Well good argument, but I think you are the one on the slippery slope.
Having cops not burst in to your home is a right (see 4th Amendment), and although less explicitly, so is sexual preference. Driving is not a right. You give up certain rights to drive on public roads. If you want to drive on such roads you have to get a license right? You also have to stay under the speed limit and obey other traffic laws. By extension, if you want to drive on public roads, you have to put on a seatbelt. Freedom snatching my ass, you give up freedoms all the time. You want to get paid/invest in the stock market/purchase goods, you give up your freedom to *not* pay taxes. Same deal.
I'm just as freedom coveting as you are in reality, and I bitch about taxes every time they eat half of my paycheck. The real reason why I feel the way I do about seatbelts is that I was involved in such an accident 4 years ago, where the other driver was not wearing a seatbelt. I was. He was hurt, I walked away.
Four years later, the pain-and-suffering lawsuit (for $300k) is finally entering court. His medical bills were already covered by insurance.
Actually there is a very good reason for seatbelt laws. If you go flying through the windshield and break your neck, who pays for your million dollar medical bills? Yeah, your insurance company. And who pays for that? Everyone who has insurance. So for my sake and everyone else who drives and has to pay insurance bills, wear your god damn seatbelt.
Hey you can do something stupid and die and thats just fine with me. But if I gotta pay for it, well I got a problem.
Another problem is also overzelous professors going too far trying to catch cheaters. I am a college student, and I definitely agree that cheating is a major problem, especially in lecture/paper oriented classes like liberal arts. However, professors must be equally cautious in accusing students of cheating. I like this professors system of checking a database of previous papers, but even so, it is very difficult to find who was the original author.
Some professors aren't so careful, and will accuse students of cheating on a whim. I was so accused after submitting a final paper for a liberal arts class I was taking. The professor thought it was "too good" for me to have written it, and said that I must have copied from some other source. In fact, the entire work was 100% my own, using my own language. I didn't even do any direct research, just wrote a bunch of BS off the top of my head. After discussing the issue with the professor, and he relented and gave me an A-.
I want to stop students from cheating (and artifically raising the grading standard) as much as anyone, but not at the expense of trust between the student and the professor. Thats why I support systems that log papers submitted and run heuristics checks on them, but students should also be made aware that such systems are in use. I think this will be the necessary disincentive to force students to not cheat.
Ultimately I think the problem is exacerbated by massive classes (like this 500 student lecture) where the sole requirements for grading are usually a paper or two plus a final exam. If the particular professor who accused me had known me personally, or been at all familiar with the previous papers I had submitted, he wouldn't have been so quick to pass judgement. Huge classes also promote cheating because students know they are far less likely to be caught in such an evironment.
Just to clarify: the instruction set hasn't changed for the Pentium 4. Its still the same tired old x86 CISC ISA from 1980, with a few new added instructions (SSE2) that are of little use to most applications (and users).
You have travelled down the slippery slope to reach the conclusion that "the drug war is a waste of time" equals "children should be taking drugs".
I for one, think that the war against drugs has been incredibly ineffective at its stated purpose (keeping people from using drugs) and incredibly effective at killing lots of people and generally being an economic drain. Billions of dollars are spent on the drug war, and the result is artifially raising the price of illegal drugs, and therefore creating periphery crime! (drug users/sellers commiting other crimes). I'd rather see a greater emphasis (more money spent) on educating people about the dangers of drugs and helping people who are addicted (rather then criminalizing them) then stopping drugs at the source. Even if the government could spend all its revenue collected from taxes on the drug war it would just have the effect of making it that much more profitable for the drug manufacturers/dealers and that much more desirable for rebellious individuals
"The only danger is sending out the wrong message." I argue that people aren't getting the message now. My friends that use drugs truly aren't aware of the dangers. The immediate effects of using a drug like ecstasy aren't visible thus they don't seem to realize the consequences. The drug war has misfocused its efforts on keeping these drugs out of their hands and not at making these drugs undesirable.
The problem is not "the drug war" but the way it is being waged.
}
Presumably Windows Media Player or equivalent will continue to play Mp3s recorded at any bitrate, it will just not be able to *record* at a higher bitrate. This is pretty stupid for MS to do, because people will just choose to use another piece of software to do the recording, ie. not Windows Media Player. So in the end... people will not use MS software anyway, and the MS proprietary format will die quickly.
My response to the subject: (feel free to flame, correct, mod me down for being a karma whore, whatever)
1) I think many people who are familiar with both Microsoft Windows and various versions of Unix from an IT perspective will disagree with his statement that Windows has "better interoperability today than any other OS out there." Interoperability requires two-ways of information exchange. Windows products do allow you to connect them to nearly any type of server, Unix, Netware or otherwise, however, using a Windows server in an environment with Unix workstations is quite a bit more difficult. The Samba development team has had to reverse engineer with little or no help provided from Microsoft. Is that interoperability? It is if you have a one sided definition of interoperability.
2) Linux has been very viable in the past and I'm sure it will continue to thrive in the future.
3) Security: One of the largest drawbacks of a commercial software enterprise is that they are only accountable to their customers if a product is found to have a security flaw. In a sense, there is a certain amount of "security through obscurity" in any closed source product. When a security flaw is discovered, the closed source commercial software enterprise reacts in two distinct and simultaneous ways: assure the users that the problem is not serious, two issue a fix as quickly as possible. Damage control. There is also the ongoing effort to ensure that any security flaws are fixed (silently, if possible) but real effort to fix flaws in a timely fashion isn't made unless the flaw is publicly known about. This begs the question, what security flaws are present in the software, and also known to the company but information about such flaws is certainly not released to the public? Only if the flaw is found and exploited does the company have any reason to acknowledge it. Compare this to the open source software security model. Since the code is open, anyone interested can observe the code for security flaws, any flaws discovered are found much more quickly, and fixed much more quickly then any closed source product can be. This is a result of the sheer number of developers ("eyes") working on open source products. This practice has been shown to be incredibly sucessful in OpenBSD.
4) I agree that there is likely little economic incentive to release Microsoft software for Linux, and likely other Unices. It would be nice if the DOC standard were made publicly available in full, because developers in the Unix world would be able to create a product which could "interoperate" with documents and spreadsheets created on the latest versions of Office. Instead, developers are constantly playing "catch up" by reverse engineering their specifications, which as features, some of dubious value, are added, becomes significantly more difficult. Microsoft understandably has no incentive to do any such thing. Unfortunately, as I feel productivity applications like office have generally shown the least amount of sophistication when created under the open source development model. We'll see...
5) I think the services model is very interesting and I certainly wonder were it will take commercial software enterprises. Open source software doesn't fit very well in this model. Why would you pay to "use" software if you have access to the source? I see Microsofts strategy as a possible way for them to gain significantly more control over the software and ensure their revenue stream. What commensurate benefit there is for customers remains to be demonstrated. Interestingly, the idea of distributed applications (one install, used on many networked machines) is hardly a new one. It dates well back to the era of timesharing mainframe computers. Any Unix system using the X Windows system has this capability natively. Since all display information received by the X Windows Server can come from any source, the actual machine, or a server across the country, the only limitation is bandwidth and the computing power of the server. Microsoft is attempting to leverage this model (as have companies like Citrix already) to use this feature with Windows based servers and windows based desktop machines. I will be incredibly impressed and pleased if Microsofts software will allow it to operate on *any* desktop (Unix, mac or otherwise). Since the software is essentially abstracted from the hardware, this step is technically quite feasable, much more possible then porting an application like Office to Unix. Likely, Microsoft will choose to protect their control of desktop operating systems by not developing this software to interoperate with Unix based systems. But of course, I may be wrong.
6) I think he is downplaying the advantages of Linux over other Unices in this response. In addition to being open source (which has many associated advantages, not least of which is that it is free) it also has a *very* large amount of applications available, albeit few good productivity (Office-type) applications. This is partly because the core of Linux users are developers, and there is less demand for comprehensive productivity apps. The fact that Linux development (the development of the kernel, and associated software/tools) as a whole has no economic stimulus (its done for free, and provided for free) and that it is open source has a significant advantage in just how much developers are able "innovate". It is not possible, or at least technically difficult, to change closed source products without "breaking" many other closed source products that rely on it. In the case of an operating system like Microsoft Windows, or a chipset like Intels x86 platform, it has taken many many years to make small evolutionary change. Witness the change from Windows 9x to Windows NT. Its taken years. Changes in chipsets are even more difficult, as Intel has found. Hopefully before too much longer, more then 20 years after it was outdated, the x86 will finally be replaced. Open source products like Linux are significantly more capable of "rolling" with the punches and adapting to technological innovations. An open source product is able to take advantage of it far quicker then the lumbering behemoth of closed source applications. Witness the fact that Unices are available on nearly ever chipset known to man (Sega Dreamcast included).
7) I'm dissapointed to hear that Microsoft was one of the supporters of hardware implemented copy protection in the new ATA standard. This seems to be self serving rather than customer oriented
8) Software protection schemes have been tried over and over again. Workable models are few and far between, and many of them a nusiance to the customer. The need for such schemes on closed source products is an advantage for open source software, since such protection schemes are unecessary. If Redhat were in Microsofts position (installed on 85% of desktop computers) Linus Torvalds wouldn't be a penny richer (at least not directly) and there probably wouldn't be any billionares at Redhat (which sells services and support, not penguins), but software developers can and do still get paid under this model. Just not in billions. Open source and closed source development models can and should coexist. But utter domination of the software world by a private software enterprise is not possible.
9) I have no problem with extending a publicly available specification, provided: other companies/individual software developers are allowed their say in the extensions of the specification, and any such specification is also released in a public manner. Closed source companies that throw temper tantrums (I'm not in any way suggesting that such behavior is even typical and certainly not confined to Microsoft alone) and go off and develop their own standard without the support or input of the community do not get my respect. When software that does not adhere to existing standards (that are available) for whatever reason, is created by a company that dominates the market, issues of anti-trust inevitably come into play. At the very least it is unethical to be in such a position and release software that reduces consumer choice in such a manner. If the goal is truly interoperability and to be "customer driven" then such a goal should outweigh the economic drawbacks such an action would cause.
10) Agreed. Whether or not the goal of the Linux community is to attract great software applications that are also commercial software applications is a subject of some debate.
What about businesses that operate in multiple countries, or organizations that don't have a particular affiliation to any country. Should they have to register their domain for every country they operate in? I agree that it is unfair that the US has such dominance over.com.edu etc... But doing away with all non cc domains isn't an ideal answer. I know this sounds corny, but the net isn't about regionalization and nationalism, its about globalization.
Not to mention that there is no way that all the.com domains companies have spent millions to obtain can be taken away at this point.
Oops, yeah, you are right, OSX on all Macs this summer.
Actually, and this is totally unrelated to this thread, I think its interesting that none of the reviews i've read of OS X have mentioned Power Builder. I think that the quality of development tools for OS X is going to be the real deciding factor for Apple's success with its new operating system. Having a really nice IDE is going to make all the difference.
Just a quick correction, my understanding is that Apple has no plans to install OS X on *all* shipping machines until sometime in 2002, it definitely won't be ready by July. July is when the MacWorld Expo will take place in NY, when the slightly updated OS X (10.0.2 i believe) and likely newer (faster) G4, Powerbook and iMac machines will all be announced.
I work for a small software firm. We had a product (before I worked here) that's name apparently infringed on some large Unix based software/hardware provider's trademark. Both of the trademarks were registered and technically they registered a little bit before us. However we had docs to show that the name had been in use for some time before.
To cut a long story short, we fought the claim, and it ended up being worth it, because this large company settled with us and gave us a lot more money then the name was worth (to a small little firm like us) and it was a drop in the bucket for such a large company. So, to cut a long story short, consult with a trademark lawyer if possible, or at least a pre-law or law student, and if there is a reasonable chance that SGIs claim would be invalid. If it is, its probably worth it to fight, because you will likely get a settlement that could fund development for a long time.
Spyky
Also, i wonder if there is some sort of way of having claims concerning open source products handled pro-bono by some willing lawyer(s). I wish I knew someone to recommend, but it may be worth asking around.
First you seem to have many reservations concerning the DMCA. However, do you think we are better off with it? Candidly, would you rather see the DMCA amended in the manner you propose, or would you rather see the DMCA abolished completely?
Secondly, you support the "fair use doctrine" and also feel that methods to circumvent protection measures such as CSS should not be criminalized; at least in as much as the goal of such circumvention is within the spectrum of fair use. You also support watermarking and other methods to protect the copyrights of digital media with the reservation that the rights of home recording rights are not impeded.
However, both digital (CSS) and traditional analog (macrovision) protection schemes are fallible. Clever individuals can circumvent them, either for illicit purposes or not. Decriminalizing methods to circumvent these "protection schemes" does little to protect the copyright holder's interest outside the scope of current law (not in the DMCA). Would your proposed amendments to the DMCA protect from prosecution *any* individual who devised a circumvention method (for any purpose) and distributed it freely. A prime example of this is software such as the DeCSS.
This is of course, assuming they are not guilty of other infractions that do not fall within the scope of the DMCA with regard to creating or distributing a circumvention method.
Spyky
Re:Looks like a system ready for abuse
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Fiddler on the RUF
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Access to rails (unlike public roads) could require more comprehensive and regular inspections, all built into the cost of rail access. Modern methods of identification could id each car that entered the rail system and ensure that it is up to standards. I'm quite sure that before any system like this is implemented issues like this will be well discussed and planned for.
A "system ready for abuse". I don't know of anyone who intentionally disables their brake pads so they can go around causing mayhem and abuse. Or perhaps thats not quite how you meant it.
Spyky
If you want to spend your time browing for patents that companies any large hardware/software corporation holds you will find *many* frivolous patents just like this one, most of which probably won't hold up in court. Does that make the patent holding company (in this case, Apple) the bad guy? Not if they don't actively sue other companies using their patent.
There is such a thing as a defensive patent. It is in the best interest (due to the USs moronic patent and legal systems) for companies to seek out as many frivolous patents as possible, on the off chance that some other company may sue them for violating some other frivolous patent. Instead of dealing with the hassle and monetary cost of taking it to court, they just exchange a bunch of their frivolous patents and everyone is happy.
Please stop shouting that Linux has had theming "engines" for years. We all know that, and Apple probably knows that too... and until Apple starts suing random companies for patent violations based on this patent, no one really cares.
So please stop shouting every time someone sees a frivolous patent owned by company X. Unless company X starts suing company Y over a frivolous patent, it doesn't really matter to anyone.
The bus runs at CPU speed. However it is still DRAM, hence the latency is a lot higher than your L1 cache. But yes, you have the right idea, its a lot faster then it being off-chip, but not so fast as your L1 (or L2 or even L3 (on a P4)) cache.
And of course, for graphics use, latency is less of an issue then raw bandwidth, because you aren't jumping around looking at a lot of different places in memory (like a PC OS) but you are trying to grab large sections of memory (textures) and keep 'em coming (bus speed).
More camera's could have helped the "jerkiness" but also remember, that in the matrix, frames were interpolated in between. No way to do that in realtime with computers available today, even at TV resolution and not film resolution. Not in the time it takes to make an instant replay. It actually probably takes a lot of juice just to grab all of the still frames and splice them into a single several second piece.
Hey, in 20 years, I bet we'll see this a lot more, and it will look a lot nicer
Spyky
If you leave the Left in power, they _will_ take your freedom to program, they will take your freedom to encrypt, and they will turn us into the world's newest socialist/fascist country if given enough rope to hang us with.
Do more of your extensive research. Facism is a Right aligned political ideology.
Also, for a laptop, what difference does it make whether you have multiple mouse buttons next to the trackpad. Your hands are right next to the keyboard anyway, so you can easily press one of the keys (cntrl) to simulate another mouse button.
Most DVD players (that I'm aware of) that support CD-R and CD-RW have a second laser that has a different wavelength. In effort to increase their profit margin certain brands of DVD players forgo adding a second laser mechanism.
So for those of you who want the ability to play burned discs on your DVD player, make sure you read the specs of the next DVD player you buy and make sure it has 2 laser pickups, and you will likely be able to read those CD formats.
And yes, this is no conspiracy, merely Sony saving an extra buck fifty on that player.
I notice you use the words "hasn't crashed yet", not "hasn't had any downtime". Not quite the same thing, short of a kernal update, there is no need to ever reboot a Linux-based machine. Not so with Windows products...
Slashdot Mirror
Well good argument, but I think you are the one on the slippery slope.
Having cops not burst in to your home is a right (see 4th Amendment), and although less explicitly, so is sexual preference. Driving is not a right. You give up certain rights to drive on public roads. If you want to drive on such roads you have to get a license right? You also have to stay under the speed limit and obey other traffic laws. By extension, if you want to drive on public roads, you have to put on a seatbelt. Freedom snatching my ass, you give up freedoms all the time. You want to get paid/invest in the stock market/purchase goods, you give up your freedom to *not* pay taxes. Same deal.
I'm just as freedom coveting as you are in reality, and I bitch about taxes every time they eat half of my paycheck. The real reason why I feel the way I do about seatbelts is that I was involved in such an accident 4 years ago, where the other driver was not wearing a seatbelt. I was. He was hurt, I walked away.
Four years later, the pain-and-suffering lawsuit (for $300k) is finally entering court. His medical bills were already covered by insurance.
Spyky
Actually there is a very good reason for seatbelt laws. If you go flying through the windshield and break your neck, who pays for your million dollar medical bills? Yeah, your insurance company. And who pays for that? Everyone who has insurance. So for my sake and everyone else who drives and has to pay insurance bills, wear your god damn seatbelt.
Hey you can do something stupid and die and thats just fine with me. But if I gotta pay for it, well I got a problem.
Spyky
Another problem is also overzelous professors going too far trying to catch cheaters. I am a college student, and I definitely agree that cheating is a major problem, especially in lecture/paper oriented classes like liberal arts. However, professors must be equally cautious in accusing students of cheating. I like this professors system of checking a database of previous papers, but even so, it is very difficult to find who was the original author.
Some professors aren't so careful, and will accuse students of cheating on a whim. I was so accused after submitting a final paper for a liberal arts class I was taking. The professor thought it was "too good" for me to have written it, and said that I must have copied from some other source. In fact, the entire work was 100% my own, using my own language. I didn't even do any direct research, just wrote a bunch of BS off the top of my head. After discussing the issue with the professor, and he relented and gave me an A-.
I want to stop students from cheating (and artifically raising the grading standard) as much as anyone, but not at the expense of trust between the student and the professor. Thats why I support systems that log papers submitted and run heuristics checks on them, but students should also be made aware that such systems are in use. I think this will be the necessary disincentive to force students to not cheat.
Ultimately I think the problem is exacerbated by massive classes (like this 500 student lecture) where the sole requirements for grading are usually a paper or two plus a final exam. If the particular professor who accused me had known me personally, or been at all familiar with the previous papers I had submitted, he wouldn't have been so quick to pass judgement. Huge classes also promote cheating because students know they are far less likely to be caught in such an evironment.
But thats just my 2 bits.
Spyky
Addressing space. As in 00000000 to 7FFFFFFF on a 32 bit machine is reserved for the kernal.
Not the same as memory space.
Spyky
Just to clarify: the instruction set hasn't changed for the Pentium 4. Its still the same tired old x86 CISC ISA from 1980, with a few new added instructions (SSE2) that are of little use to most applications (and users).
Spyky
rant() {
You have travelled down the slippery slope to reach the conclusion that "the drug war is a waste of time" equals "children should be taking drugs".
I for one, think that the war against drugs has been incredibly ineffective at its stated purpose (keeping people from using drugs) and incredibly effective at killing lots of people and generally being an economic drain. Billions of dollars are spent on the drug war, and the result is artifially raising the price of illegal drugs, and therefore creating periphery crime! (drug users/sellers commiting other crimes). I'd rather see a greater emphasis (more money spent) on educating people about the dangers of drugs and helping people who are addicted (rather then criminalizing them) then stopping drugs at the source. Even if the government could spend all its revenue collected from taxes on the drug war it would just have the effect of making it that much more profitable for the drug manufacturers/dealers and that much more desirable for rebellious individuals
"The only danger is sending out the wrong message." I argue that people aren't getting the message now. My friends that use drugs truly aren't aware of the dangers. The immediate effects of using a drug like ecstasy aren't visible thus they don't seem to realize the consequences. The drug war has misfocused its efforts on keeping these drugs out of their hands and not at making these drugs undesirable.
The problem is not "the drug war" but the way it is being waged.
}
Spyky
Presumably Windows Media Player or equivalent will continue to play Mp3s recorded at any bitrate, it will just not be able to *record* at a higher bitrate. This is pretty stupid for MS to do, because people will just choose to use another piece of software to do the recording, ie. not Windows Media Player. So in the end... people will not use MS software anyway, and the MS proprietary format will die quickly.
Spyky
My response to the subject: (feel free to flame, correct, mod me down for being a karma whore, whatever)
1) I think many people who are familiar with both Microsoft Windows and various versions of Unix from an IT perspective will disagree with his statement that Windows has "better interoperability today than any other OS out there." Interoperability requires two-ways of information exchange. Windows products do allow you to connect them to nearly any type of server, Unix, Netware or otherwise, however, using a Windows server in an environment with Unix workstations is quite a bit more difficult. The Samba development team has had to reverse engineer with little or no help provided from Microsoft. Is that interoperability? It is if you have a one sided definition of interoperability.
2) Linux has been very viable in the past and I'm sure it will continue to thrive in the future.
3) Security: One of the largest drawbacks of a commercial software enterprise is that they are only accountable to their customers if a product is found to have a security flaw. In a sense, there is a certain amount of "security through obscurity" in any closed source product. When a security flaw is discovered, the closed source commercial software enterprise reacts in two distinct and simultaneous ways: assure the users that the problem is not serious, two issue a fix as quickly as possible. Damage control. There is also the ongoing effort to ensure that any security flaws are fixed (silently, if possible) but real effort to fix flaws in a timely fashion isn't made unless the flaw is publicly known about. This begs the question, what security flaws are present in the software, and also known to the company but information about such flaws is certainly not released to the public? Only if the flaw is found and exploited does the company have any reason to acknowledge it. Compare this to the open source software security model. Since the code is open, anyone interested can observe the code for security flaws, any flaws discovered are found much more quickly, and fixed much more quickly then any closed source product can be. This is a result of the sheer number of developers ("eyes") working on open source products. This practice has been shown to be incredibly sucessful in OpenBSD.
4) I agree that there is likely little economic incentive to release Microsoft software for Linux, and likely other Unices. It would be nice if the DOC standard were made publicly available in full, because developers in the Unix world would be able to create a product which could "interoperate" with documents and spreadsheets created on the latest versions of Office. Instead, developers are constantly playing "catch up" by reverse engineering their specifications, which as features, some of dubious value, are added, becomes significantly more difficult. Microsoft understandably has no incentive to do any such thing. Unfortunately, as I feel productivity applications like office have generally shown the least amount of sophistication when created under the open source development model. We'll see...
5) I think the services model is very interesting and I certainly wonder were it will take commercial software enterprises. Open source software doesn't fit very well in this model. Why would you pay to "use" software if you have access to the source? I see Microsofts strategy as a possible way for them to gain significantly more control over the software and ensure their revenue stream. What commensurate benefit there is for customers remains to be demonstrated. Interestingly, the idea of distributed applications (one install, used on many networked machines) is hardly a new one. It dates well back to the era of timesharing mainframe computers. Any Unix system using the X Windows system has this capability natively. Since all display information received by the X Windows Server can come from any source, the actual machine, or a server across the country, the only limitation is bandwidth and the computing power of the server. Microsoft is attempting to leverage this model (as have companies like Citrix already) to use this feature with Windows based servers and windows based desktop machines. I will be incredibly impressed and pleased if Microsofts software will allow it to operate on *any* desktop (Unix, mac or otherwise). Since the software is essentially abstracted from the hardware, this step is technically quite feasable, much more possible then porting an application like Office to Unix. Likely, Microsoft will choose to protect their control of desktop operating systems by not developing this software to interoperate with Unix based systems. But of course, I may be wrong.
6) I think he is downplaying the advantages of Linux over other Unices in this response. In addition to being open source (which has many associated advantages, not least of which is that it is free) it also has a *very* large amount of applications available, albeit few good productivity (Office-type) applications. This is partly because the core of Linux users are developers, and there is less demand for comprehensive productivity apps. The fact that Linux development (the development of the kernel, and associated software/tools) as a whole has no economic stimulus (its done for free, and provided for free) and that it is open source has a significant advantage in just how much developers are able "innovate". It is not possible, or at least technically difficult, to change closed source products without "breaking" many other closed source products that rely on it. In the case of an operating system like Microsoft Windows, or a chipset like Intels x86 platform, it has taken many many years to make small evolutionary change. Witness the change from Windows 9x to Windows NT. Its taken years. Changes in chipsets are even more difficult, as Intel has found. Hopefully before too much longer, more then 20 years after it was outdated, the x86 will finally be replaced. Open source products like Linux are significantly more capable of "rolling" with the punches and adapting to technological innovations. An open source product is able to take advantage of it far quicker then the lumbering behemoth of closed source applications. Witness the fact that Unices are available on nearly ever chipset known to man (Sega Dreamcast included).
7) I'm dissapointed to hear that Microsoft was one of the supporters of hardware implemented copy protection in the new ATA standard. This seems to be self serving rather than customer oriented
8) Software protection schemes have been tried over and over again. Workable models are few and far between, and many of them a nusiance to the customer. The need for such schemes on closed source products is an advantage for open source software, since such protection schemes are unecessary. If Redhat were in Microsofts position (installed on 85% of desktop computers) Linus Torvalds wouldn't be a penny richer (at least not directly) and there probably wouldn't be any billionares at Redhat (which sells services and support, not penguins), but software developers can and do still get paid under this model. Just not in billions. Open source and closed source development models can and should coexist. But utter domination of the software world by a private software enterprise is not possible.
9) I have no problem with extending a publicly available specification, provided: other companies/individual software developers are allowed their say in the extensions of the specification, and any such specification is also released in a public manner. Closed source companies that throw temper tantrums (I'm not in any way suggesting that such behavior is even typical and certainly not confined to Microsoft alone) and go off and develop their own standard without the support or input of the community do not get my respect. When software that does not adhere to existing standards (that are available) for whatever reason, is created by a company that dominates the market, issues of anti-trust inevitably come into play. At the very least it is unethical to be in such a position and release software that reduces consumer choice in such a manner. If the goal is truly interoperability and to be "customer driven" then such a goal should outweigh the economic drawbacks such an action would cause.
10) Agreed. Whether or not the goal of the Linux community is to attract great software applications that are also commercial software applications is a subject of some debate.
Spyky
What about businesses that operate in multiple countries, or organizations that don't have a particular affiliation to any country. Should they have to register their domain for every country they operate in? I agree that it is unfair that the US has such dominance over .com .edu etc... But doing away with all non cc domains isn't an ideal answer. I know this sounds corny, but the net isn't about regionalization and nationalism, its about globalization.
.com domains companies have spent millions to obtain can be taken away at this point.
Not to mention that there is no way that all the
Spyky
Environment. It supports C/C++, Java and Objective C. Presumably with nice tools for developing Cocoa interfaces.
Spyky
Oops, yeah, you are right, OSX on all Macs this summer.
Actually, and this is totally unrelated to this thread, I think its interesting that none of the reviews i've read of OS X have mentioned Power Builder. I think that the quality of development tools for OS X is going to be the real deciding factor for Apple's success with its new operating system. Having a really nice IDE is going to make all the difference.
Spyky
Just a quick correction, my understanding is that Apple has no plans to install OS X on *all* shipping machines until sometime in 2002, it definitely won't be ready by July. July is when the MacWorld Expo will take place in NY, when the slightly updated OS X (10.0.2 i believe) and likely newer (faster) G4, Powerbook and iMac machines will all be announced.
Spyky
I work for a small software firm. We had a product (before I worked here) that's name apparently infringed on some large Unix based software/hardware provider's trademark. Both of the trademarks were registered and technically they registered a little bit before us. However we had docs to show that the name had been in use for some time before.
To cut a long story short, we fought the claim, and it ended up being worth it, because this large company settled with us and gave us a lot more money then the name was worth (to a small little firm like us) and it was a drop in the bucket for such a large company. So, to cut a long story short, consult with a trademark lawyer if possible, or at least a pre-law or law student, and if there is a reasonable chance that SGIs claim would be invalid. If it is, its probably worth it to fight, because you will likely get a settlement that could fund development for a long time.
Spyky
Also, i wonder if there is some sort of way of having claims concerning open source products handled pro-bono by some willing lawyer(s). I wish I knew someone to recommend, but it may be worth asking around.
First you seem to have many reservations concerning the DMCA. However, do you think we are better off with it? Candidly, would you rather see the DMCA amended in the manner you propose, or would you rather see the DMCA abolished completely?
Secondly, you support the "fair use doctrine" and also feel that methods to circumvent protection measures such as CSS should not be criminalized; at least in as much as the goal of such circumvention is within the spectrum of fair use. You also support watermarking and other methods to protect the copyrights of digital media with the reservation that the rights of home recording rights are not impeded.
However, both digital (CSS) and traditional analog (macrovision) protection schemes are fallible. Clever individuals can circumvent them, either for illicit purposes or not. Decriminalizing methods to circumvent these "protection schemes" does little to protect the copyright holder's interest outside the scope of current law (not in the DMCA). Would your proposed amendments to the DMCA protect from prosecution *any* individual who devised a circumvention method (for any purpose) and distributed it freely. A prime example of this is software such as the DeCSS.
This is of course, assuming they are not guilty of other infractions that do not fall within the scope of the DMCA with regard to creating or distributing a circumvention method.
Spyky
Access to rails (unlike public roads) could require more comprehensive and regular inspections, all built into the cost of rail access. Modern methods of identification could id each car that entered the rail system and ensure that it is up to standards. I'm quite sure that before any system like this is implemented issues like this will be well discussed and planned for. A "system ready for abuse". I don't know of anyone who intentionally disables their brake pads so they can go around causing mayhem and abuse. Or perhaps thats not quite how you meant it. Spyky
If you want to spend your time browing for patents that companies any large hardware/software corporation holds you will find *many* frivolous patents just like this one, most of which probably won't hold up in court. Does that make the patent holding company (in this case, Apple) the bad guy? Not if they don't actively sue other companies using their patent.
There is such a thing as a defensive patent. It is in the best interest (due to the USs moronic patent and legal systems) for companies to seek out as many frivolous patents as possible, on the off chance that some other company may sue them for violating some other frivolous patent. Instead of dealing with the hassle and monetary cost of taking it to court, they just exchange a bunch of their frivolous patents and everyone is happy.
Please stop shouting that Linux has had theming "engines" for years. We all know that, and Apple probably knows that too... and until Apple starts suing random companies for patent violations based on this patent, no one really cares.
So please stop shouting every time someone sees a frivolous patent owned by company X. Unless company X starts suing company Y over a frivolous patent, it doesn't really matter to anyone.
Derek
The bus runs at CPU speed. However it is still DRAM, hence the latency is a lot higher than your L1 cache. But yes, you have the right idea, its a lot faster then it being off-chip, but not so fast as your L1 (or L2 or even L3 (on a P4)) cache.
And of course, for graphics use, latency is less of an issue then raw bandwidth, because you aren't jumping around looking at a lot of different places in memory (like a PC OS) but you are trying to grab large sections of memory (textures) and keep 'em coming (bus speed).
Spyky
More camera's could have helped the "jerkiness" but also remember, that in the matrix, frames were interpolated in between. No way to do that in realtime with computers available today, even at TV resolution and not film resolution. Not in the time it takes to make an instant replay. It actually probably takes a lot of juice just to grab all of the still frames and splice them into a single several second piece. Hey, in 20 years, I bet we'll see this a lot more, and it will look a lot nicer Spyky
If you leave the Left in power, they _will_ take your freedom to program, they will take your freedom to encrypt, and they will turn us into the world's newest socialist/fascist country if given enough rope to hang us with.
Do more of your extensive research. Facism is a Right aligned political ideology.
Spyky
Also, for a laptop, what difference does it make whether you have multiple mouse buttons next to the trackpad. Your hands are right next to the keyboard anyway, so you can easily press one of the keys (cntrl) to simulate another mouse button.
Spyky
True true.
Most DVD players (that I'm aware of) that support CD-R and CD-RW have a second laser that has a different wavelength. In effort to increase their profit margin certain brands of DVD players forgo adding a second laser mechanism.
So for those of you who want the ability to play burned discs on your DVD player, make sure you read the specs of the next DVD player you buy and make sure it has 2 laser pickups, and you will likely be able to read those CD formats.
And yes, this is no conspiracy, merely Sony saving an extra buck fifty on that player.
Spyky
Get yourself a pair of really good speakers and amplifier and *then* worry about the quality of your CD player.
:-)
EXACTLY.
Then again, if you are even *considering* purchasing a $1500 CD player (SACD player) you better have some damn good speakers and an amplifier
Spyky
Slashdot screwed up my link, i even previewed it. weird. What i was trying to say was. Where the hell is the button to make it tell time!
Spyky
Where the hell is the to make it tell time!
Spyky
I notice you use the words "hasn't crashed yet", not "hasn't had any downtime". Not quite the same thing, short of a kernal update, there is no need to ever reboot a Linux-based machine. Not so with Windows products...
Spyky