What makes you think the backwards-compatibility layer in Longhorn is *not* "Wine-like"?
The fact is nobody has ever accomplished what Microsoft is trying to accomplish with Longhorn. Apple's strategy is right for Apple... for a company with a smaller number of more devoted followers, you can support a limited software and hardware base, and turn a new (incompatible) leaf now and then. But that's not an option for Windows, there's too much stuff built on top of it.
But Microsoft has only ever been really successful in one market, and it was a new market so they didn't have to push anybody aside to take it. Microsoft's forays into Sony's world (the livingroom, game consoles, portable music) have all been money-losing failures that fall back onto the Windows/Office monopoly for survival.
I built a Suttle XPC with a Foresight AccuStream board and 3 hard drives, two of which are in RAID0. The included Intel ICH6 chipset was perfect, because RAID is built in and the SATA drives don't use any PCI bandwidth (you'll need it for the capture card!) The AccuStream captures both analog and digital at up to 1600x1200. (However for me 1600x1200 digital doesn't work - it gets noise from signal loss) The whole box was about $5k, maybe a little more, and most of that is the capture board. This was about a year ago, maybe a year and a half. Capturing DVI is neat, but the analog capture looks extremely good anyways. Using this portable, standalone box for capture is great because it places no CPU demands on the application box, the AccuStream has a passthrough circuit, so you put the capture box inline between the application box and the monitor.
With the two SATA drives in RAID0, you can capture 1024x768 uncompressed RGB from a DVI or VGA output for as long as you like. It's about 60 MB/s. Then encode offline.
Actually I've ended up making lower-res movies most of the time, because many computers cannot play back 1024x768 compressed video in real time anyways.
The difference is that in the past, it was used against the *vendors* who were selling information for profit, without license.
The new definition of piracy is for people who are accepting or distributing copies, but without any money changing hands. It's an expansion of the definition.
My perspective is as a user of VMWare products under linux hosts. For me, the harm of Microsoft's "gift" is obvious! I don't want VMWare to be driven under and be forced to use Windows as the host OS.
VMWare has recently started giving away some valuable products too (Player and Server), which perhaps clouds the issue. But the fact is, VMWare has to make money on their virtualization software, and Microsoft does not. They can use the Windows tax to subsidize virtualization for as long as need be to ensure that, eventually, Windows is the only "choice."
I do agree that the backbone is lagging behind, but don't butcher the users' capabilities simply because the telecos can't get their fingers out.
I'd be interested to know why you think the backbone is lagging. I get 5 mb/s very frequently, and it mostly seems to depend on the server (even though none of them are remotely nearby to me - they all hit the backbone).
I've been hearing this sky-is-falling story about the "world-wide wait" caused by an overloaded backbone for 10 years now, and it never seems to happen. Bandwidth, at least on the backbone, is so cheap it's almost free. I'm not worried about running out.
Of course, you never really get your peak speed, but the improvement is still slight under most circumstances.
There's nothing "elite" about downloading sizeable files. For instance, the last time I downloaded firefox, I really appreciated the 5 mb/s download speed, the whole thing was done in about 15 seconds.
You also mentioned your cable slowed down in the evening... I guess that all depends on how your neighborhood is wired up. I seem to get 5 mb/s consistently from fast servers (such as kernel.org) regardless of the time of day. And I know my neighbors are wired because I see a couple of their wireless access points, and DSL isn't available where I live. Not denying your cable slowdown experience, just saying it isn't universal.
I already pay a monthly fee to the cable company for the programming. No more monthly fees. I'm perfectly happy to record it myself and not get jerked around by another 'service provider.'
I don't want to watch a crappy compressed version of a film in ANY case. Pirated downloads don't come close to the quality of a DVD.
There's no inherent quality difference; the bits don't really care whether they're downloaded or stamped on a disc. Some of the available downloads are simply 5 or 7 GB DVD rips with no re-encoding.
I agree $15 instant release DVDs would be tempting. If even two people watch, it's cheaper than the theater. Personally I think a $15 download would be even better. A good codec at 5 mb/s could surpass DVD in quality, and with a 4mb/s connection you wouldn't need to start pre-caching very far in advance. (Though I realize a lot of people don't have the hardware on their home theater setups to play downloads yet, and most of us who do aren't using DRM "enabled" products.)
I don't think Linux can compete on the desktop without vendor hardware support, and I don't see any progress in that area. IMHO linux applications are pretty good, but hardware support without (at least) documentation is an insurmountable problem.
On the other hand, with driver drones you can try all new tactics. Perhaps instead of a single well-established supply line, you can "swarm" the supplies into place with more, smaller vehicles. As for captured munitions, with no driver onboard, a remote destruct function becomes a possibility. Or maybe highly sensitive shipments like munitions will simply be trucked conventionally (by a person). That still leaves a lot of other stuff to move around.
Anyways, I wonder what percentage of military trucking worldwide is really conducted in a combat environment? At first maybe the robots will just drive from the port in friendly nation X to the rear lines of the battle. Just as civilian applications might initially be limited to driving between warehouses on the outskirts of cities, rather than in confined city streets.
I think reducing the number of boots on the ground is a good thing. Would it solve our present "Iraq problem"? No. But I would argue that's a problem with the mission. Nation building is inherently messy and, as Bush used to say before he was elected, should be avoided.
It would seem to me, that a CPU's workload is roughly limited by the number of transistors it has multiplied by it's MHz speed.
- NO, number of transistors has nothing to do with it.
Your statement is just as wrong as his. Yes, you can design a faster CPU given more transistors - up to a point. (If more transistors don't help, why do you think CPUs have had increasing transistor count for entire history of digital computing?) Only recently have designers failed to find new ways to use more transistors to speed up a core, hence multi core chips.
The simple answer is, "anybody who currently has a cluster or server farm, plus those who would like to if only they were cheaper and more power efficient."
I think the Sendmail cf file made more sense back when computers were slower. It is easier for a computer to parse for routing.
Sure, but isn't the cf file only used at load time? It would be crazy to parse the cf file for every email, and equally crazy to impose that syntax on users for a file read only at startup time.
SCO had nothing to lose on their Hail-Mary lawsuit, they were circling the bowl anyways. But MS would be very foolhardy to bring a baseless lawsuit against Linux.
If MS sues Linux, they'd better come prepared to win. If they lose the case, they also lose all credibility in their patent scaremongering campaign against OSS. Losing such a case would also reinforce the perception of MS as an anticompetitive monopoly, yet at the same time bolster the image of Linux as a credible threat.
So concentrate on explaining why his arguments are wrong.
Why? Ballmer didn't put any effort into his scaremongering, why should anybody go to the effort of refuting it?
Seriously, it bugs me when somebody throws out some baseless assertion, and then says "prove me wrong." Ballmer, if you want us to believe that Microsoft has grounds for suing Linux, feel free to start making your case at any time. Because as things stand, Microsoft has been on the wrong end of a lot more rulings than Linux (or any other open source project).
Under Linux, I don't even enable any swap. It's worse than useless, all it does is cause the system to come to a crawl and become unresponsive. If you don't have enough RAM, it's better just to get more. Swap is an idea whose time has come and gone.
Modular systems are great for modular problems. The difficulty comes when the underlying problem to be solved really is inherently complex so that the implementation can't be decomposed.
What's stalling Microsoft is that by trying to seamlessly integrate everything with everything, they've created a monstrously difficult problem. Linux adopts a different tack - it's engineered more simply, but integration between components is much looser. The problem with this approach is that all that integration has to be solved by somebody, somewhere, eventually. People are drawn to Windows precisly because they're less likely to have to provide the glue themselves - to hack up perl scripts to make X talk to Y - because components X and Y *already* have been integrated, by Microsoft.
If Microsoft manages to pull it off, they'll have achieved something nobody else can match. But right now, it looks like they've bit off more than they can chew.
This is partly because scientists read these books, then decide it would be cool to implement it for real
I think that hardly ever happens. For the most part, things get invented once all the prerequisites have been invented. That's why discovery is so hard to predict; because it's opportunistic.
Actually, I care very much about what happens to him. He should be given a speedy trial (about five minutes should be sufficient), whatever useful information he has should be wrung out of him by any means necessary and then the scum bag should be killed in the most painful manner possible.
Honestly, do you or do you not realize that you are a facist?
Slashdot Mirror
The fact is nobody has ever accomplished what Microsoft is trying to accomplish with Longhorn. Apple's strategy is right for Apple... for a company with a smaller number of more devoted followers, you can support a limited software and hardware base, and turn a new (incompatible) leaf now and then. But that's not an option for Windows, there's too much stuff built on top of it.
But Microsoft has only ever been really successful in one market, and it was a new market so they didn't have to push anybody aside to take it. Microsoft's forays into Sony's world (the livingroom, game consoles, portable music) have all been money-losing failures that fall back onto the Windows/Office monopoly for survival.
With the two SATA drives in RAID0, you can capture 1024x768 uncompressed RGB from a DVI or VGA output for as long as you like. It's about 60 MB/s. Then encode offline.
Actually I've ended up making lower-res movies most of the time, because many computers cannot play back 1024x768 compressed video in real time anyways.
The difference is that in the past, it was used against the *vendors* who were selling information for profit, without license. The new definition of piracy is for people who are accepting or distributing copies, but without any money changing hands. It's an expansion of the definition.
VMWare has recently started giving away some valuable products too (Player and Server), which perhaps clouds the issue. But the fact is, VMWare has to make money on their virtualization software, and Microsoft does not. They can use the Windows tax to subsidize virtualization for as long as need be to ensure that, eventually, Windows is the only "choice."
I've been hearing this sky-is-falling story about the "world-wide wait" caused by an overloaded backbone for 10 years now, and it never seems to happen. Bandwidth, at least on the backbone, is so cheap it's almost free. I'm not worried about running out.
You also mentioned your cable slowed down in the evening... I guess that all depends on how your neighborhood is wired up. I seem to get 5 mb/s consistently from fast servers (such as kernel.org) regardless of the time of day. And I know my neighbors are wired because I see a couple of their wireless access points, and DSL isn't available where I live. Not denying your cable slowdown experience, just saying it isn't universal.
I already pay a monthly fee to the cable company for the programming. No more monthly fees. I'm perfectly happy to record it myself and not get jerked around by another 'service provider.'
I agree $15 instant release DVDs would be tempting. If even two people watch, it's cheaper than the theater. Personally I think a $15 download would be even better. A good codec at 5 mb/s could surpass DVD in quality, and with a 4mb/s connection you wouldn't need to start pre-caching very far in advance. (Though I realize a lot of people don't have the hardware on their home theater setups to play downloads yet, and most of us who do aren't using DRM "enabled" products.)
I don't think Linux can compete on the desktop without vendor hardware support, and I don't see any progress in that area. IMHO linux applications are pretty good, but hardware support without (at least) documentation is an insurmountable problem.
Anyways, I wonder what percentage of military trucking worldwide is really conducted in a combat environment? At first maybe the robots will just drive from the port in friendly nation X to the rear lines of the battle. Just as civilian applications might initially be limited to driving between warehouses on the outskirts of cities, rather than in confined city streets.
I think reducing the number of boots on the ground is a good thing. Would it solve our present "Iraq problem"? No. But I would argue that's a problem with the mission. Nation building is inherently messy and, as Bush used to say before he was elected, should be avoided.
Thanks slashdot!
If MS sues Linux, they'd better come prepared to win. If they lose the case, they also lose all credibility in their patent scaremongering campaign against OSS. Losing such a case would also reinforce the perception of MS as an anticompetitive monopoly, yet at the same time bolster the image of Linux as a credible threat.
Seriously, it bugs me when somebody throws out some baseless assertion, and then says "prove me wrong." Ballmer, if you want us to believe that Microsoft has grounds for suing Linux, feel free to start making your case at any time. Because as things stand, Microsoft has been on the wrong end of a lot more rulings than Linux (or any other open source project).
Under Linux, I don't even enable any swap. It's worse than useless, all it does is cause the system to come to a crawl and become unresponsive. If you don't have enough RAM, it's better just to get more. Swap is an idea whose time has come and gone.
What's stalling Microsoft is that by trying to seamlessly integrate everything with everything, they've created a monstrously difficult problem. Linux adopts a different tack - it's engineered more simply, but integration between components is much looser. The problem with this approach is that all that integration has to be solved by somebody, somewhere, eventually. People are drawn to Windows precisly because they're less likely to have to provide the glue themselves - to hack up perl scripts to make X talk to Y - because components X and Y *already* have been integrated, by Microsoft.
If Microsoft manages to pull it off, they'll have achieved something nobody else can match. But right now, it looks like they've bit off more than they can chew.
Sorry I wasn't clear, I meant the old airframe/hull is refitted with new computer systems every decade or so, like our B52s.
Typically the airframe/hull is upgraded once a decade or so. There's no way they'll go 50 years without upgrading the infosystems and such.