It's simple- if you are capable of looking at real-world effects rather than just hypothetical ideals.
Because of Microsoft's size, position, and traditional approach, there is virtually nothing they CAN do that won't cause damage to the computer industry (defined as 'anybody else'), if not in the short term then in the long term. Microsoft's needs are incompatible with many things ordinary citizens might see as important.
Now, you can be hired by them and rationalize this, deciding 'we make the best everything, therefore we SHOULD be the ones controlling things', or you can refuse to consider the idea, choosing to avoid the situation. But you can't get around the fact that for Microsoft to expand further from a position of roughly 95% domination of an important technology sector, the only way for them to continue to get bigger is to begin seriously stepping on people's toes. It is NOT possible to expand further from that by being nicey nicey. Normal markets don't give you that big a slice of the pie- in fact it rather stops a market dynamic from developing at all.
So there IS nothing Microsoft can do that can be considered decent, from this point. If they sue hackers, right, that's considered evil. If they buy up all the hackers? They're impoverishing computing itself, and the ideas of those people may never see daylight- especially if those ideas have the effect of empowering people in virtually any way. There's not much in the way of new ideas that would directly benefit Microsoft- they're already sucking maximum money out of OEMs and consumers and to expand beyond that really limits the scope of possible inventions. Too many inventions could lead to more efficient computer use and potentially reduce the payment to Microsoft- the only ones allowed to survive are ones that would somehow make people pay even more, and that's very difficult.
That's why Microsoft hiring people (even talented people- ESPECIALLY talented people) is not good either.
Unless you're ready to argue that Microsoft's prepared to diminish its influence and become less influential and powerful?
Ampcast.com is the best model for that (in a realistic sense). My URL links to it. I guess I'm saying 'we already have that', and until music is less dead I for one am happy with it:D
If they are telling the truth, it doesn't matter how biased they might be. They could believe in black helicopters and Elvis sightings for all it would matter. The question is: is the information they put forth accurate? If so, then Intel is indeed yanking people's chains with benchmarks (as a Mac dude I can't repress a 'oh, THAT'S a surprise' reaction) and the bias is in how the site draws conclusions from this, and how loudly they remind people of stuff like the class action suit over misleading performance claims for the P4.
Which, surprise surprise, they do indeed remind people of! And if this is true, they'd be right that it was a smoking gun w.r.t. that lawsuit, too.
Let them go on being an AMD fanboy site. I don't see INTEL fanboy sites breaking this story.
Oh come on, there SHOULD be a Libertarian rep in Congress. My state, Vermont, has a Socialist:) that's our Bernie Sanders. He's been upsetting some of the antiwar leftists in recent years but he's about as strongly anti-corporate-abuses and pro campaign reform as Nader- except he IS in office, and we're keeping 'im (Bernie is well liked in Vermont- he's our guy, not Disney's guy or whatever)
I see no reason why there shouldn't be a Libertarian in Congress- and some types of libertarianism I see as about the worst, most destructive thing out there. Interestingly, Tara seems not to be following out the libertarian philosophy to its extremes regardless of the result- for instance, she seems to be privy to some information about FedEx moving into her state and apparently hosing the state pretty good in some way, and she sides with the people who live there, rather than the corporation. She could just as easily have gone the other way, and to my mind this is encouraging that she isn't.
I've seen a poster excoriate her for not being Libertarian enough. Good! Good for her. I'd excoriate her for not being socialist enough, but eh- even if she's not I think she deserves to be in the House and would be an asset. And it sounds like she researches stuff rather than just philosophizing, which is more valuable still.
Now what would really be cool is if she got in, and ended up being able to work with Bernie, Vermont's Socialist congressman. He's about as capital S socialist as she is capital L libertarian, so maybe they'd have an easy time finding common ground on the many issues that they agree strongly on:)
This is nice- it's basically one simple message (or could be):
"We're all in favor of RIAA's LEGAL efforts to deter music copying, BUT they have stated intent to trespass on our users' computer systems and hack them. We don't feel they have any right to commit this crime, so we're blocking whatever avenues we can identify as potential hacking attempts."
Just spin it as, "RIAA want to hack and trespass, we can't allow that". Who could get in trouble for wanting to protect their users against hacking and trespass?
Ironically, I have used RIAA's website to good effect in the past. If you're doing statistical analysis of popular music, their gold/platinum database is useful. Full of junk and bad data, but still, it's on the internet available to all. But- it's not worth letting the RIAA crack your machine. Call it collateral damage:)
Is this really surprising? Instead of making him out to be a bad guy, it would be useful for Slashdot people in general to look at, and think about, Declan's basic principles, with an eye to whether they work practically.
I'm specifically thinking of his libertarian (randite?) streak. To him, it is self-evident that people must go through life striving to the best of their abilities, making intelligent appraisals of the situation, and standing up for what is right. If people all did this, he would be right, and the DMCA would not be as effective as the EFF fears it is.
The trouble is, this is asking human beings for superhuman performances. You cannot be informed and intelligent on every subject under the sun. You cannot stake everything on every little problem that comes along. You prioritize, your brain tunes out certain things, you are basically HUMAN and not Superman or Hank Rearden (iirc)
When you look at the world from the perspective of: people's information isn't perfect and never will be, people will take the easier softer way some of the time, and the world functions with an awareness of this... at that point, Declan sounds like a lunatic. It's the Randite fallacy (also common to some libertarians), that you can have perfect logical judgement and expect others to have it.
Because that is nonsense (ask a hypnotist! such as Scott Adams who does 'Dilbert'!), society has to pose some form of protection for people who are stupid, or who are smart but not in the area they're dealing with. You make regulations so busy computer programmers don't distractedly buy green meat, eat it, and die. And you don't make laws like the DMCA that allow corporations to 'chill' virtually anything by threatening legal action and counting on the fact that few people really value the defense of abstract concepts over their own livelihoods and freedoms. People cave. It's not unforgivable for people to cave- but that's how DMCA works, by preying on the majority of people who are not ready to be imprisoned in defense of abstract concepts...
Declan's seriously wrong, and anyone reading this who holds the same notions of 'enlightened self' popular among libertarians needs to look at whether that is really a practical goal. It's a fine target to strive for, but you don't go around mandating it and expecting it of others- or even yourself!
Microsoft is _nothing_ to Apple in terms of mastering this stuff (and the MS fonts are pretty uninspired considering that there are thousands of Adobe Postscript fonts as good or better).
Yes, it does indeed matter, but what gives anyone the idea that Microsoft is the heavyweight in THIS field? All their stuff is toys compared to professional typography, publishing and layout. Odds are you wouldn't even be USING Truetype for professional publishing.
And if I'm not mistaken, doesn't Linux already have Postscript? As in 'ghostscript'?
Well, if people are eventually driven to the final desperation of flying a loaded airliner into Steve Ballmer, at least it won't be for lack of effort to fight off their constant all-out assault in other ways.
There was a time when Microsoft had to _struggle_ to appease user groups- MUGs, for instance, Mac user groups. The fact that now they can just sort of mass produce them is no sign of a healthy computing environment. It does illustrate that Microsoft are getting disturbingly good at orchestrating every factor of public life that touches them, but that's no blessing either.
Good point! Microsoft are rolling sunk costs into their estimate of the costs of XBox- anything to inflate what it's 'worth'. I would bet money that they are already turning a profit on the units (writing off sunk costs), if it was at all possible to get at the truth- you only have Microsoft's word, so no bet, they lie.
I also love the way some posters are arguing passionately that hacker use of XBox hurts Microsoft anyhow because games aren't being sold that way, and gaming companies look at console/game ratios. They're using this as justification to advocate ubitiquous use of XBox as a generic PC-like computing device. Where does Microsoft want to go with XBox and XBox2? Ubitiquous use as a generic PC-like computing device. Way to GO, guys- you're out-turfing the real Astroturf. *clap, clap, clap...*
Re:Summary of functionality
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"This is stupid business. Selling at a loss only makes sense if the purchaser can't use the
product
without a recuring cost."
Since Microsoft isn't stupid, the conclusion is obvious:
Microsoft is lying about their losing money on the XBox, to make it seem more costly and expensive than it actually is.
Which is more likely: Microsoft is stupid and honest, or Microsoft are cunning and lie? Think, people.
Re:Doofus enlightenment attempt
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I'm considering the act of foolish people paying Microsoft hundreds of dollars. Yup, THAT'LL help.
The Indrema vision was 'pay money to Microsoft and inflate their market share figures'?
Re:Imagine a beowulf cluster of these...
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Have you priced Celerons lately?
No. Seriously. You've been listening to Microsoft astroturf too much. The best you could say is it's not much worse than generic PC building for the purpose, plus you get elaborate GFX hardware you won't have APIs to use. But it'll still suck power and produce heat, causing problems for you in your cluster building.
Microsoft needs to expand beyond business, because there's not that much farther they can go WITHIN business. On the one hand BSA work, on the other hand this. Microsoft are getting into government and this is the most obvious move in the world.
Technically, he's right. In the situation Microsoft would like to make common, Microsoft doesn't sell, it leases.
If you don't own the thing, you haven't purchased it and the purchasing cost can be zero. You're just paying X$ per month/year/whatever, and when you stop, they shut everything off.
I don't think that guy has ever run a business. Do you know how tough it is to sell a million of anything? It's like those jokes:
1: record some music
2: ???
3: sell a million!
Never mind that 'platinum' is an RIAA certification...
I sound very negative, here. I don't mean to- it's just that this area, I know. I may not target pop demographics with my music but I know the rules... and you've got to come up with more attainable goals.
There's people out there really dedicated to building alternatives to RIAA distribution. You'll see in my URL above that I use one of them- Ampcast- not RIAA, not publically held, out there making this happen and with a long history of tough decisions well met. They are not a 'free mp3 hosting-???-profit!' site: you pay for them, but they beat what even most Slashdotters would be able to come up with, due to the range of services including the CD burn-to-order system, and the ability to get a UPC code for your CD much more cheaply than if you tried to get one yourself.
More importantly, they're a business- they do what they have to, to keep their independence so they can continue to offer musicians distribution that doesn't involve signing over your music to Vivendi (hint: mp3.com). They had to switch from free ad-supported to a paid hosting service, and musicians FREAKED and swore and you know what? Other free services have died and Ampcast is still around and hasn't altered its terms of service to make an IP grab on people's music. And some of the musicians who swore went out and tried to roll their own package of services, and got bills ten times the size of what Ampcast asks, and came back saying 'oops, hello again'- welcomed back, too.
I'm an online musician myself. I've had slashdotters write and say 'really liked your music, thanks'. I'd love to go 'yay! Yes, give ME that million sales!'. Certainly not turning people away- but that idea is not realistic. I can tell you, I don't care WHO you pick, it's not going to happen that way.
Better if some of you go out and shoot for TEN sales- hell, go out and shoot for 'my music is out there, distributed, buyable as a CD, all without use of any RIAA distribution channels'. More people need to be able to say that. I swear by Ampcast for that, but if you don't like Ampcast (or JavaMusic, or ElectronicScene) then get out there and roll your own! Might cost you more, you risk screwing up and going out of business, but I can't think of a better way to respond.
It _is_ possible to go up against the majors when they're weak- Motown happened that way, plus it was black-owned in an era where that was almost unthinkable. But you don't plan to sell a million- your plans are the details of how you do that, the million is the desired effect. Keep trying.
That's good, yes- though I have to say, if you have ways in, which are locked by the computer (disabled) then it's just a matter of coming up with a way to make them ENabled and *plook*
There's something to be said for not even having the ways there at all, if you're not going to use them. Classic MacOS using non-MS internet apps (never mind WebStar servers) was very tough to do anything to through online viruses. It was just possible that you could get THE USER to go to a website or something, and get THE USER to actively download the virus vehicle, which would unstuff automatically but not run unless THE USER went and actually doubleclicked on the sucker- at which point they've gone to so much effort that you might as well let them be infected:)
I remember when the "Good Times" virus was a hot topic of conversation, and hotly dehoaxed by all and sundry. There was no such thing as an email virus! Now, thanks to Microsoft, more than 99% of my email that passes antispam filtering is email viruses. This is partly because I've had the same email address since something like 1996, maintain a web site, and am pretty well known in some circles... but it's still disgusting, and yes, I do blame "let's make APIs to automatedly send mail to everyone in the address book, or any subset thereof" Microsoft.
Somehow I don't see them using Palladium as a means to change email to a 'telephone' like, manually-write-to-one-person-at-a-time model. I do expect they'll be ready to facilitate commercial bulk mailing, though. "opt-in! opt-in!"
Well, I wrote it and I thought two 'insightful' moderations were absurd:D that wasn't about getting mod points, I just read the guy's journal and have followed his evolution from apparently an insufferable teen star to the #1 ranking slashdot linux geek in Hollywood.
Hollywood. Perspectives. Wil Wheaton, or Jack Valenti. Which do YOU choose? if you DON'T choose Wil, I suggest -1 GET_A_FSCKING_CLUE_IDIOT:D
They would have to be willing to have less features than earlier versions of Windows, and less features than any clown who came along promising to automate all your IT chores with one click- remotely! from thousands of miles away! just one click and it slices, dices, and builds you a secure web site!
In other words, it ain't the locks, it's the keys- and MS got where they are by selling people on ease of everything. To do that, they laid the foundations for insecurity hell, and to get away from that, they have to make things more difficult for idiot users.
It's a very good question whether they'll be willing to do this.
"If American soldiers came over to another country and killed/kidnapped someone there would be hell to pay (ignoring Afganistan lol)."
But they do, and there is, including Afghanistan. *blink*
Sorry, OT:) wait, let me try to work it into context somehow;)
...sooooo, what if American soldiers came over to another country to kill/kidnap someone at the behest of Microsoft because they were compromising Palladium and thus endangering computer security all over the US, nay, the world?:D
Old school MacOS didn't have as many scripting and automation capabilities as the horribly vulnerable Windows (w. Microsoft internet software). When it did, it got bit. Quicktime added a feature basically from Windows, at one point- auto-start CD-Roms. This immediately got used as a virus vector, and the 'Autostart worm' became a major problem. You had to turn the 'autostart' Quicktime feature off to be immune from it.
It's got very little to do with mass of users- when there was a virus vector, believe me, it got hit. It's just that MacOS was always less wide open to attack than Windows w. MS apps.
If Microsoft wanted to make Palladium bulletproof from viruses, they'd have to make it so you do everything manually, by yourself, possibly with 'wizards' or whatever to help you. Nothing would be automated, least of all system-level scripting running off email or Web content (ye GODS who came up with that?). Trying to set up security levels is only asking for hacking: the only way to be truly secure is to not have the capacity to be infected.
Like old MacOS with WebStar: gee, you could root that box if it didn't have all the remote admin capability of a _toaster_... outta luck!
If you want a computer system that cannot be buggered, build one without an *ahem*;)
No, when I say "You simply cannot reduce all of life to free market economics and expect it to work. You only get insane, pathological results- Gates is only the most egregious, as well as being an object lesson in motivation- do you believe for one second that the guy would mellow out if his 'wage' was capped at, oh, one billion? Only people with neither money nor the tenacity to make money believe that- they want to believe in Santa Claus. "Maybe the money fairy will give ME 30 billion dollars some day, how would I feel then?""... when I say that, the point I am making is that Bill is not worth half the money printed in the US per year all by himself. He's not! That's crazy.
If you are seeing that happen (and you are) that is no endorsement of any economic or political system. It is a big red flag that something is horribly wrong- like 'valuations' of dot-com companies, and you know what happened to those? When the 'real world' is giving you results that are stark raving insane, that means something's gonna blow, that something is BROKEN somewhere. In this case, what is broken is the notion that any one person has a legitimate claim to be worth more than 2/3 the money in the Federal Reserve.
Your randroid-baiting with regard to 'wah, taxes are too big' is not relevant or useful either. Maybe your taxes are bigger than they need to be because guys like Gates are not supporting society to the extent of their ability to do so.
Seeing as I have been a humble Mac user since WAY before it was hip and fashionable, I suggest that voting with your money doesn't accomplish as much as you think it does. MS didn't need my money to armtwist PC OEMS and ISPs. They did it anyway without any help from me.
(argh- someone mind modding down the all-italic one please?:P )
Slashdot Mirror
Because of Microsoft's size, position, and traditional approach, there is virtually nothing they CAN do that won't cause damage to the computer industry (defined as 'anybody else'), if not in the short term then in the long term. Microsoft's needs are incompatible with many things ordinary citizens might see as important.
Now, you can be hired by them and rationalize this, deciding 'we make the best everything, therefore we SHOULD be the ones controlling things', or you can refuse to consider the idea, choosing to avoid the situation. But you can't get around the fact that for Microsoft to expand further from a position of roughly 95% domination of an important technology sector, the only way for them to continue to get bigger is to begin seriously stepping on people's toes. It is NOT possible to expand further from that by being nicey nicey. Normal markets don't give you that big a slice of the pie- in fact it rather stops a market dynamic from developing at all.
So there IS nothing Microsoft can do that can be considered decent, from this point. If they sue hackers, right, that's considered evil. If they buy up all the hackers? They're impoverishing computing itself, and the ideas of those people may never see daylight- especially if those ideas have the effect of empowering people in virtually any way. There's not much in the way of new ideas that would directly benefit Microsoft- they're already sucking maximum money out of OEMs and consumers and to expand beyond that really limits the scope of possible inventions. Too many inventions could lead to more efficient computer use and potentially reduce the payment to Microsoft- the only ones allowed to survive are ones that would somehow make people pay even more, and that's very difficult.
That's why Microsoft hiring people (even talented people- ESPECIALLY talented people) is not good either.
Unless you're ready to argue that Microsoft's prepared to diminish its influence and become less influential and powerful?
Ampcast.com is the best model for that (in a realistic sense). My URL links to it. I guess I'm saying 'we already have that', and until music is less dead I for one am happy with it :D
Which, surprise surprise, they do indeed remind people of! And if this is true, they'd be right that it was a smoking gun w.r.t. that lawsuit, too.
Let them go on being an AMD fanboy site. I don't see INTEL fanboy sites breaking this story.
I use GPL. Write your own damn license if you want one to do that.
I see no reason why there shouldn't be a Libertarian in Congress- and some types of libertarianism I see as about the worst, most destructive thing out there. Interestingly, Tara seems not to be following out the libertarian philosophy to its extremes regardless of the result- for instance, she seems to be privy to some information about FedEx moving into her state and apparently hosing the state pretty good in some way, and she sides with the people who live there, rather than the corporation. She could just as easily have gone the other way, and to my mind this is encouraging that she isn't.
I've seen a poster excoriate her for not being Libertarian enough. Good! Good for her. I'd excoriate her for not being socialist enough, but eh- even if she's not I think she deserves to be in the House and would be an asset. And it sounds like she researches stuff rather than just philosophizing, which is more valuable still.
Now what would really be cool is if she got in, and ended up being able to work with Bernie, Vermont's Socialist congressman. He's about as capital S socialist as she is capital L libertarian, so maybe they'd have an easy time finding common ground on the many issues that they agree strongly on :)
"We're all in favor of RIAA's LEGAL efforts to deter music copying, BUT they have stated intent to trespass on our users' computer systems and hack them. We don't feel they have any right to commit this crime, so we're blocking whatever avenues we can identify as potential hacking attempts."
Just spin it as, "RIAA want to hack and trespass, we can't allow that". Who could get in trouble for wanting to protect their users against hacking and trespass?
Ironically, I have used RIAA's website to good effect in the past. If you're doing statistical analysis of popular music, their gold/platinum database is useful. Full of junk and bad data, but still, it's on the internet available to all. But- it's not worth letting the RIAA crack your machine. Call it collateral damage :)
I'm specifically thinking of his libertarian (randite?) streak. To him, it is self-evident that people must go through life striving to the best of their abilities, making intelligent appraisals of the situation, and standing up for what is right. If people all did this, he would be right, and the DMCA would not be as effective as the EFF fears it is.
The trouble is, this is asking human beings for superhuman performances. You cannot be informed and intelligent on every subject under the sun. You cannot stake everything on every little problem that comes along. You prioritize, your brain tunes out certain things, you are basically HUMAN and not Superman or Hank Rearden (iirc)
When you look at the world from the perspective of: people's information isn't perfect and never will be, people will take the easier softer way some of the time, and the world functions with an awareness of this... at that point, Declan sounds like a lunatic. It's the Randite fallacy (also common to some libertarians), that you can have perfect logical judgement and expect others to have it.
Because that is nonsense (ask a hypnotist! such as Scott Adams who does 'Dilbert'!), society has to pose some form of protection for people who are stupid, or who are smart but not in the area they're dealing with. You make regulations so busy computer programmers don't distractedly buy green meat, eat it, and die. And you don't make laws like the DMCA that allow corporations to 'chill' virtually anything by threatening legal action and counting on the fact that few people really value the defense of abstract concepts over their own livelihoods and freedoms. People cave. It's not unforgivable for people to cave- but that's how DMCA works, by preying on the majority of people who are not ready to be imprisoned in defense of abstract concepts...
Declan's seriously wrong, and anyone reading this who holds the same notions of 'enlightened self' popular among libertarians needs to look at whether that is really a practical goal. It's a fine target to strive for, but you don't go around mandating it and expecting it of others- or even yourself!
Microsoft is _nothing_ to Apple in terms of mastering this stuff (and the MS fonts are pretty uninspired considering that there are thousands of Adobe Postscript fonts as good or better).
Yes, it does indeed matter, but what gives anyone the idea that Microsoft is the heavyweight in THIS field? All their stuff is toys compared to professional typography, publishing and layout. Odds are you wouldn't even be USING Truetype for professional publishing.
And if I'm not mistaken, doesn't Linux already have Postscript? As in 'ghostscript'?
There was a time when Microsoft had to _struggle_ to appease user groups- MUGs, for instance, Mac user groups. The fact that now they can just sort of mass produce them is no sign of a healthy computing environment. It does illustrate that Microsoft are getting disturbingly good at orchestrating every factor of public life that touches them, but that's no blessing either.
They're not doing it to be nice.
Do you chant? :)
I also love the way some posters are arguing passionately that hacker use of XBox hurts Microsoft anyhow because games aren't being sold that way, and gaming companies look at console/game ratios. They're using this as justification to advocate ubitiquous use of XBox as a generic PC-like computing device. Where does Microsoft want to go with XBox and XBox2? Ubitiquous use as a generic PC-like computing device. Way to GO, guys- you're out-turfing the real Astroturf. *clap, clap, clap...*
Since Microsoft isn't stupid, the conclusion is obvious:
Microsoft is lying about their losing money on the XBox, to make it seem more costly and expensive than it actually is.
Which is more likely: Microsoft is stupid and honest, or Microsoft are cunning and lie? Think, people.
I'm considering the act of foolish people paying Microsoft hundreds of dollars. Yup, THAT'LL help.
The Indrema vision was 'pay money to Microsoft and inflate their market share figures'?
No. Seriously. You've been listening to Microsoft astroturf too much. The best you could say is it's not much worse than generic PC building for the purpose, plus you get elaborate GFX hardware you won't have APIs to use. But it'll still suck power and produce heat, causing problems for you in your cluster building.
Microsoft needs to expand beyond business, because there's not that much farther they can go WITHIN business. On the one hand BSA work, on the other hand this. Microsoft are getting into government and this is the most obvious move in the world.
If you don't own the thing, you haven't purchased it and the purchasing cost can be zero. You're just paying X$ per month/year/whatever, and when you stop, they shut everything off.
How about if ALL CITIES are made to run on an entirely Microsoft infrastructure?
Too much power. I'm sorry. Executive/legislature/judiciary is enough. We don't need to go executive/legislature/judiciary/Microsoft.
1: record some music
2: ???
3: sell a million!
Never mind that 'platinum' is an RIAA certification...
I sound very negative, here. I don't mean to- it's just that this area, I know. I may not target pop demographics with my music but I know the rules... and you've got to come up with more attainable goals.
There's people out there really dedicated to building alternatives to RIAA distribution. You'll see in my URL above that I use one of them- Ampcast- not RIAA, not publically held, out there making this happen and with a long history of tough decisions well met. They are not a 'free mp3 hosting-???-profit!' site: you pay for them, but they beat what even most Slashdotters would be able to come up with, due to the range of services including the CD burn-to-order system, and the ability to get a UPC code for your CD much more cheaply than if you tried to get one yourself.
More importantly, they're a business- they do what they have to, to keep their independence so they can continue to offer musicians distribution that doesn't involve signing over your music to Vivendi (hint: mp3.com). They had to switch from free ad-supported to a paid hosting service, and musicians FREAKED and swore and you know what? Other free services have died and Ampcast is still around and hasn't altered its terms of service to make an IP grab on people's music. And some of the musicians who swore went out and tried to roll their own package of services, and got bills ten times the size of what Ampcast asks, and came back saying 'oops, hello again'- welcomed back, too.
I'm an online musician myself. I've had slashdotters write and say 'really liked your music, thanks'. I'd love to go 'yay! Yes, give ME that million sales!'. Certainly not turning people away- but that idea is not realistic. I can tell you, I don't care WHO you pick, it's not going to happen that way.
Better if some of you go out and shoot for TEN sales- hell, go out and shoot for 'my music is out there, distributed, buyable as a CD, all without use of any RIAA distribution channels'. More people need to be able to say that. I swear by Ampcast for that, but if you don't like Ampcast (or JavaMusic, or ElectronicScene) then get out there and roll your own! Might cost you more, you risk screwing up and going out of business, but I can't think of a better way to respond.
It _is_ possible to go up against the majors when they're weak- Motown happened that way, plus it was black-owned in an era where that was almost unthinkable. But you don't plan to sell a million- your plans are the details of how you do that, the million is the desired effect. Keep trying.
There's something to be said for not even having the ways there at all, if you're not going to use them. Classic MacOS using non-MS internet apps (never mind WebStar servers) was very tough to do anything to through online viruses. It was just possible that you could get THE USER to go to a website or something, and get THE USER to actively download the virus vehicle, which would unstuff automatically but not run unless THE USER went and actually doubleclicked on the sucker- at which point they've gone to so much effort that you might as well let them be infected :)
I remember when the "Good Times" virus was a hot topic of conversation, and hotly dehoaxed by all and sundry. There was no such thing as an email virus! Now, thanks to Microsoft, more than 99% of my email that passes antispam filtering is email viruses. This is partly because I've had the same email address since something like 1996, maintain a web site, and am pretty well known in some circles... but it's still disgusting, and yes, I do blame "let's make APIs to automatedly send mail to everyone in the address book, or any subset thereof" Microsoft.
Somehow I don't see them using Palladium as a means to change email to a 'telephone' like, manually-write-to-one-person-at-a-time model. I do expect they'll be ready to facilitate commercial bulk mailing, though. "opt-in! opt-in!"
Hollywood. Perspectives. Wil Wheaton, or Jack Valenti. Which do YOU choose? if you DON'T choose Wil, I suggest -1 GET_A_FSCKING_CLUE_IDIOT :D
In other words, it ain't the locks, it's the keys- and MS got where they are by selling people on ease of everything. To do that, they laid the foundations for insecurity hell, and to get away from that, they have to make things more difficult for idiot users.
It's a very good question whether they'll be willing to do this.
But they do, and there is, including Afghanistan. *blink*
Sorry, OT :) wait, let me try to work it into context somehow ;)
It's got very little to do with mass of users- when there was a virus vector, believe me, it got hit. It's just that MacOS was always less wide open to attack than Windows w. MS apps.
If Microsoft wanted to make Palladium bulletproof from viruses, they'd have to make it so you do everything manually, by yourself, possibly with 'wizards' or whatever to help you. Nothing would be automated, least of all system-level scripting running off email or Web content (ye GODS who came up with that?). Trying to set up security levels is only asking for hacking: the only way to be truly secure is to not have the capacity to be infected.
Like old MacOS with WebStar: gee, you could root that box if it didn't have all the remote admin capability of a _toaster_... outta luck!
If you want a computer system that cannot be buggered, build one without an *ahem* ;)
If you are seeing that happen (and you are) that is no endorsement of any economic or political system. It is a big red flag that something is horribly wrong- like 'valuations' of dot-com companies, and you know what happened to those? When the 'real world' is giving you results that are stark raving insane, that means something's gonna blow, that something is BROKEN somewhere. In this case, what is broken is the notion that any one person has a legitimate claim to be worth more than 2/3 the money in the Federal Reserve.
Your randroid-baiting with regard to 'wah, taxes are too big' is not relevant or useful either. Maybe your taxes are bigger than they need to be because guys like Gates are not supporting society to the extent of their ability to do so.
Seeing as I have been a humble Mac user since WAY before it was hip and fashionable, I suggest that voting with your money doesn't accomplish as much as you think it does. MS didn't need my money to armtwist PC OEMS and ISPs. They did it anyway without any help from me.
(argh- someone mind modding down the all-italic one please? :P )