Did you read the *whole* article? They state very plainly at the end that "DivX encoded clips tended to have a touch more detail, but also a few more compression artifacts, than the WMV9 video" and that DivX encodes much faster than WMV9. In brief, the only reason for choosing WMV9 over DivX is that it may be included in upcoming consumer devices.
Once the lawsuit is over, where does SCO expect to get it's money?
Dude, SCO doesn't have a long term continuity plan! McBride and his cronies are all set to cash out about this time next year. Once McBride flys the roost he'll probably turn around and sue SCO himself for something like he typically does. The stockholders will be the ones left holding the bag in the end and it's why I still can't understand why SCO isn't a penny-stock.
Yes new kernel releases are only for hardcore users. Joe Schmoe *should* be using a distro SuSE, Fedora, Mandrake, whatever, and rely on their patch releases. Updating the kernel can be tricky and I'd hope non-hardcore users wouldn't attempt it.
OpenGL drivers loaded? Try running glxgears, check the framerate you're getting there. Just an FYI, ATI's OGL drivers are kinda crappy, I get > 2200FPS with my old nVIDIA GeForce3 200 Ti. Also, for the price you probably paid for a 9600 Pro, you should consider spending an extra $100US and getting a better processor than a 900Mhz Duron, hell, XP 2000+s are around $100US now.
Hundreds of thousands of dollars barely pays for the costs of a patent
Nah, it costs ~$10K to prepare and file for a patent and 95% of that money goes to the lawyers preparing your application. The expensive part you're thinking of is enforcing / defending a patent.
So repossession is extortion then? If you owe money on a car, they have the right to take your car. It's not extortion because the car is usually the collateral in the loan. All that to say that we'd need to see the specifics of the contract to know for certain if it was extortion. If there was no provision for the revocation of the site, then yep, no get out of jail free card.
If what you said is true then HP and IBM must be piling on some staggering loses given that they reported $2.5B and $1B of Linux revenue respectively in 2003 and 2002. Also, RedHat *never* stated they dropped their non-enterprise product line because it was losing money (revenue - expenses), they did it to focus on the enterprise market with subscription based support. Besides, RedHat still pushes it's Linux Enterprise Workstation as "ideal for all desktop deployments" right here.
If the Linux desktop is unviable, why did Novell just purchase SuSE and why did Sun roll out the Linux based JDS? To spite MS? It seems ironic that in these days of cost cutting and doing anything possible to boost stock prices that struggling companies like Novell and Sun would squander resources trying to "put some hurt" on MS. So, I'll take your wager on them "hemmoraging" cash, post detailed evidence in support please.
Yeah, 'cause that software is going to administer itself, patch itself, improve itself, etc. There's money to be made in "free" software. What Mr. Vasters failed to grasp is that the free in free software means freedom, not $0. Hell, RedHat and SuSE do a pretty good job making money on free software. Besides, there's nothing in the GNU license that says you can't sell your software. Besides, it's very easy to outsource general programming, it's not so easy to outsource one-off administration tasks. The money is in the admin / customization side these days, open source software is one of the keys to maintaining this skill set in the high-wage industrialized world. The fact that Mr. Vasters fails to grasp this merely demonstrates his a) inexperience in the IT field and b) inability to view the larger economic picture.
Here's an even better spin, lower the lifespan of patents, lets say a max of 5 years from the date of commercialization. Also, failure to commericialize a patent within 2 years would render a patent null and void. Also, "method" patents must die, there's no excuse for any "method" patent. If your patent is not a "physical" concept, it's not worth patenting and almost certainly has some kind of prior art basis in the 5000+ years of recorded human history.
Hell, I'd even set maximum limits on the % of patent applications that can be approved. Lets say 1%. If a patent review approves more than 1/100 of their patent backlog, they have to undergo a full audit. That would certain stem the tide of "idiot" patents.
I'm looking at an ostensibly "Java" Oracle Forms 9i form that will only run on one JVM, Oracle's JVM
While there is the nagging limitiation of technical support which restricts your JVM options -but- that doesn't mean Forms will "only run on one JVM", just that it's only supported on a few Oracle approved JVMs.
Personally, I think Java runs just fine on the client side. The GUI may not be as snappy as a native GUI but it's on par with similar solutions such as Flash. Most users would be hard pressed to tell the difference.
To help prevent fragmentation, there'd have to be a GPL-like license to it. It wouldn't mean there wouldn't be ANY fragmentation but it would certainly reduce any potential barriers to keeping any forks in sync with the baseline.
However, as a special exception, the source code distributed need not include anything that is normally distributed (in either source or binary form) with the major components (compiler, kernel, and so on) of the operating system on which the executable runs, unless that component itself accompanies the executable.
There's an exception in the GPL for "normally accompanying OS runtime libraries. The "normally" piece would exempt the underlying OS from being forced open.
The DCMA reference is with regards to removing the watermark from the Corbis images, not reprinting or modifying the image itself. The DMCA (which I dislike btw) has that famous provision for tampering with security devices, which I guess can be applied to watermarks without an overly broad stretch.
Umm, MS *only* provided those to thoroughly suffocate Netscape out of existence. Mission accomplished, and now those "free" versions of IE are curiously no longer developed or supported by our philanthropist friends at MS.
BMW doesn't have a monopoly, that's where bundling becomes a bad thing because it extends a monopoly. For your example to make sense, it would need to be something along the lines of:
You own MobileCoffeeCo that makes in-car coffee makers. You sell your coffee makers in the after market. All of a sudden, BMW, which owns 95% of the world auto market (Bentley owns the other 5% and few people can afford one) decides they're including their own in car coffee maker in their cars. You're out of business. Eh, no harm done, people still have their coffee makers right? Yeah, you're out of business through a completely anti-competitive move, but it's not unfair according to your argument.
Now can you see where the *combination* of having a monopoly and employing bundling strategies is anti-competitive? It's leveraging that monopoly power that's illegal. Back in the real world, if BMW had a 5% market share and bundled coffee makers, you could still compete. However, if the other auto makers *colluded* with BMW to put you out of business by bundling, again it would be anti-competitive.
Well they'd better hurry up and sell something because that IBM patent infringement lawsuit is looming large on the horizon. I'm not a big fan of patents but in this case I'll turn a blind eye.
Personally, it would take more than MS supporting Linux, it would take a change in MS's business practices. I used to detest IBM but their attitude towards business changed. It's just an added bonus that they are the most visible corp backers of Linux. If MS drops their exclusionary tactics and user lock-in strategies of proprietary standards / open standards corruption then I might have a change of heart. However, it would ~5 years of "good behavior" before my suspicions wane, just like it did for IBM.
I've got a sneaky feeling they'll be selling an external hard drive as an "option" that you can live without but only uncomfortably. That would knock $50 off the console price but most consumers would most likely pony up for it separately anyhow. I'd bet it would have a modified (non-std) USB 2.0 connector too!
I rarely get rain fade and I'm in an area where it rains fairly often. When it does happen, it's typically some brief (5-10 seconds) pixelation. I do sometimes lose the signal for more than a minute, ~6 times a year, but it's only during really severe thunderstorms when I'm more concerned about my electronics getting "zapped" by lightning than anything else. All in all, it would take the mother of all cable deals to get me to switch back.
Be diplomatic about it, do not pound your fist on the desk and demand a raise. Make sure you get your manager on your side, point out the fact that you're doing a good job (past reviews help here), and slip in the salary level discrepancy during your review. The key is to give the impression that you deserve the raise rather than are demanding a raise. People feel good about helping people out but hate to be coerced.
The other thing is that you may be setting your expectations for a 30% raise a little high. Something in the 15-20% range is a more realistic expectation. For example, one large company I worked for had a "maximum" raise of 20% beyond which raises required CEO approval. If you feel dissatisfied with the raise they give you, you can always become a contractor yourself but don't discount the low stress levels associated with knowing that you'll get that steady (but smaller) paycheck twice a month.
It's funny, whenever I read a Martin Taylor interview I'm always reminded of Colin Powell sitting in front of the UN making that WMD presentation. They both knew damn well their facts were nothing but bullshit but they had to cover their bosses asses regardless.
So you're suggesting that MS would just bail out of the second largest IT market, give up ~$7B USD worth of revenue per year (source), and not to mention provide a tremendous shot in the arm to Linux adoption rates? You think stock holders and more importantly the stock market would react positively to an immediate 25% reduction in revenue and a disproportionately larger reduction in profit? I only wish that MS were so blatantly stupid as to say "screw you Europe", sadly, money talks, bullshit walks. Microsoft will pay the fine and ensure that they hold their monopoly firm. Even at a full 10% penalty on their full worldwide ~$30B of revenue, they'd only be reducing their $8B profit for the year by $3B, not incurring a loss.
I hear this over and over, and I don't doubt that it's true. However, isn't that what the law is for? It's illegal to shoot somebody with a gun, but there are no controls in place to prevent me from doing just that. If somebody tweaks their wifi software and breaks the law, then use the law to make them pay for their crime.
That's not really a fair comparison. If Linux came preloaded from OEMs, there'd be no driver magic or X-Win cfg issues. Granted things can be tough to configure from scratch, but the same could be true under Windows considering the user base you're referring to.
Also, I wouldn't concern myself with supporting a particular distribution. The important thing is which version of GCC you choose to support. Windows isn't immune to this kinda thing either, msvcrt#.dll needs to be present for the version the code was compiled in order to work. As for a package manager, don't bother, use a custom installer like the Loki installer and it's becomes irrelevant. Finally, I think a bootable CD is a terrible idea specifically because it involves a reboot. It certainly brings back bad memories of when DOS games used to require a reboot. No thanks.
Ok, all that aside, I think the primary reason why there aren't more games on Linux is critical mass. You can rest assured that if Linux had 50% of the home desktop market, all the major games would be on Linux. Another reason is very likely DirectX. By basing games on DirectX, game shops can offload a LOT of support volume onto MS and pocket the savings. With an OpenGL approach, they'd be stuck supporting much more of the application stack in house.
I think it's important to differentiate between the "home" desktop market and the "business" desktop market. The "home" segment will be a tough one for Linux to crack. The "business" segment is ripe for Linux to take over. Sadly, for those of us that use Linux at home, games fall into the former. The key to the home segment is going to be the OEMs and MS keeps those guys greased up nicely.
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... because Apple is not a monopoly, period.
Did you read the *whole* article? They state very plainly at the end that "DivX encoded clips tended to have a touch more detail, but also a few more compression artifacts, than the WMV9 video" and that DivX encodes much faster than WMV9. In brief, the only reason for choosing WMV9 over DivX is that it may be included in upcoming consumer devices.
Once the lawsuit is over, where does SCO expect to get it's money?
Dude, SCO doesn't have a long term continuity plan! McBride and his cronies are all set to cash out about this time next year. Once McBride flys the roost he'll probably turn around and sue SCO himself for something like he typically does. The stockholders will be the ones left holding the bag in the end and it's why I still can't understand why SCO isn't a penny-stock.
Yes new kernel releases are only for hardcore users. Joe Schmoe *should* be using a distro SuSE, Fedora, Mandrake, whatever, and rely on their patch releases. Updating the kernel can be tricky and I'd hope non-hardcore users wouldn't attempt it.
OpenGL drivers loaded? Try running glxgears, check the framerate you're getting there. Just an FYI, ATI's OGL drivers are kinda crappy, I get > 2200FPS with my old nVIDIA GeForce3 200 Ti. Also, for the price you probably paid for a 9600 Pro, you should consider spending an extra $100US and getting a better processor than a 900Mhz Duron, hell, XP 2000+s are around $100US now.
Hundreds of thousands of dollars barely pays for the costs of a patent
Nah, it costs ~$10K to prepare and file for a patent and 95% of that money goes to the lawyers preparing your application. The expensive part you're thinking of is enforcing / defending a patent.
So repossession is extortion then? If you owe money on a car, they have the right to take your car. It's not extortion because the car is usually the collateral in the loan. All that to say that we'd need to see the specifics of the contract to know for certain if it was extortion. If there was no provision for the revocation of the site, then yep, no get out of jail free card.
If what you said is true then HP and IBM must be piling on some staggering loses given that they reported $2.5B and $1B of Linux revenue respectively in 2003 and 2002. Also, RedHat *never* stated they dropped their non-enterprise product line because it was losing money (revenue - expenses), they did it to focus on the enterprise market with subscription based support. Besides, RedHat still pushes it's Linux Enterprise Workstation as "ideal for all desktop deployments" right here.
If the Linux desktop is unviable, why did Novell just purchase SuSE and why did Sun roll out the Linux based JDS? To spite MS? It seems ironic that in these days of cost cutting and doing anything possible to boost stock prices that struggling companies like Novell and Sun would squander resources trying to "put some hurt" on MS. So, I'll take your wager on them "hemmoraging" cash, post detailed evidence in support please.
Yeah, 'cause that software is going to administer itself, patch itself, improve itself, etc. There's money to be made in "free" software. What Mr. Vasters failed to grasp is that the free in free software means freedom, not $0. Hell, RedHat and SuSE do a pretty good job making money on free software. Besides, there's nothing in the GNU license that says you can't sell your software. Besides, it's very easy to outsource general programming, it's not so easy to outsource one-off administration tasks. The money is in the admin / customization side these days, open source software is one of the keys to maintaining this skill set in the high-wage industrialized world. The fact that Mr. Vasters fails to grasp this merely demonstrates his a) inexperience in the IT field and b) inability to view the larger economic picture.
Here's an even better spin, lower the lifespan of patents, lets say a max of 5 years from the date of commercialization. Also, failure to commericialize a patent within 2 years would render a patent null and void. Also, "method" patents must die, there's no excuse for any "method" patent. If your patent is not a "physical" concept, it's not worth patenting and almost certainly has some kind of prior art basis in the 5000+ years of recorded human history.
Hell, I'd even set maximum limits on the % of patent applications that can be approved. Lets say 1%. If a patent review approves more than 1/100 of their patent backlog, they have to undergo a full audit. That would certain stem the tide of "idiot" patents.
I'm looking at an ostensibly "Java" Oracle Forms 9i form that will only run on one JVM, Oracle's JVM
While there is the nagging limitiation of technical support which restricts your JVM options -but- that doesn't mean Forms will "only run on one JVM", just that it's only supported on a few Oracle approved JVMs.
Personally, I think Java runs just fine on the client side. The GUI may not be as snappy as a native GUI but it's on par with similar solutions such as Flash. Most users would be hard pressed to tell the difference.
To help prevent fragmentation, there'd have to be a GPL-like license to it. It wouldn't mean there wouldn't be ANY fragmentation but it would certainly reduce any potential barriers to keeping any forks in sync with the baseline.
Not necessarily, see section 3 of the GPL:
However, as a special exception, the source code distributed need not include anything that is normally distributed (in either source or binary form) with the major components (compiler, kernel, and so on) of the operating system on which the executable runs, unless that component itself accompanies the executable.
There's an exception in the GPL for "normally accompanying OS runtime libraries. The "normally" piece would exempt the underlying OS from being forced open.
The DCMA reference is with regards to removing the watermark from the Corbis images, not reprinting or modifying the image itself. The DMCA (which I dislike btw) has that famous provision for tampering with security devices, which I guess can be applied to watermarks without an overly broad stretch.
Umm, MS *only* provided those to thoroughly suffocate Netscape out of existence. Mission accomplished, and now those "free" versions of IE are curiously no longer developed or supported by our philanthropist friends at MS.
BMW doesn't have a monopoly, that's where bundling becomes a bad thing because it extends a monopoly. For your example to make sense, it would need to be something along the lines of:
You own MobileCoffeeCo that makes in-car coffee makers. You sell your coffee makers in the after market. All of a sudden, BMW, which owns 95% of the world auto market (Bentley owns the other 5% and few people can afford one) decides they're including their own in car coffee maker in their cars. You're out of business. Eh, no harm done, people still have their coffee makers right? Yeah, you're out of business through a completely anti-competitive move, but it's not unfair according to your argument.
Now can you see where the *combination* of having a monopoly and employing bundling strategies is anti-competitive? It's leveraging that monopoly power that's illegal. Back in the real world, if BMW had a 5% market share and bundled coffee makers, you could still compete. However, if the other auto makers *colluded* with BMW to put you out of business by bundling, again it would be anti-competitive.
Take a look here. Granted it's not as polished as VMWare and not as speedy but it's progressing.
Well they'd better hurry up and sell something because that IBM patent infringement lawsuit is looming large on the horizon. I'm not a big fan of patents but in this case I'll turn a blind eye.
Personally, it would take more than MS supporting Linux, it would take a change in MS's business practices. I used to detest IBM but their attitude towards business changed. It's just an added bonus that they are the most visible corp backers of Linux. If MS drops their exclusionary tactics and user lock-in strategies of proprietary standards / open standards corruption then I might have a change of heart. However, it would ~5 years of "good behavior" before my suspicions wane, just like it did for IBM.
I've got a sneaky feeling they'll be selling an external hard drive as an "option" that you can live without but only uncomfortably. That would knock $50 off the console price but most consumers would most likely pony up for it separately anyhow. I'd bet it would have a modified (non-std) USB 2.0 connector too!
I rarely get rain fade and I'm in an area where it rains fairly often. When it does happen, it's typically some brief (5-10 seconds) pixelation. I do sometimes lose the signal for more than a minute, ~6 times a year, but it's only during really severe thunderstorms when I'm more concerned about my electronics getting "zapped" by lightning than anything else. All in all, it would take the mother of all cable deals to get me to switch back.
Be diplomatic about it, do not pound your fist on the desk and demand a raise. Make sure you get your manager on your side, point out the fact that you're doing a good job (past reviews help here), and slip in the salary level discrepancy during your review. The key is to give the impression that you deserve the raise rather than are demanding a raise. People feel good about helping people out but hate to be coerced.
The other thing is that you may be setting your expectations for a 30% raise a little high. Something in the 15-20% range is a more realistic expectation. For example, one large company I worked for had a "maximum" raise of 20% beyond which raises required CEO approval. If you feel dissatisfied with the raise they give you, you can always become a contractor yourself but don't discount the low stress levels associated with knowing that you'll get that steady (but smaller) paycheck twice a month.
It's funny, whenever I read a Martin Taylor interview I'm always reminded of Colin Powell sitting in front of the UN making that WMD presentation. They both knew damn well their facts were nothing but bullshit but they had to cover their bosses asses regardless.
So you're suggesting that MS would just bail out of the second largest IT market, give up ~$7B USD worth of revenue per year (source), and not to mention provide a tremendous shot in the arm to Linux adoption rates? You think stock holders and more importantly the stock market would react positively to an immediate 25% reduction in revenue and a disproportionately larger reduction in profit? I only wish that MS were so blatantly stupid as to say "screw you Europe", sadly, money talks, bullshit walks. Microsoft will pay the fine and ensure that they hold their monopoly firm. Even at a full 10% penalty on their full worldwide ~$30B of revenue, they'd only be reducing their $8B profit for the year by $3B, not incurring a loss.
I hear this over and over, and I don't doubt that it's true. However, isn't that what the law is for? It's illegal to shoot somebody with a gun, but there are no controls in place to prevent me from doing just that. If somebody tweaks their wifi software and breaks the law, then use the law to make them pay for their crime.
That's not really a fair comparison. If Linux came preloaded from OEMs, there'd be no driver magic or X-Win cfg issues. Granted things can be tough to configure from scratch, but the same could be true under Windows considering the user base you're referring to.
Also, I wouldn't concern myself with supporting a particular distribution. The important thing is which version of GCC you choose to support. Windows isn't immune to this kinda thing either, msvcrt#.dll needs to be present for the version the code was compiled in order to work. As for a package manager, don't bother, use a custom installer like the Loki installer and it's becomes irrelevant. Finally, I think a bootable CD is a terrible idea specifically because it involves a reboot. It certainly brings back bad memories of when DOS games used to require a reboot. No thanks.
Ok, all that aside, I think the primary reason why there aren't more games on Linux is critical mass. You can rest assured that if Linux had 50% of the home desktop market, all the major games would be on Linux. Another reason is very likely DirectX. By basing games on DirectX, game shops can offload a LOT of support volume onto MS and pocket the savings. With an OpenGL approach, they'd be stuck supporting much more of the application stack in house.
I think it's important to differentiate between the "home" desktop market and the "business" desktop market. The "home" segment will be a tough one for Linux to crack. The "business" segment is ripe for Linux to take over. Sadly, for those of us that use Linux at home, games fall into the former. The key to the home segment is going to be the OEMs and MS keeps those guys greased up nicely.