6) Taking back the 'Net
by RareHeintz
Much recent technology legislation - most notably the DMCA and UCITA - seem unreasonably skewed toward large corporate interests seeking
copyright, patent, and licensing protections in the digital world they don't enjoy in the analog world.
[SNIP] Rep. Boucher:
I am in the process of drafting comprehensive legislation which will reaffirm the fair use rights of the users of information and create a better balance
between the copyright owners, who currently dominate the Congressional debates on intellectual property measures, and the users of copyrighted
information. My measure will be strongly supported by universities and libraries throughout the nation. It will be strongly opposed by motion picture
companies, the recording industry and book publishers.[snip]
Let me summarize -- "This law sucks." "Don't worry, I'm writing a NEW law that sucks differently!"
I must say, I wasn't terribly impressed with the Rep's answers, and I understood when I read the last question's answer. I wondered why the pablum I was reading sounds so much like the junk I hear from Washington, and now I know why -- Boucher was giving a campaign speech, as if he forgot that Slashdot is read by an international audience and not by constituents.
Don't get me wrong -- every now and then there was a nugget of clue found in his answers, but for the most part I was not filled with confidence.
Let me tie this in to the current D.C. obsession, Campaign Finance Reform. Our jackleg elected representatives in the Senate are arguing over who gets to give money to political candidates. They have successfully dodged the question of "Wait a minute. Big corporations may be giving you guys money, but I don't see you people turning it down. Mostly, I see you standing around like toilets with the lid up!"
Let me tie this back to the DMCA and UCITA -- Congress passed these abortions and certain groups caught on fire over it. Now, we've got people like Boucher saying that they'll pass new laws to make it better. What I don't hear, though, are people saying that Congress had no right to pass these laws in the first place, except for the occasional 10th Amendment nut.
Fixing bad legislation with more legislation is as stupid (and backward) as, oh, I dunno... letting lawyers make laws?
Please remember this: When buying and selling are controlled by legislation, the first things to be bought and sold are legislators. "Beware by whom you are called sane."
No biggie -- it's just this is the second time in as many days my posts have been mis-interpreted.
An egoist would blame the educational system in this country. I know better -- I'm not being as clear as I should be. Sometimes it's because I'm lazy, sometimes because I'm trying to convey information through subtlety and nuance -- either way, I'm not listening to the lessons taught by Hemmingway...
One of these days, I'll get it right:) "Beware by whom you are called sane."
I'm glad you're passionate about this -- if you read my post again, you'll notice that you agree with me 100% I'm NOT (repeat NOT) advocating a quarter-by-quarter strategy
To reiterate, MSFT doesn't live by the quarterly returns, as witnessed by the gobs of money they spend on research (some of which is pure research). Now, Bob Cringely has commented that this money is spent now, to be revoked if MS needs it to make their quarterly numbers look good. Maybe, maybe not.
Here's a summary, just to hammer the point home: I don't think a quarter-by-quarter strategy is good. I think a next-ten-years strategy is good, and I see some signs that RedHat gets this. Clear enough? "Beware by whom you are called sane."
Unfortunately, most of the time companies do better than they forcast. They sandbag as much as they can, because "beating First Call estimates" sounds a lot better than "oops, did we look under the couch cushions?"
Don't get me wrong, I'm proud of what RedHat's done here, but it means little in the long term. What I see from RedHat is more than a quarter-by-quarter strategy, and more of a next-ten-years strategy. This is the reason MSFT is such a great stock, and Microsoft such a worthwhile company to invest in.
As soon as you see RedHat Labs budget cut, run, don't walk, to the nearest exit. It means RedHat's ready to sink. "Beware by whom you are called sane."
Could someone who knows more about accounting explain how a company that really lost millions of dollars can say they broke even, after
adjusting the score to losing only $600,000?
Without a really close examination of the books, NOBODY knows. Publicly traded companies have to meet a truckload of regulations, but in the end, there is a lot of accounting chicanery going on.
What do they adjust
More money than you can shake a stick at, plus the stick.
why do they get to adjust
It's in the NASDAQ Corporation Handbook. You get that when you get the decoder ring and learn the secret handshake.
when is that adjustment ever factored back in?
When Bill Gates gets down on all fours and lets Larry Ellison bugger him. "Beware by whom you are called sane."
No, they're using it because it's the most popular. And what better way to get your operating system into the hands of the populace, than by
porting it to *popular* hardware?
Will Mac OS X become popular if it's being run on x86 hardware? I posit to you that it wouldn't make a difference. As proof, I offer BeOS as an example.
BeOS is created, amid quite a bit of hype. It runs on proprietary Be hardware. They sell a handful of 'em, so they port to Apple hardware (in, I believe, an attempt to get bought by Apple. I'm willing to bet that if you looked at Gassee's exit strategy on his business plan, that's what you'll find) They still can't sell many copies, though they sell more than before. They port to x86 hardware, and they sell a few more copies. But, regardless of quality and power and availability on x86 hardware, Be can't make many in-roads. Now Be has re-invented itself again as an "Internet Appliance" OS, trying another tact. Not only was Be unable to uproot Microsoft, they couldn't even survive as a co-existing OS.
OS X on x86 would sell a few copies, but not enough to make it worthwhile, because OS X is not Windows.
ou forgot "...and expensive". Sure Mr. Techo-Elitist, perhaps you can afford to pay a premium to get "blessed" hardware from Apple. But most
users don't *care* if their hardware was designed elegantly or not. They look at value. [snipping anti-Apple rant]
Techno-elitist? I don't have a computer newer than 5 years old. Some elitist. Don't assume you know me, Sparky.
"x86 hardware has price going for it, and that's all." And in this case, by all, you must mean *everything*. Why isn't everybody driving Mercedes and BMWs, instead of Ford Tauruses and Chevy
Caveliers? They're better designed right?
I'll use smaller words, since the point whizzed a good 3 or 4 feet over your head.
In porting Mac OS X to x86 hardware, Apple gains cheap hardware, and that's all. There is no particularly important technical reason for Apple to do so. Why spend a minimum of 2 years and millions (perhaps billions) of dollars to gain a handful of users?
Apple hardware, regardless of what you think, is not that expensive. It's more expensive than Turbo Bob's House o' Chips box, but on par with a Dell or IBM, which, after all, is Apple's peer group.
Windows users use Windows because they don't know any better, don't care, or are too lazy to change something they've already grown
accustomed to. If I ask my mother why she uses Windows I will guarantee you the words "Because it's best" will not come out of her mouth
(more like "Because it runs Word". Or "Because it runs game XYZ". Or "Because it came with the computer").
Neither will your mother say "Because I blindly follow other people, baa baa baaaa", but that doesn't make it less true.
If they use Windows for Word, they think Windows is the best OS to run Word on, though I find the Mac version superior myself. If they use it for Quake, it's because they think it's best for Quake (which happens to be true). If it's because it came with the computer, if they didn't think Windows was best, they'd install Linux, right?
Microsoft has spent billions of dollars convincing people that Windows is the best. They spend untold millions more in t-shirts and pens at trade shows to make IT managers think favorably of them. They spend even more in staff to put the thumbscrews to computer manufacturers to make sure they ship boxes with Windows on 'em (barring that, MS at least gets the money).
I don't blame people for equating computers with Windows, but neither do I delude myself into thinking that people care one way or the other. "Beware by whom you are called sane."
Now, would you like to back up your statement that the only going for the x86 platform is price? It seems like a rather broad statement to me, but
even if you're only talking about the quality of the hardware itself, well, do explain.
I didn't make myself clear, I suppose. Either that, or you're intentionally misreading me to score one-upsmanship points. Either way, I'll clarify with smaller words.
Porting OS X to x86 hardware gains Apple nothing, except availability on cheap hardware. This minor advantage is not something Apple is willing to spend millions (perhaps billions) on achieving. As an occassional Apple user (digital video and Photoshop, mainly), I'd prefer Apple to spend that money on advancing their PPC technology.
(Okay, eMachines use ATI processors. s/eMachines/random generic computer/ if it makes you feel better.) "Beware by whom you are called sane."
Actually, I'd pay good money to see Bob Young dangled from a rope, splattered with paint and flung against a canvas. "Beware by whom you are called sane."
If only it would run on x86 hardware, Windows users would flock away from the evil empire.
Geez, is this still hanging around? Look, Windows users aren't using Windows because it's got an x86 architecture. This is a myth promulgated over and over again by well-meaning people who think Apple needs their advice.
If you ask your standard Windows user what processor he has, you'll get either a misguided or flat-out wrong answer ("It's a Pentium!" Okay, Sparky, what version of Pentium? II, III, IV? Wait, it's not a Pentium, it's an Athlon!) All they know for sure is that they run Windows.
The reason why the MacOS is so nice and tight is because they control the hardware and the software. Throw in a different architecture (especially one with a funny endian-ness), and now you've exponentially increased your support costs, with little benefit.
x86 hardware has price going for it, and that's all. And you only get that price advantage when you're buying cheap shit. You want a decent video card? It costs. What comes in your $500 eMachines is usually a piece of crap. What's in the $800 iMac isn't top of the line, but at least it's made by ATI and not Wang Chungs House o' Video Procs.
Repeat after me -- Windows users use Windows because they think its the best. If they sit down at at Mac, they'll think it's screwed up.
(I'm talking generalities here -- there are exceptions, but only exceptions. The general rule is still true.) "Beware by whom you are called sane."
No point, if they can't read the computer in their own language. Apple (and Microsoft, incidentally) are the leaders in I18N support for their OSes. I believe Solaris is also in the top. Linux has some decent support, but nowhere near the level of Apple and MS.
Would you use an OS if it gave you prompts in Swahilli? Even if it was free (and Free)? "Beware by whom you are called sane."
Besides, I prefer the look and feel of Linux on a Mac versus BSD;)
Perhaps I don't understand... Is there a look-and-feel difference between BSD and Linux? If you mean command line options, I wouldn't consider that a look or a feel. If you mean X, then I'm curious -- how can you tell whether you're running BSD or Linux while running X?
However, like many GNU purists, I think their decision to go with BSD over Mach is pretty short-sighted.
Umm... OS X's kernel is based on NeXT's kernel, which is based on Mach. The userland stuff is based on BSD. Dunno how GNUists care one way or the other about kernel design (unless you're talking Hurd, which is neither BSD nor Mach)
Perhaps you're just trolling -- in which case, phfffllllbbblllt! "Beware by whom you are called sane."
3Com wasn't shy about advertising Audrey. The company placed ads in a number of magazines
and featured it in television slots. 3Com sold Audrey directly, but was also signing up retail
partners.
Not shy about advertising? Then how come I've never heard of the thing? Not to sound like an arrogant prick, but I tend to keep up with things like this, and this is the first time I've ever seen the thing.
Crikey, does 3Com have rhesus monkeys running their marketing department? What is the target market for the Audrey? Grandma? Grandpa? Not yet -- get them in the hands of nerds and the technoratti. Did they even buy an ad on Slashdot?
Get some buzz going first. This is a neat-o device -- expensive, but I can think up several dozen uses for it once the price comes down.
Now, the Internet radio is plain stupid. It deserved to die. "Beware by whom you are called sane."
And if you think that MacOS 9 or even 8 or 7 runs on the same gui framework code as in the original System 1.0, you have another think coming.
No, it doesn't -- from Sytem 1.0 to System 7. That's a ridiculous comparison. Compare System 7 (late 80s) to MacOS 9.
But, the real pudding that provides the proof is that you can use a Mac from 1999-2000 (say an iMac running MacOS 9) and my SE/30 running System 7.1. While the SE/30 is slow, and some things you expect aren't there (like double-clicking on a title bar to "windowshade" it), you're in completely familiar territory.
Try that with a randomly selected group of Linux nerds. You'd be lucky to figure what they've mapped the mouse buttons to, much less understand what's going on.
Software development can be done like an analog factory. Not all of it, sure -- there is still a need for the lone artist, but certain problems are solvable this way.
At least, I hope so.. otherwise, we're stuck with this ad hockery that we do now...
The true problem is the inhearent complexity of software, where any useful integrated program enters the realm of chaos, and exhibits
behavior "as if at random".
It's digital nature makes it more susceptible. While you can plumb a toilet within wide tolerances, software must be exact. Furthermore, a
broken toilet doesn't take the city's sewer system down with it.
Partially. It's also a function of how software is developed. The process by which a car (or a toaster, or an airplane) is designed, built and assembled is 50 or more years mature. Software (as we know it today, with high-level languages and cheap, ubiquitous hardware) is barely out of it's teens.
It hasn't been until recently that people could sit down and say "Okay, C sucks, but it's the best we've got, so we standardize on C. For scripting, we use Python. We assume Intel processors and we'll use Linux as the base. From this, build me a software factory" and be able to deliver.
I confess more than a little irritation that "engineers" are taking the rap for their PHBs, for the airheads in marketting who care more about
releasing a product at the right moment than whether that product is ready for prime time, for designers who care more that there's a cohesive
colorscheme than that it presents the user with a compelling metaphor. [snip] In my experience, coders have immense respect for usability (even those who don't know how to make it themselves) and robustness, but are
never taken seriously when they say "no, that's not how we should be doing it; it would be better if...". To blame them as a class for the failures
in robustness and usability of their code is salt in the wound.
I'll buy this "oh, it's not US that makes things suck" argument when nerds agree on whether to use KDE or GNOME.
Please, spare me. Nerds and engineers are just as much to blame as anybody. To use the KDE/GNOME scism as an example, KDE creates an application environment where programmer can share code and rapidly develop applications that can interact (copy-paste functionality, etc. Basically, duplicate the 1984 Macintosh Toolbox, but anyway...)
However, KDE uses Qt. Qt is "evil" because it's not Free. God forbid we spend our effort on convincing TrollTech to "free" Qt -- we start another goddamn widget set with GNOME.
So, while *nix hackers are busily wanking themselves over software licenses and how the bits move in ways that are only interesting to other nerds (a la CORBA), Palm created and fed a market and Microsoft developed the world's best web browser.
Puhleeze -- as much as I love and identify with engineers, don't feed me this sad story. Expand your mind by studying some of the great designers, learn about user interfaces, absorb a little business (so you'll understand where your PHB is coming from) and make the product great yourself -- or stop bitching.
I love how BP, Texaco, Mobil, et. al. are evil because they produce gasoline.
I mean, wow -- Texaco is evil? What's Texaco? Well, it's your grandmother, for one. Your parents, possibly you, your sainted aunt and thousands of widows and orphans who depend on Texaco's profits in order to eat
Point one: Texaco is a corporation. Anthropomorphizing Texaco by calling it evil is just plain silly.
Point two: Texaco deals in petrochemical by-products, only one of which is gasoline. To say that Texaco will suppress a hydrogen powered car because they won't be able to sell gasoline is asinine. It's the same as saying that your local drug store will suppress the planting of willow trees because it will impact their sales of aspirin. (willow bark contains aspirin-like chemicals and can be chewed to release the chemicals)
Texaco will continue to provide oil to people who make Vasaline, lipstick, WD-40... so they stop selling gas? Big deal -- they're still needed for home heating oil, kerosene, Castrol, you name it.
You seem to be saying, "Ha! But there's a *REASON* why what you're saying is true! Therefore your point is stupid!" This... logic...
confusing...
Well, almost. I'm saying that to pick an arbitrary metric (CO2 production) and measure ONLY that, then all kinds of assumptions can be made -- most of them wrongly.
I can pick another metric (say methane from burrito farts) and say "Mexico produces 75% of burrito farts, and they're only 5% of the worlds population. And their government is doing NOTHING about it!" It's equally valid (which is to say, equally stupid).
Try to balance your CO2 metric with a QOL metric (Quality of Life). Now -- we have 25% of the world's CO2 output, but the highest QOL. The argument can be made, then, that higher CO2 output means higher QOL. Thus, countries, to increase QOL must increase CO2 output.
(I make these points to highlight another point -- that point being that "Global Environmental Treaties" such as the Environmental summit in Rio some years ago, have all boiled down to Third World Countries lining up, holding out their hands to the US and saying "Give us a dollar")
We Americans are 5% of the world population, and we produce 25% of the world's CO2. So it is too bad that Bush has decided not to do anything.
Okay, I'll bite...
Sure, we produce more than our share of CO2 -- we're an industrialized nation. Hoovallooo in Papau New Guinea doesn't produce CO2 (except through respiration) because he's squatting in a tree waiting for a pig to pass by.
"But that's an extreme example!" Okay -- try Lin Chang in China. His complete personal property list is (1) water buffalo, (1) wok, (1) pointy hat. Not much CO2 producing going on there.
Now Biff Manley over in the States has a lawnmower, SUV, charcoal grill and a Pentium III 1Ghz. He's a CO2 producing fool, all by himself.
The fact of the matter is, most of the world's population lives in what may be considered -- to us overfed, whiny Americans anyway -- Third World status. Of COURSE they aren't going to produce much CO2.
An equally fair (and stupid) comparison would be "Mexicans are only 3% of the world's population, but produce 65% of the world's supply of laquered frogs."
Good points, all. It's something that's been weighing on my mind recently.
Email is a tough example. But it's appropriate, since email is a good example of something where it would behoove us to scratch and start over.
Email takes two basic forms -- chatty "conversations" and important missives. Chatty conversations would benefit from a p2p arrangement (similar to AIM), whereas important missives would benefit from encryption, signing, and other "high-dollar" functions. But what do we have now?
We have email -- I send you a message, it could come from me, it could come from a friend using my computer, it could come from Ted Kazinsky. Who knows? There is no method for prioritizing mail, no built-in method for verifying a senders identification. It could stand a revamping.
Are you going to allow users
to create E-mail addresses from their own namespace? how is that database going to be maintained?
How does Napster do it? They have a central server -- do you have to use Napster's server? Nope, you can use one of the OpenNap servers.
This method of choosing reliable sources of namespacing (and allowing those sources to swap information between themselves) gives the Internet a greater flexibility, and the consumers more choices. If you're a home-schooler who wants to protect your children from pornography, wouldn't it be nice to choose a namespace provider who concentrates on the home-school market? It's like going with a "family-friendly" ISP, only better, because it's more than a regular ISP with filtering software. Home-schooling type sites can apply to the namespace vendor and get accepted. The namespace vendor monitors and maintains that submission, and if it ever starts putting up Pam and Tommy videos, they can shut it off.
... I'm getting another idea. With this namespace vendor idea, when a home-schooler types in "hot and wet" in a search box, he gets links to experiments involving boiling water, not Pam and Tommy videos, because the namespace vendor indexes it's subscriber sites itself, and provides those search services.
First, you never address your subject in your post. I'll go out on a limb and guess that by making a computer system "easy to use", you equate that with "dumbing it down". This is patently untrue -- a TV is easy to use, but what it does is incredibly complicated. It's taking a stream of data from a cable, mashing it into an electron beam, exciting phosphors on the back of a vaccumed glass tube, and suddenly you can see Pamela Anderson Lee take off her bikini top.
The TV works (as a consumer device) because it makes a bunch of decisions for the user. It decides that 720x480 resolution is fine. It decides that the user will travel linearly in a forward or reverse direction. It decides that the volume level you had set it at when you turned it off last is likely the same level you want when you turn it on again.
Now, a TV has a lot of other nifty options (PIP, self-timers, etc) but very few people use them. Why not? Well, sometimes because it's just not useful -- PIP is a good example of a great idea, but one that nobody really wants. And sometimes, nobody uses them because it's a huge pain to get working.
To address your other points, what Emily is complaining about is the fact that EVERY distribution (except possibly for Mandrake -- I haven't used it in a long time) is basically the same, in that EVERY distro tries to include EVERYTHING. ksh, bash, csh -- who cares? Pick one, stay with it. If some nerd wants to use your distro, make him compile his favorite shell himself. GNOME, KDE? Who cares? The differences between GNOME and KDE are miniscule. The differences lie in how each one moves bits around in ways that are only interesting to other nerds.
Honestly, I don't care if you use CORBA, massive flat-file databases, or do everything in base-12. As long as I can type, compute, look at porn and play xboing, I'm happy. The details don't matter.
Now, the fight between GNOME and KDE is good, in that it should determine which is the "better" way of doing things. But, instead, we end up with two different toolkits -- and our nerd-power is immediately halved. We've got hugely talented programmers duplicating effort. Is that the wonder of Free Software/Open Source? 16 different wheels, each one painted a different color?
Where is free software heading? Only time will tell, and the "open ideas market" will be the judge.
That's the problem -- the open ideas market isn't judging -- it's allowing both to prosper, and thus divide our forces. Am I complaining? No -- I don't use either. My needs are met with Netscape, emacs and xterm. GNOME, KDE -- I don't care! But if I wanted to set up a machine for my mother to use, which would I pick? I dunno. I think I'll just keep Windows 95 on it, since she's used to that.
Reality -- if Linus truly wants "world domination", the way to do that is for somebody to make up a distribution that doesn't suck. I had high hopes for RedHat, but they've fallen down. (Honestly, the best installer I've uses is the one for OpenBSD. As long as your hardware isn't weird, and you know how to follow directions, a reasonably intelligent person can install OpenBSD) The way things stand, Linux is still a nerd's toy.
Slashdot Mirror
Let me summarize -- "This law sucks." "Don't worry, I'm writing a NEW law that sucks differently!"
I must say, I wasn't terribly impressed with the Rep's answers, and I understood when I read the last question's answer. I wondered why the pablum I was reading sounds so much like the junk I hear from Washington, and now I know why -- Boucher was giving a campaign speech, as if he forgot that Slashdot is read by an international audience and not by constituents.
Don't get me wrong -- every now and then there was a nugget of clue found in his answers, but for the most part I was not filled with confidence.
Let me tie this in to the current D.C. obsession, Campaign Finance Reform. Our jackleg elected representatives in the Senate are arguing over who gets to give money to political candidates. They have successfully dodged the question of "Wait a minute. Big corporations may be giving you guys money, but I don't see you people turning it down. Mostly, I see you standing around like toilets with the lid up!"
Let me tie this back to the DMCA and UCITA -- Congress passed these abortions and certain groups caught on fire over it. Now, we've got people like Boucher saying that they'll pass new laws to make it better. What I don't hear, though, are people saying that Congress had no right to pass these laws in the first place, except for the occasional 10th Amendment nut.
Fixing bad legislation with more legislation is as stupid (and backward) as, oh, I dunno... letting lawyers make laws?
Please remember this: When buying and selling are controlled by legislation, the first things to be bought and sold are legislators.
"Beware by whom you are called sane."
No biggie -- it's just this is the second time in as many days my posts have been mis-interpreted.
An egoist would blame the educational system in this country. I know better -- I'm not being as clear as I should be. Sometimes it's because I'm lazy, sometimes because I'm trying to convey information through subtlety and nuance -- either way, I'm not listening to the lessons taught by Hemmingway...
One of these days, I'll get it right :)
"Beware by whom you are called sane."
I'm glad you're passionate about this -- if you read my post again, you'll notice that you agree with me 100% I'm NOT (repeat NOT) advocating a quarter-by-quarter strategy
To reiterate, MSFT doesn't live by the quarterly returns, as witnessed by the gobs of money they spend on research (some of which is pure research). Now, Bob Cringely has commented that this money is spent now, to be revoked if MS needs it to make their quarterly numbers look good. Maybe, maybe not.
Here's a summary, just to hammer the point home: I don't think a quarter-by-quarter strategy is good. I think a next-ten-years strategy is good, and I see some signs that RedHat gets this. Clear enough?
"Beware by whom you are called sane."
Unfortunately, most of the time companies do better than they forcast. They sandbag as much as they can, because "beating First Call estimates" sounds a lot better than "oops, did we look under the couch cushions?"
Don't get me wrong, I'm proud of what RedHat's done here, but it means little in the long term. What I see from RedHat is more than a quarter-by-quarter strategy, and more of a next-ten-years strategy. This is the reason MSFT is such a great stock, and Microsoft such a worthwhile company to invest in.
As soon as you see RedHat Labs budget cut, run, don't walk, to the nearest exit. It means RedHat's ready to sink.
"Beware by whom you are called sane."
Without a really close examination of the books, NOBODY knows. Publicly traded companies have to meet a truckload of regulations, but in the end, there is a lot of accounting chicanery going on.
More money than you can shake a stick at, plus the stick.
It's in the NASDAQ Corporation Handbook. You get that when you get the decoder ring and learn the secret handshake.
When Bill Gates gets down on all fours and lets Larry Ellison bugger him.
"Beware by whom you are called sane."
Will Mac OS X become popular if it's being run on x86 hardware? I posit to you that it wouldn't make a difference. As proof, I offer BeOS as an example.
BeOS is created, amid quite a bit of hype. It runs on proprietary Be hardware. They sell a handful of 'em, so they port to Apple hardware (in, I believe, an attempt to get bought by Apple. I'm willing to bet that if you looked at Gassee's exit strategy on his business plan, that's what you'll find) They still can't sell many copies, though they sell more than before. They port to x86 hardware, and they sell a few more copies. But, regardless of quality and power and availability on x86 hardware, Be can't make many in-roads. Now Be has re-invented itself again as an "Internet Appliance" OS, trying another tact. Not only was Be unable to uproot Microsoft, they couldn't even survive as a co-existing OS.
OS X on x86 would sell a few copies, but not enough to make it worthwhile, because OS X is not Windows.
Techno-elitist? I don't have a computer newer than 5 years old. Some elitist. Don't assume you know me, Sparky.
I'll use smaller words, since the point whizzed a good 3 or 4 feet over your head.
In porting Mac OS X to x86 hardware, Apple gains cheap hardware, and that's all. There is no particularly important technical reason for Apple to do so. Why spend a minimum of 2 years and millions (perhaps billions) of dollars to gain a handful of users?
Apple hardware, regardless of what you think, is not that expensive. It's more expensive than Turbo Bob's House o' Chips box, but on par with a Dell or IBM, which, after all, is Apple's peer group.
Neither will your mother say "Because I blindly follow other people, baa baa baaaa", but that doesn't make it less true.
If they use Windows for Word, they think Windows is the best OS to run Word on, though I find the Mac version superior myself. If they use it for Quake, it's because they think it's best for Quake (which happens to be true). If it's because it came with the computer, if they didn't think Windows was best, they'd install Linux, right?
Microsoft has spent billions of dollars convincing people that Windows is the best. They spend untold millions more in t-shirts and pens at trade shows to make IT managers think favorably of them. They spend even more in staff to put the thumbscrews to computer manufacturers to make sure they ship boxes with Windows on 'em (barring that, MS at least gets the money).
I don't blame people for equating computers with Windows, but neither do I delude myself into thinking that people care one way or the other.
"Beware by whom you are called sane."
I didn't make myself clear, I suppose. Either that, or you're intentionally misreading me to score one-upsmanship points. Either way, I'll clarify with smaller words.
Porting OS X to x86 hardware gains Apple nothing, except availability on cheap hardware. This minor advantage is not something Apple is willing to spend millions (perhaps billions) on achieving. As an occassional Apple user (digital video and Photoshop, mainly), I'd prefer Apple to spend that money on advancing their PPC technology.
(Okay, eMachines use ATI processors. s/eMachines/random generic computer/ if it makes you feel better.)
"Beware by whom you are called sane."
Did you read my post? You're agreeing with me -- thanks for the supporting anecdote.
"Beware by whom you are called sane."
Nah. Bob Young might actually do it. Larry Ellison never would. (I have invested in Oracle).
"Beware by whom you are called sane."
Actually, I'd pay good money to see Bob Young dangled from a rope, splattered with paint and flung against a canvas.
"Beware by whom you are called sane."
I'm not arguing that there are differences, but you specifically were talking about the look and feel. What look and feel? The command line? X? GNOME?
If you tell me that you can tell a difference in their VM schemes, I'll damn you for a liar :)
"Beware by whom you are called sane."
AMD doesn't have the very cool Blue Man Group shilling for 'em.
"Beware by whom you are called sane."
Geez, is this still hanging around? Look, Windows users aren't using Windows because it's got an x86 architecture. This is a myth promulgated over and over again by well-meaning people who think Apple needs their advice.
If you ask your standard Windows user what processor he has, you'll get either a misguided or flat-out wrong answer ("It's a Pentium!" Okay, Sparky, what version of Pentium? II, III, IV? Wait, it's not a Pentium, it's an Athlon!) All they know for sure is that they run Windows.
The reason why the MacOS is so nice and tight is because they control the hardware and the software. Throw in a different architecture (especially one with a funny endian-ness), and now you've exponentially increased your support costs, with little benefit.
x86 hardware has price going for it, and that's all. And you only get that price advantage when you're buying cheap shit. You want a decent video card? It costs. What comes in your $500 eMachines is usually a piece of crap. What's in the $800 iMac isn't top of the line, but at least it's made by ATI and not Wang Chungs House o' Video Procs.
Repeat after me -- Windows users use Windows because they think its the best. If they sit down at at Mac, they'll think it's screwed up.
(I'm talking generalities here -- there are exceptions, but only exceptions. The general rule is still true.)
"Beware by whom you are called sane."
No point, if they can't read the computer in their own language. Apple (and Microsoft, incidentally) are the leaders in I18N support for their OSes. I believe Solaris is also in the top. Linux has some decent support, but nowhere near the level of Apple and MS.
Would you use an OS if it gave you prompts in Swahilli? Even if it was free (and Free)?
"Beware by whom you are called sane."
Perhaps I don't understand ... Is there a look-and-feel difference between BSD and Linux? If you mean command line options, I wouldn't consider that a look or a feel. If you mean X, then I'm curious -- how can you tell whether you're running BSD or Linux while running X?
Umm... OS X's kernel is based on NeXT's kernel, which is based on Mach. The userland stuff is based on BSD. Dunno how GNUists care one way or the other about kernel design (unless you're talking Hurd, which is neither BSD nor Mach)
Perhaps you're just trolling -- in which case, phfffllllbbblllt!
"Beware by whom you are called sane."
Not shy about advertising? Then how come I've never heard of the thing? Not to sound like an arrogant prick, but I tend to keep up with things like this, and this is the first time I've ever seen the thing.
Crikey, does 3Com have rhesus monkeys running their marketing department? What is the target market for the Audrey? Grandma? Grandpa? Not yet -- get them in the hands of nerds and the technoratti. Did they even buy an ad on Slashdot?
Get some buzz going first. This is a neat-o device -- expensive, but I can think up several dozen uses for it once the price comes down.
Now, the Internet radio is plain stupid. It deserved to die.
"Beware by whom you are called sane."
No, it doesn't -- from Sytem 1.0 to System 7. That's a ridiculous comparison. Compare System 7 (late 80s) to MacOS 9.
But, the real pudding that provides the proof is that you can use a Mac from 1999-2000 (say an iMac running MacOS 9) and my SE/30 running System 7.1. While the SE/30 is slow, and some things you expect aren't there (like double-clicking on a title bar to "windowshade" it), you're in completely familiar territory.
Try that with a randomly selected group of Linux nerds. You'd be lucky to figure what they've mapped the mouse buttons to, much less understand what's going on.
Software development can be done like an analog factory. Not all of it, sure -- there is still a need for the lone artist, but certain problems are solvable this way.
At least, I hope so .. otherwise, we're stuck with this ad hockery that we do now...
Partially. It's also a function of how software is developed. The process by which a car (or a toaster, or an airplane) is designed, built and assembled is 50 or more years mature. Software (as we know it today, with high-level languages and cheap, ubiquitous hardware) is barely out of it's teens.
It hasn't been until recently that people could sit down and say "Okay, C sucks, but it's the best we've got, so we standardize on C. For scripting, we use Python. We assume Intel processors and we'll use Linux as the base. From this, build me a software factory" and be able to deliver.
I'll buy this "oh, it's not US that makes things suck" argument when nerds agree on whether to use KDE or GNOME.
Please, spare me. Nerds and engineers are just as much to blame as anybody. To use the KDE/GNOME scism as an example, KDE creates an application environment where programmer can share code and rapidly develop applications that can interact (copy-paste functionality, etc. Basically, duplicate the 1984 Macintosh Toolbox, but anyway...)
However, KDE uses Qt. Qt is "evil" because it's not Free. God forbid we spend our effort on convincing TrollTech to "free" Qt -- we start another goddamn widget set with GNOME.
So, while *nix hackers are busily wanking themselves over software licenses and how the bits move in ways that are only interesting to other nerds (a la CORBA), Palm created and fed a market and Microsoft developed the world's best web browser.
Puhleeze -- as much as I love and identify with engineers, don't feed me this sad story. Expand your mind by studying some of the great designers, learn about user interfaces, absorb a little business (so you'll understand where your PHB is coming from) and make the product great yourself -- or stop bitching.
I love how BP, Texaco, Mobil, et. al. are evil because they produce gasoline.
I mean, wow -- Texaco is evil? What's Texaco? Well, it's your grandmother, for one. Your parents, possibly you, your sainted aunt and thousands of widows and orphans who depend on Texaco's profits in order to eat
Point one: Texaco is a corporation. Anthropomorphizing Texaco by calling it evil is just plain silly.
Point two: Texaco deals in petrochemical by-products, only one of which is gasoline. To say that Texaco will suppress a hydrogen powered car because they won't be able to sell gasoline is asinine. It's the same as saying that your local drug store will suppress the planting of willow trees because it will impact their sales of aspirin. (willow bark contains aspirin-like chemicals and can be chewed to release the chemicals)
Texaco will continue to provide oil to people who make Vasaline, lipstick, WD-40... so they stop selling gas? Big deal -- they're still needed for home heating oil, kerosene, Castrol, you name it.
Well, almost. I'm saying that to pick an arbitrary metric (CO2 production) and measure ONLY that, then all kinds of assumptions can be made -- most of them wrongly.
I can pick another metric (say methane from burrito farts) and say "Mexico produces 75% of burrito farts, and they're only 5% of the worlds population. And their government is doing NOTHING about it!" It's equally valid (which is to say, equally stupid).
Try to balance your CO2 metric with a QOL metric (Quality of Life). Now -- we have 25% of the world's CO2 output, but the highest QOL. The argument can be made, then, that higher CO2 output means higher QOL. Thus, countries, to increase QOL must increase CO2 output.
(I make these points to highlight another point -- that point being that "Global Environmental Treaties" such as the Environmental summit in Rio some years ago, have all boiled down to Third World Countries lining up, holding out their hands to the US and saying "Give us a dollar")
Okay, I'll bite...
Sure, we produce more than our share of CO2 -- we're an industrialized nation. Hoovallooo in Papau New Guinea doesn't produce CO2 (except through respiration) because he's squatting in a tree waiting for a pig to pass by.
"But that's an extreme example!" Okay -- try Lin Chang in China. His complete personal property list is (1) water buffalo, (1) wok, (1) pointy hat. Not much CO2 producing going on there.
Now Biff Manley over in the States has a lawnmower, SUV, charcoal grill and a Pentium III 1Ghz. He's a CO2 producing fool, all by himself.
The fact of the matter is, most of the world's population lives in what may be considered -- to us overfed, whiny Americans anyway -- Third World status. Of COURSE they aren't going to produce much CO2.
An equally fair (and stupid) comparison would be "Mexicans are only 3% of the world's population, but produce 65% of the world's supply of laquered frogs."
Good points, all. It's something that's been weighing on my mind recently.
Email is a tough example. But it's appropriate, since email is a good example of something where it would behoove us to scratch and start over.
Email takes two basic forms -- chatty "conversations" and important missives. Chatty conversations would benefit from a p2p arrangement (similar to AIM), whereas important missives would benefit from encryption, signing, and other "high-dollar" functions. But what do we have now?
We have email -- I send you a message, it could come from me, it could come from a friend using my computer, it could come from Ted Kazinsky. Who knows? There is no method for prioritizing mail, no built-in method for verifying a senders identification. It could stand a revamping.
How does Napster do it? They have a central server -- do you have to use Napster's server? Nope, you can use one of the OpenNap servers.
This method of choosing reliable sources of namespacing (and allowing those sources to swap information between themselves) gives the Internet a greater flexibility, and the consumers more choices. If you're a home-schooler who wants to protect your children from pornography, wouldn't it be nice to choose a namespace provider who concentrates on the home-school market? It's like going with a "family-friendly" ISP, only better, because it's more than a regular ISP with filtering software. Home-schooling type sites can apply to the namespace vendor and get accepted. The namespace vendor monitors and maintains that submission, and if it ever starts putting up Pam and Tommy videos, they can shut it off.
... I'm getting another idea. With this namespace vendor idea, when a home-schooler types in "hot and wet" in a search box, he gets links to experiments involving boiling water, not Pam and Tommy videos, because the namespace vendor indexes it's subscriber sites itself, and provides those search services.
Not perfect, but an interesting idea, anyway...
First, you never address your subject in your post. I'll go out on a limb and guess that by making a computer system "easy to use", you equate that with "dumbing it down". This is patently untrue -- a TV is easy to use, but what it does is incredibly complicated. It's taking a stream of data from a cable, mashing it into an electron beam, exciting phosphors on the back of a vaccumed glass tube, and suddenly you can see Pamela Anderson Lee take off her bikini top.
The TV works (as a consumer device) because it makes a bunch of decisions for the user. It decides that 720x480 resolution is fine. It decides that the user will travel linearly in a forward or reverse direction. It decides that the volume level you had set it at when you turned it off last is likely the same level you want when you turn it on again.
Now, a TV has a lot of other nifty options (PIP, self-timers, etc) but very few people use them. Why not? Well, sometimes because it's just not useful -- PIP is a good example of a great idea, but one that nobody really wants. And sometimes, nobody uses them because it's a huge pain to get working.
To address your other points, what Emily is complaining about is the fact that EVERY distribution (except possibly for Mandrake -- I haven't used it in a long time) is basically the same, in that EVERY distro tries to include EVERYTHING. ksh, bash, csh -- who cares? Pick one, stay with it. If some nerd wants to use your distro, make him compile his favorite shell himself. GNOME, KDE? Who cares? The differences between GNOME and KDE are miniscule. The differences lie in how each one moves bits around in ways that are only interesting to other nerds.
Honestly, I don't care if you use CORBA, massive flat-file databases, or do everything in base-12. As long as I can type, compute, look at porn and play xboing, I'm happy. The details don't matter.
Now, the fight between GNOME and KDE is good, in that it should determine which is the "better" way of doing things. But, instead, we end up with two different toolkits -- and our nerd-power is immediately halved. We've got hugely talented programmers duplicating effort. Is that the wonder of Free Software/Open Source? 16 different wheels, each one painted a different color?
That's the problem -- the open ideas market isn't judging -- it's allowing both to prosper, and thus divide our forces. Am I complaining? No -- I don't use either. My needs are met with Netscape, emacs and xterm. GNOME, KDE -- I don't care! But if I wanted to set up a machine for my mother to use, which would I pick? I dunno. I think I'll just keep Windows 95 on it, since she's used to that.
Reality -- if Linus truly wants "world domination", the way to do that is for somebody to make up a distribution that doesn't suck. I had high hopes for RedHat, but they've fallen down. (Honestly, the best installer I've uses is the one for OpenBSD. As long as your hardware isn't weird, and you know how to follow directions, a reasonably intelligent person can install OpenBSD) The way things stand, Linux is still a nerd's toy.