The fact Microsoft has an effective monopoly on operating systems, web browsers and office apps data formats and that it has been shown to repeatedly abuse that position in order to extend it (which _is_ a crime) makes a world of a difference.
All the peripheral monopolies MS has should be considered illegal ones because they stem from the abuse of their monopoly of PC operating systems.
"That may be overstated though when it comes to cost and failing to meet deadlines, NASA routinely exceeds expectations"
To be fair, they routinely do it both ways. When they get it right, they tend to get it very right.
But then, they have really clever people. They sure have figured out how to modulate expectations in a favorable way.
Still, just to match capacity, the Angora facility would have to launch 15 times more than the Ares V. That's more than one per month. I am sure it also incurs in large fixed costs.
BTW, can't all shuttle launchpads be converted to Ares V ones? Can't they launch more than 3 unmanned flights a year (most of the shuttle delays are because it's a human-rated vehicle that can't fail without causing a presidential speech)
But, again, there are the fixed costs for the launch facility and costs associated with each launch. I am not sure keeping a 3 launch/year Ares V facility costs significantly more than a 15 launch/year Angora facility. You have to keep in mind that's five times more launches per year just to match capacity. Then there is the in-orbit construction (which is also needed if we are to build anything significant in space). The only way it may work is if a lot of the construction work is highly automated and controlled from the ground - keeping a dozen construction workers in LEO just doesn't make much financial sense (but I would sign up immediately nevertheless).
One thing that puzzles me is that by using the LH2/LOX combination for the first stage, the Ares V gets hideous costs with fuel and facilities (they have to store a whole lot more hydrogen than, say, a Saturn V had and that's not easy).
When you launch an Ares V, you are, of course, burning a lot of money, but you are also launching about 5 times more cargo than an Angora launch. All things being equal, the bigger launch wastes less material and equipment.
And there is nothing that prevents using an Ares I or any other smaller lifter for lighter cargo.
Still, there is nothing to prevent usage of the combined capabilities of all the vehicles and platforms available. If someone can build an in-orbit facility where a satellite can be refurbished and sent back to a new orbit, it will more or less pay for itself in just a couple years. Some interesting electro-magnetic propulsion systems would have to be developed as well as some large pressurized shops with doors big enough to let a satellite through, but that's nothing really impossible.
The US, Europe and Russia have all proposed the most fantastic things, promising them for the next few years and then postponing or canceling them for budget reasons.
This project, like any fantastic one proposed in the past, has very little chance of, pun intended, ever flying.
This confusion is very common. There is the core OS and the MacOS X product you can buy in boxes. The core OS does not include Finder or Aqua. Just by getting rid of the superfluous components, Apple was able to shrink OSX to a bare minimum and then, just by selectively compiling the parts that made sense to include in the phone and iPod products, they achieved the desired footprint. It's like compiling a minimal kernel on Linux or BSD - really simple.
There could have been some problems with ARM-incompatible stuff, but those problems did not prevent the product launch.
As for developing, doing it for the iPhone OS is very close to developing for MacOS. Not everything is present, but it is a lot easier than to transition from desktop Windows to Windows CE.
I wouldn't be surprised if Apple did shrink it even further for smaller devices. The iPhone/iPod Touch have proven it can be done and getting rid of OpenGL ES, CoreAnimation and Cocoa Touch would end up in a very, very small OS.
Yes. Microsoft painted itself into a corner. They will, eventually, figure a way to get out, but I am not sure they will do it in time.
If you think someone is wrong, please prove it. Unless you do so, your argument resembles an ad hominem so closely it cannot be distinguished from one.
"Communitarianism: Communism Lite! Now with fewer corpses!"
Your firm grasp of History is also quite inspiring.
Now, humans have not only 10 times more nukes than required to wipe out life on Earth, now we have 10 times more oil than required to put us well into a runaway greenhouse effect.
As for the nukes, well, at least we don't drive them to work.
"My son's Toshiba laptop, purchased this last Christmas, runs Vista at about that speed. It sucks. (That's a unanimous opinion among all members of our household, geeks and non-geeks alike. Even the cats hate it.)"
I had Vista on my last notebook, a quite capable dual-core thingie and it sucked.
I had to explain to my wife (back when she was my GF) that, while I am working, I am in "autistic mode" and should never, ever be interrupted because it takes a long time to put one's brain in that mode (unless, of course, you are really autistic, but this is beyond the scope of this post).
That's why I turn Skype, Pidgin and Evolution off for most of the time. As for disruptions, Evolution was driving me crazy - I don't care some IMAP server could not be pinged - just get the f* e-mail. It seems the next release will be a huge improvement but, until then, it will remain off until the hours I block for dealing with e-mail.
Besides that, the server is mine and if something really serious happens to it, Nagios or Munin will page me in less time it takes Evolution to even realize something is wrong.
"he opposes the idea of voting over internet because people use internet mostly to watch pornography while drinking beer and voting should be a serious issue"
I oppose the idea of voting through the internet because it would be a nightmare to ensure the confidentiality of the votes, to say nothing about the accuracy of the whole process.
Having been part of the development team of one of the Brazilian electronic voting ballots I can tell there is a very thick layer of regulations, protocols and processes around the physical device that have to be followed carefully and audited independently in order to make it about as secure as a paper ballot while preserving its practical advantages like the almost instantaneous election results.
The very idea of being able to vote by phone of by a home computer connected to the internet horrifies me.
Not to say it won't fly - I am sure it will - but there is some relationship between beauty and function that seems to prevent flying machines from being ugly. This is a level of ugliness I think no flying machine ever reached. And yes, that includes the LEM.
There is something wrong with this design. I can feel it.
Well... For Exchange sync, I think "in a couple releases" is a safe bet, since the EU is making Microsoft publish their protocols. All it takes is for someone to endure reading possibly the ugliest piece of software ever written.
I still hope enterprises will notice that committing themselves to Exchange is a stupid idea, but, until there is some open alternative, part of me still can see why they feel so compelled to marry it.
Actually, it's not like marriage. Committing your mail and calendaring to Exchange is more like surgical implantation of a new organ.
In the centrally controlled scenario, you would still have a dangerous situation, but, if the situation could be adequately relayed, all other cars around the problem would either start braking, steer clear or accelerate out of the accident before it happens.
"Mistakenly handing over a crate of said electronics would give a nation a significant shortcut toward developing their own nuclear weapons."
Even considering that it's damn hard to make an implosion bomb implode properly, it's probably the part most countries that have no nuclear weapons already are very proficient with - it's _the_ part that can be fully developed and tested without calling much attention (unlike Uranium enriching facilities or missile testing). And keeping in mind MMII did never carry implosion warheads, and these must be for fusion devices, even a modest supply of relatively low-yield implosion nukes command a lot of respect.
Nuclear weapons are a nice insurance against invasions.
What worries me with BSD licenses is that anyone can pick up the software you helped to build, improve it (or not) a little bit, and start competing and fragmenting the market with a closed-source alternative product.
The GPL strikes a balance between what you give to a given project and what you get in return. You give work and, in return, you get other people's work. It's a very good deal and it's responsible for a lot of the progress in free software.
It's incorrect because "Free" and "Commercial" are not mutually exclusive. You can pay for free software, if you are so inclined. In comparison with closed software, you get so much more (you get the complete source for it) it's surprising it doesn't cost more. The folks at Red Hat may also enlighten you about this.
It's also wrong because you can use MySQL with commercial software. What you can't is to embed MySQL code within a non-free application unless you pay MySQL AB for the different license.
On the other hand, centrally controlling all cars would do wonders in simplifying the software that manages them. Think about it: no need for sensors in cars to measure position of other cars, no need to interpret this data (just a reliable indicator of the car's position, perhaps RFID tags embedded in the road, would suffice).
Of course, if any car that's not managed enters the road or the communications breaks down and we would have an instant pile of organ donors.
And, BTW, I too don't like the idea of a single entity controlling all cars. I don't even like cameras that can scan license plates. It's too 1984-ish for me to feel comfortable.
Slashdot Mirror
And it would be totally appropriate.
The fact Microsoft has an effective monopoly on operating systems, web browsers and office apps data formats and that it has been shown to repeatedly abuse that position in order to extend it (which _is_ a crime) makes a world of a difference.
All the peripheral monopolies MS has should be considered illegal ones because they stem from the abuse of their monopoly of PC operating systems.
And it dates back to the late 80s and early 90s.
"That may be overstated though when it comes to cost and failing to meet deadlines, NASA routinely exceeds expectations"
To be fair, they routinely do it both ways. When they get it right, they tend to get it very right.
But then, they have really clever people. They sure have figured out how to modulate expectations in a favorable way.
Still, just to match capacity, the Angora facility would have to launch 15 times more than the Ares V. That's more than one per month. I am sure it also incurs in large fixed costs.
BTW, can't all shuttle launchpads be converted to Ares V ones? Can't they launch more than 3 unmanned flights a year (most of the shuttle delays are because it's a human-rated vehicle that can't fail without causing a presidential speech)
But, again, there are the fixed costs for the launch facility and costs associated with each launch. I am not sure keeping a 3 launch/year Ares V facility costs significantly more than a 15 launch/year Angora facility. You have to keep in mind that's five times more launches per year just to match capacity. Then there is the in-orbit construction (which is also needed if we are to build anything significant in space). The only way it may work is if a lot of the construction work is highly automated and controlled from the ground - keeping a dozen construction workers in LEO just doesn't make much financial sense (but I would sign up immediately nevertheless).
One thing that puzzles me is that by using the LH2/LOX combination for the first stage, the Ares V gets hideous costs with fuel and facilities (they have to store a whole lot more hydrogen than, say, a Saturn V had and that's not easy).
I am not sure if your reasoning makes sense.
When you launch an Ares V, you are, of course, burning a lot of money, but you are also launching about 5 times more cargo than an Angora launch. All things being equal, the bigger launch wastes less material and equipment.
And there is nothing that prevents using an Ares I or any other smaller lifter for lighter cargo.
Still, there is nothing to prevent usage of the combined capabilities of all the vehicles and platforms available. If someone can build an in-orbit facility where a satellite can be refurbished and sent back to a new orbit, it will more or less pay for itself in just a couple years. Some interesting electro-magnetic propulsion systems would have to be developed as well as some large pressurized shops with doors big enough to let a satellite through, but that's nothing really impossible.
The US, Europe and Russia have all proposed the most fantastic things, promising them for the next few years and then postponing or canceling them for budget reasons.
This project, like any fantastic one proposed in the past, has very little chance of, pun intended, ever flying.
How many binary architectures does XP embedded run on? One? Perhaps x86 and Itanic?
And an XPE build goes on about 40 megs of disk and requires an x86 processor.
Most definitely not suited for iPhone-style embedded applications.
This hardly solves their problem. It takes them about five years to produce a new Window.
This confusion is very common. There is the core OS and the MacOS X product you can buy in boxes. The core OS does not include Finder or Aqua. Just by getting rid of the superfluous components, Apple was able to shrink OSX to a bare minimum and then, just by selectively compiling the parts that made sense to include in the phone and iPod products, they achieved the desired footprint. It's like compiling a minimal kernel on Linux or BSD - really simple.
There could have been some problems with ARM-incompatible stuff, but those problems did not prevent the product launch.
As for developing, doing it for the iPhone OS is very close to developing for MacOS. Not everything is present, but it is a lot easier than to transition from desktop Windows to Windows CE.
I wouldn't be surprised if Apple did shrink it even further for smaller devices. The iPhone/iPod Touch have proven it can be done and getting rid of OpenGL ES, CoreAnimation and Cocoa Touch would end up in a very, very small OS.
Yes. Microsoft painted itself into a corner. They will, eventually, figure a way to get out, but I am not sure they will do it in time.
If you think someone is wrong, please prove it. Unless you do so, your argument resembles an ad hominem so closely it cannot be distinguished from one.
"Communitarianism: Communism Lite! Now with fewer corpses!"
Your firm grasp of History is also quite inspiring.
That's great news...
Now, humans have not only 10 times more nukes than required to wipe out life on Earth, now we have 10 times more oil than required to put us well into a runaway greenhouse effect.
As for the nukes, well, at least we don't drive them to work.
"My son's Toshiba laptop, purchased this last Christmas, runs Vista at about that speed. It sucks. (That's a unanimous opinion among all members of our household, geeks and non-geeks alike. Even the cats hate it.)"
I had Vista on my last notebook, a quite capable dual-core thingie and it sucked.
The conclusion is that Vista sucks at any speed.
I love my e-mails on an IMAP server rack-monted and guarded by armed security.
I had a notebook robbed not too long ago and having no e-mails really in it made the episode digitally survivable.
I lost, perhaps, a couple days worth of Gaim logs.
I had to explain to my wife (back when she was my GF) that, while I am working, I am in "autistic mode" and should never, ever be interrupted because it takes a long time to put one's brain in that mode (unless, of course, you are really autistic, but this is beyond the scope of this post).
That's why I turn Skype, Pidgin and Evolution off for most of the time. As for disruptions, Evolution was driving me crazy - I don't care some IMAP server could not be pinged - just get the f* e-mail. It seems the next release will be a huge improvement but, until then, it will remain off until the hours I block for dealing with e-mail.
Besides that, the server is mine and if something really serious happens to it, Nagios or Munin will page me in less time it takes Evolution to even realize something is wrong.
As immoral as it may be, it's not illegal to buy votes at the NBs that vote on ISO standards...
"he opposes the idea of voting over internet because people use internet mostly to watch pornography while drinking beer and voting should be a serious issue"
I oppose the idea of voting through the internet because it would be a nightmare to ensure the confidentiality of the votes, to say nothing about the accuracy of the whole process.
Having been part of the development team of one of the Brazilian electronic voting ballots I can tell there is a very thick layer of regulations, protocols and processes around the physical device that have to be followed carefully and audited independently in order to make it about as secure as a paper ballot while preserving its practical advantages like the almost instantaneous election results.
The very idea of being able to vote by phone of by a home computer connected to the internet horrifies me.
Parallelism is the new new thing since at least around the ILLIAC IV...
It's the ugliest spaceship I ever saw.
Not to say it won't fly - I am sure it will - but there is some relationship between beauty and function that seems to prevent flying machines from being ugly. This is a level of ugliness I think no flying machine ever reached. And yes, that includes the LEM.
There is something wrong with this design. I can feel it.
Well... For Exchange sync, I think "in a couple releases" is a safe bet, since the EU is making Microsoft publish their protocols. All it takes is for someone to endure reading possibly the ugliest piece of software ever written.
I still hope enterprises will notice that committing themselves to Exchange is a stupid idea, but, until there is some open alternative, part of me still can see why they feel so compelled to marry it.
Actually, it's not like marriage. Committing your mail and calendaring to Exchange is more like surgical implantation of a new organ.
"I can't wait for that. PDF import will turn OpenOffice.org into a poor-man's Adobe Acrobat."
I would rather say a free man's Adobe Acrobat. It's not about the cost - it's about the freedom.
In the centrally controlled scenario, you would still have a dangerous situation, but, if the situation could be adequately relayed, all other cars around the problem would either start braking, steer clear or accelerate out of the accident before it happens.
"Mistakenly handing over a crate of said electronics would give a nation a significant shortcut toward developing their own nuclear weapons."
Even considering that it's damn hard to make an implosion bomb implode properly, it's probably the part most countries that have no nuclear weapons already are very proficient with - it's _the_ part that can be fully developed and tested without calling much attention (unlike Uranium enriching facilities or missile testing). And keeping in mind MMII did never carry implosion warheads, and these must be for fusion devices, even a modest supply of relatively low-yield implosion nukes command a lot of respect.
Nuclear weapons are a nice insurance against invasions.
What worries me with BSD licenses is that anyone can pick up the software you helped to build, improve it (or not) a little bit, and start competing and fragmenting the market with a closed-source alternative product.
The GPL strikes a balance between what you give to a given project and what you get in return. You give work and, in return, you get other people's work. It's a very good deal and it's responsible for a lot of the progress in free software.
"but it cannot be used with commercial software"
That's incorrect.
It's incorrect because "Free" and "Commercial" are not mutually exclusive. You can pay for free software, if you are so inclined. In comparison with closed software, you get so much more (you get the complete source for it) it's surprising it doesn't cost more. The folks at Red Hat may also enlighten you about this.
It's also wrong because you can use MySQL with commercial software. What you can't is to embed MySQL code within a non-free application unless you pay MySQL AB for the different license.
On the other hand, centrally controlling all cars would do wonders in simplifying the software that manages them. Think about it: no need for sensors in cars to measure position of other cars, no need to interpret this data (just a reliable indicator of the car's position, perhaps RFID tags embedded in the road, would suffice).
Of course, if any car that's not managed enters the road or the communications breaks down and we would have an instant pile of organ donors.
And, BTW, I too don't like the idea of a single entity controlling all cars. I don't even like cameras that can scan license plates. It's too 1984-ish for me to feel comfortable.
Indeed. Didn't realize that... :-)