I think that MS has little chance in this arena because the palm already controls 70% of the PDA market and the Palm OS does what it does so well.
Flashback 1995: "I think that MS has little chance in this arena because Netscape already controls 70% of the browser market and does what it does so well."
The Palm OS has IMO become the standard, much as Win9X has become the standard OS on 90% of PC's. You don't need to have WinCE on a PDA, and Palm OS is easier to use. I think that the people have already spoken. The Palm has already won this battle.
Don't be so sure of it. MS has money. Lots of it. And version 1.0 through 3.0 might suck bollocks (DirectX, IE) but they'll keep throwing money at it... Hope 3Com's new spinoff Palm division can handle MS.
On the other hand, I can't wait for the X-Box to crash and buuuuurn.:)
Ah, but you list off Linux, NetBSD, and Darwin... One under development and owned by Apple, and two free software projects. If Be invested the time/energy to port BeOS to G3/G4, which they don't have enough of as is, they would open themselves up to lawsuits. Since, as opposed to Linux, there is actually someone to sue at Be Inc., they don't want to stick their neck out!
Of course the sons/daughters of politicians could be nice kids - it doesn't matter if they are or aren't. The point is to make the congresspeople aware of how inane and dangerous this program is by putting it under their noses, seeing as they're the ones with the power to do something about it. I think this joke is very funny (and almost feasible).
Not to be too redundant here, but I'd just like to clear up a few worries about FreeBeOS 5.
You aren't limited to 500 megs! Yes, the Be-in-a-file can only be that big, but if you set aside a partition (say, 1.5 megs) and format it as BeFS using the Partition Magic version that came with R4, you can install onto that directly using the "Installer" program that comes with FreeBe 5. I'll bet you could format partitions as BeFS using the DriveSetup utility that comes with FreeBe5 too... Check BeNews for details
You're not limited to one processor! This is a problem only if you launch BeOS 5 directly from Windows, as the second processor is disabled in hardware during the Windows boot sequence. Make a boot floppy and start from there, or install the BeOS Boot manager by running "bootman" in the BeOS shell (Be Menu -> Applications -> Terminal... Bash, whee)
In fact, you can install BeOS 5 overtop of your existing 4.5.2 partition and it will boot without any problems... Or at least none that I've found yet while typing this post in the new NetPositive!
...since you actually paid for BeOS 4.5, you're entitled to the $29.95 upgrade pricing to the full version of BeOS 5, with RealMedia codec, Mp3 encoding codec, and all those other royalty things... plus the goodies. Good thing you didn't pirate 4.5, right?:)
Got dandruff? Using a shampoo for it? Stop right now.
Dandruff is caused by a pH inbalance on your scalp. To correct this pH balance, take some vinegar (any kind will do, but apple vinegar smells good) into the shower with you, shampoo your hair with vinegar, and rinse. The dandruff will be gone, and the smell will dissapear quickly.
Obviously the shampoo industry doesn't want you to know about this. Their shampoos use harsh detergents to strip off a layer or two of skin, getting rid of your dandruff for a bit. Of course, the harsh detergents make the pH inbalance on your scalp even worse, so you're going to have to keep on using their product until it makes you bald.
Of course, with the AMD/Intel clock speed war, all we've been hearing about is how useless these ridiculously stretched CPU cores are, and how disk I/O is the bottleneck in most PC usage. I'm trying to put together the components I'd like to buy to upgrade/replace my box, and I'd like to focus on disk access/throughput... perhaps a duallie with only one CPU to start with, then I can add one later when I get more cash. ANYHOW - What is the best I/O system to get for PC usage? Is SCSI worth it? Any way that aging IDE can get anywhere close to the rated transfer speed (444 Mb/s) of this IBM drive?
But Unix has the trump card over BeOS: the idea of users.
Acutally, BeOS has all the groundwork for a multi-user system built in. If you look at your files in the BeOS shell, you'll find they're owned by "Baron". Eventually, when they get enough time/demand, they will invest the time to finish the job.
Of course, with its mediocre network performance, BeOS wouldn't be too useful as a multi-user platform. That's set to change with the inclusion of the network system into the kernel (as opposed to the net_server). BeOsNetworkingEnvironment (BONE)... I think... is the name for the new subsystem.
>Sure, how about Chernobyl, or the recent cyanide >spill in Romania and Hungary that killed 90% of >the fish life in the Tisa river. Or how about the Love Canal toxic waste dump?
Would you say any of those are global catastrophes that endanger humanity?
I would say that the global catastrophes that threaten humanity are
Our complete dependance on fossil fuels to sustain our standard of living - Look for example at how upset people are over the hike in oil prices from OPEC. Now think what would happen if it were ten times the price. Gasoline is ridiculously cheap, right now it sells for less than Coke by volume (Gas is at most 80 cents/litre in canada, Coke is $1.25/litre). Do you realize how much energy is contained in a litre of gasoline?
Our non-renewable logging of the rainforest belts, the areas where life began and evolved, and where we only have 10% of species documented. We don't even know how it works, and we're destroying it at the rate of as 20.4 million ha. per year (From a study by the World Resources Institute (WRI))
Our meddling with the genetic code of plants and animals, with no understanding of what the long-term consequences will be - I'm so tired of typing these enormous posts so I will link to some people with more time on their hands
The point in all this discussion is, Humanity does not seem to be in any danger of becoming extinct.
David Suzuki has a very good analogy for this sort of view. Imagine a test tube, filled with food, in which bacteria grow, by cellular division. After ninety-eight minutes, the test tube is 25% full. Imagine then if some bacteria stood up and said "Hey guys, I think we have a problem here.". He would be laughed at! "Honestly, there's still almost an entire test tube full of food, and all us bacteria have been around for ninety-eight minutes already". As we all know, in two more minutes the test tube is full, and the population collapses. But, imagine that at the last minute, some bacteria scientists created three more test tubes full of food! The population would be saved!.... for two more minutes. That's what exponential growth is all about, and that's what the human race has been experiencing. Not all of us will die (unless we really fuck things up), but our current living standards cannot continue.
If you think Chernobyl was bad, think of how many people died of cancer in the past, because they breathed the smoke from their candles. Or how they maimed themselves accidentaly with their axes while cutting firewood.
Think of how many children are dying right now of tuberculosis in India, AIDS in Africa, or malnutrition everywhere but here in the first world. Everybody dies sometime. But not all have to die from radiation poisoning, and not all have to die at the age of six months because their mother was raped by an HIV-positive man. Honestly, "maimed while cutting firewood?"... How many people die today from maiming themselves with power tools?:)
AFAIK, the biggest danger we have faced in recorded history was the black death during the Middle Ages. Modern medicine and sanitation could have easily avoided that.
Sorry to be rude, but you sound pretty uneducated and Eurocentric here! You do realize that the entire world population didn't originate from Europe, right? Even if the plague had killed off the entire filthy feudalistic society (no small loss, hence the name "Dark ages"), the Chinese would have been just fine - I think they had almost invented gunpowder by that point? Anyone?
Hell, there are holes in my argument, but I'm too lazy to fix them. Comment away.
You strongly disagree with North American optimisim you say? Well, then answer me this: Has it ever been wrong? Has there ever been some man made event that has lead to catastrophic loss of life?
we've conqured polio, small pox, and a host of other plauges that killed millions, we'll conquer AIDS, et al as well.
Show me one disease we've cured (simple 'treatment' doesn't count) since smallpox.
Tuberculosis is even now killing millions in India because there is no money to immunize people against it. Why? There's no money in it. There is, however, lots of money to be made in rich-world viruses such as AIDS, but we haven't cured those either. Hell, we can't cure the common cold, what makes you think we have a chance against Ebola?
The only thing I will say is re: the Bioshpere 2. So it failed. So what? It was the first experiment. I'm betting they will figure it out with subsequent expirments.(sp)
Right. It was the first experiment and it was called the Biosphere II.
Fair enough, I was writing my rant in a fair rush and didn't check up on my facts... However, it's fact that genes can jump from species to species. There have been cases of antibiotic-resistant bacteria transferring the necessary genes to other types of bacteria, allowing them to survive. There has also been examples of genes from GE crops spreading to other species, such as weeds nearby the fields. Check it out on Google.
Step back and have a look at what optimisim you're projecting. First off, the only global disaster that you're even willing to possibly accept as having any credibility is global warming? What about running completely out of oil and gas? No matter what people may say, there is a finite limit on the amount of crude oil that has been built up over the millennia, and it is non-renewable. The net production of oil by natural processes during one day is pretty much enough to run four cars full-time. And, before you go off about fuel cells and solar power - Fuel cells that are in production now are set to run on gasoline. No NOx or SOx in the combustion, but still gasoline. Hydrogen fuel cells will need to be supplied with hydrogen, which must be extracted at an electrical cost. Where does electricity come from? Coal. Gas. Do you realize how much we depend on gasoline to support our ridiculously opulent lifestyle?
As a second note, did you know that there are two types of the Ebola virus that have had outbreaks? One was in Africa, which we all saw on the evening news. It killed humans, but could only be transferred by bodily fluids. Since your entire body turned into jelly, there was plenty of that to go around, but still, the infection rate was not critical. The other strain came to North America with a shipment of monkeys. It did not kill humans (only made you sick), but it was airborne!!! Put the two strains together, couple it with a flight out of Zaire to NYC, and...
Do you want to talk about accentuating the positive? Accentuate the fact that genetically engineered crops with the 'Bt' pesticide inserted are killing off Monarch butterflies. Accentuate the fact that frogs are being born with three legs and two heads due to toxins released during paper processing which mimic hormones. Accentuate the fact that we are destroying species at a rate never before seen in the history of the earth since the meteor that killed the dinosaurs! THERE IS A FINITE LIMIT ON GROWTH. That's right - the Dow Jones can't keep growing forever, because natural resources which we depend on are non-renewable! Of course, in a capitalist system which rewards profit as the most noble of motivations, that issue never comes up.
Trees grow at 2% a year. If you cut timber at 2% a year, and kept the amount of forest protected, you could cut trees forever. However, the stock market grows at 10% (at least). It makes more economic sense to cut down the trees now and invest the money. Does that make sense?
However, you say, technology will find us a way out. The Biosphere II project was an example of how we could use technology to live on Mars by generating a natural environment that would support us. Of course, you don't hear much about the Biosphere project anymore, because it failed miserably. Oxygen levels inside the sealed environment dropped to those found at 12,000 feet. Then Nitrogen levels skyrocketed, causing risk of brain damage. Then most of the plants which were supposed to sustain the bionauts died off, and cockroaches and ants began to swarm over everything. Had they stayed inside any longer, they might have died. The lesson this teaches is that we don't know what the hell is going on in the ecosystem! Working in a lab is fine and dandy, but as soon as you take out the fixed variables that the scientific method is based around and throw your invention into the real world, who knows what might happen? There have already been instances of genes jumping from one species to another, for example in the Mad Cow disease incident... Sheep --> Cows --> Humans. Don't get me started.
Sorry for the flames but I strongly disagree with the cheery optimisim which pervades North American society.
Didn't they copyright it? I don't see how you could patent a bottle, after all, the method of making glass bottles is pretty much in the public domain by now.;)
All of you 17-20 year olds out there - Remember Nintendo Thumb? The bruises you got from playing your Nintendo game of choice too long? Don't pretend you don't, 'cause I'm on to you.
Honestly, the ergonomics of video game controllers have improved a hundredfold since the rectangles that were the original NES controllers. Super NES controllers were fine (or maybe I didn't play a much), and the next generation have had so much research put into them that those kids must be playing a HELL of a lot to get blisters!
And, the reason that iCraveTV has been succesfully litigated off the net is because they were adding their own advertisements to the bottom of the screen on their rebroadcasted signal. Fully illegal, and justifiable.
I agree with your statement completely and wholeheartedly (one of my housemates just commented "It'll just get bought out and shut down"), and congratulate you for your clear-sightedness. It would be fantastic if some good-natured company with scads of fake (i.e. overvalued) stock money snatched this company up and did some good with it. But I think there are some good reasons why it won't happen. First of all, any company which has gone public is inherently responsible to its shareholders to make the largest profit possible. That tends to make management a little more conservative then they were when they were a wee fledgeling startup. Second of all, most investors agree that the software/internet stock situation today is overvalued, so the millions upon billions that Red Hat has in stock value isn't really liquid cash.
It's like Betamax vs. VHS, like DAT tapes and all those other cool technologies that lost out because they weren't backed by the big money. The MPAA and assorted hoodlums have poured cash into DVD, and you're damn right they're not going to give up. FMD is, admittedly, scads better than DVD (as opposed to the nearly equal Betamax/VHS), but the problems remain the same.
One other thing - From what I understand, to manufacture one of these, you need to laminate the disk in 10 steps (or however many layers you have). Does this technology allow for FMD-burning, i.e. FMD-RAM? I see nothing about it in their tech or marketing pages... That takes out another advantage of CDs, that you can make your own, for the UNIX/NT tape-backup market and other things (mp3). You need to have big money to set up a plant to make these, and that means you need to get studios releasing movies and software companies releasing titles on this format, which means you need to get coalition backing to assure everyone that they won't get left out in the cold with an incompatible product, and... guess what, it's been done already and they're not about to give up. Yay DVD-consortium.
My first reaction to this article was "What the hell are they doing, stealing the work of open source developers?"... Well, unidealogical as it may be, I get angry at the thought of AOL getting a browser for free, then leveraging it back on the current market leader. What do you think AOL would do if they happened to be on top? They'd likely be like MSFT and do everything in their power to co-opt standards and prevent interoperability. Grr.
True, there was no moderation, and no need for moderation, but when I went back to the archived copy of the article, I found that every comment was basically "Whoah, that is cool, ". Wouldn't you agree that while the level of petrifying natalie portmanizing trolls has gone up, the intelligent posts have kept the balance pretty much even?
Slashdot Mirror
Flashback 1995: "I think that MS has little chance in this arena because Netscape already controls 70% of the browser market and does what it does so well."
The Palm OS has IMO become the standard, much as Win9X has become the standard OS on 90% of PC's. You don't need to have WinCE on a PDA, and Palm OS is easier to use. I think that the people have already spoken. The Palm has already won this battle.
Don't be so sure of it. MS has money. Lots of it. And version 1.0 through 3.0 might suck bollocks (DirectX, IE) but they'll keep throwing money at it... Hope 3Com's new spinoff Palm division can handle MS.
On the other hand, I can't wait for the X-Box to crash and buuuuurn. :)
IMHO, shouldn't this be under "Science" not "Hardware"?
Ah, but you list off Linux, NetBSD, and Darwin... One under development and owned by Apple, and two free software projects. If Be invested the time/energy to port BeOS to G3/G4, which they don't have enough of as is, they would open themselves up to lawsuits. Since, as opposed to Linux, there is actually someone to sue at Be Inc., they don't want to stick their neck out!
...BeOS for ext2. Pretty much it, no?
Of course the sons/daughters of politicians could be nice kids - it doesn't matter if they are or aren't. The point is to make the congresspeople aware of how inane and dangerous this program is by putting it under their noses, seeing as they're the ones with the power to do something about it. I think this joke is very funny (and almost feasible).
- You aren't limited to 500 megs! Yes, the Be-in-a-file can only be that big, but if you set aside a partition (say, 1.5 megs) and format it as BeFS using the Partition Magic version that came with R4, you can install onto that directly using the "Installer" program that comes with FreeBe 5. I'll bet you could format partitions as BeFS using the DriveSetup utility that comes with FreeBe5 too... Check BeNews for details
- You're not limited to one processor! This is a problem only if you launch BeOS 5 directly from Windows, as the second processor is disabled in hardware during the Windows boot sequence. Make a boot floppy and start from there, or install the BeOS Boot manager by running "bootman" in the BeOS shell (Be Menu -> Applications -> Terminal
... Bash, whee)
In fact, you can install BeOS 5 overtop of your existing 4.5.2 partition and it will boot without any problems... Or at least none that I've found yet while typing this post in the new NetPositive!...since you actually paid for BeOS 4.5, you're entitled to the $29.95 upgrade pricing to the full version of BeOS 5, with RealMedia codec, Mp3 encoding codec, and all those other royalty things... plus the goodies. Good thing you didn't pirate 4.5, right? :)
Dandruff is caused by a pH inbalance on your scalp. To correct this pH balance, take some vinegar (any kind will do, but apple vinegar smells good) into the shower with you, shampoo your hair with vinegar, and rinse. The dandruff will be gone, and the smell will dissapear quickly.
Obviously the shampoo industry doesn't want you to know about this. Their shampoos use harsh detergents to strip off a layer or two of skin, getting rid of your dandruff for a bit. Of course, the harsh detergents make the pH inbalance on your scalp even worse, so you're going to have to keep on using their product until it makes you bald.
Have a nice day now. :)
Of course, with the AMD/Intel clock speed war, all we've been hearing about is how useless these ridiculously stretched CPU cores are, and how disk I/O is the bottleneck in most PC usage. I'm trying to put together the components I'd like to buy to upgrade/replace my box, and I'd like to focus on disk access/throughput... perhaps a duallie with only one CPU to start with, then I can add one later when I get more cash. ANYHOW - What is the best I/O system to get for PC usage? Is SCSI worth it? Any way that aging IDE can get anywhere close to the rated transfer speed (444 Mb/s) of this IBM drive?
Acutally, BeOS has all the groundwork for a multi-user system built in. If you look at your files in the BeOS shell, you'll find they're owned by "Baron". Eventually, when they get enough time/demand, they will invest the time to finish the job.
Of course, with its mediocre network performance, BeOS wouldn't be too useful as a multi-user platform. That's set to change with the inclusion of the network system into the kernel (as opposed to the net_server). BeOsNetworkingEnvironment (BONE) ... I think... is the name for the new subsystem.
Check out Free Be in a week or two!
Would you say any of those are global catastrophes that endanger humanity?
I would say that the global catastrophes that threaten humanity are
The point in all this discussion is, Humanity does not seem to be in any danger of becoming extinct.
David Suzuki has a very good analogy for this sort of view. Imagine a test tube, filled with food, in which bacteria grow, by cellular division. After ninety-eight minutes, the test tube is 25% full. Imagine then if some bacteria stood up and said "Hey guys, I think we have a problem here.". He would be laughed at! "Honestly, there's still almost an entire test tube full of food, and all us bacteria have been around for ninety-eight minutes already". As we all know, in two more minutes the test tube is full, and the population collapses. But, imagine that at the last minute, some bacteria scientists created three more test tubes full of food! The population would be saved! .... for two more minutes. That's what exponential growth is all about, and that's what the human race has been experiencing. Not all of us will die (unless we really fuck things up), but our current living standards cannot continue.
If you think Chernobyl was bad, think of how many people died of cancer in the past, because they breathed the smoke from their candles. Or how they maimed themselves accidentaly with their axes while cutting firewood.
Think of how many children are dying right now of tuberculosis in India, AIDS in Africa, or malnutrition everywhere but here in the first world. Everybody dies sometime. But not all have to die from radiation poisoning, and not all have to die at the age of six months because their mother was raped by an HIV-positive man. Honestly, "maimed while cutting firewood?" ... How many people die today from maiming themselves with power tools? :)
AFAIK, the biggest danger we have faced in recorded history was the black death during the Middle Ages. Modern medicine and sanitation could have easily avoided that.
Sorry to be rude, but you sound pretty uneducated and Eurocentric here! You do realize that the entire world population didn't originate from Europe, right? Even if the plague had killed off the entire filthy feudalistic society (no small loss, hence the name "Dark ages"), the Chinese would have been just fine - I think they had almost invented gunpowder by that point? Anyone?
Hell, there are holes in my argument, but I'm too lazy to fix them. Comment away.
You strongly disagree with North American optimisim you say? Well, then answer me this: Has it ever been wrong? Has there ever been some man made event that has lead to catastrophic loss of life?
Sure, how about Chernobyl, or the recent cyanide spill in Romania and Hungary that killed 90% of the fish life in the Tisa river. Or how about the Love Canal toxic waste dump?
we've conqured polio, small pox, and a host of other plauges that killed millions, we'll conquer AIDS, et al as well.
Show me one disease we've cured (simple 'treatment' doesn't count) since smallpox.
Tuberculosis is even now killing millions in India because there is no money to immunize people against it. Why? There's no money in it. There is, however, lots of money to be made in rich-world viruses such as AIDS, but we haven't cured those either. Hell, we can't cure the common cold, what makes you think we have a chance against Ebola?
The only thing I will say is re: the Bioshpere 2. So it failed. So what? It was the first experiment. I'm betting they will figure it out with subsequent expirments.(sp)
Right. It was the first experiment and it was called the Biosphere II.
Fair enough, I was writing my rant in a fair rush and didn't check up on my facts... However, it's fact that genes can jump from species to species. There have been cases of antibiotic-resistant bacteria transferring the necessary genes to other types of bacteria, allowing them to survive. There has also been examples of genes from GE crops spreading to other species, such as weeds nearby the fields. Check it out on Google.
As a second note, did you know that there are two types of the Ebola virus that have had outbreaks? One was in Africa, which we all saw on the evening news. It killed humans, but could only be transferred by bodily fluids. Since your entire body turned into jelly, there was plenty of that to go around, but still, the infection rate was not critical. The other strain came to North America with a shipment of monkeys. It did not kill humans (only made you sick), but it was airborne!!! Put the two strains together, couple it with a flight out of Zaire to NYC, and...
Do you want to talk about accentuating the positive? Accentuate the fact that genetically engineered crops with the 'Bt' pesticide inserted are killing off Monarch butterflies. Accentuate the fact that frogs are being born with three legs and two heads due to toxins released during paper processing which mimic hormones. Accentuate the fact that we are destroying species at a rate never before seen in the history of the earth since the meteor that killed the dinosaurs! THERE IS A FINITE LIMIT ON GROWTH. That's right - the Dow Jones can't keep growing forever, because natural resources which we depend on are non-renewable! Of course, in a capitalist system which rewards profit as the most noble of motivations, that issue never comes up.
Trees grow at 2% a year. If you cut timber at 2% a year, and kept the amount of forest protected, you could cut trees forever. However, the stock market grows at 10% (at least). It makes more economic sense to cut down the trees now and invest the money. Does that make sense?
However, you say, technology will find us a way out. The Biosphere II project was an example of how we could use technology to live on Mars by generating a natural environment that would support us. Of course, you don't hear much about the Biosphere project anymore, because it failed miserably. Oxygen levels inside the sealed environment dropped to those found at 12,000 feet. Then Nitrogen levels skyrocketed, causing risk of brain damage. Then most of the plants which were supposed to sustain the bionauts died off, and cockroaches and ants began to swarm over everything. Had they stayed inside any longer, they might have died. The lesson this teaches is that we don't know what the hell is going on in the ecosystem! Working in a lab is fine and dandy, but as soon as you take out the fixed variables that the scientific method is based around and throw your invention into the real world, who knows what might happen? There have already been instances of genes jumping from one species to another, for example in the Mad Cow disease incident... Sheep --> Cows --> Humans. Don't get me started.
Sorry for the flames but I strongly disagree with the cheery optimisim which pervades North American society.
Didn't they copyright it? I don't see how you could patent a bottle, after all, the method of making glass bottles is pretty much in the public domain by now. ;)
Honestly, the ergonomics of video game controllers have improved a hundredfold since the rectangles that were the original NES controllers. Super NES controllers were fine (or maybe I didn't play a much), and the next generation have had so much research put into them that those kids must be playing a HELL of a lot to get blisters!
http://underdogs.cjb.net
It's the most comprehensive and well-maintained archive of classic DOS games I've ever seen on the net.
Nonsense. Only an incurable, barefaced liberal would conflate love in the religious sense with sexual lust. You, sir, are a mental and moral cripple.
Besides, we all know that God's a woman. And we all know that at heart all woman are bisexual.
There, that has to end this discussion. Nobody could possibly add anything to that.
> All you touch and all you see Gratuitous Pink Floyd reference?
And, the reason that iCraveTV has been succesfully litigated off the net is because they were adding their own advertisements to the bottom of the screen on their rebroadcasted signal. Fully illegal, and justifiable.
"He's the last person I'd feel qualified to give a tour on reality."
Seinfeld
Just an offtopic question - Do you do your microwave any harm by melting a CD in it? Aside from scorch marks on the inside, that is.
It's like Betamax vs. VHS, like DAT tapes and all those other cool technologies that lost out because they weren't backed by the big money. The MPAA and assorted hoodlums have poured cash into DVD, and you're damn right they're not going to give up. FMD is, admittedly, scads better than DVD (as opposed to the nearly equal Betamax/VHS), but the problems remain the same.
One other thing - From what I understand, to manufacture one of these, you need to laminate the disk in 10 steps (or however many layers you have). Does this technology allow for FMD-burning, i.e. FMD-RAM? I see nothing about it in their tech or marketing pages... That takes out another advantage of CDs, that you can make your own, for the UNIX/NT tape-backup market and other things (mp3). You need to have big money to set up a plant to make these, and that means you need to get studios releasing movies and software companies releasing titles on this format, which means you need to get coalition backing to assure everyone that they won't get left out in the cold with an incompatible product, and... guess what, it's been done already and they're not about to give up. Yay DVD-consortium.
My first reaction to this article was "What the hell are they doing, stealing the work of open source developers?" ... Well, unidealogical as it may be, I get angry at the thought of AOL getting a browser for free, then leveraging it back on the current market leader. What do you think AOL would do if they happened to be on top? They'd likely be like MSFT and do everything in their power to co-opt standards and prevent interoperability. Grr.
True, there was no moderation, and no need for moderation, but when I went back to the archived copy of the article, I found that every comment was basically "Whoah, that is cool, ". Wouldn't you agree that while the level of petrifying natalie portmanizing trolls has gone up, the intelligent posts have kept the balance pretty much even?