The article seems to take Microsoft at face value when it says it can't change its browser. This is hogwash. It won't change its browser, because it is dominant.
I don't believe for a minute that the code base is so bloated that they can't change it. In the late 1990's, when they weren't dominant, new features and versions were released all the time.
The only reason MS spent money on IE in the first place was to keep people from viewing the operating system as a commodaty (gee, I can get everything I need through the web on any platform, why buy MS Windows). Once they established IE as the dominant web browser, they relaxed. People need to buy Windows cause it is the best (only for some sites) way to browse the web.
IE hasn't kept up with the times (CSS bugs, bad png support, no tabbed browsing, popup blocking, etc). But now that it is dominant, people write to its bugs. IE is the only browser that can view some websites. Even though I use Mozilla as my primary browser, I still fire up IE once or twice a week.
And Microsoft has no motivation to fix it. Why would they? When you have 95% of the desktop and 95% of the browser market, why spend a dime? Every version of IE they release costs them millions of dollars in development, testing and support. Why spend a lot of money to change a product that people are happy with?
Instead, Microsoft is concentrating its efforts on new ways to make money, like DRM and "safe computing" (which gives them a new profit center in code signing, validation, and security tools).
This could have been ended years ago if Microsoft had dropped a Look & Feel lawsuit on them. After all, they defend even their ownership of the word "Windows".
Actually, it appears Bonzi is business partners with Microsoft. The news on their portal comes from MSNBC.com.
Unlike music, which is primarily a personal experience (is packaged and sold to be experienced by a single or small group of people), films are still largely a social experience.
I hate to disagree, but there are only two reasons that film is currently a communal experience. First it is expensive to have large screens and premium sound at home. Second is that movies aren't released on DVD until many months after they are in the theaters.
Do you really think that if films came out at the same time on DVD as on the screen that many people would still go to the theater?
We are increasingly becoming a home bound society. The malls will eventually fall to internet shopping, and movie theaters will fall to home viewing.
I have heard rumors that movies released in the early 1980's had contracts which spelled out the exact formats they could be released under, and that is why it took so long for back to release Indy and Back to the Future.
If so, this is another example of lawyers and greed getting in the way of geeking.
There are always going to be people out there that ask stupid questions, don't follow the rules, flame, or in other ways don't add to the discussion.
The slashdot system of moderation is an evolution that usenet wasn't capable of. It allows users to self police and separate wheat from the chaff.
Of course, no system is perfect. We still have duplicate posts and other problems, but it is much better.
And Taco saith "post all the crap you want, for I shalt mod you down." And it was so.
Re:Keep the government out of this!
on
FTC vs Spammers
·
· Score: 5, Insightful
Yeah, that's just what we need -- governments passing laws to outlaw things that the majority of the population doesn't like. I wonder other unpopular things they're looking at banning. At least Ashcroft hasn't labeled spammers as enemy combatants engaged in cyberterrorism and shipped them all off to Guantonomo Bay without a trial -- yet.
Spoken like a true spammer.
The government has a long history of regulating how a business advertises. Perhaps you long for the day when a business could completely lie in its advertising, but I don't.
The irony here is that for the very reason you cannot get DSL or cable service, you might not also be able to get powerline service. You might be too far from the central office.
The problem with both MythTV and Freevo is that they can't do hardware MPEG compression, due to there not being linux drivers for MPEG cards available.
Once linux drivers become available (hopefully for an MPEG 4 card), you could probably use a 400 mHz pc (TiVO series 1 ran on a 57 mhz power pc).
They should probably be called the theories of nature. As we learn more, we refine these theories.
Of course, then we will have the same problems that we have with the "Theory of Evolution". People will say it is not true because it is still just a theory. Breaking laws seems worse than disproving theory.
Seems to me that text to speech would be a good problem for darwinian competitive algorithms. You can take a book on tape, feed the text as input, and have the computer have different algorithms compete by judging them against the human speaker.
Many iterations later, you probably can get a computer sounding just like a person. And since it has had a whole book to practice over, it should be pretty general.
Sounds like Mystro TV is not a personal video recorder, it is an on-demand television system. Networks are probably loath to give up schedule driven TV, but AOL might be able to force this one through by scaring networks with fear of personal video recorders and commercial skipping.
If you asked me what I loved most about my TiVO, I would say that it lets me watch what I want when I want to. And then second, I can skip commercials. Don't get me wrong, I hate commercials. But time shifting is much more important to me.
The ability to play back shows whenever I want (freeing me from network scheduling) is a major advantage of the technology. It seems like this is what Myestro TV is trying to do.
I can imagine that some shows will allow time shifting for a few days or a week, while others won't have restrictions. I think it could be more flexible than TiVO.
The problem with TiVO is that you have to know what you want to watch before you want to watch it. And you can only record one thing at a time (unless you have two TiVO's or a DirectTiVO). This causes my wife much fretting when she needs to decide between Buffy and Gilmore Girls. With this system, there is no problem. You can watch them both.
Another problem I have found with TiVO is that all the commercials are stale. When I get around to watching a Junk Yard Wars from last week, if I do happen to see a promo for something I might like, it is too late to record it. With this system, I might be able to find it in the archive, or at least when watching a week old show at least I would get up-to-date promos.
The advantages of TiVO are that you can skip commercials, and that you can store things indefinately. These will still be important to some users, so there will always be a market for a personal video recorder.
A completely on-demand television system creates many interesting things. There would be no more schedules, just when shows were available. Television contracts would be rewritten to pay for the amount of plays, not . You might be able to pay a premium to see an obscure show, but you would be able to see it. Commercials might be more geared to the viewer. Broadcasting standards might be lifted (since parental controls could be built into this).
Anyway, sounds interesting. Not that I would want to give up my TiVO.
From the article: RSA and Netscape Communications Inc., now part of Sun Microsystems Inc.
Isn't Netscape part of AOL now?
Excellent Article
on
World of Ends
·
· Score: 5, Interesting
This reminds me why the original MSN failed and Yahoo succeeded. Microsoft wanted to control the content providers (making them use its own proprietary tools), while yahoo used HTTP and HTML.
Sure, absolute control might mean they can offer more features, but absolute control also means everyone can't play. The file format of Microsoft Word was closed, and so it is hard to write programs which understand it. Microsoft gets richer, but users can't get their own data. Finally, when Microsoft sees there is no other big driver to get users to upgrade, they open up their file formats.
The internet succeeded because of its simplicity, and because of HTML and HTTP. Almost anyone can serve HTTP. And write some sort of HTML. The protocols are simple and well documented.
I'd even go so far as to maybe allow a subscriber another +1 bonus to karma, or maybe allow a subscriber a higher karma cap, or even let a subscribers post get modded to +6... but what do I know...
Features like letting people see stories early or giving them extra karma for money will cheapen and ultimately ruin the site.
Having money doesn't mean you are more intelligent, or have more important things to say. By giving people time to prepare their posts, or giving them higher karma for paying, we are saying that what they say is more important than other people.
Following these trends, ultimately the quality of slashdot posts will decrease, which is the whole reason for the moderation / karma system in the first place.
Competition is a good thing. See Intel vs. AMD, Sony vs. Nintendo, Linux vs. Microsoft.
For very high reliability software, competition is also used. For example, the space shuttle uses four sets of identical software on four sets of hardware that vote on results, with a fifth set running completely different software waiting to take over if the other fail (see Fastcompany for more details).
Also, one of the benefits of breaking up Ma Bell was that one company, with one set of software, was no longer running the telephone system in the United States.
In the long run I think this is a very good thing. In the short run, however, there might be problems.
If you read the memo on the timeline site, the patent only covers "automating the production of data warehouses/marts and the downstream delivery and enhancement of the information so obtained". Only a small amount of Microsoft customers probably use these features.
I'm not sure I should admit this, but in 1984 I was the National Association of Rocketry's national champion for people 14 and under.
Oh, and the national meet was in Houston that year, and I illegally transported rocket engines in my luggage
Does this mean I'm on the FBI and homeland security watch list? Are they reading my brain waves from orbit? Have they put a spy cam on my cat? Are they looking for spent rocket casings in my garbage?
Slashdot Mirror
The article seems to take Microsoft at face value when it says it can't change its browser. This is hogwash. It won't change its browser, because it is dominant.
I don't believe for a minute that the code base is so bloated that they can't change it. In the late 1990's, when they weren't dominant, new features and versions were released all the time.
The only reason MS spent money on IE in the first place was to keep people from viewing the operating system as a commodaty (gee, I can get everything I need through the web on any platform, why buy MS Windows). Once they established IE as the dominant web browser, they relaxed. People need to buy Windows cause it is the best (only for some sites) way to browse the web.
IE hasn't kept up with the times (CSS bugs, bad png support, no tabbed browsing, popup blocking, etc). But now that it is dominant, people write to its bugs. IE is the only browser that can view some websites. Even though I use Mozilla as my primary browser, I still fire up IE once or twice a week.
And Microsoft has no motivation to fix it. Why would they? When you have 95% of the desktop and 95% of the browser market, why spend a dime? Every version of IE they release costs them millions of dollars in development, testing and support. Why spend a lot of money to change a product that people are happy with?
Instead, Microsoft is concentrating its efforts on new ways to make money, like DRM and "safe computing" (which gives them a new profit center in code signing, validation, and security tools).
This could have been ended years ago if Microsoft had dropped a Look & Feel lawsuit on them. After all, they defend even their ownership of the word "Windows".
Actually, it appears Bonzi is business partners with Microsoft. The news on their portal comes from MSNBC.com.
Unlike music, which is primarily a personal experience (is packaged and sold to be experienced by a single or small group of people), films are still largely a social experience.
I hate to disagree, but there are only two reasons that film is currently a communal experience. First it is expensive to have large screens and premium sound at home. Second is that movies aren't released on DVD until many months after they are in the theaters.
Do you really think that if films came out at the same time on DVD as on the screen that many people would still go to the theater?
We are increasingly becoming a home bound society. The malls will eventually fall to internet shopping, and movie theaters will fall to home viewing.
Since Microsoft bought Bungee, they dictate what platforms Halo will be released on. And it is in Bill's best interest to keep the game XBox only.
I have heard rumors that movies released in the early 1980's had contracts which spelled out the exact formats they could be released under, and that is why it took so long for back to release Indy and Back to the Future.
If so, this is another example of lawyers and greed getting in the way of geeking.
There are always going to be people out there that ask stupid questions, don't follow the rules, flame, or in other ways don't add to the discussion.
The slashdot system of moderation is an evolution that usenet wasn't capable of. It allows users to self police and separate wheat from the chaff.
Of course, no system is perfect. We still have duplicate posts and other problems, but it is much better.
And Taco saith "post all the crap you want, for I shalt mod you down." And it was so.
Yeah, that's just what we need -- governments passing laws to outlaw things that the majority of the population doesn't like. I wonder other unpopular things they're looking at banning. At least Ashcroft hasn't labeled spammers as enemy combatants engaged in cyberterrorism and shipped them all off to Guantonomo Bay without a trial -- yet.
Spoken like a true spammer.
The government has a long history of regulating how a business advertises. Perhaps you long for the day when a business could completely lie in its advertising, but I don't.
Clearly this author loves Lisp, and hates Java and object oriented programming.
And clearly, his opinions in no way reflect mainstream programming today.
Let me make a prediction. Lisp died in the early 90ies. Java's ideas (especially the virtual machine) will survive and take over.
The irony here is that for the very reason you cannot get DSL or cable service, you might not also be able to get powerline service. You might be too far from the central office.
Or buy it from Amazon here and save $4.49.
The problem with both MythTV and Freevo is that they can't do hardware MPEG compression, due to there not being linux drivers for MPEG cards available. Once linux drivers become available (hopefully for an MPEG 4 card), you could probably use a 400 mHz pc (TiVO series 1 ran on a 57 mhz power pc).
It probably will support voice recongnition dialing.
They should probably be called the theories of nature. As we learn more, we refine these theories.
Of course, then we will have the same problems that we have with the "Theory of Evolution". People will say it is not true because it is still just a theory. Breaking laws seems worse than disproving theory.
This is how it all starts.
Honestly, we are just registering [ applications | the Jews ].
Honestly, we are just making all [applications | Jews ] wear [ logos | badges ] identifying them.
Honestly, we are just putting the [ non trusted applications ] / [ Jews into a ghetto ].
This story doesn't end happily.
Seems to me that text to speech would be a good problem for darwinian competitive algorithms. You can take a book on tape, feed the text as input, and have the computer have different algorithms compete by judging them against the human speaker.
Many iterations later, you probably can get a computer sounding just like a person. And since it has had a whole book to practice over, it should be pretty general.
Sounds like Mystro TV is not a personal video recorder, it is an on-demand television system. Networks are probably loath to give up schedule driven TV, but AOL might be able to force this one through by scaring networks with fear of personal video recorders and commercial skipping.
If you asked me what I loved most about my TiVO, I would say that it lets me watch what I want when I want to. And then second, I can skip commercials. Don't get me wrong, I hate commercials. But time shifting is much more important to me.
The ability to play back shows whenever I want (freeing me from network scheduling) is a major advantage of the technology. It seems like this is what Myestro TV is trying to do.
I can imagine that some shows will allow time shifting for a few days or a week, while others won't have restrictions. I think it could be more flexible than TiVO.
The problem with TiVO is that you have to know what you want to watch before you want to watch it. And you can only record one thing at a time (unless you have two TiVO's or a DirectTiVO). This causes my wife much fretting when she needs to decide between Buffy and Gilmore Girls. With this system, there is no problem. You can watch them both.
Another problem I have found with TiVO is that all the commercials are stale. When I get around to watching a Junk Yard Wars from last week, if I do happen to see a promo for something I might like, it is too late to record it. With this system, I might be able to find it in the archive, or at least when watching a week old show at least I would get up-to-date promos.
The advantages of TiVO are that you can skip commercials, and that you can store things indefinately. These will still be important to some users, so there will always be a market for a personal video recorder.
A completely on-demand television system creates many interesting things. There would be no more schedules, just when shows were available. Television contracts would be rewritten to pay for the amount of plays, not . You might be able to pay a premium to see an obscure show, but you would be able to see it. Commercials might be more geared to the viewer. Broadcasting standards might be lifted (since parental controls could be built into this).
Anyway, sounds interesting. Not that I would want to give up my TiVO.
From the article: RSA and Netscape Communications Inc., now part of Sun Microsystems Inc.
Isn't Netscape part of AOL now?
This reminds me why the original MSN failed and Yahoo succeeded. Microsoft wanted to control the content providers (making them use its own proprietary tools), while yahoo used HTTP and HTML.
Sure, absolute control might mean they can offer more features, but absolute control also means everyone can't play. The file format of Microsoft Word was closed, and so it is hard to write programs which understand it. Microsoft gets richer, but users can't get their own data. Finally, when Microsoft sees there is no other big driver to get users to upgrade, they open up their file formats.
The internet succeeded because of its simplicity, and because of HTML and HTTP. Almost anyone can serve HTTP. And write some sort of HTML. The protocols are simple and well documented.
Now that Microsoft has cornered the browser market, they see no more reason to innovate, er, spend more money, on the product.
When they were playing catch-up, it was all about new features. How many features have been added to IE lately?
At this point, the only changes to IE are going to be things which will make Microsoft money, like DRM.
I'd even go so far as to maybe allow a subscriber another +1 bonus to karma, or maybe allow a subscriber a higher karma cap, or even let a subscribers post get modded to +6... but what do I know...
Features like letting people see stories early or giving them extra karma for money will cheapen and ultimately ruin the site.
Having money doesn't mean you are more intelligent, or have more important things to say. By giving people time to prepare their posts, or giving them higher karma for paying, we are saying that what they say is more important than other people.
Following these trends, ultimately the quality of slashdot posts will decrease, which is the whole reason for the moderation / karma system in the first place.
From dell.com:
Weight: 6.9 lbs. (2.96 kg) with travel module, battery and Harddrive.
Heavier that the 17" wide Apple G4 powerbook (see apple.com).
Competition is a good thing. See Intel vs. AMD, Sony vs. Nintendo, Linux vs. Microsoft.
For very high reliability software, competition is also used. For example, the space shuttle uses four sets of identical software on four sets of hardware that vote on results, with a fifth set running completely different software waiting to take over if the other fail (see Fastcompany for more details).
Also, one of the benefits of breaking up Ma Bell was that one company, with one set of software, was no longer running the telephone system in the United States.
In the long run I think this is a very good thing. In the short run, however, there might be problems.
If you read the memo on the timeline site, the patent only covers "automating the production of data warehouses/marts and the downstream delivery and enhancement of the information so obtained". Only a small amount of Microsoft customers probably use these features.
I'm not sure I should admit this, but in 1984 I was the National Association of Rocketry's national champion for people 14 and under.
Oh, and the national meet was in Houston that year, and I illegally transported rocket engines in my luggage
Does this mean I'm on the FBI and homeland security watch list? Are they reading my brain waves from orbit? Have they put a spy cam on my cat? Are they looking for spent rocket casings in my garbage?
If you truly worked 100 to 120 hours per week, you would have no time to post on slashdot.