No, all they have to do is scare your customers away, by dropping unsubtle hints that they might be sued at some point in the future, if they use your software (without buying a "license" from MS).
All the more reason for FSF, OIN or OSDL to sue MS for slander of title and tortuous interference with the businesses of others. This way they will be obliged to defend their claims and not the other way around.
Since they are not stupid, I must ask why would MS make such a provocation. Could they want to be sued?
The direct effect of patents is that US$ 50 digital camera could cost US$ 49 if it weren't for the patents, which is quite acceptable.
The indirect effects, on the other hand, although less obvious, run deep in the way our society works.
I suppose many/. users are innovators and inventors to some degree, from people who develop end-user products to people who think of clever ways to make a computer do something. We can see first hand how hard is to start a company in a world where just about everything is patented - how can one compete with a giant company that has patented the way your display shows information and how its buttons are laid out. Patents should cover innovative and _non_obvious_ uses of technology. The simple fact someone complains of massive violations could mean that the patents being violated are too vague or too obvious to be avoidable.
This scenario creates a world where in order to do something new you need licenses to a sizable patent portfolio, maybe a cross-licensing agreement with your older and larger competitor and to secure funds to defend yourself and your products from submarine patents. This environment is as hostile to the small inventors as it could get.
90% of the population wants nothing to do with Vista already.
90% of the population wants nothing to do with the OS their computer comes with. About 50% of those do not even know what kind of Windows they are running.
MS does not need to sell Vista do Joe Sixpack. Joe Sixpack is not their client. Dell, HP, Lenovo and Acer are.
Or main concern is not with software patents but with bad patents that should never be granted the first time.
One click shopping works by using cookies for their intended purpose - to maintain state during and across browsing sessions. This should never be considered original. On the USPTO's defense, we should consider how clueless everybody but a few were on the ins and outs of the web.
One click shopping should not even be considered particularly clever. They got there first because they were pretty much the first to get there. If I got near a small river and rolled a stone into it so I can cross it without getting wet, that hardly entitles me the right to patent the concept of a bridge.
Patent offices should shoulder part of the burden for defending the bad patents they issue. Only this way we can ensure all patents issued will be of high quality. Patents issued without such guarantee should be considered invalid.
You know... My first internet connection was on two leased line 9600 bps modems. We had a Siemens server running SINIX and a couple graphical workstations running Collage. My first post-web home connection was my trusty 14400 US Robotics I already used for BBSs. I still have it and it still works.
Of course, it was before the web.
In ten years, my home internet connection became five hundred times fatter. If we disconsider clever compression techniques that could be invented in the meantime, we can imagine that a 10-fold increase would be required for HD movies to be feasible.
Just seeing how fast broadband was adopted here in Brazil (first at 256Kbps and these days in the Mbps-range) accompanied by a sharp drop in prices, I can't imagine not having a link fat enough for HD content delivery in 5 years.
People tend to forget that whoever offers video subsidized by commercials will do whatever they can to prevent you from skipping them.
I think that the videos you will be able to purchase on iTunes will still cater to the normal Apple audience: those who can pay a little more for a whole lot more convenience.
It's an interesting angle. Perhaps it is possible to bully enough customers as to make Microsoft have a disproportionately high legal bill, much larger than needed to start bullying.
It's an interesting bluff Microsoft is making. Let's see if anyone wants to call it.
In the meantime, could it be considered libel with the explicit intention to damage a competitor's business? Does someone have the money to bring a lawsuit against MS to force them to state clearly their evidence or STFU?
I see a lot of reasons to have dual-head and proper 3D acceleration under Linux.
Besides that, the platform-specific part of any current game is rather small compared of the overall effort. Much more is devoted to creating 3D content, music and motion data and to promote the game itself.
If one can develop the Unix/Linux version in a way it's not very incompatible with MacOS (or vice-versa), you would have an instantly higher market to address. A 2% increase in sales for a successful title may very well cover the costs of doing so.
Just like living creatures, as soon as an opportunity arises, businesses will seize it. Game development for Linux will start right after there are decent 3D drivers.
I would not be surprised if the current lack of interest on part of Nvidia and ATI is because someone told someone else "It's a nice display card you have there. It would be a shame if it became incompatible with Windows. A bad reputation is a bad thing to have, but, at least, you could have all those Linux users..."
But Venus is a nice example of a runaway greenhouse effect on a rocky planet. When people predict a stable ice age because of increased polar melting, I am forced to show there are at least two stable states for a planet like ours and I prefer the ice-age one over the other.
And since we have been in and out ice ages for... ages, the other state seems much more stable.
Can you name any fully-featured file systems for Unix that provide transparent compression? How 'bout any Unix that provides transactional file system behavior? Alternate streams/extended attributes that can be read and written as files?
Since disk-space is dirt-cheap and processor bandwidth is very expensive, having compressed file systems seems quite dated. Talk to me again if you get at least 10-to-1 compression on any file.
Compression belongs to the application space unless it's a read-only file system and disk bandwidth is a concern. It's easier (and more sensible) to compress a file during save and decompress it during reads. Compressing everything - including temporary files - just creates more overhead than it's worth.
How many versions of Unix have case insensitive file systems? (Personally, I feel that case sensitive file systems should be considered a dated practice.)
I think Windows is case-insensitive more due to limitations of the original FAT file system than to any sensible architecture decision. MacOS was case-insensitive and its insensitiveness created some problems when it migrated to a Unix base. Again, case insensitiveness belongs to application space - it's the application that should deal with it. If you are talking about a command-line interface, case insensitiveness makes absolutely no sense. It also becomes a very thorny issue when you deal with non-ascii filenames, something that is clearly an afterthought in Windows.
MS didn't get all of this right; their implementation of streams and extended attributes I think is lacking from just the FS point of view, and even moreso from the UI point of view, and I could go on a bit of a rant about that. Reiser4 provides what I think is a much better model for how to handle that sort of thing.
Multiple streams existed in the classic MacOS and are considered very bad practice because it creates a whole lot of difficulties when transporting the file to a different OS. IIRC, they were added to NT to make it easy/possible to serve files to MacOS clients. Extended attributes are, again, application, user and machine specific and it is very hard to do them right. When you do them wrong, they create the risk of improper information disclosure or loss. I call it bad practice too.
But the others are things that I wish that Linux had. And that's just looking at the file system.
I think most people confuse what they want from a GUI for what they want from an OS - and it is typically a "Windows thing". There is not much I need from an OS than to be reliable and efficient. Having a GUI is not something I need from an OS.
IIRC no ICBM thing would qualify as heavy lift. And they are not even designed for orbital flight.
We don't know how to build a Saturn V. We have the plans, but we have neither the expertise to build one nor the factories needed to build its parts.
NASA thought about resurrecting the SV, but found it would be better and cheaper to do something with current expertises (the Ares series) than to re-learn 50-yo tech.
The problem with this approach is that it takes about 4 hours to prepare for an EVA using current US spacesuits. With the soviet designs it takes a lot less, but the suit is more rigid and less comfortable to work in.
And both are very bulky, so, it won't work in tight spaces.
about performance:
OLPC uses AMD Geode CPU at 366 MHz while CMPC runs at Intel Celeron Mobile 900 MHz. so who's the really winner?
While I agree the CMPC has a faster processor and, most probably, can run Office much faster than the XO can run OpenOffice, it also draws far more power and batteries will be either heavier, more dangerous (the XO does not use Lithim on purpose) or last less. I suspect a 366 MHz Geode is quite enough for what they are aiming.
about resolution:
You must know, if you know a bit of tech, that LCD screen size matters much more than its resolution, while screen size largely determines the BOM price. What OLPC uses is either 7' or 9' LCD while Classmate PC offers both and support a variety of resolution from 800*480 to 1024*768...but all computer literate people would know a larger resolution on the 7' or 9' screen will make fonts look rather too smaller to be read or making eyeballs very painful eventually.
Really, the XO's screen is not as easy to define - it's a very different kind of LCD and it is not directly comparable to the one in front of me. The extra pixels will not make fonts smaller, unless you are using a horridly primitive font management technology. What happens with mode DPI is that your fonts get better defined.
about operating system:
Classmate PC supports both worlds from ground up: Linux and Windows XP Pro
Since the XO was designed for a very specific purpose, what OS it does run is not very important. But I think a Unix-like core is a better choice for a rugged device where running MS Office is not one of the requirements.
about trusting platform module:
I don't know why you are so freaked about TPM... like an ancient man were afraid of morden weapons. but you must be fair to understand its usage. To my knowledge TPM is not used for DRM sorts of thing but for anti-theft purpose since a kid carrying a mobile laptop is so vulnerable to thieves and robbers in the street.
The fact there is a TPM indicates it can be used for just about anything TPMs are used for. While not alarming per se, not having a TPM means it cannot be used at all. As they say, "better safe than sorry". And since the notebooks are unable to pass for a common notebook - the form-factor is very characteristic - and thus its black-market value is very low, the risk of it being stolen should very small.
I see the CMPC being used in other settings, but, dollar for dollar, the XO seems a much better value unless your requirements demand something it cannot do.
It all depends on where you place the division between stupid and clever and if you can easily produce something that appeals to IQs between 85 and 115.
Of course, "stupid" was too strong a word. "Around average and below" would be a better one. Considering the average is 100, 50-115 would be a large-enough group and, if it shows a lower demand for quality than the 115+, they would qualify as the low hanging fruit.
I also suspect the public on the 115+ range is very fragmented and more difficult to hit.
On a side note, I have been observing what is happening here (in Brazil) with the popularization of cable-TV: As more higher income households get cable or other forms of premium content, the more traditional TV stations aim lower income families. The difference in quality, say, of journalism, is astounding, even within the same network.
So, for the disappointed fans of Firefly or BSG, I suggest strongly demanding a better educational system, with special attention to scientific education. Sure it won't come in time to save current series, but it could create a more fertile market for them in the future.
The tragic truth is that if intelligence obeys a Gaussian distribution, exactly half of the people have below the average intelligence. Since shows like these appeal mostly to people in the far right of the distribution (not really appealing to the average - and the word "mediocre" has its roots here - viewer), it's obvious TV execs should aim to the largest audience possible: stupid people.
With the added benefit that they can cut costs by cutting quality (reality is as cheap as it can get and sports, while expensive to secure a deal, is mostly profitable) and they will barely notice.
Slashdot Mirror
I would like to point out that the words of Mutually Assured Destruction were chosen for a very good reason.
I really have no need for FAT or NTFS file system support here. I am just very happy with ext3.
It will never be a real threat until Dell starts shipping boxes with OSX to Fortune 500 companies.
As long as it's in the realm of the willing hacker, MS is quite safe.
All the more reason for FSF, OIN or OSDL to sue MS for slander of title and tortuous interference with the businesses of others. This way they will be obliged to defend their claims and not the other way around.
Since they are not stupid, I must ask why would MS make such a provocation. Could they want to be sued?
It affects everyone's life deeply.
/. users are innovators and inventors to some degree, from people who develop end-user products to people who think of clever ways to make a computer do something. We can see first hand how hard is to start a company in a world where just about everything is patented - how can one compete with a giant company that has patented the way your display shows information and how its buttons are laid out. Patents should cover innovative and _non_obvious_ uses of technology. The simple fact someone complains of massive violations could mean that the patents being violated are too vague or too obvious to be avoidable.
The direct effect of patents is that US$ 50 digital camera could cost US$ 49 if it weren't for the patents, which is quite acceptable.
The indirect effects, on the other hand, although less obvious, run deep in the way our society works.
I suppose many
This scenario creates a world where in order to do something new you need licenses to a sizable patent portfolio, maybe a cross-licensing agreement with your older and larger competitor and to secure funds to defend yourself and your products from submarine patents. This environment is as hostile to the small inventors as it could get.
90% of the population wants nothing to do with the OS their computer comes with. About 50% of those do not even know what kind of Windows they are running.
MS does not need to sell Vista do Joe Sixpack. Joe Sixpack is not their client. Dell, HP, Lenovo and Acer are.
I have to agree.
It was the teenager in me who wanted to do that. He is grounded right now.
Not really.
Or main concern is not with software patents but with bad patents that should never be granted the first time.
One click shopping works by using cookies for their intended purpose - to maintain state during and across browsing sessions. This should never be considered original. On the USPTO's defense, we should consider how clueless everybody but a few were on the ins and outs of the web.
One click shopping should not even be considered particularly clever. They got there first because they were pretty much the first to get there. If I got near a small river and rolled a stone into it so I can cross it without getting wet, that hardly entitles me the right to patent the concept of a bridge.
Patent offices should shoulder part of the burden for defending the bad patents they issue. Only this way we can ensure all patents issued will be of high quality. Patents issued without such guarantee should be considered invalid.
Yes. All of a sudden, it will be really easy to convince about 90% of the population that buying a computer with Microsoft inside is evil...
But a plug-in for IE and Firefox that blocks all banners to or from a Microsoft-owned site would be loads of fun.
Even more fun if it's bundled in a self-propagating Windows rootkit.
You know... My first internet connection was on two leased line 9600 bps modems. We had a Siemens server running SINIX and a couple graphical workstations running Collage. My first post-web home connection was my trusty 14400 US Robotics I already used for BBSs. I still have it and it still works.
Of course, it was before the web.
In ten years, my home internet connection became five hundred times fatter. If we disconsider clever compression techniques that could be invented in the meantime, we can imagine that a 10-fold increase would be required for HD movies to be feasible.
Just seeing how fast broadband was adopted here in Brazil (first at 256Kbps and these days in the Mbps-range) accompanied by a sharp drop in prices, I can't imagine not having a link fat enough for HD content delivery in 5 years.
People tend to forget that whoever offers video subsidized by commercials will do whatever they can to prevent you from skipping them.
I think that the videos you will be able to purchase on iTunes will still cater to the normal Apple audience: those who can pay a little more for a whole lot more convenience.
It's an interesting angle. Perhaps it is possible to bully enough customers as to make Microsoft have a disproportionately high legal bill, much larger than needed to start bullying.
It's an interesting bluff Microsoft is making. Let's see if anyone wants to call it.
In the meantime, could it be considered libel with the explicit intention to damage a competitor's business? Does someone have the money to bring a lawsuit against MS to force them to state clearly their evidence or STFU?
The question is who has more money for a long legal war.
I see a lot of reasons to have dual-head and proper 3D acceleration under Linux.
Besides that, the platform-specific part of any current game is rather small compared of the overall effort. Much more is devoted to creating 3D content, music and motion data and to promote the game itself.
If one can develop the Unix/Linux version in a way it's not very incompatible with MacOS (or vice-versa), you would have an instantly higher market to address. A 2% increase in sales for a successful title may very well cover the costs of doing so.
Just like living creatures, as soon as an opportunity arises, businesses will seize it. Game development for Linux will start right after there are decent 3D drivers.
I would not be surprised if the current lack of interest on part of Nvidia and ATI is because someone told someone else "It's a nice display card you have there. It would be a shame if it became incompatible with Windows. A bad reputation is a bad thing to have, but, at least, you could have all those Linux users..."
No.
But Venus is a nice example of a runaway greenhouse effect on a rocky planet. When people predict a stable ice age because of increased polar melting, I am forced to show there are at least two stable states for a planet like ours and I prefer the ice-age one over the other.
And since we have been in and out ice ages for... ages, the other state seems much more stable.
Since disk-space is dirt-cheap and processor bandwidth is very expensive, having compressed file systems seems quite dated. Talk to me again if you get at least 10-to-1 compression on any file.
Compression belongs to the application space unless it's a read-only file system and disk bandwidth is a concern. It's easier (and more sensible) to compress a file during save and decompress it during reads. Compressing everything - including temporary files - just creates more overhead than it's worth.
How many versions of Unix have case insensitive file systems? (Personally, I feel that case sensitive file systems should be considered a dated practice.)I think Windows is case-insensitive more due to limitations of the original FAT file system than to any sensible architecture decision. MacOS was case-insensitive and its insensitiveness created some problems when it migrated to a Unix base. Again, case insensitiveness belongs to application space - it's the application that should deal with it. If you are talking about a command-line interface, case insensitiveness makes absolutely no sense. It also becomes a very thorny issue when you deal with non-ascii filenames, something that is clearly an afterthought in Windows.
MS didn't get all of this right; their implementation of streams and extended attributes I think is lacking from just the FS point of view, and even moreso from the UI point of view, and I could go on a bit of a rant about that. Reiser4 provides what I think is a much better model for how to handle that sort of thing.Multiple streams existed in the classic MacOS and are considered very bad practice because it creates a whole lot of difficulties when transporting the file to a different OS. IIRC, they were added to NT to make it easy/possible to serve files to MacOS clients. Extended attributes are, again, application, user and machine specific and it is very hard to do them right. When you do them wrong, they create the risk of improper information disclosure or loss. I call it bad practice too.
But the others are things that I wish that Linux had. And that's just looking at the file system.I think most people confuse what they want from a GUI for what they want from an OS - and it is typically a "Windows thing". There is not much I need from an OS than to be reliable and efficient. Having a GUI is not something I need from an OS.
Specially because witches did not exist at that time any more than they do today.
IIRC no ICBM thing would qualify as heavy lift. And they are not even designed for orbital flight.
We don't know how to build a Saturn V. We have the plans, but we have neither the expertise to build one nor the factories needed to build its parts.
NASA thought about resurrecting the SV, but found it would be better and cheaper to do something with current expertises (the Ares series) than to re-learn 50-yo tech.
The problem with this approach is that it takes about 4 hours to prepare for an EVA using current US spacesuits. With the soviet designs it takes a lot less, but the suit is more rigid and less comfortable to work in.
And both are very bulky, so, it won't work in tight spaces.
Please, never again use the word "hacker" as a synonym to "criminal".
Having hackers, Brazilian or not (I am Brazilian), is a good thing.
While I agree the CMPC has a faster processor and, most probably, can run Office much faster than the XO can run OpenOffice, it also draws far more power and batteries will be either heavier, more dangerous (the XO does not use Lithim on purpose) or last less. I suspect a 366 MHz Geode is quite enough for what they are aiming.
about resolution: You must know, if you know a bit of tech, that LCD screen size matters much more than its resolution, while screen size largely determines the BOM price. What OLPC uses is either 7' or 9' LCD while Classmate PC offers both and support a variety of resolution from 800*480 to 1024*768...but all computer literate people would know a larger resolution on the 7' or 9' screen will make fonts look rather too smaller to be read or making eyeballs very painful eventually.Really, the XO's screen is not as easy to define - it's a very different kind of LCD and it is not directly comparable to the one in front of me. The extra pixels will not make fonts smaller, unless you are using a horridly primitive font management technology. What happens with mode DPI is that your fonts get better defined.
about operating system: Classmate PC supports both worlds from ground up: Linux and Windows XP Pro
Since the XO was designed for a very specific purpose, what OS it does run is not very important. But I think a Unix-like core is a better choice for a rugged device where running MS Office is not one of the requirements.
about trusting platform module: I don't know why you are so freaked about TPM... like an ancient man were afraid of morden weapons. but you must be fair to understand its usage. To my knowledge TPM is not used for DRM sorts of thing but for anti-theft purpose since a kid carrying a mobile laptop is so vulnerable to thieves and robbers in the street.The fact there is a TPM indicates it can be used for just about anything TPMs are used for. While not alarming per se, not having a TPM means it cannot be used at all. As they say, "better safe than sorry". And since the notebooks are unable to pass for a common notebook - the form-factor is very characteristic - and thus its black-market value is very low, the risk of it being stolen should very small.
I see the CMPC being used in other settings, but, dollar for dollar, the XO seems a much better value unless your requirements demand something it cannot do.
It all depends on where you place the division between stupid and clever and if you can easily produce something that appeals to IQs between 85 and 115.
Of course, "stupid" was too strong a word. "Around average and below" would be a better one. Considering the average is 100, 50-115 would be a large-enough group and, if it shows a lower demand for quality than the 115+, they would qualify as the low hanging fruit.
I also suspect the public on the 115+ range is very fragmented and more difficult to hit.
On a side note, I have been observing what is happening here (in Brazil) with the popularization of cable-TV: As more higher income households get cable or other forms of premium content, the more traditional TV stations aim lower income families. The difference in quality, say, of journalism, is astounding, even within the same network.
So, for the disappointed fans of Firefly or BSG, I suggest strongly demanding a better educational system, with special attention to scientific education. Sure it won't come in time to save current series, but it could create a more fertile market for them in the future.
If TV survives the next 20 years.
Folks... It was pretty obvious they were pulling a Chris Carter on the audience.
They just fell for it.
Maybe this is some cause for alarm.
The tragic truth is that if intelligence obeys a Gaussian distribution, exactly half of the people have below the average intelligence. Since shows like these appeal mostly to people in the far right of the distribution (not really appealing to the average - and the word "mediocre" has its roots here - viewer), it's obvious TV execs should aim to the largest audience possible: stupid people.
With the added benefit that they can cut costs by cutting quality (reality is as cheap as it can get and sports, while expensive to secure a deal, is mostly profitable) and they will barely notice.
Well... I never really liked Firefly but definitely love this new BSG.
+1 insightful for you.
Sorry. but I ran out of mod points.