After reading another Slashdot-linked article a few days ago, I am reminded of what it said about best practices related to security and how anybody making an OS should never deviate from this path under any circumstances. Failure to do so will only create problems that will become increasingly difficult to correct as time goes by.
Nevertheless, it's no surprise at all to read once again that the industry has no confidence whatsoever in Microsoft's will to change course and produce something decent for a change. As always, to them it simply does not make any business sense to rectify their past mistakes. By 2008, Longhorn will be on the shelves and of course M$ will make security one of their major selling points (just as they did with WinXP). Nevertheless, the rest of industry knows better and sees through this. Hence, this article and its prediction.
... it can be proved that there was wide-spread election fraud in many states and that Kerry should even have won the Florida vote? How can this change anything now? Somehow, at this late stage, I don't see the government declaring the outcome of the elections null and void no matter what is proved.
... Why should MS give up all the big profits of today just to be another commodity Linux company of the future?...
Excellent point. They won't. I don't suggest that Microsoft are likely to take Mr. Christensen's advice any time soon, let alone my own. Personally, I think they're currently far too satisfied with their monopoly position to listen to any advice of this sort. I don't believe that they will even consider a move such as Apple's until all else has failed first.
However, if, as Mr. Christensen believes, the situation does change and Microsoft's profits do begin to decline, their position will have to change. In that case, I suppose that, if they don't act soon enough, they may well be in danger of becoming just another commodity Linux company.
... I suspect that many applications that ran on the original Mac won't run on OSX.
Apple does have a way to run older software on OSX, but you're probably right that it doesn't always work. However, that's beside the point. The fact is, Apple must have decided to go ahead with OSX because they believed the advantages of doing so outweighed the disadvantages.
Windows XP can run applications designed for an 8088, would it really be that easy to write an new Unix based OS that is capable of that level of compatibility?...
Um, that's not always the case. For instance, many older DOS era and 16-bit Windows programs don't work on XP. This happened to another group of programs recently after XP SPack2 came out.
... Would the result really be more secure, faster and more reliable than Windows XP?...
Well, for a comparison, you could ask the folks at Apple this question. I'm sure they would say OSX is an improvement. And, as far as their popularity is concerned, I don't believe their switch has done them any harm.
... How many years would it take for MS to recover the costs of developing it. At the end of the day this has to make good business sense.
Compared to their current monopoly position? That could take years... maybe forever! However, Clayton Christensen's point is that Microsoft's monopoly is not going to last forever, and that therefore they should learn to love Linux sooner as opposed to later (as Apple did), or pay the price. In that case, the switch would make good business sense.
... I suspect that many applications that ran on the original Mac won't run on OSX.
Apple does have a way to run older software on OSX, but you're probably right that it doesn't always work. But, that's beside the point. The fact is, Apple must have decided to go ahead with OSX because they believed the advantages of doing so outweighed the disadvantages.
Windows XP can run applications designed for an 8088, would it really be that easy to write an new Unix based OS that is capable of that level of compatibility? Would the result really be more secure, faster and more reliable than Windows XP? How many years would it take for MS to recover the costs of developing it. At the end of the day this has to make good business sense.
I've said it before and I'll say it again. If people are so willing to shell out all that extra money for Apple's GUI on top of an open source operating system (Darwin), why wouldn't they be willing to pay something extra for a system that runs a Windows desktop and applications on top of Linux? They'd have the speed, reliability and security of Linux, together with that good ol' Windows look and feel that we all know and love (cough).
Seriously, though: if Apple can do it, there's no reason Microsoft can't. If they wait too long, there is indeed a danger that the open source community will, slowly but surely, end up pulling a Netscape on them (oh, the irony). However, if they act soon enough, I can even imagine them retaining a bit of their current monopoly (apps that don't work without the MS desktop).
Well, as long as they're so busy genetically modifying everything, how about if they come up with something to help absorb some of that excess CO2 that's worrying everybody? Oh, probably somebody's already working on this idea. Objections? Well, I remember somebody saying "Technology got us into this mess, so maybe technology will get us out too." If something like this does offer us a solution, perhaps it's too late for second thoughts about GM products. But, we must be careful.
... overexposure, audience fatigue and creative exhaustion...
I started watching Star Trek when I was a kid and have long considered myself a fan, but not anymore. In recent years it's all become too much for me -- like an overdose. They now have a new series, Enterprise, which looks to be an improvement, but at the same time you can also catch endless re-runs of the original series, the Next Generation, etc, etc. Enough!
On top of that, all this exposure has made me realize how silly it all really is. I mean, from a Sci-Fi point of view, Star Trek really has very little to do with science -- it's more like "The Bold and the Beautiful" in space with pure fantasy standing in for science. As far as I'm concerned, the best Sci-Fi is based more often on current technology and scientific theory (either that, or it's just exceedingly well written). Nowadays, Star Trek seems to me too much like 1950's Sci-Fi: outdated and badly written at that. For instance, according to the Star Trek universe, our galaxy is just crawling with advanced, humanoid civilizations inhabiting temperate-zone, 1G-planets with breathable atmospheres. Today, we know this to be a ridiculous premise and it's just one more reason why it has become increasingly difficult for me to suspend my disbelief for this particular series.
IMHO, they should pull the plug altogether, or at least wait for a decade or so before even thinking about reviving the series.
Hmm... I always thought 'the Internet' sounded logical, if only because of its clearly defined address space. Did the good Doctor explain himself? Perhaps he compares the Internet to the global phone network.
Even worse: here in the Netherlands they don't refer to it as the Internet, but simply as 'internet'. So, now it's 'I found it on internet', just as it's 'I saw it on TV'. It seems to me that the Dutch technical crowd still refers to it as 'the Internet', but the popular press is just hopeless.
What an incredible waste. Not that working on the ISS sounds as exciting as setting up bases on the Moon and Mars, but think of all the money and effort that's already been invested in the ISS. It hasn't really even begun to pay off and it's already being dumped! What's worse is that I don't see the Moon/Mars mission happening anyway -- it's going to cost too much. After all, from a political point of view, there's really no point (except in the short term for George Bush). So, if ultimately Congress does not cough up the money for this project, then what will we be left with? Not much: no mission, no shuttle and no ISS. Great. One step forward, two steps back.
Back in '95 when working for a small, private university, lightning struck and wiped out about half the machines in the building. Only a few that had been switched on at the time (including the server) were unaffected. It took a while to replace all the equipment involved.
Besides that, the worst private accident I suffered was when I absentmindedly deleted a certain unknown partition on my private server with the DOS fdisk utility. Too late, it dawned upon me this this partition had contained multiple volumes, including one containing about five or six years worth of personal financial data and other documents (doh!). Naturally, I didn't have any backups.
I see you point: M$ makes this announcement sound like it's finally decided to be brave, cut it's losses and 'do the right thing' for a change, while in actual fact they're probably planning on making some more money off of those customers who will soon feel forced to upgrade some of their old software as a result.
However, you got that last part the wrong way around: opening up an Office97 document in OfficeXP has never been a problem. It's doing it the other way around that is.
I can't stand the fact that everything about M$ is designed to keep users locked into Windows with little regard for anything else. The system is unstable, unpredictable, insecure, inflexible, outdated, badly designed and far too expensive. It wastes everybody's time. What's more, the license agreement is incredibly restrictive and M$ takes no responsibility whatsoever for their product. After having used M$ products for far too long, I switched completely to an Open Source system three years ago. My only regret is that I didn't do so earlier; the experience has been nothing short of a liberation for me.
Remember back in the decades just before and after WWII when black athletes were beginning to appear in national football and baseball teams? There was a lot of racism and those guys had to work twice as hard as any of there white teammates in order to be accepted -- even though they were much better at what they did. It's just prejudice.
It seems to me that when a lot of these industry pundits decide to air there views on Linux, their opinions are colored by about 10 years of Windows experience and maybe 1 day's worth of struggle to get a completely new operating system to work. It's all too easy for them to make judgments based on their expectations alone.
With this kind of prejudice, I fear we may have an uphill battle on our hands until Linux can do everything Windows does in addition to all of the things that Linux does better already.
... on why we plan to go there in the first place. If all we really want to do on the Moon (or Mars) is pick up some rocks and leave behind some footprints, that's fine, but remember that we could just as well use robots to the science part. The footprints would make some of us feel proud for a while, but are otherwise pointless in the grand scheme of things. Plus, those footprints are hideously expensive.
As a boy, I watched the Moon landings and fully expected us to get to Mars before the year 2000. Alas, things didn't pan out that way, but that's not just because it's so expensive; it's also because no government has ever given their space agency the order (and the budget) to actually *colonize* space. The people with the money have never given us a real reason to send anybody up there. Therefore, any such project is subject to budget cuts and even termination as soon as the politicians think their constituents might be getting bored with the whole idea.
IMHO, if we ever do decide to start spending gigabucks on a Moon or Mars-base project, then we should do it *ultimately* for the only reason that will ever make a difference: to set up a permanent, self-sufficient, self-sustaining colony there so that the human race will no longer have to live with all of it's eggs in the same basket. We should go there to stay, to grow, to make money, for science, for tourism, for fun... whatever: as long as we intend to stay there. 'Here we stand and here we'll stay!' -- that kind of attitude. Only such a plan can ensure that people -- and businesses -- back on Earth will remain interested long enough to start investing their money in the colony and everything around it. This way also, after a while, the politicians will no longer be able to pull the plug on the whole show.
I'm no legal expert, so I can't be sure how far Mr. Monti can go with his punitive measures, but I don't think he's gone far enough. In my estimation, only Judge Thomas Penfield Jackson had the right idea: split up the company. It's too bad he didn't have his way.
Mr. Monti points out that Microsoft's business practice of bundling is generally abusive, but his solution -- the creation of a new, slightly cheaper Windows version sans MediaPlayer -- is not going to make much of difference to the average consumer: for only $10 to $15 more, who in their right mind would pass up the chance to buy something as exciting as "Windows XP Media Plus"? As far as I'm concerned, Mr. Monti should have demanded an end to Microsoft's evil bundling practices (at least in Europe). Period.
As for the 500m Euro fine, I suppose it's more symbolic than anything else, since it amounts to about 1% of their cash reserves. However, it does create an unwelcome precedent that Microsoft are keen to avoid and which could lead to a lot more trouble for them in the future. I sincerely hope so.
I came up with an idea for something like this years ago. Besides having a constant connection to the Internet, oodles of memory and a backup system at home, I envisioned that my wearable computer would include an AI that would be able to understand speech so that a keyboard would not be necessary. I now believe that any kind of AI is still years away, but it sure would be handy in this case, if only for speech recognition purposes.
Anyway, I figured that this system would come with a complicated pair of glasses that would be able to overlay the real world with computer data. Besides that, the glasses would come with built-in cameras (potentially giving you 360 degree vision, as well as passive IR and UV), earphones and various microphones.
My dream would be to walk around all the time with this device. I would ask the AI questions, and after searching the net it would respond by showing me city maps, my location on them (GPS), pictures of people and the things they said, telling me about how much money I had spent, showing me lists of restaurants, my next appointments, incoming phone calls, etc, etc.
I also think that such a device would be a great for people who forget things a lot (like me). Since it would record everything you would hear and see all the time, you'd be able to recall any of this information at any time and virtually relive any event. It would then be easy to pass your experiences on to your friends -- or even the police if you happened to have been witness to a crime, for instance.
Of course, there would be lots of people who would object to the use of this technology in there presence on the grounds that anything they said or did around you could be used against them. On the other hand, they'd probably stop complaining as soon as they got one of the devices themselves.
Businesses would be more difficult, however. Imagine getting fired for whatever reason, and then the company insisting that you also erase all the data from your wearable computer that you accumulated over the period of your employment.
Anyway, as I was saying, I don't expect this kind of AI technology to become reality any time soon, but I think you would still be able to do a lot of interesting things with it -- even without the AI. I could go on, but IMHO this technology has the potential to radically change our society.
How about trying to build a better product, or coming up with a different business plan? Trying to destroy the competition with such pathetic and unscrupulous court actions is the wrong approach entirely, not to mention just plain dumb. Linux and the Open-Source movement are far larger than SCO -- kind of a cultural revolution; eventually, you'll find that you've just been beating your head against a brick wall.
The only possible outcome from your actions will be to inflict irreparable damage upon your company's reputation (not to mention at least one of its employees). Plus it's a senseless drain on your company's revenues and will ultimately not help the value of your stock. In the end, the only winners will be Microsoft (for a while) and especially your lawyers.
... from November 1991! It's one of those really heavy, sturdy ones that they stopped making only about a year later. I replaced its power supply about four years ago and still use it to run Win98 natively every once in a while (whenever VMware or Win4Lin don't do the trick).
At this moment I'm staring at a CTX 1765GM CRT from 1996 and until recently was using a CTX 1785GM from 1994.
Other than that, I still regularly use a US Robotics Courier modem from 1997 for dial-in purposes.
IMHO, Yes indeed! Just look at what the private sector has done for the railway system in the UK as opposed to the rest of Europe and Japan: the UK system may have cost less directly over the past 50 years, but it's a complete mess and will take decades to fix. And for decades already, their economy has suffered terribly as a result (thus indirectly raising the cost to their society anyhow).
In stark contrast, Japan and Europe have the best rail systems in the world. It may be so that they spent a lot more money to achieve this up front, but I'm sure it wouldn't be hard to show that their economy's have also benefitted immeasurably (thus indirectly lowering the cost to their societies).
Governments, may be less efficient than private enterprise at tackling such problems in financial terms, but at least you can count on them to get the job done. Also, governments are at least capable of making investments in the future (when it becomes painfully obvious that they should), while private enterprises with thin profit margins usually seem more concerned with cutting their costs in order to stay ahead of the competition. Oh, and if their is no competition, things can get even worse than when a government is in control.
As I see it, governments should be in control of key infrastructures: the railways, gas, water electricity, sewage systems, roads, air-traffic control, etc. If you put private enterprise in charge of any of these, corners will be cut and any country as a whole will pay the price at one point or another; it's simply a risk that shouldn't be taken. I say it's better to pay higher taxes than lower bills that can leave you with even less in return.
MS is facing competition all right, but judging from the way they've been reacting to it, they're having real trouble accepting reality. At the moment they're frustrated with the success of the Open Source movement and are desperately trying to stem the tide with their usual lobbying efforts and bag of dirty tricks. When will they catch on? It's pathetic, but perhaps this behaviour is to be expected from any big company that's been in a monopoly position for over a decade.
If MS ever get smart, they'll face the music, cut their losses, drop Windows and start making graphical desktop environments and applications for Unix systems. Once they decide to go down this path, they can choose to remain closed source or go entirely Open Source, keep making money on a per-license basis or give some or all of it away for free (making money with support). If they put their minds to it, they could probably build some pretty decent products this way.
Does this sound like wishful thinking? Perhaps. But if they can't beat us, they might as well join us. It could take a while to come to this realization after they start loosing money, but with $50b in the bank I figure they should be able to buy themselves enough of time.
Either that or their (monopoly) days are numbered...
Actually, I think Brian regards the the continuation of his father's brilliant Dune series as more of a cash cow than anything else.
I read the original trilogy more than 20 years ago and I still regard it as the best sci-fi there is; no movie director will ever do it any justice.
Then Frank died, the years passed, and Brian comes out with a new book: a 'prequel' to his father's work. Like lots of other people, I felt nostalgic enough to read it. And despite feeling that Brian and Co were not as good as Frank was, I also read their second book, and the third.
After running out of new Dune books to read, I decided it might be fun to re-read the originals. Kind of like a continuation of the new series. Was it it worth it? Yes -- I read all six! However, three things I have learned from this:
1. Frank Herbert's work is still unsurpassed.
2. Being older now, I found much more to appreciate in Frank's work.
3. Brian Herbert's work is no more than pulp by comparison.
This was so painfully obvious to me, that when confronted with the question of whether I will bother to read Brian's new book, I can safely say: No.
IMHO it's not easy to do anything about this. You have to get lots of people involved -- get the masses all stirred about about a number of concepts that they're not familiar with and therefore don't care about. It would help if these evil policies were putting a hurt on people's wallets, but that's probably not the case -- perhaps even the opposite.
Seriously, the only reasonable chance that I can think of for putting a stop to this kind of abuse by a cable company or an ISP involves getting the law changed. This is a strategy that would also require the participation of lots of people, but at least they could all be geeks.
Or maybe that would not even be necessary. It's possible that the (local) law is already on the side of the consumer, but that nobody has done any research yet to determine which laws apply.
In this case it could also be that the cable provider in question is already one step ahead, and may be one of the reasons that they want those signatures. If so, it might be that the best you could hope for would be to force them to explain to the customers what they wanted to install on their PCs, and then to let them decide whether they wanted to opt out or not.
Slashdot Mirror
After reading another Slashdot-linked article a few days ago, I am reminded of what it said about best practices related to security and how anybody making an OS should never deviate from this path under any circumstances. Failure to do so will only create problems that will become increasingly difficult to correct as time goes by.
Nevertheless, it's no surprise at all to read once again that the industry has no confidence whatsoever in Microsoft's will to change course and produce something decent for a change. As always, to them it simply does not make any business sense to rectify their past mistakes. By 2008, Longhorn will be on the shelves and of course M$ will make security one of their major selling points (just as they did with WinXP). Nevertheless, the rest of industry knows better and sees through this. Hence, this article and its prediction.
... it can be proved that there was wide-spread election fraud in many states and that Kerry should even have won the Florida vote? How can this change anything now? Somehow, at this late stage, I don't see the government declaring the outcome of the elections null and void no matter what is proved.
... Why should MS give up all the big profits of today just to be another commodity Linux company of the future?...
Excellent point. They won't. I don't suggest that Microsoft are likely to take Mr. Christensen's advice any time soon, let alone my own. Personally, I think they're currently far too satisfied with their monopoly position to listen to any advice of this sort. I don't believe that they will even consider a move such as Apple's until all else has failed first.
However, if, as Mr. Christensen believes, the situation does change and Microsoft's profits do begin to decline, their position will have to change. In that case, I suppose that, if they don't act soon enough, they may well be in danger of becoming just another commodity Linux company.
(Sorry, I wasn't finished yet)
... I suspect that many applications that ran on the original Mac won't run on OSX.
... Would the result really be more secure, faster and more reliable than Windows XP?...
... How many years would it take for MS to recover the costs of developing it. At the end of the day this has to make good business sense.
Apple does have a way to run older software on OSX, but you're probably right that it doesn't always work. However, that's beside the point. The fact is, Apple must have decided to go ahead with OSX because they believed the advantages of doing so outweighed the disadvantages.
Windows XP can run applications designed for an 8088, would it really be that easy to write an new Unix based OS that is capable of that level of compatibility?...
Um, that's not always the case. For instance, many older DOS era and 16-bit Windows programs don't work on XP. This happened to another group of programs recently after XP SPack2 came out.
Well, for a comparison, you could ask the folks at Apple this question. I'm sure they would say OSX is an improvement. And, as far as their popularity is concerned, I don't believe their switch has done them any harm.
Compared to their current monopoly position? That could take years... maybe forever! However, Clayton Christensen's point is that Microsoft's monopoly is not going to last forever, and that therefore they should learn to love Linux sooner as opposed to later (as Apple did), or pay the price. In that case, the switch would make good business sense.
... I suspect that many applications that ran on the original Mac won't run on OSX.
Apple does have a way to run older software on OSX, but you're probably right that it doesn't always work. But, that's beside the point. The fact is, Apple must have decided to go ahead with OSX because they believed the advantages of doing so outweighed the disadvantages.
Windows XP can run applications designed for an 8088, would it really be that easy to write an new Unix based OS that is capable of that level of compatibility? Would the result really be more secure, faster and more reliable than Windows XP? How many years would it take for MS to recover the costs of developing it. At the end of the day this has to make good business sense.
I've said it before and I'll say it again. If people are so willing to shell out all that extra money for Apple's GUI on top of an open source operating system (Darwin), why wouldn't they be willing to pay something extra for a system that runs a Windows desktop and applications on top of Linux? They'd have the speed, reliability and security of Linux, together with that good ol' Windows look and feel that we all know and love (cough).
Seriously, though: if Apple can do it, there's no reason Microsoft can't. If they wait too long, there is indeed a danger that the open source community will, slowly but surely, end up pulling a Netscape on them (oh, the irony). However, if they act soon enough, I can even imagine them retaining a bit of their current monopoly (apps that don't work without the MS desktop).
Well, as long as they're so busy genetically modifying everything, how about if they come up with something to help absorb some of that excess CO2 that's worrying everybody? Oh, probably somebody's already working on this idea. Objections? Well, I remember somebody saying "Technology got us into this mess, so maybe technology will get us out too." If something like this does offer us a solution, perhaps it's too late for second thoughts about GM products. But, we must be careful.
... overexposure, audience fatigue and creative exhaustion ...
I started watching Star Trek when I was a kid and have long considered myself a fan, but not anymore. In recent years it's all become too much for me -- like an overdose. They now have a new series, Enterprise, which looks to be an improvement, but at the same time you can also catch endless re-runs of the original series, the Next Generation, etc, etc. Enough!
On top of that, all this exposure has made me realize how silly it all really is. I mean, from a Sci-Fi point of view, Star Trek really has very little to do with science -- it's more like "The Bold and the Beautiful" in space with pure fantasy standing in for science. As far as I'm concerned, the best Sci-Fi is based more often on current technology and scientific theory (either that, or it's just exceedingly well written). Nowadays, Star Trek seems to me too much like 1950's Sci-Fi: outdated and badly written at that. For instance, according to the Star Trek universe, our galaxy is just crawling with advanced, humanoid civilizations inhabiting temperate-zone, 1G-planets with breathable atmospheres. Today, we know this to be a ridiculous premise and it's just one more reason why it has become increasingly difficult for me to suspend my disbelief for this particular series.
IMHO, they should pull the plug altogether, or at least wait for a decade or so before even thinking about reviving the series.
Hmm... I always thought 'the Internet' sounded logical, if only because of its clearly defined address space. Did the good Doctor explain himself? Perhaps he compares the Internet to the global phone network.
Even worse: here in the Netherlands they don't refer to it as the Internet, but simply as 'internet'. So, now it's 'I found it on internet', just as it's 'I saw it on TV'. It seems to me that the Dutch technical crowd still refers to it as 'the Internet', but the popular press is just hopeless.
What an incredible waste. Not that working on the ISS sounds as exciting as setting up bases on the Moon and Mars, but think of all the money and effort that's already been invested in the ISS. It hasn't really even begun to pay off and it's already being dumped! What's worse is that I don't see the Moon/Mars mission happening anyway -- it's going to cost too much. After all, from a political point of view, there's really no point (except in the short term for George Bush). So, if ultimately Congress does not cough up the money for this project, then what will we be left with? Not much: no mission, no shuttle and no ISS. Great. One step forward, two steps back.
Back in '95 when working for a small, private university, lightning struck and wiped out about half the machines in the building. Only a few that had been switched on at the time (including the server) were unaffected. It took a while to replace all the equipment involved.
Besides that, the worst private accident I suffered was when I absentmindedly deleted a certain unknown partition on my private server with the DOS fdisk utility. Too late, it dawned upon me this this partition had contained multiple volumes, including one containing about five or six years worth of personal financial data and other documents (doh!). Naturally, I didn't have any backups.
I see you point: M$ makes this announcement sound like it's finally decided to be brave, cut it's losses and 'do the right thing' for a change, while in actual fact they're probably planning on making some more money off of those customers who will soon feel forced to upgrade some of their old software as a result.
However, you got that last part the wrong way around: opening up an Office97 document in OfficeXP has never been a problem. It's doing it the other way around that is.
I can't stand the fact that everything about M$ is designed to keep users locked into Windows with little regard for anything else. The system is unstable, unpredictable, insecure, inflexible, outdated, badly designed and far too expensive. It wastes everybody's time. What's more, the license agreement is incredibly restrictive and M$ takes no responsibility whatsoever for their product. After having used M$ products for far too long, I switched completely to an Open Source system three years ago. My only regret is that I didn't do so earlier; the experience has been nothing short of a liberation for me.
Remember back in the decades just before and after WWII when black athletes were beginning to appear in national football and baseball teams? There was a lot of racism and those guys had to work twice as hard as any of there white teammates in order to be accepted -- even though they were much better at what they did. It's just prejudice.
It seems to me that when a lot of these industry pundits decide to air there views on Linux, their opinions are colored by about 10 years of Windows experience and maybe 1 day's worth of struggle to get a completely new operating system to work. It's all too easy for them to make judgments based on their expectations alone.
With this kind of prejudice, I fear we may have an uphill battle on our hands until Linux can do everything Windows does in addition to all of the things that Linux does better already.
I think that the public needs to be more educated...
Sure, but the problem is that Microsoft's mighty marketing department is always busy 'educating' the public in the opposite direction.
... on why we plan to go there in the first place. If all we really want to do on the Moon (or Mars) is pick up some rocks and leave behind some footprints, that's fine, but remember that we could just as well use robots to the science part. The footprints would make some of us feel proud for a while, but are otherwise pointless in the grand scheme of things. Plus, those footprints are hideously expensive.
As a boy, I watched the Moon landings and fully expected us to get to Mars before the year 2000. Alas, things didn't pan out that way, but that's not just because it's so expensive; it's also because no government has ever given their space agency the order (and the budget) to actually *colonize* space. The people with the money have never given us a real reason to send anybody up there. Therefore, any such project is subject to budget cuts and even termination as soon as the politicians think their constituents might be getting bored with the whole idea.
IMHO, if we ever do decide to start spending gigabucks on a Moon or Mars-base project, then we should do it *ultimately* for the only reason that will ever make a difference: to set up a permanent, self-sufficient, self-sustaining colony there so that the human race will no longer have to live with all of it's eggs in the same basket. We should go there to stay, to grow, to make money, for science, for tourism, for fun... whatever: as long as we intend to stay there. 'Here we stand and here we'll stay!' -- that kind of attitude. Only such a plan can ensure that people -- and businesses -- back on Earth will remain interested long enough to start investing their money in the colony and everything around it. This way also, after a while, the politicians will no longer be able to pull the plug on the whole show.
I'm no legal expert, so I can't be sure how far Mr. Monti can go with his punitive measures, but I don't think he's gone far enough. In my estimation, only Judge Thomas Penfield Jackson had the right idea: split up the company. It's too bad he didn't have his way.
Mr. Monti points out that Microsoft's business practice of bundling is generally abusive, but his solution -- the creation of a new, slightly cheaper Windows version sans MediaPlayer -- is not going to make much of difference to the average consumer: for only $10 to $15 more, who in their right mind would pass up the chance to buy something as exciting as "Windows XP Media Plus"? As far as I'm concerned, Mr. Monti should have demanded an end to Microsoft's evil bundling practices (at least in Europe). Period.
As for the 500m Euro fine, I suppose it's more symbolic than anything else, since it amounts to about 1% of their cash reserves. However, it does create an unwelcome precedent that Microsoft are keen to avoid and which could lead to a lot more trouble for them in the future. I sincerely hope so.
I came up with an idea for something like this years ago. Besides having a constant connection to the Internet, oodles of memory and a backup system at home, I envisioned that my wearable computer would include an AI that would be able to understand speech so that a keyboard would not be necessary. I now believe that any kind of AI is still years away, but it sure would be handy in this case, if only for speech recognition purposes.
Anyway, I figured that this system would come with a complicated pair of glasses that would be able to overlay the real world with computer data. Besides that, the glasses would come with built-in cameras (potentially giving you 360 degree vision, as well as passive IR and UV), earphones and various microphones.
My dream would be to walk around all the time with this device. I would ask the AI questions, and after searching the net it would respond by showing me city maps, my location on them (GPS), pictures of people and the things they said, telling me about how much money I had spent, showing me lists of restaurants, my next appointments, incoming phone calls, etc, etc.
I also think that such a device would be a great for people who forget things a lot (like me). Since it would record everything you would hear and see all the time, you'd be able to recall any of this information at any time and virtually relive any event. It would then be easy to pass your experiences on to your friends -- or even the police if you happened to have been witness to a crime, for instance.
Of course, there would be lots of people who would object to the use of this technology in there presence on the grounds that anything they said or did around you could be used against them. On the other hand, they'd probably stop complaining as soon as they got one of the devices themselves.
Businesses would be more difficult, however. Imagine getting fired for whatever reason, and then the company insisting that you also erase all the data from your wearable computer that you accumulated over the period of your employment.
Anyway, as I was saying, I don't expect this kind of AI technology to become reality any time soon, but I think you would still be able to do a lot of interesting things with it -- even without the AI. I could go on, but IMHO this technology has the potential to radically change our society.
How about trying to build a better product, or coming up with a different business plan? Trying to destroy the competition with such pathetic and unscrupulous court actions is the wrong approach entirely, not to mention just plain dumb. Linux and the Open-Source movement are far larger than SCO -- kind of a cultural revolution; eventually, you'll find that you've just been beating your head against a brick wall.
The only possible outcome from your actions will be to inflict irreparable damage upon your company's reputation (not to mention at least one of its employees). Plus it's a senseless drain on your company's revenues and will ultimately not help the value of your stock. In the end, the only winners will be Microsoft (for a while) and especially your lawyers.
... from November 1991! It's one of those really heavy, sturdy ones that they stopped making only about a year later. I replaced its power supply about four years ago and still use it to run Win98 natively every once in a while (whenever VMware or Win4Lin don't do the trick).
At this moment I'm staring at a CTX 1765GM CRT from 1996 and until recently was using a CTX 1785GM from 1994.
Other than that, I still regularly use a US Robotics Courier modem from 1997 for dial-in purposes.
IMHO, Yes indeed! Just look at what the private sector has done for the railway system in the UK as opposed to the rest of Europe and Japan: the UK system may have cost less directly over the past 50 years, but it's a complete mess and will take decades to fix. And for decades already, their economy has suffered terribly as a result (thus indirectly raising the cost to their society anyhow).
In stark contrast, Japan and Europe have the best rail systems in the world. It may be so that they spent a lot more money to achieve this up front, but I'm sure it wouldn't be hard to show that their economy's have also benefitted immeasurably (thus indirectly lowering the cost to their societies).
Governments, may be less efficient than private enterprise at tackling such problems in financial terms, but at least you can count on them to get the job done. Also, governments are at least capable of making investments in the future (when it becomes painfully obvious that they should), while private enterprises with thin profit margins usually seem more concerned with cutting their costs in order to stay ahead of the competition. Oh, and if their is no competition, things can get even worse than when a government is in control.
As I see it, governments should be in control of key infrastructures: the railways, gas, water electricity, sewage systems, roads, air-traffic control, etc. If you put private enterprise in charge of any of these, corners will be cut and any country as a whole will pay the price at one point or another; it's simply a risk that shouldn't be taken. I say it's better to pay higher taxes than lower bills that can leave you with even less in return.
MS is facing competition all right, but judging from the way they've been reacting to it, they're having real trouble accepting reality. At the moment they're frustrated with the success of the Open Source movement and are desperately trying to stem the tide with their usual lobbying efforts and bag of dirty tricks. When will they catch on? It's pathetic, but perhaps this behaviour is to be expected from any big company that's been in a monopoly position for over a decade.
If MS ever get smart, they'll face the music, cut their losses, drop Windows and start making graphical desktop environments and applications for Unix systems. Once they decide to go down this path, they can choose to remain closed source or go entirely Open Source, keep making money on a per-license basis or give some or all of it away for free (making money with support). If they put their minds to it, they could probably build some pretty decent products this way.
Does this sound like wishful thinking? Perhaps. But if they can't beat us, they might as well join us. It could take a while to come to this realization after they start loosing money, but with $50b in the bank I figure they should be able to buy themselves enough of time.
Either that or their (monopoly) days are numbered...
Actually, I think Brian regards the the continuation of his father's brilliant Dune series as more of a cash cow than anything else.
I read the original trilogy more than 20 years ago and I still regard it as the best sci-fi there is; no movie director will ever do it any justice.
Then Frank died, the years passed, and Brian comes out with a new book: a 'prequel' to his father's work. Like lots of other people, I felt nostalgic enough to read it. And despite feeling that Brian and Co were not as good as Frank was, I also read their second book, and the third.
After running out of new Dune books to read, I decided it might be fun to re-read the originals. Kind of like a continuation of the new series. Was it it worth it? Yes -- I read all six! However, three things I have learned from this:
1. Frank Herbert's work is still unsurpassed.
2. Being older now, I found much more to appreciate in Frank's work.
3. Brian Herbert's work is no more than pulp by comparison.
This was so painfully obvious to me, that when confronted with the question of whether I will bother to read Brian's new book, I can safely say: No.
IMHO it's not easy to do anything about this. You have to get lots of people involved -- get the masses all stirred about about a number of concepts that they're not familiar with and therefore don't care about. It would help if these evil policies were putting a hurt on people's wallets, but that's probably not the case -- perhaps even the opposite.
Seriously, the only reasonable chance that I can think of for putting a stop to this kind of abuse by a cable company or an ISP involves getting the law changed. This is a strategy that would also require the participation of lots of people, but at least they could all be geeks.
Or maybe that would not even be necessary. It's possible that the (local) law is already on the side of the consumer, but that nobody has done any research yet to determine which laws apply.
In this case it could also be that the cable provider in question is already one step ahead, and may be one of the reasons that they want those signatures. If so, it might be that the best you could hope for would be to force them to explain to the customers what they wanted to install on their PCs, and then to let them decide whether they wanted to opt out or not.