness of cross-platform portability," don't hold your breath. What you will be far more likely to see is that more software vendors will port their major products to Mac OS, and stop there.
That depends on lots of things. If you chose the right platform, it is not much harder to code something for Win-lin-mac than it is to just port to the mac. Also, "cloud" computing is having an effect. The more things that run in the browser, the less concern there is over what OS is under the browser.
It is not all a bed of roses over there on the mac. Adobe has already stopped development on the Mac. If you want to run the next version of photoshop, you had better bootcamp over to XP. It will be the "free software" folks that will have a Mac version of wine that will let you run PhotoShop. Not ment as a dig. I just would not count out people who like free software and run Linux.
Software is going full circle. Back in the 70's the home computer crowd shared all of their software for free. Then in the early 80's Gates ran around and told them the only way these computers would catch on would be if people could profit from writing software. In the early 90's RMSs talk about free software and those who always held with PD software started coding more ambitions projects. Now in the 00's the circle is coming back around again. More and more free software, for those that choose to run it.
Besides Linux is not going away. As long as there are geeks who love to take care of it and use it. As long as there are those who believe in running free software. As long as there are those who are to cheep to run anything else. There will be Linux.
If you want a Virtual desktop that does not suck or get in the way. Try Secretly.
I have not run it on Vista. But I have used it extensively on XP. It is wicked fast at changing desktops. It has no user interface (it is keyboard driven). Which works out well. All of the graphical virtual desktop pagers I have seen in Windows suck.
Usage is not bad either. Unzip it to a folder you want to keep it in. I use C:\Program Files\Secretly. Log out and back in or reboot. You will need to hit F11 to start using it.
F12 Turn off Hotkeys
F11 Turn on Hotkeys
Ctrl+Alt+T sets the current desktop as the TARGET desktop for a window move
Ctrl+ALt+M moves the window that currently has focus to the target desktop
Ctrl+Alt+A Moves all windows to desktop 1
Ctrl+Alt+numpad 1 to Ctrl+Alt+numpad 9 will switch to desktop 1 to 9.
As I have said, it is wicked fast for changing desktops. So far it is the only virtual desktop program that has been fast enough at switching deskops, does not have teh gay pager that gets in the way and has sane keyboard navigation.
Thank you for taking my last comment as a joke, because that is how it was meant.
It really is a problem. There is one Internet that you will experience if you give away no personal data, i.e. cookies, ip address, name, credit card numbers, etc.
There is second Internet you will experience if you provide this information. Web sites making recommendations to you. Google being able to sift through information and show you just what you are interested in, that kind of thing
Then there is the third Internet, the dark side of the second Internet where parties have collected all sorts of information about you and use it in all kinds of unscrupulous (albiet legal) maners.
Not really a free advert for Live Search although I do use both - at least in part because I don't want to give Google too much information...just my very small part in keeping them from total domination
You should be careful when adjusting the tin foil around the ears, if it crinkles it does not provide proper protection.
While Microsoft not having a new OS to call attention to besides Vista is a factor for Micorsoft over the next 18 months or so. I think Apple makes their own luck. Every time they put out a new sexy product like the iPod, the Nano or the iPhone they suck the oxygen right out of the room on Microsoft.
What products Apple puts out in the next 18 months and people perception of Apple will have more to due with Apples share of the PC market in 18 months than anything Microsoft does or does not do.
With that being said, at some point I do believe that Microsoft will say they need to focus on their "core business" and will not be able to maintain a version of Microsoft office for Mac. Unless Openoffice or Google docs are to big of a deal then. After all, they don't want to give away 10% of the market.
We in the FOSS community are building Moonlight on Mono, which besides have teh gay name is a feature incomplete at least one version back of Microsoft dot net.
Then on top of that we build Moonlight off the spec for one version back of Silverlight.
Then we pray that Microsoft "does not alter the deal any farther" and go after Moonlight or Mono. Even if Microsoft could not win in court, just them filing suit or getting an injunction would kill Mono and Moonlight.
We are coming along. Time well tell how good of an idea this switch was in the long run
I like the idea of folder views. Being able to have one folder view of all.log files via an ssh fish connection. Another folder view showing all photos I have tagged as "Vacation 2008". What we really need is a Meta Folder View. I.E. I can drop 2 or 3 folder views inside of it and they will all act like one folder. This way, for instance you could have all projects you are working on from different network shares show up in ONE folderview.
Once the folder view thing can be transparent, thus revealing the background below, the distros can fix the icon issue.
All they have to do, by default is set up one folder view that covers the whole desktop and has a few icons on it to get the user started. That way folks who expect the old behavior get it. Those who know better, can do what they want.
There should be some kind of wizard or easy way to get back to having this "default" view. Maybe even hard-wired in to KDE 4.
Additional properties for the "background" of the folder view. Should be the ability to set a color, gradient, background image and to control the opaqueness. You could also toss in there if you just "see through" to the desktop directly or can see other folders/applets, etc below the current folder view.
Excel as the presentation layer, which is much, much safer. You build a web site that pumps the data out of the database, create Excel sheets dynamically, and you got a lot of happy Excel junkies.
It should be possible to use Openoffice Calc or gnumeric as the client for this presentation layer.
Wise man say building all corporate data on excel spreadhseets is building a house of cards.
Seriously, there are issues to using excel for data. Corruption being one. Companies often have no clue what they are doing as they build this house of cards. Links to files include hard coded server names. If you replace a server or move any data things break. Yes it can be prevented. But still, not everyone knows how to do this.
Corporations that build everything on excel will experience Microsoft Vendor Lock-In (tm). That includes being tied to Microsoft Vista and Microsoft Windows 7. Depending on how bad that is. It may be no fun at all trying to move to a new platform. And if they think it is bad trying to convert 5 years of data locked up in excel format, think of all the fun of converting 10 years worth of data.
Re:Windows done right from the ground up
on
Fresh Air For Windows?
·
· Score: 4, Informative
WinCE done right?
I have written some software on the WinCE platform. It is NOT windows done right. Lets start with the evolution of the platform. It was designed for displays like 600x300. Full menus and dialogs. The OS has no concept of a "current directory". Every file has to be specified from the root of the drive every time. They figured the devices would have a touch display so no need for a mouse. So the standard Windows mouse API was ripped out. Essentially the only thing left was is a click or double click either left or right and where on screen it happened at.
They then "re-imaged" it to compete with Palm. So now it is redesigned to work on a device that is 240x320. The menu is at the top of the device. The pop up keyboard soft-input-device (sip) pops up from the bottom. There are issues with a window getting in the background not being able to be brought to the foreground.
Now we "re-image" again for the smart phone. With an even smaller display. Microsoft decides that a mouse is needed again. So they create a brand new API for dealing with a mouse, instead of using the win32 api
If you think the win95-98 api vs the Win NT code base api wars were a problem. Now kick it up a notch. Take your pick, drawing graphics, initializing windows, dealing with the SIP. What ever fun I had dealing with the Win32 API was ground out of me when I started working on WinCE
You want proof? Why did Microsoft extend the life of Windows XP for 3 more years for UMPC style devices to compete with Linux? Because WinCE in any incarnation is not up to the job. Microsoft is not even trying to pretend anyone will want it on a UMPC style device.
According to the complaint, Scott McMullan, a senior executive in the Google Apps partner program, told LimitNone that the potential for 50 million users - was "just too big to come from someone else" and that "this is how Google operates."
There are at least 6 billion people on that planet and more than 50% of them are female. That means I have the potential to sleep with more than 3 billion women. There is a big difference between having potential and actually closing the deal.
Even with 50 million users, not all of them have mail in outlook. Some that do, don't care if they lose it. Then there are those that continue to use outlooks imap to connect to gmail, etc, etc, etc.
If I had to guess. Google probably decided it could spend a million or two to buy something now instead of having to build it. So they talked to several companies that had software that could do the job. Somewhere along the lines of "Hey what can pay to get your converter so we can rebrand it". They probably vetted these companies with questions like what protocol do you use for the transfers, how many emails an hour can it import, etc. In the long run, they did not get picked and are now calling sour grapes.
They can allege anything they like. If you read SCO's press releases and their court filings you would be certain that IBM had chiselled SCO. But as you know, once all of the facts are known, it is quite a different story.
Of course, the only real problem here is that we don't trust Microsoft to work well within the system
Surely you are not talking about the Microsoft who was a member of the Software industry anti-piracy group back in the late 80's. The group published an "ethics" standard statement that their members would follow.
The hope was that if the industry treated the customer fairly and allowed them to do things with their software they may want to do. Like make backups and such. Customers would be happy, would continue to buy software and they could still do some things to discourage piracy.
As it turns out. Once Microsoft saw the list of ethical practices, they pulled out of the organization and started the Business Software Alliance (BSA). I would expect as soon as things don't go their way, they will bail.
Who wants Windows Mobile? Windows Mobile is not Windows. If it was, Microsoft would be going on the eeePC. But it is not because you can't run Windows software on it. You have to run software especially written for it.
Of course there is linux that scales from a 486 processor on up to an eeePC on up to a quad core P4. Same software will run on the entire line. Even moving from x86 to ARM or PowerPC is not a deal brekaer.
MS are very effective lobbyists, often paying vendors to install their awful OS so they can then charge users for all those silly upgrades
I think Microsoft's days are numbered at doing this. They are big on sponsoring research into cool new tech. Now I realize that all they were doing was making sure there would be a new stream of expensive laptops and computers to "hide" the price of the OS in. After all $200.00 of Windows is easier to hide on a $1000.00 system than on a $500.00 system.
Market forces want to make the PC a commodity product. They hardware wants to be commodity. Microsoft is fighting the OS being commodity.
Once it is made available, people will want 9 or 10 inch touch screens at 1024x768, 16gig solid state drives, 8 to 12 hour battery life. What ever OS will let that puppy do wireless and browse the internet at $300.00 or less will eventually win the day
A Cartel http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cartel works until someone inside of it realizes that there is a lot of money to be had by being the FIRST company to bail on it and sell at a lower price. It is only a matter of time till it is financially advantageous to skip Microsoft. To produce cheap hardware with just the right mix of features. Such as anything on Microsoft list of "thou shalt not do this and be able to load XP home on a laptop".
I'm actually a bit sad that the EFF won on this case. Because if it hadn't of been overturned, you could label "anything" as no-resale and send it to someone. Like, you know, that giant pile of bricks or the entire output of a nuclear reactor and mail it to the RIAA.
Since they have not asked for it, you can still send all of those things to the RIAA as a gift.
Really, the "contract" isn't as much of a hassle as you make it out to be. All it has to be is a one-liner in any other sort of "sign-up" or agreement saying that you want to sign up for promos but won't sell them.
But remember, those who get air play are those who had their promo heard. Those who had their promo herd, are those who sent it out unsolicited. If they ask for any level of commitment they will lose business to those who don't ask. Thus everyone in the business would like to have the thing singed, but would like everyone else to be doing it before they come on board. It ain't going to happen.
I can see why WinCE would not be offered. It is NOT ready for a knock down drag out fight with Linux.
I am not sure why they dont offer MicroXP? Maybe they think this XP thing is a fluke and if they don't encourage it to much it will go away?
Even trimmed down, I don't see that Vista with Anti-virus protection loaded running on a 1gig of ram would be very usable. And forget about 512k. I remember seeing XP on 128 megs of ram and it was not a pretty sight.
Then again no one is making a UMPC with 800x768 128megs of ram, 1gig of flash memory and puppy linux.
I take it you did go out of your way to make waves.
I believe the problem is when you stand up and scream you are an atheist and want everyone else to change what they are doing to do it your way, is when there are problems.
I think for the most part when you are "different" from a group of people and you elect to be involved with them. That you will be accepted as long as you try to fit in and look for common ground. As opposed to stressing how you are different and they should change who they are, what they have always done, and what they believe so as to make you happy.
So, at this point, I have to wonder whether Microsoft is going to try to converge WinCE code with Vista code for Windows 7 to have a single OS that can run on phones / UMPCs / netbooks / laptops / desktops (or at least the same codebase even if CPUs aren't the same)
Microsofts choices are few
They can keep selling XP on small devices. But linux is still capable of being scaled down further. Where it goes XP can not follow.
WinCE cant run real Windows XP software. It does not even compare to what can be run in Linux. No body wants CE. Microsoft has not even offered it as a choice.
Vista and Windows Seven are two heavy
Microsoft would be forced to write a new OS or bring back windows 98. WinCE is too different under the hood. It does not even have the concept of "current directory". Microsoft stripped out the mouse API, then realized when it was time to work on smartphones that they needed a mouse API. So did you add it back in. No, they wrote a new API incompatible with the win32 api. They are not going to be able to merge WinCE and Windows Vista.
Hopefully Windows's next version might be something more like XP.
I would not hold my breath on that one. We know that the next version of Windows will: 1. Not be based on miniwin 2. Is going to be pushed out the door done or not in about 18 to 24 months. 3. Is going to come in both 32 and 64 bit flavors. 4. Will be able to use all Vista drivers.
With that kind of time frame and having two code bases. There is a limit to what Microsoft can get done. Since they are sticking with Vista drivers. The kernel is going to be close to what we have now.
So what can we expect? 1. A face lift of the UI 2. UAC will work better. 3. Improvement in networking. 4. No real improvement in performace. 5. Whatever insane idea marketing or management has could break items 1-3 and exacerbate 4 and cause other harm as well.
Microsoft is hoping that: 1. People can't hold out another six years for Windows Eight. 2. That Moores law will help them on the performance side and 3. Four years of Vista drivers and plenty of compatible printers and other hardware will make people accept this new OS.
The big selling point that marketing has will be that all the hardware out there will be "Windows Eight" compatible. Of course it will also be the "Most secure version of windows ever". (I am so glad that Microsoft had their windows programmers shutdown for a year and do nothing but review code for security problems)
Lets not forget if you are on an admin account and run an installer UAC asks for a password before performing the install. Sometimes an install done like this does not work. Even if you give the end user admin rights. You have right click on the installer and do a "Run As" to get a good install. Whoever says that UAC is like sudo in Linux or the admin prompts in linux/MacOS has no idea what they are talking about.
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If you have years of slackware experience, why would you need a "user friendly" distro?
Package management rocks. Large, hiqh quality package repositories rock even more.
On Slackware I can have the system I want after 3 days of configuring, compiling and hunting down dependencies. I don't know maybe 30 or 40 programs, plus the little things to be configured, dev rules to be added, etc.
Now I use the *buntu family distros. All my hardware is new enough, I don't really notice a difference in performance. The bug to configuration ratio is low. For instance. In Ubuntu auto-creation of mount points just work. But I have to create my own Midnight Commander profile for Konqueror. Not a big deal. In Slackware, I get the Midnight Commander profile for Konqueror. But I have to write my own udev rules and configure things to get automounting to work. Ubuntu makes my life easier.
There are only 4 or 5 programs I have to compile by hand in Ubuntu. (To bad I am addicted to dock apps). Everything is in the repos or the software maintainer has an *buntu deb package on their site.
I like slack but Ubuntu lets me spend more time working. I hate to say it, but in my experience. Usability bugs for desktop users are more likely to be worked out in Ubuntu than in Slackware.
Agreed - I tried Linux because I wanted a desktop that had similar capabilities as the systems I administer at work - Solaris, AIX, and Red Hat Enterprise Linux. I went and bought a Mac because I was sick of constantly tweaking my Fedora install to keep it running. If Linux supporters think MacOS is anything but a direct competitor to Linux on the desktop, you're fooling yourself.
Yes, but the cost of linux is as low as free. THe hardware linux can be run on is more varied than the Mac. People can leverage their investment in other hardware. Also the removal of the stigma that "Everyone runs Windows" wont hurt. After all. If you can approach any group of people and it turns out 7 run window, 2 mac and 1 linux. Linux is much less strange.Than it is now. Which is Lin what?
And for all the people postulating that somehow MacOS' increased market share will lead to an "increased awareness of cross-platform portability," don't hold your breath. What you will be far more likely to see is that more software vendors will port their major products to Mac OS, and stop there.
That depends on lots of things. If you chose the right platform, it is not much harder to code something for Win-lin-mac than it is to just port to the mac. Also, "cloud" computing is having an effect. The more things that run in the browser, the less concern there is over what OS is under the browser.
It is not all a bed of roses over there on the mac. Adobe has already stopped development on the Mac. If you want to run the next version of photoshop, you had better bootcamp over to XP. It will be the "free software" folks that will have a Mac version of wine that will let you run PhotoShop. Not ment as a dig. I just would not count out people who like free software and run Linux.
Software is going full circle. Back in the 70's the home computer crowd shared all of their software for free. Then in the early 80's Gates ran around and told them the only way these computers would catch on would be if people could profit from writing software. In the early 90's RMSs talk about free software and those who always held with PD software started coding more ambitions projects. Now in the 00's the circle is coming back around again. More and more free software, for those that choose to run it.
Besides Linux is not going away. As long as there are geeks who love to take care of it and use it. As long as there are those who believe in running free software. As long as there are those who are to cheep to run anything else. There will be Linux.
If you want a Virtual desktop that does not suck or get in the way. Try Secretly.
I have not run it on Vista. But I have used it extensively on XP. It is wicked fast at changing desktops. It has no user interface (it is keyboard driven). Which works out well. All of the graphical virtual desktop pagers I have seen in Windows suck.
Usage is not bad either. Unzip it to a folder you want to keep it in. I use C:\Program Files\Secretly. Log out and back in or reboot. You will need to hit F11 to start using it.
As I have said, it is wicked fast for changing desktops. So far it is the only virtual desktop program that has been fast enough at switching deskops, does not have teh gay pager that gets in the way and has sane keyboard navigation.
Mandatory reference.
Thank you for taking my last comment as a joke, because that is how it was meant.
It really is a problem. There is one Internet that you will experience if you give away no personal data, i.e. cookies, ip address, name, credit card numbers, etc.
There is second Internet you will experience if you provide this information. Web sites making recommendations to you. Google being able to sift through information and show you just what you are interested in, that kind of thing
Then there is the third Internet, the dark side of the second Internet where parties have collected all sorts of information about you and use it in all kinds of unscrupulous (albiet legal) maners.
It is a brave new world
Not really a free advert for Live Search although I do use both - at least in part because I don't want to give Google too much information...just my very small part in keeping them from total domination
You should be careful when adjusting the tin foil around the ears, if it crinkles it does not provide proper protection.
While Microsoft not having a new OS to call attention to besides Vista is a factor for Micorsoft over the next 18 months or so. I think Apple makes their own luck. Every time they put out a new sexy product like the iPod, the Nano or the iPhone they suck the oxygen right out of the room on Microsoft.
What products Apple puts out in the next 18 months and people perception of Apple will have more to due with Apples share of the PC market in 18 months than anything Microsoft does or does not do.
With that being said, at some point I do believe that Microsoft will say they need to focus on their "core business" and will not be able to maintain a version of Microsoft office for Mac. Unless Openoffice or Google docs are to big of a deal then. After all, they don't want to give away 10% of the market.
We in the FOSS community are building Moonlight on Mono, which besides have teh gay name is a feature incomplete at least one version back of Microsoft dot net.
Then on top of that we build Moonlight off the spec for one version back of Silverlight.
Then we pray that Microsoft "does not alter the deal any farther" and go after Moonlight or Mono. Even if Microsoft could not win in court, just them filing suit or getting an injunction would kill Mono and Moonlight.
We are coming along. Time well tell how good of an idea this switch was in the long run
I like the idea of folder views. Being able to have one folder view of all .log files via an ssh fish connection. Another folder view showing all photos I have tagged as "Vacation 2008". What we really need is a Meta Folder View. I.E. I can drop 2 or 3 folder views inside of it and they will all act like one folder. This way, for instance you could have all projects you are working on from different network shares show up in ONE folderview.
Once the folder view thing can be transparent, thus revealing the background below, the distros can fix the icon issue.
All they have to do, by default is set up one folder view that covers the whole desktop and has a few icons on it to get the user started. That way folks who expect the old behavior get it. Those who know better, can do what they want.
There should be some kind of wizard or easy way to get back to having this "default" view. Maybe even hard-wired in to KDE 4.
Additional properties for the "background" of the folder view. Should be the ability to set a color, gradient, background image and to control the opaqueness. You could also toss in there if you just "see through" to the desktop directly or can see other folders/applets, etc below the current folder view.
Excel as the presentation layer, which is much, much safer. You build a web site that pumps the data out of the database, create Excel sheets dynamically, and you got a lot of happy Excel junkies.
It should be possible to use Openoffice Calc or gnumeric as the client for this presentation layer.
Wise man say building all corporate data on excel spreadhseets is building a house of cards.
Seriously, there are issues to using excel for data. Corruption being one. Companies often have no clue what they are doing as they build this house of cards. Links to files include hard coded server names. If you replace a server or move any data things break. Yes it can be prevented. But still, not everyone knows how to do this.
Corporations that build everything on excel will experience Microsoft Vendor Lock-In (tm). That includes being tied to Microsoft Vista and Microsoft Windows 7. Depending on how bad that is. It may be no fun at all trying to move to a new platform. And if they think it is bad trying to convert 5 years of data locked up in excel format, think of all the fun of converting 10 years worth of data.
WinCE done right?
I have written some software on the WinCE platform. It is NOT windows done right. Lets start with the evolution of the platform. It was designed for displays like 600x300. Full menus and dialogs. The OS has no concept of a "current directory". Every file has to be specified from the root of the drive every time. They figured the devices would have a touch display so no need for a mouse. So the standard Windows mouse API was ripped out. Essentially the only thing left was is a click or double click either left or right and where on screen it happened at.
They then "re-imaged" it to compete with Palm. So now it is redesigned to work on a device that is 240x320. The menu is at the top of the device. The pop up keyboard soft-input-device (sip) pops up from the bottom. There are issues with a window getting in the background not being able to be brought to the foreground.
Now we "re-image" again for the smart phone. With an even smaller display. Microsoft decides that a mouse is needed again. So they create a brand new API for dealing with a mouse, instead of using the win32 api
If you think the win95-98 api vs the Win NT code base api wars were a problem. Now kick it up a notch. Take your pick, drawing graphics, initializing windows, dealing with the SIP. What ever fun I had dealing with the Win32 API was ground out of me when I started working on WinCE
You want proof? Why did Microsoft extend the life of Windows XP for 3 more years for UMPC style devices to compete with Linux? Because WinCE in any incarnation is not up to the job. Microsoft is not even trying to pretend anyone will want it on a UMPC style device.
There are at least 6 billion people on that planet and more than 50% of them are female. That means I have the potential to sleep with more than 3 billion women. There is a big difference between having potential and actually closing the deal.
Even with 50 million users, not all of them have mail in outlook. Some that do, don't care if they lose it. Then there are those that continue to use outlooks imap to connect to gmail, etc, etc, etc.
If I had to guess. Google probably decided it could spend a million or two to buy something now instead of having to build it. So they talked to several companies that had software that could do the job. Somewhere along the lines of "Hey what can pay to get your converter so we can rebrand it". They probably vetted these companies with questions like what protocol do you use for the transfers, how many emails an hour can it import, etc. In the long run, they did not get picked and are now calling sour grapes.
They can allege anything they like. If you read SCO's press releases and their court filings you would be certain that IBM had chiselled SCO. But as you know, once all of the facts are known, it is quite a different story.
Surely you are not talking about the Microsoft who was a member of the Software industry anti-piracy group back in the late 80's. The group published an "ethics" standard statement that their members would follow.
The hope was that if the industry treated the customer fairly and allowed them to do things with their software they may want to do. Like make backups and such. Customers would be happy, would continue to buy software and they could still do some things to discourage piracy.
As it turns out. Once Microsoft saw the list of ethical practices, they pulled out of the organization and started the Business Software Alliance (BSA). I would expect as soon as things don't go their way, they will bail.
Who wants Windows Mobile? Windows Mobile is not Windows. If it was, Microsoft would be going on the eeePC. But it is not because you can't run Windows software on it. You have to run software especially written for it.
Of course there is linux that scales from a 486 processor on up to an eeePC on up to a quad core P4. Same software will run on the entire line. Even moving from x86 to ARM or PowerPC is not a deal brekaer.
It was actually the trade show Computex.
I think Microsoft's days are numbered at doing this. They are big on sponsoring research into cool new tech. Now I realize that all they were doing was making sure there would be a new stream of expensive laptops and computers to "hide" the price of the OS in. After all $200.00 of Windows is easier to hide on a $1000.00 system than on a $500.00 system.
Market forces want to make the PC a commodity product. They hardware wants to be commodity. Microsoft is fighting the OS being commodity.
Once it is made available, people will want 9 or 10 inch touch screens at 1024x768, 16gig solid state drives, 8 to 12 hour battery life. What ever OS will let that puppy do wireless and browse the internet at $300.00 or less will eventually win the day
A Cartel http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cartel works until someone inside of it realizes that there is a lot of money to be had by being the FIRST company to bail on it and sell at a lower price. It is only a matter of time till it is financially advantageous to skip Microsoft. To produce cheap hardware with just the right mix of features. Such as anything on Microsoft list of "thou shalt not do this and be able to load XP home on a laptop".
Since they have not asked for it, you can still send all of those things to the RIAA as a gift.
But remember, those who get air play are those who had their promo heard. Those who had their promo herd, are those who sent it out unsolicited. If they ask for any level of commitment they will lose business to those who don't ask. Thus everyone in the business would like to have the thing singed, but would like everyone else to be doing it before they come on board. It ain't going to happen.
I can see why WinCE would not be offered. It is NOT ready for a knock down drag out fight with Linux.
I am not sure why they dont offer MicroXP? Maybe they think this XP thing is a fluke and if they don't encourage it to much it will go away?
Even trimmed down, I don't see that Vista with Anti-virus protection loaded running on a 1gig of ram would be very usable. And forget about 512k. I remember seeing XP on 128 megs of ram and it was not a pretty sight.
Then again no one is making a UMPC with 800x768 128megs of ram, 1gig of flash memory and puppy linux.
I take it you did go out of your way to make waves.
I believe the problem is when you stand up and scream you are an atheist and want everyone else to change what they are doing to do it your way, is when there are problems.
I think for the most part when you are "different" from a group of people and you elect to be involved with them. That you will be accepted as long as you try to fit in and look for common ground. As opposed to stressing how you are different and they should change who they are, what they have always done, and what they believe so as to make you happy.
Microsofts choices are few
They can keep selling XP on small devices. But linux is still capable of being scaled down further. Where it goes XP can not follow.
WinCE cant run real Windows XP software. It does not even compare to what can be run in Linux. No body wants CE. Microsoft has not even offered it as a choice.
Vista and Windows Seven are two heavy
Microsoft would be forced to write a new OS or bring back windows 98. WinCE is too different under the hood. It does not even have the concept of "current directory". Microsoft stripped out the mouse API, then realized when it was time to work on smartphones that they needed a mouse API. So did you add it back in. No, they wrote a new API incompatible with the win32 api. They are not going to be able to merge WinCE and Windows Vista.
I would not hold my breath on that one. We know that the next version of Windows will: 1. Not be based on miniwin 2. Is going to be pushed out the door done or not in about 18 to 24 months. 3. Is going to come in both 32 and 64 bit flavors. 4. Will be able to use all Vista drivers.
With that kind of time frame and having two code bases. There is a limit to what Microsoft can get done. Since they are sticking with Vista drivers. The kernel is going to be close to what we have now.
So what can we expect? 1. A face lift of the UI 2. UAC will work better. 3. Improvement in networking. 4. No real improvement in performace. 5. Whatever insane idea marketing or management has could break items 1-3 and exacerbate 4 and cause other harm as well.
Microsoft is hoping that: 1. People can't hold out another six years for Windows Eight. 2. That Moores law will help them on the performance side and 3. Four years of Vista drivers and plenty of compatible printers and other hardware will make people accept this new OS.
The big selling point that marketing has will be that all the hardware out there will be "Windows Eight" compatible. Of course it will also be the "Most secure version of windows ever". (I am so glad that Microsoft had their windows programmers shutdown for a year and do nothing but review code for security problems)
Lets not forget if you are on an admin account and run an installer UAC asks for a password before performing the install. Sometimes an install done like this does not work. Even if you give the end user admin rights. You have right click on the installer and do a "Run As" to get a good install. Whoever says that UAC is like sudo in Linux or the admin prompts in linux/MacOS has no idea what they are talking about.