Digital movie distribution will obviously "win in time". It's growing as we speak, and has been doing so for a number of years. CinemaNow.com I think started in 1999, and it's been getting larger every year. It's selection and service blows iTunes Store away. And the studios themselves formed MovieLink.com, which also blows Apple's store away. There are other smaller digital movie sites as well (and I won't even get into the growing porn VOD sites). Oh, and there's also Amazon's new site, but everyone says it sucks at the moment.
Apple's problem is that they were the first to open an online music store, so they got to dictate terms. They're playing catch-up in the online movie business, and the terms have already been set for that market. They either play ball, or go home.
The only question remaining is who will eventually buy Red Hat.... SAP and HP are the first names that come to mind.
I watched the MS/Novell press event, and HP is on board with the deal, nodding in approval. HP had one of their head honchos speak at the event. Look to see HP bundling SuSe for its Linux offerings rather than buy Red Hat.
I really don't see what Red Hat brings to the table anymore, besides inertia from having been the biggest Linux player up to now. There software is available from others for free, and their support isn't any better than anyone else and many times worse (I assume the latter from reading message boards).
The price you pay for the OEM license is what, $40 (depending on what version of Windows the OEM bundled)? So for paying that much lower price you get more restrictions. You want fewer restrictions, then pay for a retail license at retail prices.
"Being that any security flaw will make headlines these days, what prevents a "mole" from a competitor (say, for example, a borg developer) from joining an open source project and injecting difficult to detect security flaws?"
The "millions of eyes" that OSS advocates like to tout should prevent such a thing from occurring.
"Alright, netcraft showed that Apache was the dominant webserver, yet the webserver that gets exploited the most is IIS -- This could be the case with other Microsoft software if they were put into that situation."
IIS blows Apache away wrt security, what are you talking about? Here are the security advisories for IIS6 and Apache2, since 2003 (the year that IIS6 was released): IIS6 security advisories Number of security advisories: THREE (You read right, just THREE). Two were rated as "Moderately Critical", the other rated as "Not Critical". All three have been patched.
http://secunia.com/product/73/?task=statistics>Apa che 2 security advisories Number of security advisories: 31 3% were "Highly Critical", 32% "Moderately Critical", 55% "Less Critical", and 10% "Not Critical". 10% are unpatched today, and another 3% have a "Partial Fix".
Slashdotters love to trot out the "axiom" that "Apache is more secure than IIS", and then base conclusions on it. Well guess what, your "axiom" is false. So you'd best cease trying to prove things based on it.
(BTW, only someone engaging in sophistry would assert that market share is irrelevant to number of attacks. Someone living isolated in the woods can leave his cabin completely unlocked and still be less subject to burglaries than someone living in the city with his house locked up tight.)
The current version of Portable Media Center is PMC 2.x, which Toshiba Gigabeat uses. According to the Zune blogs, Zune doesn't run PMC 2.x, it runs it's own thing, but I assume that Windows Mobile is used underneath, particularly the kernel.
BTW, Zune isn't a "rebranded Toshiba Gigabeat", though one could say that it's derived from it. Zune has a slicker UI, as the Wi-Fi, supports more audio and video formats, etc.
It's debatable whether any or all of those are "best of breed", but I think the article was talking about userbase rather than quality. Google has not been able to break out of the Geek userbase in any of its efforts except search, generally speaking. Gmail, GoogleTalk, etc have miniscule share compared to the competition.
I don't know what happens when upgrading to Vista, but upgrading to IE7 does preserve the search settings. When I upgraded to IE7, Yahoo was set as the default search engine (because I had installed Yahoo toolbar in the past), not Live.
Secondly, Google has some nerve demanding that Microsoft give users a choice regarding search engines when they have a deal with Apple that makes Google not only the default, but the exclusive search engine for Safari, which is Mac OSX's default browser, and one that holds a monopoly-like share wrt browser usage in Mac OS X. Not only can the user not change the default search engine in Safari, but the user can't even add any secondary search engines.
Well, Apple used to support writing Cocoa apps in Java. They pulled that support as of 10.4. Do you really want to rely on Apple continuing Cocoa support in any language except Obj C?
Vista has probably had the largest public beta testing in history. Where did you get the idea that MS is relying on automation and not doing manual poking around? This bug likely occurs in extremely rare circumstances, which is why it was not discovered until now, despite the years of manual and automated in-house testing and millions of beta testers.
Finally, a reasonable post. The vast majority of the posts on this subject leads me to believe that the vast majority of slashodtters don't have the first clue about the development and testing of a large project.
Oh, and let's not forget that a few months ago an Ubunto update deleted the entire home directory of users. That's as major as this Vista bug, and was readily producible (unlike this Vista bug), yet it slipped through.
Lack of rumble is going to really harm the experience of games like Motostorm. You can play "sour grapes" all you want (bah!! the grapes are sour anyway!!), but lack of rumble sucks bad.
Actually, the statement you "quoted" (whoever allegedly said it, urban myth or not), wasn't really shortsighted. "no-one really needs more than 640k of ram" was true at the time that it was (allegedly) said.
Would that Apple had simply said what you said, rather than tossing out the cheap-shot against Windows. It's that cheap-shot that blew this thing out of proportion.
At one point there were 3rd party memory managers and multitasking/task-scudulers for DOS and Win2.x (see DesqView and QEMM). Future versions of Windows incorporated modern virtual memory and multitask scheduling on their own and DesqView and QEMM went bye-bye. And you know what? It's *GOOD* that that happened. If the EU had been around, they would've prevented Microsoft from adding virtual memory and mutitask functionality to protect 3rd-party memory manager and multitask-scheduler companies. Times change, OSes incorporate more and more functionality. GET OVER IT, EU!!
So we should kill off functionality because someone might abuse it, right? Should carpenters stop building houses with windows too, since windows provide easy access to burglars?
Sorry, I don't hold with the school of thought that says, "Kill features and functionality out of security fears". It's like giving in to terrorists - "No bottles of water allowed on planes". You make devices, homes, cars, etc as secure as you can, but that doesn't mean that you automatically kill features, stop using windows in houses, or don't use rubber tires because someone *might* hack a device, break a window, or slash a tire.
"Who's to say some deviant bastard isn't going to craft some sort of dormant malware and spread it across a bus station, restaurant, or campus in the future?"
Who's to say some deviant bastard isn't going to strap bombs to himself and blow them up at a bus station, restaurant, or campus?
You're right, but Micrsoft is following Apple's lock-in model because it's been more successful. But they're not killing off the more open model of PFS.
I understand that those that want to "upgrade" to a Zune won't be able to play PFS music on it. But they can instead get a Toshiba Gigabeat, from which the Zune is derived. The Gigabeat plays PFS music, videos, and has the slick Portable Media Center 2.x UI (which is similar to Zune's UI, but Zune's appears to be even slicker).
(Of course, one can legally burn PFS music to a CD then rip DRM-free mp3s from the CD, just like one can do with iTMS music.)
Not only that, but anyone who has purchased songs in Microsoft's PlaysForSure scheme have been FUCKED by Microsoft. It's incredible to me that there isn't a larger outcry in the press over this.
I don't understand your logic. How did anyone that buy PlaysForSure music get "FUCKED by Microsoft?" That would imply that those that bought PFS music would be better off in some way if Micrososft didn't come out with Zune, at all. But that's not the case.
PlaysForSure still exists, and those that bought PFS music can still buy many PFS players. They won't buy Zunes, but how does that mean that they were "FUCKED by Microsoft"? They can buy still buy PFS players, just as they could before Zune. Only if PFS was being terminated, would they be "FUCKED".
Also, most PFS users use the subscription model; the nice thing about that model is that you're free to switch services at any time without any loss in investment whatsoever.
As for MS badmouthing Apple's lock-in model, then choosing it for themselves, they're admitting that Apple's model is more successful. Apple fanboys should be happy at being vindicated (but MS is still offering subscription as well as purchases, so they didn't copy Apple's model entirely.)
What's interesting is that XPS will be more open for use than PDF once it's approved as an international standard, because MS also has a "Covenant not to sue", something that Adobe doesn't have for PDF. Adobe reserves the right to sue users of PDF, and threatened to do just that against MS's use of PDF in Office 2007.
XPS is better than PDF (has all of PDF's functionality and adds support for some graphical effects that PDF lacks), and is easier to deal with since it's XML. It also produces smaller files. (Note that these advantages aren't because MS is "smarter" than Adobe, it's just that XPS is newer, so it does more things with newer techniques). So, if XPS becomes a standard, and has technical advantages, and has a real "covenant not to sue", why would anyone use PDF besides the inertia of the format itself?
MS was going to strip Office 2007 of XPS support, requiring a separate free downloadable plugin for such support, and they were going to do the same for PDF (both were in response to Adobe's threats). MS was also going to strip Vista of full XPS support, leaving in only that required by the core printer spool, and allowing the OEMs to bundle the full XPS support on their own accord (again, this was in response to Adobe's threats). See: http://blogs.msdn.com/andy_simonds/archive/2006/06 /02/XPSAdobe.aspx
But now that XPS will be a recognized standard, MS should feel free to include XPS in both Officw 2007 and Vista, and Adobe can't really do anything about it.
So either there are another 6-9 months' delay (at least), or Vista will be released with it's security fundamentally compromised. Your call, Billy-boy! I don't care whether you "do security" or not, you have no clue about the code involved. You're talking out of your ass.
Can't say I'm particularly happy about this (breaking security in the name of security? Could even OneCare touch the kernel before this?),
No, One Care doesn't touch the kernel. Vista already had APIs to allow security software to monitor file activity without touching the kernel. This the API that One Care uses. And *most* security software already use that API, such as: Trend Micro's "PC-cillin" Avast! Sophos
Symantec and McAfee, unfortunately implement their software by mucking directly with the kernel, so rather than adopt to the new world under Vista's disallowing direct kernel access, they bitched and moaned (to the EU, which is predisposed to rule against Microsoft regardless of the merits of the complaint), so now MS has added a new api which supposedly allows bypassing PatchGuard in a secure manner, whatever that means. Seems that malware will be able to take advantage of this new API, unless they require that any code using that API be digitally signed by a trusted authority or something like that.
No. First, it's not "any kind of driver for Windows", it's kernel-mode drivers.
Second, you don't pay Microsoft, you pay a signing company (e.g. verisign) that has a root cert on the system (well-known root certs will be pre-installed).
Third, you can sign your own driver, but that will require you to install your own root cert (requiring admin rights).
Fourth, for 32-bit Vista, you can run unsigned kernel-mode drivers, but won't be able to play protected HD-DVDs and BR discs (the fear is that unsigned drivers would be used to compromise the DRM of such discs).
What is too keep microsoft or whoever from just saying nope your driver isn't good enough?
Nothing. Go to another signing-company, then. I don't know about Vista, but XP has multiple root-certs from well-known signing companies pre-installed (verisign, etc). Pick one of them. If they all think that your driver "isn't good enough", then it probably isn't. BTW, "not good enough" usually means that they think the code in question is malware (win which case it's *good* that it be rejected) or piracy-ware (which would piss off the "information wants to be free" types) of some sort.
The other main reason for sigs is to ensure that a driver that you obtain wasn't mucked with. For example, if you download an ATI driver from some site and that driver has malware inserted into it, it likely won't have a digital sig, or at least not one that matches the driver or is valid, so it won't run.
Slashdot Mirror
Sounds like Apple has you locked in by virtue of dominant market share, the same thing you guys blast MS for.
BTW, Microsoft is indeed openning up the 3rd party market, so that iPod advantage won't be as big as you think.
Here are a couple examples:
Octavio - Zune speaker dock made by VAF
Altec Lansing's Zune speaker dock
A list of companies that have signed up to make Zune accessories is here:
http://www.zunescene.com/zuneaccessories/
Read more info at http://www.zuneguy.com/ the blog of the MS guy that's in charge of creating Zune's 3rd party market.
Digital movie distribution will obviously "win in time". It's growing as we speak, and has been doing so for a number of years. CinemaNow.com I think started in 1999, and it's been getting larger every year. It's selection and service blows iTunes Store away. And the studios themselves formed MovieLink.com, which also blows Apple's store away. There are other smaller digital movie sites as well (and I won't even get into the growing porn VOD sites). Oh, and there's also Amazon's new site, but everyone says it sucks at the moment.
Apple's problem is that they were the first to open an online music store, so they got to dictate terms. They're playing catch-up in the online movie business, and the terms have already been set for that market. They either play ball, or go home.
I watched the MS/Novell press event, and HP is on board with the deal, nodding in approval. HP had one of their head honchos speak at the event. Look to see HP bundling SuSe for its Linux offerings rather than buy Red Hat.
I really don't see what Red Hat brings to the table anymore, besides inertia from having been the biggest Linux player up to now. There software is available from others for free, and their support isn't any better than anyone else and many times worse (I assume the latter from reading message boards).
The price you pay for the OEM license is what, $40 (depending on what version of Windows the OEM bundled)?
So for paying that much lower price you get more restrictions. You want fewer restrictions, then pay for a retail license at retail prices.
"Being that any security flaw will make headlines these days, what prevents a "mole" from a competitor (say, for example, a borg developer) from joining an open source project and injecting difficult to detect security flaws?"
The "millions of eyes" that OSS advocates like to tout should prevent such a thing from occurring.
IIS blows Apache away wrt security, what are you talking about?
Here are the security advisories for IIS6 and Apache2, since 2003 (the year that IIS6 was released):
IIS6 security advisories
Number of security advisories: THREE (You read right, just THREE).
Two were rated as "Moderately Critical", the other rated as "Not Critical".
All three have been patched.
http://secunia.com/product/73/?task=statistics>Ap
Number of security advisories: 31
3% were "Highly Critical", 32% "Moderately Critical", 55% "Less Critical", and 10% "Not Critical".
10% are unpatched today, and another 3% have a "Partial Fix".
Slashdotters love to trot out the "axiom" that "Apache is more secure than IIS", and then base conclusions on it. Well guess what, your "axiom" is false. So you'd best cease trying to prove things based on it.
(BTW, only someone engaging in sophistry would assert that market share is irrelevant to number of attacks. Someone living isolated in the woods can leave his cabin completely unlocked and still be less subject to burglaries than someone living in the city with his house locked up tight.)
It's still running WindowsMobile, I believe. Specifically, the Portable Media Center flavor.b lemediacenter/default.mspx
http://www.microsoft.com/windowsmobile/help/porta
The current version of Portable Media Center is PMC 2.x, which Toshiba Gigabeat uses. According to the Zune blogs, Zune doesn't run PMC 2.x, it runs it's own thing, but I assume that Windows Mobile is used underneath, particularly the kernel.
BTW, Zune isn't a "rebranded Toshiba Gigabeat", though one could say that it's derived from it. Zune has a slicker UI, as the Wi-Fi, supports more audio and video formats, etc.
It's debatable whether any or all of those are "best of breed", but I think the article was talking about userbase rather than quality. Google has not been able to break out of the Geek userbase in any of its efforts except search, generally speaking. Gmail, GoogleTalk, etc have miniscule share compared to the competition.
I don't know what happens when upgrading to Vista, but upgrading to IE7 does preserve the search settings. When I upgraded to IE7, Yahoo was set as the default search engine (because I had installed Yahoo toolbar in the past), not Live.
Secondly, Google has some nerve demanding that Microsoft give users a choice regarding search engines when they have a deal with Apple that makes Google not only the default, but the exclusive search engine for Safari, which is Mac OSX's default browser, and one that holds a monopoly-like share wrt browser usage in Mac OS X. Not only can the user not change the default search engine in Safari, but the user can't even add any secondary search engines.
Well, Apple used to support writing Cocoa apps in Java. They pulled that support as of 10.4. Do you really want to rely on Apple continuing Cocoa support in any language except Obj C?
What's your excuse for sounding like one?
Vista has probably had the largest public beta testing in history.
Where did you get the idea that MS is relying on automation and not doing manual poking around? This bug likely occurs in extremely rare circumstances, which is why it was not discovered until now, despite the years of manual and automated in-house testing and millions of beta testers.
Finally, a reasonable post.
The vast majority of the posts on this subject leads me to believe that the vast majority of slashodtters don't have the first clue about the development and testing of a large project.
Oh, and let's not forget that a few months ago an Ubunto update deleted the entire home directory of users. That's as major as this Vista bug, and was readily producible (unlike this Vista bug), yet it slipped through.
Lack of rumble is going to really harm the experience of games like Motostorm. You can play "sour grapes" all you want (bah!! the grapes are sour anyway!!), but lack of rumble sucks bad.
Actually, the statement you "quoted" (whoever allegedly said it, urban myth or not), wasn't really shortsighted. "no-one really needs more than 640k of ram" was true at the time that it was (allegedly) said.
Would that Apple had simply said what you said, rather than tossing out the cheap-shot against Windows. It's that cheap-shot that blew this thing out of proportion.
At one point there were 3rd party memory managers and multitasking/task-scudulers for DOS and Win2.x (see DesqView and QEMM). Future versions of Windows incorporated modern virtual memory and multitask scheduling on their own and DesqView and QEMM went bye-bye. And you know what? It's *GOOD* that that happened. If the EU had been around, they would've prevented Microsoft from adding virtual memory and mutitask functionality to protect 3rd-party memory manager and multitask-scheduler companies. Times change, OSes incorporate more and more functionality. GET OVER IT, EU!!
So we should kill off functionality because someone might abuse it, right?
Should carpenters stop building houses with windows too, since windows provide easy access to burglars?
Sorry, I don't hold with the school of thought that says, "Kill features and functionality out of security fears". It's like giving in to terrorists - "No bottles of water allowed on planes". You make devices, homes, cars, etc as secure as you can, but that doesn't mean that you automatically kill features, stop using windows in houses, or don't use rubber tires because someone *might* hack a device, break a window, or slash a tire.
"Who's to say some deviant bastard isn't going to craft some sort of dormant malware and spread it across a bus station, restaurant, or campus in the future?"
Who's to say some deviant bastard isn't going to strap bombs to himself and blow them up at a bus station, restaurant, or campus?
You're right, but Micrsoft is following Apple's lock-in model because it's been more successful. But they're not killing off the more open model of PFS.
I understand that those that want to "upgrade" to a Zune won't be able to play PFS music on it. But they can instead get a Toshiba Gigabeat, from which the Zune is derived. The Gigabeat plays PFS music, videos, and has the slick Portable Media Center 2.x UI (which is similar to Zune's UI, but Zune's appears to be even slicker).
(Of course, one can legally burn PFS music to a CD then rip DRM-free mp3s from the CD, just like one can do with iTMS music.)
I don't understand your logic. How did anyone that buy PlaysForSure music get "FUCKED by Microsoft?" That would imply that those that bought PFS music would be better off in some way if Micrososft didn't come out with Zune, at all. But that's not the case.
PlaysForSure still exists, and those that bought PFS music can still buy many PFS players. They won't buy Zunes, but how does that mean that they were "FUCKED by Microsoft"? They can buy still buy PFS players, just as they could before Zune. Only if PFS was being terminated, would they be "FUCKED".
Also, most PFS users use the subscription model; the nice thing about that model is that you're free to switch services at any time without any loss in investment whatsoever.
As for MS badmouthing Apple's lock-in model, then choosing it for themselves, they're admitting that Apple's model is more successful. Apple fanboys should be happy at being vindicated (but MS is still offering subscription as well as purchases, so they didn't copy Apple's model entirely.)
What's interesting is that XPS will be more open for use than PDF once it's approved as an international standard, because MS also has a "Covenant not to sue", something that Adobe doesn't have for PDF. Adobe reserves the right to sue users of PDF, and threatened to do just that against MS's use of PDF in Office 2007.
6 /02/XPSAdobe.aspx
XPS is better than PDF (has all of PDF's functionality and adds support for some graphical effects that PDF lacks), and is easier to deal with since it's XML. It also produces smaller files. (Note that these advantages aren't because MS is "smarter" than Adobe, it's just that XPS is newer, so it does more things with newer techniques). So, if XPS becomes a standard, and has technical advantages, and has a real "covenant not to sue", why would anyone use PDF besides the inertia of the format itself?
MS was going to strip Office 2007 of XPS support, requiring a separate free downloadable plugin for such support, and they were going to do the same for PDF (both were in response to Adobe's threats). MS was also going to strip Vista of full XPS support, leaving in only that required by the core printer spool, and allowing the OEMs to bundle the full XPS support on their own accord (again, this was in response to Adobe's threats).
See:
http://blogs.msdn.com/andy_simonds/archive/2006/0
But now that XPS will be a recognized standard, MS should feel free to include XPS in both Officw 2007 and Vista, and Adobe can't really do anything about it.
No, One Care doesn't touch the kernel.
Vista already had APIs to allow security software to monitor file activity without touching the kernel. This the API that One Care uses. And *most* security software already use that API, such as:
Trend Micro's "PC-cillin"
Avast!
Sophos
Symantec and McAfee, unfortunately implement their software by mucking directly with the kernel, so rather than adopt to the new world under Vista's disallowing direct kernel access, they bitched and moaned (to the EU, which is predisposed to rule against Microsoft regardless of the merits of the complaint), so now MS has added a new api which supposedly allows bypassing PatchGuard in a secure manner, whatever that means. Seems that malware will be able to take advantage of this new API, unless they require that any code using that API be digitally signed by a trusted authority or something like that.
No.
First, it's not "any kind of driver for Windows", it's kernel-mode drivers.
Second, you don't pay Microsoft, you pay a signing company (e.g. verisign) that has a root cert on the system (well-known root certs will be pre-installed).
Third, you can sign your own driver, but that will require you to install your own root cert (requiring admin rights).
Fourth, for 32-bit Vista, you can run unsigned kernel-mode drivers, but won't be able to play protected HD-DVDs and BR discs (the fear is that unsigned drivers would be used to compromise the DRM of such discs).
What is too keep microsoft or whoever from just saying nope your driver isn't good enough?
Nothing. Go to another signing-company, then.
I don't know about Vista, but XP has multiple root-certs from well-known signing companies pre-installed (verisign, etc). Pick one of them. If they all think that your driver "isn't good enough", then it probably isn't. BTW, "not good enough" usually means that they think the code in question is malware (win which case it's *good* that it be rejected) or piracy-ware (which would piss off the "information wants to be free" types) of some sort.
The other main reason for sigs is to ensure that a driver that you obtain wasn't mucked with. For example, if you download an ATI driver from some site and that driver has malware inserted into it, it likely won't have a digital sig, or at least not one that matches the driver or is valid, so it won't run.