with little or no discussion on Sony or their music service.
Because when I think of Sony, I think of Michael Jackson, Britney Spears & a Bill Hick's comedy sketch about "corporate musician's sucking Satan's pecker"...
I've been buying music for 25 years now and eating in restaurants for almost as long.
Two of my great joys in life are putting a CD on for the first time and discover that it's a fantastic piece of music and having a good meal in a restaurant I've tried for the first time. The fun in both of these activities is increased by a degree of exploration - either trawling through Internet music sites and music shop displays or driving around in an unknown area to find a good-looking place to eat.
I'm not into fast food particularly or music downloads (music for me is about full albums, not single tracks) but I have no issue with McDonalds selling fast food or Sony/iTunes/etc. selling downloadable music, if that's what people want.
I do have a problem with the modern general populace, however. Many people today, especially the youth generation, seem to want to live in this constant "safe zone" of life - at least here in the UK, they want the same theme pubs, fast food joints and bland popular music. In all three cases, they are assured of knowing "exactly what they are getting" beforehand without any risk of paying for something they may not think is worth the money. They rely on "product branding" to keep them from taking any risks in life and, to me, seem to live in fear of the unknown because standing out from the crowd would not be "cool".
I don't claim to understand their motivations and when I was their age, I had many of the same traits. I therefore hope they learn, like I did, to develop the confidence in their own decision making and to not give a damn about what "everyone else" is doing and make their own decisions.
In the meantime, just how many musicians and chefs are there out there who, because they are not a mainstream "branded product", have not had the opportunity to play us their music or cook us a meal?
Journals from commoners back in the day provided valuable historic insight.
I agree - but then whether or not your journals are published to the public at large will either be decided by you during your lifetime or by someone else after your death, not by you posthumously.
For example, your high school journals might be of no interest now to the public at large but if your high school disappears into a crack in the earth and becomes a big news story then your journals might instantly become a best selling book.
Incidentally, speaking of "cracks", the picture is disgusting. I would definitely get that navel seen too - or at least post a few warning buoys nearby keeping the rest of us away from it...
Your original point holds up only if you build a monolithic kernel with every driver built in.
Not in one sense. If you have a monolithic kernel as opposed to a modular one, then you will have to apply more processing time to the bigger kernel but less time to loading/unloading modules. In either case, there is some effect on your system speed.
I was not attacking Apple or the Mac in any way, I simply don't know enough about either to have a valid opinion.
But having read the article from the outset, I thought about the kind of optimising decisions you need to make on an x86 kernel installation and they are quite similar with the added decision making you need to make (on x86) about what hardware you support and how you support it.
Since you do seem to understand enough about the kernel and gcc (believe me, I'm no expert but I understand quite a bit), you'll also be aware that you can apply things like pre-emprive kernel patches (for example) that will also affect the overall system speed for certain functions.
My real argument was that Mac designers/programmers, much as I respect what they do, have only to understand a small set of hardware on the Mac platform (this in itself probably makes it a much better architecture than x86 - again, I can't comment through lack of experience) whereas someone that has to get a jumble of third-party vendor peripherals to work as fast as possible under a Linux kernel, or indeed a Windows installation, has a much harder task to complete.
My "personal data" consists of a few letters to bank managers, utility companies, etc, a selection of ROMs for MAME and some holiday photos... who cares who has them when I've "joined the choir invisibule"...
People that are worried about their data posthumously are:
1) Too self-obsessed and too boring to have anything interesting in their data including spreadsheets of the roughage contents in their twice-daily stool analysis, or
2) Have humungous pr0n collections and are afraid of "Joe Average was a dirty pervert" rumours spreading once they're dead.
How about we just kill those people and just see what happens to their data?
Wah, it's not fair, they have it easy- gimme a break.
Buddy, stop being so touchy, you sound like you sleep with your Mac, not just run software on it...
I hope the Linux contributors out there aren't as close-minded and Linux-retentive as you.
How about you read my original post again?
Did I not talk about Linux and Windows optimisations based on the range of hardware both need to support? Does that not in itself reveal to your blinkered "Mac-only" perceptions that I have experience of more than just Linux?
Instead of trolling and snapping anonymously from your dark little corner, how about you come out into the light and argue intelligently?
Actually, if you had bothered with reading the article instead of repeating the old Apple has it easy with limited hardware cliché, you would have noticed that this is absolutely not related to driver performance.
Not being an Apple owner or user, this is about the first time I've ever been in an OS X discussion. But the fact is that even as a non-user, I know a MAC has to ne a limited subset of hardware meaning a smaller, more optimised kernel, fewer drivers, etc. etc.
On Linux (which is the OS I most love and use incidentally), there are several hundred kernel options that span the range of hardware that Linux supports - therefore, knowing your way around those, as well as knowing the best drivers to use, best graphics options in, say, xf86config, the best compiler options in GCC, etc, etc, all contribute to the speed of the system - caching and dynamic defragmentation is just a small part of that.
What takes genius is getting every combination of different motherboards, CPU, graphic cards, hard disks, etc and make it *ALL* work flawlessly and without any configuration at all. Just plug it in, turn it on and it's ready.
And what operating system does that, pray tell?
Some Linux distros get pretty close to it, I'm told Windows XP is quite good at it (don't use it) but neither of them do it anywhere near 100% of the time.
Sorry, didn't realise this was a science fiction discussion...
After all, they make OS X for a very limited subset of hardware that they also produce (or at least assemble). Presumably they write all the drivers (or at least have input to them) and are already making use of a lot of good work from the Open Source community.
What takes genius is getting every ounce of speed from a Linux or Windows box that can be a conglomeration of different motherboards, CPUs, graphics cards, hard disks, etc.
Most users WILL be using the products that are either offered by MS or are rated as better or best products elsewhere (or by other users).
..and I'm saying that is precisely the problem. Many Windows users need to adopt a mindset change of actively looking for software that meets their needs, not just sitting back and waiting for something to drop into their laps.
Apologies, but did I give you an impression that I was looking for something free?
Not at all. But there's no point just griping about WMP and expecting MS to listen - they care about capturing the media player market exactly like they did with the browser market, not about making a piece of software that you personally like to use. MS just assume you'll download and use it anyway because it's free...
Umm..what else is a consumer then?
Someone with a choice... a person who buys a car for fuel economy and not speed, or vice versa... a person who uses MS products, other commercial products or OSS... you...
I believe the usage pattern for most users will be to look on their favourite search engine for an alternative media player, d/l and try a couple, make a decision about their usability and effectiveness, and move on.
Alternatively, they could find the player that best meets their needs and let the authors know what features they'd like to see - direct positive action...
Its argumentative IMO, to accuse a naive user of not contributing to the open source solutions or having to change their attitude...
"Contributing" means not just contributing software but contributing opinions and feedback also. If you care enough about software to moan why you hate an application, you should also care enough to tell the application authors why you hate it...
How many startup services does he have that his reboot takes 10 minutes? On my 800mhz machine (ancient by todays standards) reboot is 2-3 minutes, tops.
The main core weakness in Windows is the registry and registry bloat. Plus the fact that NTFS still suffers from fragmentation even though it's better than FAT was.
As someone who ends up fixing PCs for relatives and friends, I have seen PCs that take 15 minutes to boot due to lack of regular defragmentation, registry checking, etc.
Any knowledgeable person who works with Windows automatically knows that a Windows server needs regular attention and, in a desktop environment where software is being (un)installed regularly, will probably need need a total rebuild at least every 18 months or so to keep running smoothly.
When you've worked with Linux, UNIX or OS X, you begin to understand how much you took regular maintenance and rebuilds for granted in Windows.
Remote Desktop Sharing made XP a very useful and even very cost-saving upgrade.
I accept this but there was nothing "new" in XP (to my knowledge because I don't use anything above Windows 2000) - desktop sharing was nothing you couldn't do before with Citrix, pcAnywhere or VNC. Sure, under Windows XP integration, it probably made it a lot cheaper.
But, please remember, I am talking about Joe Public home-type users rather than knowledgeable types - I doubt many of these people know or even care about desktop sharing but do want to play music and movies, etc.
I'd give an arm and leg to have a no-nonsense media player, but I'm still stuck with what is (in most cases), the best of the lot.
You're not stuck with anything.
Unfortunately, you've fallen into the same trap that the vast majority of computer users have done when it comes to the world of Windows.
Firstly, Microsoft does nothing for free. It's a business, it's sole purpose is to make money. So when it offers you a "free" WMP update, it may take no money from you but it will take away something else instead - information about where you surf or what you play, your ability to use anything else in the future when you become dependant upon proprietary formats, etc.
Secondly, change your attitude. You cannot simply expect any software company to develop your killer media player application while you just sit back and wait.
Unfortunately, in the commercial sector, the whole issue is much bigger than just a piece of software that plays music and movies - it's about having the rights to the formats that music and video will be distributed in the future (in their eyes, anyway) so any software they "give" you, be it Real, Microsoft, etc. is going to try and force you to adopt their way of doing things so that their proprietary formats become the "defacto standard".
Rather than giving an "arm and a leg", you need to take an active role in the Open Source movement. OSS does not mean giving up Windows, it does mean maintaining your right to choice - there is a wealth of OSS software on Windows, like Media Player Classic.
If there's a piece of software that you need to perform a certain task, then the best thing you can do is try out some Open Source packages and let the developers of those packages know what you feel is wrong with them - that way, Open Source gets better and you, hopefully, get the functionality you want.
Just please do not just sit back and expect your killer app to be handed to you - commercial vendors only care about you and your desires if there's a way of crowbarring a heap of money from you also.
Windows users need to start looking beyond the "Open Source is just Linux" idea and understand that it's all about making good software and keeping data formats open so you can exchange whatever you like whenever you like with whomever you like.
Let's face it, be they Microsoft or any other commercial software developer, all of them have run out of ideas when it comes to features and usability.
From the perspective of the commercial software developer (at least for those that develop for the desktop environment), everything in software in now about garnish (= the way the software looks) and locking users into regular payment schemes, be that through DRM or software rental licensing.
It used to be that a major release upgrade meant a core functionality change in software - nowadays, it's just about a prettier look. For example, take a look at Powerquest's PartitionMagic software - from v7.0 to v8.0, I see no core functionality changes, just a slightly different look and feel. The same is true going from Windows 2000 to Windows XP - it's all just about a GUI change.
Unfortunately, version numbers are now just marketing tools to attract "fashion-conscious" users to using your software while, at the same time, introducing yet more bloat so that they also stay in the hardware upgrade cycle.
The whole Windows applications / PC thing is a global conspiracy to keep you spending money on hardware and software, nothing more.
One of the major advantages of the OSS movement is that every user has the opportunity to customise their computer environment and to trade off bloat against speed - provided that those same users start thinking for themselves a little and not just blindly consume every piece of hardware and software marketing hype that gets thrown at them.
Re:swap sucks with 2k & xp - disable it if pos
on
Is Swap Necessary?
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· Score: 1
Under Win9x, you could drop a line into the [386Enh] section of system.ini that read:
ConservativeSwapfileUsage=1
This setting supposedly encouraged Win9x to use real memory rather than swap - I don't know if there's something similar you can do in 2K/XP...
Writing open source applications puts companies out of business.
Sorry, but who decreed that software creation should become commercial ventures in the first place? I'm not denying that businesses have a right to trade and to make money making new and innovative products but the history of software stems from the military and the academics - that meant that software was either restricted to certain users within the military or handed out amongst the academics freely, in the same way that academic papers & other knowledge was shared.
Software distribution originally was pretty much Open Source, closed source and making money from it came later.
develops a product simply for the glory of it
What's wrong with that? Getting a man on the moon was done for the "glory of it" in the same way that Edmund Hillary climbed Everest. Okay, so writing "vi" isn't quite in the same league...
if he'd had the courage to take a chance and develop his software as a going concern
You're assuming that everybody is motivated purely by money - what's wrong with just writing software for the sake of it?
I'm in a tech support/software role, I enjoy my work, I could advance through management and double my salary but it doesn't interest me because I like fixing and fiddling with things.
all for his glory he puts 100s of families out of work.
There's no logic to this statement - if he doesn't emply them in the first place, how can he put them out of work???
I just think open sourcing applications of every variety is going to end up killing our industry
Wrong! Ignoring Open Source and open standards will kill your industry. There is nothing stopping any commercial venture making money from Open Source software (what are Red Hat, IBM, Novell, etc all doing currently?) and if you recognise that you have the ability to work with the Open Source community, then you can use that to your advantage - why do you need to employ a programmer to write an application that already exists as an Open Source package?
Now is about time that Microsoft stops behaving like a spoilt child and starts acting like an adult.
Open Source has NO interest in MS except with regard to APIs and protocols to enable OSS to talk with proprietary MS protocols. Other than that, OSS does not care that MS exists or not, it has no interest in defeating MS is some kind of software war and is here to stay whether MS like it or not.
MS should now accept this, just like they had to finally accept that TCP/IP became the globally accepted way of networking computers together about 10 - 15 years ago.
A rational adult company would recognise that it now has some serious competition for market share and would begin to take positive steps to secure its userbase - for starters, spending some of those huge cash reserves to improve the products that are out there already, make them better and more secure and, yes, lower their prices to make them more value for money.
Additionally, an adult company would accept that it's products have to work with competitors products and take action to ensure that (some of)
its APIs are open or that it adopts more open standards within its products.
The problem is that at the moment, the only damage MS is doing is to itself. This "spoilt brat" behaviour is lowering its public image even more and giving some of its customers another excuse to adopt OSS in favour of its own products.
My personal belief is that MS are very close to having to adopt a major tactic change (for the better) in order to stay in business in the future (and they know it). I'm sure that very soon we'll see the patent litigations start against the likes of SAMBA and those that built FAT/NTFS support into the kernel but I really don't see how backwards engineering will be seen as infringing a patent when tested in court - I also suspect (and hope) that one or more of the big Linux players (IBM?) will step forward with the money for OSS to fight these litigations - if not, then I believe the community itself will find ways of raising money to fight them. After all the court cases are done, MS will just be perceived as inflexible and (more) arrogant and lose more customers as a result.
The article just indicates how desperate MS are getting (in terms of trying to stop OSS) and very soon they'll realise that they just have to accept it and work with it or give up with software completely.
..the RIAA are putting forward a proposal that all music listeners will in future undergo surgery for the installation of aural cybernetic implants into their ears.
The implants are designed to once and for all do away with the Communist notion that people within social groupings share music, dance and storytelling amongst themselves.
The RIAA idea proposes that, in the future, all music media will be encoded with high frequency, out of listening band tones which will automatically activate or deactivate the listener's implants based on whether or not the RIAA have their credit card number - therefore, only those with valid subscriptions to a particular piece of music will be permitted to hear it, whether the music is broadcast over radio or on CD.
Of course, the implants will be available in a range of colours in "Home", "Professional" and "Advanced" editions.
I don't personally bother with music sharing because any music I really like I buy - and usually as cheaply as possible.
But I don't see the big deal with P2P anyway. Just scan through some of the alt.binaries.sounds newsgroups on Usenet and there's no shortage of stuff posted in there, far more than on any P2P networks I've seen and if you pay a few dollars/euros/pounds for a good Usenet provider, that seems a much more reliable source.
Added to that the RIAA would have to start suing ISPs and Usenet providers which is by no means a cheap or easy task.
After all, with creatures like Cthulhu, Nyalarthotep, Tsathoggua, Hounds Of Tindalos, the Wendigo, etc., there's plenty of scope for non-dictionary passwords and I've never seen a Cthulhu mythos word file for password crackers...
...having said that, with having uttered these names so frequently in the past, I now have a large black tentacle growing from the back of my neck and keep seeing strange shapes lurking in the shadows...
If MS (or any other company) releases free development environments then they should be applauded because at least it gives anyone the opportunity of turning a good idea into a tangible game or piece of software.
The problem I have is with the game companies themselves because making money from games and having a constant supply of good quality games are mutually exclusive.
For starters, I don't understand why there is a necessity to constantly re-invent the wheel and create gaming engines from scratch just about each time a new game is released. Surely it would be better to throw out the source code to current gaming engines to the Internet community to see what enhancements get added as a result - sure, keep the level design, textures, etc. for a specific commercial game that uses that engine under wraps so that, as a game company, you can make money from it.
One advantage that consoles have over a PC is that developers for a console platform must constantly "push the envelope" to get the console to do more and more as time goes on - this, in turn, creates better, more efficient coding. On the PC, the expectation is that users simply upgrade hardware to meet the requirements of a new game, no games developers get long enough with a particular, say, graphics chipset to fully understand what they can get it to do and, as a result, we, the end users, end up with sloppily coded games that need constant upgrades to get them to work properly.
My point is that we need a return to the good old days of the Commodore 64, ZX Spectrum & Amiga when it was possible for "bedroom programmers" to create good quality games. Sure, games were much smaller then but that's why game development environments like XNA, SDL, etc. exist now in order to cut down the development times. What would really put games development back into the hands of single programmers or small groups of game designers, is having access to the core engines as well so that the most important aspect of game design, the initial good idea for a game design, can become tangible much easier.
Incidentally, I don't, for one minute, expect this to happen because there are far too many concerns about making money (which is why money and good games are mutually exclusive in my view) but it would be good to see the games buyers become a lot more discerning when it comes to purchasing games.
Sure, we all own games that we feel were worth the money and that provide us with good entertainment but I guarantee most game players have spent far more money on disappointing games than good ones.
In a world of Open Source ideologies, Henry Ford makes a car with 4 circular wheels and 100 years later, we're all driving cars with 4 circular wheels.
In a close sourced patented world of the AdTI's making, Henry Ford makes a car with 4 circular wheels and 100 years later, we're arguing about whether the car should have 3 or 5 square wheels.
Unix is a 30-year-old idea because Unix is a 30-year-old good idea... enough said.
Slashdot Mirror
Because when I think of Sony, I think of Michael Jackson, Britney Spears & a Bill Hick's comedy sketch about "corporate musician's sucking Satan's pecker"...
Two of my great joys in life are putting a CD on for the first time and discover that it's a fantastic piece of music and having a good meal in a restaurant I've tried for the first time. The fun in both of these activities is increased by a degree of exploration - either trawling through Internet music sites and music shop displays or driving around in an unknown area to find a good-looking place to eat.
I'm not into fast food particularly or music downloads (music for me is about full albums, not single tracks) but I have no issue with McDonalds selling fast food or Sony/iTunes/etc. selling downloadable music, if that's what people want.
I do have a problem with the modern general populace, however. Many people today, especially the youth generation, seem to want to live in this constant "safe zone" of life - at least here in the UK, they want the same theme pubs, fast food joints and bland popular music. In all three cases, they are assured of knowing "exactly what they are getting" beforehand without any risk of paying for something they may not think is worth the money. They rely on "product branding" to keep them from taking any risks in life and, to me, seem to live in fear of the unknown because standing out from the crowd would not be "cool".
I don't claim to understand their motivations and when I was their age, I had many of the same traits. I therefore hope they learn, like I did, to develop the confidence in their own decision making and to not give a damn about what "everyone else" is doing and make their own decisions.
In the meantime, just how many musicians and chefs are there out there who, because they are not a mainstream "branded product", have not had the opportunity to play us their music or cook us a meal?
I agree - but then whether or not your journals are published to the public at large will either be decided by you during your lifetime or by someone else after your death, not by you posthumously.
For example, your high school journals might be of no interest now to the public at large but if your high school disappears into a crack in the earth and becomes a big news story then your journals might instantly become a best selling book.
Incidentally, speaking of "cracks", the picture is disgusting. I would definitely get that navel seen too - or at least post a few warning buoys nearby keeping the rest of us away from it...
Not in one sense. If you have a monolithic kernel as opposed to a modular one, then you will have to apply more processing time to the bigger kernel but less time to loading/unloading modules. In either case, there is some effect on your system speed.
I was not attacking Apple or the Mac in any way, I simply don't know enough about either to have a valid opinion.
But having read the article from the outset, I thought about the kind of optimising decisions you need to make on an x86 kernel installation and they are quite similar with the added decision making you need to make (on x86) about what hardware you support and how you support it.
Since you do seem to understand enough about the kernel and gcc (believe me, I'm no expert but I understand quite a bit), you'll also be aware that you can apply things like pre-emprive kernel patches (for example) that will also affect the overall system speed for certain functions.
My real argument was that Mac designers/programmers, much as I respect what they do, have only to understand a small set of hardware on the Mac platform (this in itself probably makes it a much better architecture than x86 - again, I can't comment through lack of experience) whereas someone that has to get a jumble of third-party vendor peripherals to work as fast as possible under a Linux kernel, or indeed a Windows installation, has a much harder task to complete.
People that are worried about their data posthumously are:
1) Too self-obsessed and too boring to have anything interesting in their data including spreadsheets of the roughage contents in their twice-daily stool analysis, or
2) Have humungous pr0n collections and are afraid of "Joe Average was a dirty pervert" rumours spreading once they're dead.
How about we just kill those people and just see what happens to their data?
Buddy, stop being so touchy, you sound like you sleep with your Mac, not just run software on it...
I hope the Linux contributors out there aren't as close-minded and Linux-retentive as you.
How about you read my original post again?
Did I not talk about Linux and Windows optimisations based on the range of hardware both need to support? Does that not in itself reveal to your blinkered "Mac-only" perceptions that I have experience of more than just Linux?
Instead of trolling and snapping anonymously from your dark little corner, how about you come out into the light and argue intelligently?
Not being an Apple owner or user, this is about the first time I've ever been in an OS X discussion. But the fact is that even as a non-user, I know a MAC has to ne a limited subset of hardware meaning a smaller, more optimised kernel, fewer drivers, etc. etc.
On Linux (which is the OS I most love and use incidentally), there are several hundred kernel options that span the range of hardware that Linux supports - therefore, knowing your way around those, as well as knowing the best drivers to use, best graphics options in, say, xf86config, the best compiler options in GCC, etc, etc, all contribute to the speed of the system - caching and dynamic defragmentation is just a small part of that.
And what operating system does that, pray tell?
Some Linux distros get pretty close to it, I'm told Windows XP is quite good at it (don't use it) but neither of them do it anywhere near 100% of the time.
Sorry, didn't realise this was a science fiction discussion...
What takes genius is getting every ounce of speed from a Linux or Windows box that can be a conglomeration of different motherboards, CPUs, graphics cards, hard disks, etc.
...the air stewardesses always tell you turn off your computers, mobile phones and Gameboys while the plane is in the air.
Apologies, but did I give you an impression that I was looking for something free?
Not at all. But there's no point just griping about WMP and expecting MS to listen - they care about capturing the media player market exactly like they did with the browser market, not about making a piece of software that you personally like to use. MS just assume you'll download and use it anyway because it's free...
Umm..what else is a consumer then?
Someone with a choice... a person who buys a car for fuel economy and not speed, or vice versa... a person who uses MS products, other commercial products or OSS... you...
I believe the usage pattern for most users will be to look on their favourite search engine for an alternative media player, d/l and try a couple, make a decision about their usability and effectiveness, and move on.
Alternatively, they could find the player that best meets their needs and let the authors know what features they'd like to see - direct positive action...
Its argumentative IMO, to accuse a naive user of not contributing to the open source solutions or having to change their attitude...
"Contributing" means not just contributing software but contributing opinions and feedback also. If you care enough about software to moan why you hate an application, you should also care enough to tell the application authors why you hate it...
The main core weakness in Windows is the registry and registry bloat. Plus the fact that NTFS still suffers from fragmentation even though it's better than FAT was.
As someone who ends up fixing PCs for relatives and friends, I have seen PCs that take 15 minutes to boot due to lack of regular defragmentation, registry checking, etc.
Any knowledgeable person who works with Windows automatically knows that a Windows server needs regular attention and, in a desktop environment where software is being (un)installed regularly, will probably need need a total rebuild at least every 18 months or so to keep running smoothly.
When you've worked with Linux, UNIX or OS X, you begin to understand how much you took regular maintenance and rebuilds for granted in Windows.
I accept this but there was nothing "new" in XP (to my knowledge because I don't use anything above Windows 2000) - desktop sharing was nothing you couldn't do before with Citrix, pcAnywhere or VNC. Sure, under Windows XP integration, it probably made it a lot cheaper.
But, please remember, I am talking about Joe Public home-type users rather than knowledgeable types - I doubt many of these people know or even care about desktop sharing but do want to play music and movies, etc.
You're not stuck with anything.
Unfortunately, you've fallen into the same trap that the vast majority of computer users have done when it comes to the world of Windows.
Firstly, Microsoft does nothing for free. It's a business, it's sole purpose is to make money. So when it offers you a "free" WMP update, it may take no money from you but it will take away something else instead - information about where you surf or what you play, your ability to use anything else in the future when you become dependant upon proprietary formats, etc.
Secondly, change your attitude. You cannot simply expect any software company to develop your killer media player application while you just sit back and wait.
Unfortunately, in the commercial sector, the whole issue is much bigger than just a piece of software that plays music and movies - it's about having the rights to the formats that music and video will be distributed in the future (in their eyes, anyway) so any software they "give" you, be it Real, Microsoft, etc. is going to try and force you to adopt their way of doing things so that their proprietary formats become the "defacto standard".
Rather than giving an "arm and a leg", you need to take an active role in the Open Source movement. OSS does not mean giving up Windows, it does mean maintaining your right to choice - there is a wealth of OSS software on Windows, like Media Player Classic.
If there's a piece of software that you need to perform a certain task, then the best thing you can do is try out some Open Source packages and let the developers of those packages know what you feel is wrong with them - that way, Open Source gets better and you, hopefully, get the functionality you want.
Just please do not just sit back and expect your killer app to be handed to you - commercial vendors only care about you and your desires if there's a way of crowbarring a heap of money from you also.
Windows users need to start looking beyond the "Open Source is just Linux" idea and understand that it's all about making good software and keeping data formats open so you can exchange whatever you like whenever you like with whomever you like.
From the perspective of the commercial software developer (at least for those that develop for the desktop environment), everything in software in now about garnish (= the way the software looks) and locking users into regular payment schemes, be that through DRM or software rental licensing.
It used to be that a major release upgrade meant a core functionality change in software - nowadays, it's just about a prettier look. For example, take a look at Powerquest's PartitionMagic software - from v7.0 to v8.0, I see no core functionality changes, just a slightly different look and feel. The same is true going from Windows 2000 to Windows XP - it's all just about a GUI change.
Unfortunately, version numbers are now just marketing tools to attract "fashion-conscious" users to using your software while, at the same time, introducing yet more bloat so that they also stay in the hardware upgrade cycle.
The whole Windows applications / PC thing is a global conspiracy to keep you spending money on hardware and software, nothing more.
One of the major advantages of the OSS movement is that every user has the opportunity to customise their computer environment and to trade off bloat against speed - provided that those same users start thinking for themselves a little and not just blindly consume every piece of hardware and software marketing hype that gets thrown at them.
ConservativeSwapfileUsage=1
This setting supposedly encouraged Win9x to use real memory rather than swap - I don't know if there's something similar you can do in 2K/XP...
They too "funnel money" into the US...
Sorry, but who decreed that software creation should become commercial ventures in the first place? I'm not denying that businesses have a right to trade and to make money making new and innovative products but the history of software stems from the military and the academics - that meant that software was either restricted to certain users within the military or handed out amongst the academics freely, in the same way that academic papers & other knowledge was shared.
Software distribution originally was pretty much Open Source, closed source and making money from it came later.
develops a product simply for the glory of it
What's wrong with that? Getting a man on the moon was done for the "glory of it" in the same way that Edmund Hillary climbed Everest. Okay, so writing "vi" isn't quite in the same league...
if he'd had the courage to take a chance and develop his software as a going concern
You're assuming that everybody is motivated purely by money - what's wrong with just writing software for the sake of it?
I'm in a tech support/software role, I enjoy my work, I could advance through management and double my salary but it doesn't interest me because I like fixing and fiddling with things.
all for his glory he puts 100s of families out of work.
There's no logic to this statement - if he doesn't emply them in the first place, how can he put them out of work???
I just think open sourcing applications of every variety is going to end up killing our industry
Wrong! Ignoring Open Source and open standards will kill your industry. There is nothing stopping any commercial venture making money from Open Source software (what are Red Hat, IBM, Novell, etc all doing currently?) and if you recognise that you have the ability to work with the Open Source community, then you can use that to your advantage - why do you need to employ a programmer to write an application that already exists as an Open Source package?
Open Source has NO interest in MS except with regard to APIs and protocols to enable OSS to talk with proprietary MS protocols. Other than that, OSS does not care that MS exists or not, it has no interest in defeating MS is some kind of software war and is here to stay whether MS like it or not.
MS should now accept this, just like they had to finally accept that TCP/IP became the globally accepted way of networking computers together about 10 - 15 years ago.
A rational adult company would recognise that it now has some serious competition for market share and would begin to take positive steps to secure its userbase - for starters, spending some of those huge cash reserves to improve the products that are out there already, make them better and more secure and, yes, lower their prices to make them more value for money.
Additionally, an adult company would accept that it's products have to work with competitors products and take action to ensure that (some of) its APIs are open or that it adopts more open standards within its products.
The problem is that at the moment, the only damage MS is doing is to itself. This "spoilt brat" behaviour is lowering its public image even more and giving some of its customers another excuse to adopt OSS in favour of its own products.
My personal belief is that MS are very close to having to adopt a major tactic change (for the better) in order to stay in business in the future (and they know it). I'm sure that very soon we'll see the patent litigations start against the likes of SAMBA and those that built FAT/NTFS support into the kernel but I really don't see how backwards engineering will be seen as infringing a patent when tested in court - I also suspect (and hope) that one or more of the big Linux players (IBM?) will step forward with the money for OSS to fight these litigations - if not, then I believe the community itself will find ways of raising money to fight them. After all the court cases are done, MS will just be perceived as inflexible and (more) arrogant and lose more customers as a result.
The article just indicates how desperate MS are getting (in terms of trying to stop OSS) and very soon they'll realise that they just have to accept it and work with it or give up with software completely.
The implants are designed to once and for all do away with the Communist notion that people within social groupings share music, dance and storytelling amongst themselves.
The RIAA idea proposes that, in the future, all music media will be encoded with high frequency, out of listening band tones which will automatically activate or deactivate the listener's implants based on whether or not the RIAA have their credit card number - therefore, only those with valid subscriptions to a particular piece of music will be permitted to hear it, whether the music is broadcast over radio or on CD.
Of course, the implants will be available in a range of colours in "Home", "Professional" and "Advanced" editions.
But I don't see the big deal with P2P anyway. Just scan through some of the alt.binaries.sounds newsgroups on Usenet and there's no shortage of stuff posted in there, far more than on any P2P networks I've seen and if you pay a few dollars/euros/pounds for a good Usenet provider, that seems a much more reliable source.
Added to that the RIAA would have to start suing ISPs and Usenet providers which is by no means a cheap or easy task.
Damn cool mod though - I wonder if I can get him to mod my cat...
Gibber...
The problem I have is with the game companies themselves because making money from games and having a constant supply of good quality games are mutually exclusive.
For starters, I don't understand why there is a necessity to constantly re-invent the wheel and create gaming engines from scratch just about each time a new game is released. Surely it would be better to throw out the source code to current gaming engines to the Internet community to see what enhancements get added as a result - sure, keep the level design, textures, etc. for a specific commercial game that uses that engine under wraps so that, as a game company, you can make money from it.
One advantage that consoles have over a PC is that developers for a console platform must constantly "push the envelope" to get the console to do more and more as time goes on - this, in turn, creates better, more efficient coding. On the PC, the expectation is that users simply upgrade hardware to meet the requirements of a new game, no games developers get long enough with a particular, say, graphics chipset to fully understand what they can get it to do and, as a result, we, the end users, end up with sloppily coded games that need constant upgrades to get them to work properly.
My point is that we need a return to the good old days of the Commodore 64, ZX Spectrum & Amiga when it was possible for "bedroom programmers" to create good quality games. Sure, games were much smaller then but that's why game development environments like XNA, SDL, etc. exist now in order to cut down the development times. What would really put games development back into the hands of single programmers or small groups of game designers, is having access to the core engines as well so that the most important aspect of game design, the initial good idea for a game design, can become tangible much easier.
Incidentally, I don't, for one minute, expect this to happen because there are far too many concerns about making money (which is why money and good games are mutually exclusive in my view) but it would be good to see the games buyers become a lot more discerning when it comes to purchasing games.
Sure, we all own games that we feel were worth the money and that provide us with good entertainment but I guarantee most game players have spent far more money on disappointing games than good ones.
In a close sourced patented world of the AdTI's making, Henry Ford makes a car with 4 circular wheels and 100 years later, we're arguing about whether the car should have 3 or 5 square wheels.
Unix is a 30-year-old idea because Unix is a 30-year-old good idea... enough said.