Oh and BTW... the whole Kerberos thing? Microsoft released the specs as a trade secret. TRADE SECRETS HAVE NO PROTECTION UNDER THE LAW ONCE THEY ARE LEAKED . That's why they are guarded so viciously.
So its no longer a trade secret. Its still a copyrighted document and is still protected as such.
No, you have no idea what you're talking about. "Native" widgets in the X implementations are 100% "client" side (given X's ass-backwards client/server definitions). They are implemented (in Xt, and for that matter, in Gtk or Qt) 100% through Xlib (or X extension) calls. Xlib has optimizations for a lot of features like direct to screen drawing and/or non-network communication, but no X server (and no X graphics card) knows anything more than that. Those that do are often 3D aware, and get acceleration when doing 3D work (or using GL "widgets"), but that's GL, and no X server implementation uses GL for simple 2D primitives.
"Native" widgets in Windows? Like I said, if graphics cards are now so MS friendly as to do 70% of Windows' work for Microsoft, I'm getting out of the software business and will go take up modern dance. Name a graphics card that knows what a "pull down menu is". I really would like to see it...and see if its spec is open enough to use it.
If "component-aware" graphics cards have existed, then a new graphics system for Linux aught to be started to take advantage of it (with the first application built on it being an X server, so backwards compatability remains).
The most "component aware" graphics cards can get is hardware buffering (using the graphics cards memory to cache, which reduces the amount of screen redraws). But it still takes the application developer to choose to use it. MFC may be built in such a way as to do that, but that's MS doing the work, not the graphics card. Yes, that would make "native" faster, but not for the reasons you think. In X, its the double-buffering extension, though its never been stable enough for me to bother to use it, at least back in X11R5 days.
Fred Lavigne (http://fred.lavigne.com/) has written a Swing Look And Feel class that uses gtk themes. Its not perfect, but it works.
He also has some code (independent of that) that implements some GTK/Gnome features in java.
Unfortunately, the site isn't coming up in my DNS right now...but look up SkinLF on freshmeat. I wrote some code on top of that which will look at the local.gtkrc file and load up the default gtk theme.
Ok, I hadn't read the earlier comment (it was below my threashold) about In any OS worth mentioning standard windowing calls (such as pulling down a menu or pushing a button) make specific calls to the video hardware. Sun's JVM, however, does not accelerate swing components, relying instead on your CPU to draw them.
It can't accelerate Swing, since Swing is 100% java. Its translated to Graphics object calls, which translate to graphics primitives in Windows or Xlib.
And since when did hardware video cards actually become "Component aware" of things like menus, pushbuttons, etc. X has NEVER had that as far as I know (not in Solaris, not in SGI, certainly not in XFree). Widgets in Xt/Motif are 100% implemented in Xlib calls. The port of X to the platform can take some advantage of hardware for graphics and images, but beyond that, the hardware has no idea what "Xt" or "Motif" are. The X Server doesn't either. Go look at the X11 protocol.
Optimization of GUIs usually involves buffering, particularly of pixmaps and colormaps. Or, it involves improvements like Low Bandwidth X, the Shared Memory extension (where the network aspect of the X protocol is removed, and the client basically sends the protocol to the server through shared memory), or direct x (no relation to microsofts DirectX), where Xlib directly draws onto the screen rather than telling the server to draw.
If graphics cards for the PC platform actually have an awareness of "push button", i would be severely suprised. "Specific calls" for a push button are "fill this rectangle, now draw these 4 lines and this string in this color... ok, now fill the rectangle in a different color, draw these same 4 lines in a different color, and redraw the string." Oh, gee, that can really benefit from hardware acceleration?
Don't think they'll be "pixel identical". You've no idea how often I see code that hard-codes the layouts to fixed pixel sizes (rather than use layout managers) that look ugly as hell 'cause on a different platform the fonts are different sizes.
And what's "accelerated" in AWT? Nothing can be done in AWT that the hardware can really take advantage of. Graphics cards are unaware of "windows" (in the Windows or X sense) as far as I know. The only exception are 3D cards, and you need Java3D to get acceleration out of them.
As for basic drawing, well the "Graphics" object is the same, regardless of whether you're doing Swing or AWT (its an AWT object), and its a Graphics2D object. If the VM implementation uses hardware acceleration for that, cool. You'll get the benefits regardless. In fact, if it IS accelerated, Swing may be faster than AWT.
Not because somebody actually went to a store and bought the latest MS Office.
What happens is MS updates their software. The OEMs that do the bundling (including Dell, where a LOT of companies get their computers), automatically include the upgrade of Office on every NEW box that comes out.
Now, the next wave of new computers that goes to a company automatically is given the update, and instantly, incompatabilities exist. The only solution is for the company to independently purchase a complete set of licenses for the new product to all other employees, pass the cd around, and get on with it.
MS then makes the real money, when (in order to take work home and bring it back again without lossage) the employee has to buy a copy of the Office upgrade from a store, at store prices, at their own expense.
And I'd say you're still in the minority and will remain as such no matter what. Yes, mp3.com can still deliver (legally) much good music. The problem is that the daily/hourly/every few minutes need (i stress that word -- you get the big bucks when the user needs to visit your site, just like MS got the big bucks when users needed MS Office or MS Windows (for various reasons we all wish weren't so true).
When I'm looking for something new, I might still hit mp3.com. but i'm not looking for something new every day. Advertising-based sites are still (and likely will remain as such) only profitable on sites one has to hit multiple times every day (slashdot, yahoo, netcenter...). Since mp3.com can't deliver that kind of content anymore, mp3.com is going to lose the value of their advertising, and thus, their only income to their stockholder value.
This was a very limited part of MP3.com's services which was ruled a violation.
Unfortunately for MP3.com, it was a very LARGE portion of their buisness model. MP3.com needed a hook to get repeat visitors and a mailing list of customers (the kinds of things that Wall St. values in a advertising-based 'net company). My.mp3.com as a portal was their mechanism. The key attraction for my.mp3.com was for users to be able to hear music they own anywhere they are, thus, they keep coming back to the site to listen to their music and the advertising dollars keep rolling in.
Kill the music downloads, and you kill the reason for daily visits to the site. You strangle their primary income. By the time the final effects of this reach Wall Street tomorrow, the company might not even be worth the $6billion that the RIAA is asking for damages.
B.t.w., everybody. Remember this is not the death of mp3 the file format. Not even close. All this has to do with is whether or not a company or individual can store a database of music (copyrighted), and make a profit from that database.
This in no way is ordering anybody to remove their own mp3s from their own personal collection.
This probably will also imply that Napster will likely lose. mp3 trading will go on. Its just gonna have to go underground, like all bootlegging.
Mp3 central storage will go a different route. As bandwidth increases to the "common person", individual broadcasting software will become more standard as part of the base o/s (things like icecast/shoutcast, etc...). In fact, MS already has plans for a windows-media-limited-edition-server to go as part of Windows ME (though the target is Real Networks, not shoutcast). With that setup, you can keep all your mp3s on a single box (that _you_ own), and play them wherever you happen to be at the time.
Yes, the RIAA is attacking "public" stations, but they can't patrol every box, every port, to find the "private" broadcasting and play-on-demand stations out there. Again, it'll go underground, or it'll be completely legal, since its your copy being played for yourself, under fair usage (give or take the DMCA's vague definition of fair use).
Shame this news (good or bad, but important either way) got buried so quickly thanks to the (redundant, already known, and really downright pointless) D.o.J/States decision to try to remedy Microsoft by breaking them up...
Microsoft is the past creeping up on the present.
The MP3 issue (and no, I don't agree w/ Katz 100%, or even close) is still the past trying to take over the future. I think the MP3 issue is far more important.
You can hear music for free on the radio. You can hear music for free on television.
This analogy doesn't work when comparing traditional media to napster and mp3-broadcasting stations.
Music on the radio isn't "free". The radio station has to keep very careful records of what they play, and based on the ratings, they pay royalties to the RIAA (which distributes them proportionaly to the labels who own the recordings played), and to the publishing companies (BMI/ASCAP/SOCAN).
The radio stations advertise in order to collect the money that goes to the royalty payments. The music isn't free. Like "Yahoo", its paid for by advertising.
This is the reason the RIAA is going after 'net broadcasters. Net broadcasting (shoutcast, real-producer, etc...) is likely going to have to go to an advertising model 'cause the royalties for playing the music still need to be paid.
The problem with the RIAA approach is that they charge far too much relative to the size of the listening audience. Why should someone pay $5000 + royalties that reflect an audience of 10,000, when they have records (its all digitially logged anyways, automatically) showing that they've never had an audience more than 100 listeners at a time? Economically, the RIAA is actually pricing most 'net broadcasters out of business. And I'm inclined to believe its intentional.
It wouldn't be for ALL writing...its more things like "this chapter is free, $1 and you can read the whole book", etc. Its been shown that only in rare cases does banner advertising even come close to working, so SOME alternative to pay for the effort that goes into writing the stuff has to come out.
Besides, the prices could vary based on size of the material, view once vs. keep your own copy, etc. A real market would (should?) develop where prices really do reflect demand or quality.
Right now, most sites exist on 4 things. 1) they actually have a product to sell. 2) they are supported by banner ads for products someone else is selling, and both the advertisers and the site are operating at efficient (if not profitable) levels. 3) they are supported by banner ads, but the click-through rate is so low that it isn't profitable for the advertiser to continue paying for the site. 4) they operate at a loss, all effort to the site is donated by either the maintainers or by supporters of the site who don't require advertising.
I feel the majority of sites out there are 3, 4, or 4 but not interesting enough to charge...and neither 3 nor 4 can survive forever. Micropayments for "important content" is a way to get out of that loss-center loop. Consider it the price of "making a copy". you go to the library, you don't have time to read the entire (10-something odd page) magazine article, so you go to the copy machine and make the copy, at 5p a page. in that case, the money goes to the library for paper and machine maintainance. With micropayments, aside from, say 2p a transaction to the micropayment firm, the money goes directly to the content author.
If they sold 3 or 4 never before heard tunes on MP3 on a website for fans to pay for, selling them for $.25 each...
The problem is that there's no infrastructure on the 'net for micropayments (which is what you're talking about) that's reached a consensus enough to become a standard. and no end-user wants to have to deal with more than one micropayment scheme, so a single standard/company needs to exist (but we all know who we don't want that company to be...).
Yes, I wouldn't mind the ability to surf around, see headlines of stuff, and then plunk down a virtual quarter to see/hear/save the details, finally having all my quarters collectively charged to my credit card at the end of the month (or vice versa, i invest x number of quarters that are used up as i surf).
But the problem is that too many people out there still feel the web should be "free", so the only B2C architecture out there is the standard pay a large amount for a product which is shipped to you of normal e-commerce. When credit card transactions cost the processing company a minimum of 50cents to either visa or m.c. each, how do you justify using a credit card to pay a quarter?
The other hassle is that, again, once you've got it, what's to stop you from giving it to your friends? We're right back to the issue that napster's being bitten for in the first place.
Microsoft's Media includes encryption, which makes some companies happy (like DGM/BootlegTV), but that has the side effect of annoying/excluding the rather large Linux-only customer base. Few of the other companies out there are supporting such approaches. Most pay per view sites out there (www.hob.com) are now exclusively supporting Windows Media Player.
It's called truth in advertising, and laws like this are very common...The percentage of real fruit juice in anything described as a "fruit drink", "fruit juice", etc. is controlled.
I thought this was the guy's point. Saying a product is an "Operating System" should mean something. The problem with that is, unlike "I have a pickle", "I provide an operating system" is a moving target. What an OS was in 1963 is not what an OS is in 2000, and thus won't be in the future.
If the government, through "truth in advertising" or something related to it, decides to mandate definitions of what a particular software product or feature really is, it will affect things drastically. A definition of a type of software product by anything but what the public will buy will either raise the bar for new product entry, or make people even more content with "government standard O/S 1.0" which will never change (look at what ISO's "standards" did to american factories, after ISO declared that all factories are made alike).
Rule 1: Remember this is bloat-fucking-central Microsloth we're dealing with. (add to that -- 64MB memory? that might someday be a limitaton, too)
Rule 2: Remember this box will have Windows CE underneath it (or some varient). Bloat^2.
Rule 3: Remember this box is designed to compete with PlayStation 2. PlayStation 2 can do a number of non-game things (with extensions that MS will have already installed out of the box). As the number of non-game things grows, it will fall prey to people asking more than what can be done reasonably. If the PC never did this, Moore's law would be a moot point. Albiet, when this happens in the gaming console world, its a free-for-all on who wins the next generation; the PC world is still Wintel on a generation change.
MS will use this to lock in people away from other products as best they can by over-integrating everything in site. This includes a Web-TV-like interface (don't know if they've said that, but they've thought it -- there's gotta something underneath that interfaces with the "broadband internet" system). Once you hit the 'net, you start bringing in things that change subject to the PC and Workstation world, where things ALWAYS get more intensive than your CPU and memory can handle. ALWAYS.
If it was just used for games, then screw it, 600 is overkill (unless you are doing real 3D in the processor and not an optimized card). 600 + a decent card is overkill even for doing realtime 3D at decent resolution on a PC, much less the crappy TV res. even HDTV-level resolution would work well with that chip (but then the 64M memory becomes a _heavy_ limitation at the texture-mapping process)
At any rate, there will, by the time MS gets this thing out, apps that they want to work on it that will still (for various reasons) be slower than ideal, even for a 600Mhz chip. And game makers will have to deal with the portion of processor and memory that WindowsCE (or its varient) will take away from them (you probably cant bypass it as easily as you could bypass the O/S in the old 6502 boxes)...
Advantage of the 600 chip? by the time they're ready for mass production, those will be the "cheap chips".
Every chip is excellent for what it was meant to do. Every chip user asks more of his chip than was originally intended.
yeah, but coming out in 2001 means they need to seriously consider HDTV standards as well. The other gaming systems will have to as well.
of course, MS may just choose to ignore HDTV and only send out the standard TV signal. probably wouldn't hurt, unless they were to try to integrate the X-Box w/ Web-TV or something...
It has been a trademark since the "New Coke" was introduced in 1984. The Coca-Cola company has already won a lawsuit in America, suing the publisher and author of a novel, for not capiltalizing their usage of it. The suit was victorious.
uh...that's Bradbury...and over 50 years old at that...and heck, the cheesy 70's TV Miniseries was probably better than this new film, and without product placements to boot...
No. The Phrack document never existed on any of SJGames's files, including the BBS.
The Company was raided because the file DID show up on Lloyd Blankenship's personal underground BBS, and by coincidence, Lloyd also managed the Illuminati BBS.
Now onto java 1.3, 3 or whatever it will be called
Actually, I want them to get on the ball with all the supplimental stuff -- Media Framework, Advanced Imaging, 3D, and the plug-in (and make sure the plug in and mozilla milestones work together.
Basically, there are still a number of "Java" pieces that have native code that needs to be ported. If Blackdown doesn't have the resources to do the work, then someone else needs to step forward to get it done.
Right now I'm running Netscape on my Solaris/x86 box, and it uses plenty of Motif. What are you trying to say?
I read (somewhere) that the GTK libraries used in the linux version are going to remain the only supported front end for ALL unix platforms, meaning the Solaris build of Mozilla also will require GTK.
Netscape may be put under some pressure by Motif holdouts in the Solaris world to instead build a new front end for Netscape 5 that IS in Motif.
Looking at it right now, it appears that the UI engine is far more XML/CSS like (XUL + Javascript), so making a Motif "look" may be merely a case of changing the graphics used. But that of course brings us back to the "Skins" approach instead of the themes which yeild a consistent desktop.
My main problem with "skins" is that they don't adapt to "subtle" changes. I may like a particular skin for xmms, but it clashes slightly with my gtk set up -- because they're all image files, if i wanted "pure" compatibility i'd have to load up each image, play with the colormap, save it as a separate skin (that isn't worth "publishing" since its only a minor mod) and re-install it...
Problem 2 with skins -- they use too damn many colors. Not a problem with my since i run 16 bit+, but certainly a major problem, as most Solaris machines i know are (still) 8 bit. The Dithering algorithm or 216-colormap that's applied to the html images will also be applied to those (ugly) buttons as well.
Netscape already uses gtk as its framework, plus some homegrown stuff too.
Wrong
Mozilla is currently using GTK. Netscape has used Motif for every unix version around. Whether or not Netscape finally re-builds a Motif front end for their Solaris port (if they do one) remains to be seen.
I personally find the "buttons" (in the current Mozilla milestons) to be attrocious. If you're going to use a GTK app in a GTK environment, then likely you want the theme stuff to work as well. Its a pain in the butt as it is to keep changing xmms skins everytime i change my GTK and WindowMaker themes (which i have to do separately); to have Mozilla butt ugly no matter what i use is just too much, and if it goes "skins" instead of GTK themes for its main controls might lead me to just not bother...
Slashdot Mirror
So its no longer a trade secret. Its still a copyrighted document and is still protected as such.
"Native" widgets in Windows? Like I said, if graphics cards are now so MS friendly as to do 70% of Windows' work for Microsoft, I'm getting out of the software business and will go take up modern dance. Name a graphics card that knows what a "pull down menu is". I really would like to see it...and see if its spec is open enough to use it.
If "component-aware" graphics cards have existed, then a new graphics system for Linux aught to be started to take advantage of it (with the first application built on it being an X server, so backwards compatability remains).
The most "component aware" graphics cards can get is hardware buffering (using the graphics cards memory to cache, which reduces the amount of screen redraws). But it still takes the application developer to choose to use it. MFC may be built in such a way as to do that, but that's MS doing the work, not the graphics card.
Yes, that would make "native" faster, but not for the reasons you think. In X, its the double-buffering extension, though its never been stable enough for me to bother to use it, at least back in X11R5 days.
written a Swing Look And Feel class that uses
gtk themes. Its not perfect, but it works.
He also has some code (independent of that)
that implements some GTK/Gnome features in java.
Unfortunately, the site isn't coming up in my DNS right now...but look up SkinLF on freshmeat. I wrote some code on top of that which will look at the local .gtkrc file and load up the default gtk theme.
It can't accelerate Swing, since Swing is 100% java. Its translated to Graphics object calls, which translate to graphics primitives in Windows or Xlib.
And since when did hardware video cards actually become "Component aware" of things like menus, pushbuttons, etc. X has NEVER had that as far as I know (not in Solaris, not in SGI, certainly not in XFree). Widgets in Xt/Motif are 100% implemented in Xlib calls. The port of X to the platform can take some advantage of hardware for graphics and images, but beyond that, the hardware has no idea what "Xt" or "Motif" are. The X Server doesn't either. Go look at the X11 protocol.
Optimization of GUIs usually involves buffering, particularly of pixmaps and colormaps. Or, it involves improvements like Low Bandwidth X, the Shared Memory extension (where the network aspect of the X protocol is removed, and the client basically sends the protocol to the server through shared memory), or direct x (no relation to microsofts DirectX), where Xlib directly draws onto the screen rather than telling the server to draw.
If graphics cards for the PC platform actually have an awareness of "push button", i would be severely suprised. "Specific calls" for a push button are "fill this rectangle, now draw these 4 lines and this string in this color... ok, now fill the rectangle in a different color, draw these same 4 lines in a different color, and redraw the string." Oh, gee, that can really benefit from hardware acceleration?
Don't think they'll be "pixel identical". You've no idea how often I see code that hard-codes the layouts to fixed pixel sizes (rather than use layout managers) that look ugly as hell 'cause on a different platform the fonts are different sizes.
And what's "accelerated" in AWT? Nothing can be done in AWT that the hardware can really take advantage of. Graphics cards are unaware of "windows" (in the Windows or X sense) as far as I know. The only exception are 3D cards, and you need Java3D to get acceleration out of them.
As for basic drawing, well the "Graphics" object is the same, regardless of whether you're doing Swing or AWT (its an AWT object), and its a Graphics2D object. If the VM implementation uses hardware acceleration for that, cool. You'll get the benefits regardless. In fact, if it IS accelerated, Swing may be faster than AWT.
What happens is MS updates their software. The OEMs that do the bundling (including Dell, where a LOT of companies get their computers), automatically include the upgrade of Office on every NEW box that comes out.
Now, the next wave of new computers that goes to a company automatically is given the update, and instantly, incompatabilities exist. The only solution is for the company to independently purchase a complete set of licenses for the new product to all other employees, pass the cd around, and get on with it.
MS then makes the real money, when (in order to take work home and bring it back again without lossage) the employee has to buy a copy of the Office upgrade from a store, at store prices, at their own expense.
Dear God, how the money rolls in...
When I'm looking for something new, I might still hit mp3.com. but i'm not looking for something new every day. Advertising-based sites are still (and likely will remain as such) only profitable on sites one has to hit multiple times every day (slashdot, yahoo, netcenter...). Since mp3.com can't deliver that kind of content anymore, mp3.com is going to lose the value of their advertising, and thus, their only income to their stockholder value.
Unfortunately for MP3.com, it was a very LARGE portion of their buisness model. MP3.com needed a hook to get repeat visitors and a mailing list of customers (the kinds of things that Wall St. values in a advertising-based 'net company). My.mp3.com as a portal was their mechanism. The key attraction for my.mp3.com was for users to be able to hear music they own anywhere they are, thus, they keep coming back to the site to listen to their music and the advertising dollars keep rolling in.
Kill the music downloads, and you kill the reason for daily visits to the site. You strangle their primary income. By the time the final effects of this reach Wall Street tomorrow, the company might not even be worth the $6billion that the RIAA is asking for damages.
This in no way is ordering anybody to remove their own mp3s from their own personal collection.
This probably will also imply that Napster will likely lose. mp3 trading will go on. Its just gonna have to go underground, like all bootlegging.
Mp3 central storage will go a different route. As bandwidth increases to the "common person", individual broadcasting software will become more standard as part of the base o/s (things like icecast/shoutcast, etc...). In fact, MS already has plans for a windows-media-limited-edition-server to go as part of Windows ME (though the target is Real Networks, not shoutcast). With that setup, you can keep all your mp3s on a single box (that _you_ own), and play them wherever you happen to be at the time.
Yes, the RIAA is attacking "public" stations, but they can't patrol every box, every port, to find the "private" broadcasting and play-on-demand stations out there. Again, it'll go underground,
or it'll be completely legal, since its your copy being played for yourself, under fair usage (give or take the DMCA's vague definition of fair use).
Microsoft is the past creeping up on the present.
The MP3 issue (and no, I don't agree w/ Katz 100%, or even close) is still the past trying to take over the future. I think the MP3 issue is far more important.
This analogy doesn't work when comparing traditional media to napster and mp3-broadcasting stations.
Music on the radio isn't "free". The radio station has to keep very careful records of what they play, and based on the ratings, they pay royalties to the RIAA (which distributes them proportionaly to the labels who own the recordings played), and to the publishing companies (BMI/ASCAP/SOCAN).
The radio stations advertise in order to collect the money that goes to the royalty payments. The music isn't free. Like "Yahoo", its paid for by advertising.
This is the reason the RIAA is going after 'net broadcasters. Net broadcasting (shoutcast, real-producer, etc...) is likely going to have to go to an advertising model 'cause the royalties for playing the music still need to be paid.
The problem with the RIAA approach is that they charge far too much relative to the size of the listening audience. Why should someone pay $5000 + royalties that reflect an audience of 10,000, when they have records (its all digitially logged anyways, automatically) showing that they've never had an audience more than 100 listeners at a time? Economically, the RIAA is actually pricing most 'net broadcasters out of business. And I'm inclined to believe its intentional.
Besides, the prices could vary based on size of the material, view once vs. keep your own copy, etc. A real market would (should?) develop where prices really do reflect demand or quality.
Right now, most sites exist on 4 things. 1) they actually have a product to sell. 2) they are supported by banner ads for products someone else is selling, and both the advertisers and the site are operating at efficient (if not profitable) levels. 3) they are supported by banner ads, but the click-through rate is so low that it isn't profitable for the advertiser to continue paying for the site. 4) they operate at a loss, all effort to the site is donated by either the maintainers or by supporters of the site who don't require advertising.
I feel the majority of sites out there are 3, 4, or 4 but not interesting enough to charge...and neither 3 nor 4 can survive forever. Micropayments for "important content" is a way to get out of that loss-center loop. Consider it the price of "making a copy". you go to the library, you don't have time to read the entire (10-something odd page) magazine article, so you go to the copy machine and make the copy, at 5p a page. in that case, the money goes to the library for paper and machine maintainance. With micropayments, aside from, say 2p a transaction to the micropayment firm, the money goes directly to the content author.
The problem is that there's no infrastructure on the 'net for micropayments (which is what you're talking about) that's reached a consensus enough to become a standard. and no end-user wants to have to deal with more than one micropayment scheme, so a single standard/company needs to exist (but we all know who we don't want that company to be...).
Yes, I wouldn't mind the ability to surf around, see headlines of stuff, and then plunk down a virtual quarter to see/hear/save the details, finally having all my quarters collectively charged to my credit card at the end of the month (or vice versa, i invest x number of quarters that are used up as i surf).
But the problem is that too many people out there still feel the web should be "free", so the only B2C architecture out there is the standard pay a large amount for a product which is shipped to you of normal e-commerce. When credit card transactions cost the processing company a minimum of 50cents to either visa or m.c. each, how do you justify using a credit card to pay a quarter?
The other hassle is that, again, once you've got it, what's to stop you from giving it to your friends? We're right back to the issue that napster's being bitten for in the first place.
Microsoft's Media includes encryption, which makes some companies happy (like DGM/BootlegTV), but that has the side effect of annoying/excluding the rather large Linux-only customer base. Few of the other companies out there are supporting such approaches. Most pay per view sites out there (www.hob.com) are now exclusively supporting Windows Media Player.
I know I am...but stranger things have happened, and if you don't point out the obviously stupid before the obviously stupid becomes reality...
I thought this was the guy's point. Saying a product is an "Operating System" should mean something. The problem with that is, unlike "I have a pickle", "I provide an operating system" is a moving target. What an OS was in 1963 is not what an OS is in 2000, and thus won't be in the future.
If the government, through "truth in advertising" or something related to it, decides to mandate definitions of what a particular software product or feature really is, it will affect things drastically. A definition of a type of software product by anything but what the public will buy will either raise the bar for new product entry, or make people even more content with "government standard O/S 1.0" which will never change (look at what ISO's "standards" did to american factories, after ISO declared that all factories are made alike).
Rule 2: Remember this box will have Windows CE underneath it (or some varient). Bloat^2.
Rule 3: Remember this box is designed to compete with PlayStation 2. PlayStation 2 can do a number of non-game things (with extensions that MS will have already installed out of the box). As the number of non-game things grows, it will fall prey to people asking more than what can be done reasonably. If the PC never did this, Moore's law would be a moot point. Albiet, when this happens in the gaming console world, its a free-for-all on who wins the next generation; the PC world is still Wintel on a generation change.
MS will use this to lock in people away from other products as best they can by over-integrating everything in site. This includes a Web-TV-like interface (don't know if they've said that, but they've thought it -- there's gotta something underneath that interfaces with the "broadband internet" system). Once you hit the 'net, you start bringing in things that change subject to the PC and Workstation world, where things ALWAYS get more intensive than your CPU and memory can handle. ALWAYS.
If it was just used for games, then screw it, 600 is overkill (unless you are doing real 3D in the processor and not an optimized card). 600 + a decent card is overkill even for doing realtime 3D at decent resolution on a PC, much less the crappy TV res. even HDTV-level resolution would work well with that chip (but then the 64M memory becomes a _heavy_ limitation at the texture-mapping process)
At any rate, there will, by the time MS gets this thing out, apps that they want to work on it that will still (for various reasons) be slower than ideal, even for a 600Mhz chip. And game makers will have to deal with the portion of processor and memory that WindowsCE (or its varient) will take away from them (you probably cant bypass it as easily as you could bypass the O/S in the old 6502 boxes)...
Advantage of the 600 chip? by the time they're ready for mass production, those will be the "cheap chips".
Every chip is excellent for what it was meant to do. Every chip user asks more of his chip than was originally intended.
of course, MS may just choose to ignore HDTV and only send out the standard TV signal. probably wouldn't hurt, unless they were to try to integrate the X-Box w/ Web-TV or something...
600 Mhz? That's gonna be 2 generations old by the
time it hits the stores next year...
It has been a trademark since the "New Coke" was introduced in 1984. The Coca-Cola company has already won a lawsuit in America, suing the publisher and author of a novel, for not capiltalizing their usage of it. The suit was victorious.
uh...that's Bradbury...and over 50 years old at that...and heck, the cheesy 70's TV Miniseries was probably better than this new film, and without product placements to boot...
No. The Phrack document never existed on any of SJGames's files, including the BBS.
The Company was raided because the file DID show up on Lloyd Blankenship's personal underground BBS, and by coincidence, Lloyd also managed the Illuminati BBS.
Actually, I want them to get on the ball with all the supplimental stuff -- Media Framework, Advanced Imaging, 3D, and the plug-in (and make sure the plug in and mozilla milestones work together.
Basically, there are still a number of "Java" pieces that have native code that needs to be ported. If Blackdown doesn't have the resources to do the work, then someone else needs to step forward to get it done.
and if it is, then this whole thing about "congress could still regulate it" is absolute garbage.
What part of "Shall Make No Law" does this idiot not understand?
I read (somewhere) that the GTK libraries used in the linux version are going to remain the only supported front end for ALL unix platforms, meaning the Solaris build of Mozilla also will require GTK.
Netscape may be put under some pressure by Motif holdouts in the Solaris world to instead build a new front end for Netscape 5 that IS in Motif.
Looking at it right now, it appears that the UI engine is far more XML/CSS like (XUL + Javascript), so making a Motif "look" may be merely a case of changing the graphics used. But that of course brings us back to the "Skins" approach instead of the themes which yeild a consistent desktop.
My main problem with "skins" is that they don't adapt to "subtle" changes. I may like a particular skin for xmms, but it clashes slightly with my gtk set up -- because they're all image files, if i wanted "pure" compatibility i'd have to load up each image, play with the colormap, save it as a separate skin (that isn't worth "publishing" since its only a minor mod) and re-install it...
Problem 2 with skins -- they use too damn many colors. Not a problem with my since i run 16 bit+, but certainly a major problem, as most Solaris machines i know are (still) 8 bit. The Dithering algorithm or 216-colormap that's applied to the html images will also be applied to those (ugly) buttons as well.
Or has the dithering code been removed?
Wrong
Mozilla is currently using GTK. Netscape has used Motif for every unix version around. Whether or not Netscape finally re-builds a Motif front end for their Solaris port (if they do one) remains to be seen.
I personally find the "buttons" (in the current Mozilla milestons) to be attrocious. If you're going to use a GTK app in a GTK environment, then likely you want the theme stuff to work as well. Its a pain in the butt as it is to keep changing xmms skins everytime i change my GTK and WindowMaker themes (which i have to do separately); to have Mozilla butt ugly no matter what i use is just too much, and if it goes "skins" instead of GTK themes for its main controls might lead me to just not bother...