SCSI is expensive, FireWire is proven technology. Wouldn't it be more sensible to use FireWire? [sucs.org]
Firewire is low end consumer product...even with its successor (which is taking longer than expected to ship) running at 800Mbits/s (100 Megabytes/second) it falls short of current SCSI technology running @ 320MB/s. As such there is no one who would seriously consider firewire for a large scale server handling many gigabytes/terabytes of data. Firewire is just too slow of a bus for big needs, but does fills its convenience needs in the consumer market. Everything has it's own niche... that's why heavily marked up servers/mainframes/supercomputers still exist instead of cheaper home machines which just can't fill the requirements.
With PCI-X 1066 8.6GB/s bus tranfers are possible so that should be too much of a problem. Also, the InfiniBand aims to solve that problem. One can see that 6GB bus' were planned even in this older dell whitepaper suggests.
Last time i checked you only needed to keep records seven years... the apple case ended close to eleven years ago... Looks to me that they might have won an empty victory.
That would sound like a great idea, as a nonbiased comparison is greatly needed including how you got those TCO results. However, your choice to support this document as factual is poor. Consider the following excerts.
Intentional Vulnerability - Microsoft demands access to your computers and network over the Internet, without your consent and without your knowledge (it's in the license agreement for Windows XP and Windows 2000 SP3). To expect a computer system outfitted with these "features" to be in any way secure is purest fantasy.
Deliberate "Back Doors" - It is strongly suspected that Microsoft has provided government agencies with keys and codes allowing secret entry into Windows systems. This is a major reason why China and the German Bundeswehr are dumping Windows. Further, Microsoft developers have hidden whole games within the code of Microsoft Office. It's absurd to think they haven't put in a few convenient entry points.
Many think the sudden surrender of the Bush Department of Justice to Microsoft, after the antitrust case was decisively won and upheld on appeal, was in return for Microsoft inserting access points into Windows - access points that are probably redundant, but asked for as a result of the now famous lack of communication among U.S. security agencies.
Not only are these wild claims that he attemps to pass as fact but they are pure speculation on his part not even supported by his references. There are countless examples throughout this document where massive bias is attempted to pass as fact, some of which have been noted in other posts here. One only needs to look at his choice of references to see what his bias lies, nothing really pro microsoft listed..
My point is simple, we can do a lot better as a community. We don't have to sink to trying to convince people with wild claims that even a layperson can see right through. Our attempt to show material ultimately demonstrates who we are and if we push crap we look like crap. If we push quality material then we look good.
Ultimately most journalists are after the stories that will shock and oooooo and ahhhhh their readership ultimately lining the companies pocket.... what happened to responsible journalism?.. Its taught at ever journalism program or at least the concept of ethics.. Would a temporary ban on net based articles really hurt the news industry?... Simply put, definitely not! The goal is to prevent pollution of the jury. So, if you were to remove the references from the big net sites where the odd Canadian might get accidental viewing to the information in question then the general jury population won't be tainted. Even with a non net based ban you can't control rumors, but if a large organization like cnn posts anything weather its true or not it adds credibility that doesn't exist for little shops. Also seeing that just about every big site that might cover this has a paper or television version of the news being pushed out,. it wouldn't cost them anything to use some ethics to prevent the odd Canadian from accidentally stumbling on it say on CNN's main page...
The net isn't perfect, but we can all understand that waiting a month or two until the court case is done isn't going to hurt no one and potentially prevent a mistrial which worse come to shove could hurt somebody (eg.. and acquittal). This is especially the case seeing that the ban is only applicable during the actual trial.
So,
Let me get this right.... If i go out and wear a crazy costume and perhaps adorn myself with a pair of claws ala wolverine and somebody made a doll of me... sorry action..;) it wouldn't be considered human?...
What does that say of the subject matter that it was inspired from??... to me it would be an action figure of some crazy nut that perhaps goes to the gym a tad too much... but the law would suggest otherwise seeing that its obviously not capturing a human in it's representation.
Honestly... reading the article it seems that the judge goes out on a limb trying to justify her answers... hell... a gypsy fortuneteller that can tell you the future would not be considered human seeing that there the obvious costume and overuse of makeup would definitely not make them human.
Sometime in the technicalities of the law the obvious gets lost.,
Cross-platform write-once-run-anywhere is what Java was build and designed for. If you want to write a program that will run on Windows boxes only, writing it in some bastardized Java seems a bit inefficient to say the least when many other Windows-only programming languages are readily available.
I agree with what your saying.... but then there would be no need to have the JNI interface that comes with the official java that lets you use native features of any os...
see... you miss what happened during the slow evelotion of Java... JNI has been described to me (as I have never had the need to use it, as extremely cumberson. What Microsoft did was to make a clean version of that interface that allowed transparent mapping of things like COM into java... Either way you needed to do this way back in the day when this was a really big issue as graphics/file access/print access had no real native API under Java. So, the big Java joke was that sun's slogan was totally off... eg.. write once run everywhere... seeing that if you played with video for example you had to make custom JNI calls for every platform you intended your application to run.
What microsoft was really guilty was giving Java and edge on windows and potentially creating a movent that Sun couldn't control, eg... All versions of java needed to have fast video support or the ability to do multilayering video with overlays... etc... defeating the goal of having one basic runtime that ran on everything. Sun has since moved away from that slightly by providing smaller more compact version of java to run on smaller devices (but pretty much basically the same)
If you play on Microsoft's game board at all you'll end up playing a version of their game that they will win. You need to take over the board. You need to shift the fundamentals of what an Operating System is and what Software is.
Correct me if i'm wrong... but isn't that exactly what Microsoft does?.... eg.. OS needs internet... IE becomes part of OS... WIN32's are fundementally flawed and OS must include native high level networking functionality ala.Net. People work in a task based environment the OS should be task oriented... Longhorn(so it's been reported). A File System is the wrong way to store your files... Ala database file system (as been reported.).
Linux plays the game very well on Microsoft's terms and its convinced some big names to stand behind it and it didn't need to sue to maintain its support. It only means that it can be done... Now wether ther're the motivation on Sun's part to do it's another. Like the Post points out... Sun could easily get what they're looking for just by dumping 4 million with OEMs... I'm pretty sure they're spending a lot more on legal right now.
I couldn't totally disagree more....Net is tied to windows, just like COM+. So to give an analogy with your thread of though would be COM+ will take over everything else like RPC,CORBA, Web services, etc... even though its only available on windows...
.Net is only a windows technology that will replace the win32's in time. The fact that it has similarities to java via the VM has cause soo much FUD its scary. It also doesn't help the Microsoft for the longest time kept a huge cloud of confusion around them as to what.Net is.
Java doesn't have a great web presence on the client (there are numbers lying around the net that I couldn't find for this post). Its a fact that's been true for a long time. And for that matter, interactive stuff on the client hasn't been a big success for Microsoft either. Players like Real, Macromedia, and the like have a far greater penetration in that market then both Microsoft and Sun combined.
The real stronghold of java tend to lie in business backends and middle stuff that sits between the servers and clients. This isn't going to change any time soon regardless of what.Net produces.
The reason Sun is picking on.Net is that it wants more market share period and with microsoft finally heading in what seems to be the right direction they want to stomp it out at the start instead of having to deal with it later.
Put a whole bunch of enthusiast you get innovation.. Put as whole bunch of mega corps you get ripoffs and lawsuits.
I agree, sometimes microsoft's "extensions" to java or anything else have some useful features. But the reason they aren't incorporated into any standard is that microsoft's additions are proprietary and closed in every sense of the words.
Here's the problem that your statments runs into... Microsoft's exentions to Java were put there was to allow programmers easy access to the Win32/Com components that underline windows. It was a combersome process to do that via Sun's own api's. So... the point is... anyone using the microsoft extensions were basically using built in features of the OS that were really hard to get at via the builtin interfaces... The fact is... once the settlement came in... those programmer just switched from using the microsoft easy access API to sun's more cumbersome one to access local system functionality or toughed it out. In the end... neither app was compatible with all versions of java.
The real reason it happened was for power... Sun likes control just like Microsoft/Apple, etc etc etc.
Don't allow them to distribute.NET and Java with Windows and let the market decide.
Here's the problem with that statement..NET is Microsoft's replacement for the dreaded Win32's and the DLL hell problem that has plagued them for years. It in itself is not a direct competitor to java as it aims to fix windows related problems. Longhorn (the next edition of windows) are to include a new API set based on.Net and begin the phase out of the win32s.
If you don't believe me that.Net is not a direct competitor, just compare the two philosophies: Sun write once, run everywhere on anything, Microsoft: Runs Amazing on windows, and maybe if we have the time other places (eg, IE for Sun, Mac). Yes.Net works on other platforms but just count the number of platforms it runs on... (Hint 3, windows, Mac OS and BSD) and only one of them you have a legal license you use it for commercial stuff. There's work being done for the other Unix like mono, but none will really have the power of the full functionality set found in Microsoft's proprietary implementation,.Net as we know it. The free one just doesn't come with critical things like ASP, ADO, Winforms, etc. Without this fundamental functionality other projects like mono or Rotor don't even come close!. Oh... and did I mention that Rotor implementation doesn't include a GUI api?..
It seem more to me that Sun is finding it more difficult to sell its Java vision (that being that everything would run it, from a mainframe down to a ring. If you don't believe me, just look at what they're trying to get out of their settlement.
Unbundled tied products like Internet Explorer, IIS, Active Directory, Exchange, Windows server and.NET framework
Removing Active Directory form of administration from the windows world is as fundamentally removing shell scripting and the telnet daemon from a unix box. They're both key ways of working with the platform and have nothing to do with java. If Sun wants more admins and end users to accept java, they should focus on making the end user experience the best instead of trying to throw stuff down your throat as they claim Microsoft does. They've gotten better but they've had a terrible history, I certainly had a hell of a time installing Java 1.x way back in the day because the instruction were far too cryptic, hell I even caught unix setup instruction in the win32 distrib man. If they want to woo the average man or admin they should embrace the platform their on and use what's there. An Intellimirror install that could be admin'd and easly distributed by Active Directory would go a lot father in helping than trying to cripple windows by removing something unrelated. It only shows that Sun is trying to be as anticompetitive as they are claiming Microsoft is by trying to cripple windows so that you don't have much of a choice but to switch.
My philosophy is if your going to pick a fight and you can't beat them your way, beat them their way... that way the victory is soo much sweeter.
The point of Liberty or Passport in an ideal situation is to be able to authenticate you anywhere you go. Period... Call it the universal Internet ID. A business case for this is that you all of a sudden can grant say an accountant from a firm that has a single sign on account setup access to your lan knowing exactly who he is and as such he can still authenticate back to his home lan to get what he needs. This can be further extended to the roaming employee, say a sales rep who logs into a machine or the web, authenticates in... and now has access to his home directory in the form of a local mount. These are things that your Local browser cannot do that these methods are intended to solve...
For the average joe the more relevant case involves how he can now log into his phone, computer, laptop, pda, etc, and be able to identify himself such that he can get access to stuff like his contacts in an easy fashion. The example for this can be seen in web ICQ or MSN messenger.
After reading the article again and checking the site, it has come to my attention that this is some pretty crazy shit!. Let me just clerify what i mean....
Directly from the article "As a second gauge of spending, ComScore also looks for trends in the credit card statements that about 30,000 of its panelists view online." and "ComScore gains access to people's Internet travels by giving them free security software and programs that speed up their Internet connections. With its capacity to download 18 billion Web page views annually, ComScore expects this year to capture 800 million Internet searches and 5 million online transactions."
now after a quick serch of of the site ComScore Networks Inc i couldn't find any reference to this free security software... So, is it just be or does it sound pretty fishy that this site looks at all your web queries, your online credit card statements, what you buy and dont, but isn't recognized by the company?....
The uses of novelty things to promote the real agenda of spyware or perhaps we should call it the new reincarnation of the Trojan horse. This is only but the first public release of what they've been doing, God knows what they've done without us knowing.
but that's just my 2 cents.
Re:Love/Hate... screw it, I love my Powerbook.
on
The Apple Name Game
·
· Score: 1
I agree with your points. Its not always the heads that intiate a fight or action, however, they do set the mood that help lead such initiatives.
Re:Love/Hate... screw it, I love my Powerbook.
on
The Apple Name Game
·
· Score: 1
You read the press too much which Steve exploits to his fullest. If you read inbetween the links then you'll get a better picture... The takeover was regarded well because he created decention between the ranks and then presented himself as the only solution. It wasn't because of Gil's supposed incompetence. read the article i attached for a better picture.
Now as far as ATI is concerned, they have far more reason to be anoyed at apple than you might suspect. the "incident" is just icing on the cake... Everybody was excepting new machines to come out it wall all over the press for weeks... what was actually released by one ATI employee was that he was under the impression that there was going to be such a release. In any other situation this would be considered a rumor and nothing more, and of course Steve just hates rumors.... Apple has done far far worse, but has played the media and hidden behind NDA's so that unprivilaged and average folk don't really hear the stories.
As far as the rumor sites go... read the links...and if the one i provided isn't good enough i can pull about a hundred more that describe the situation. There were a lot of ligitimate people who didn't get their passes... That's what the bid deal was about. And even if they were legit, these people help create the mac culture that has stood the test of time. Steve is only hurting Apple by angrying these people. And the only reason Steve is doing it is because they take the wind out of his sails when he stands out in front of everyone at macworld to show them a keynote of new stuff.
look at the bigger picture and you'll start to see that the fuzzy Apple that a lot of people grew up with is now a big monster company with a mission and an attitude to match.
Re:Love/Hate... screw it, I love my Powerbook.
on
The Apple Name Game
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
Its not the company its Steve, he's a power hungry attention grabbing tyrant. If he's not fighting over a name, he's engineering a takeover (like
how he took over apple after apple bought Next), or he's ticking off vital partners like ATI by removing all mention of ATI products with a black marker on all literature just hours before macworld because somebody leaked that two new machines were going to be released but no details. Or, more recently
revoking press passes to mac journalists.
Apple is Steve's persona.... and it tends to be a lot of controlled show... once you talk with people who have worked with companies that deal with apple you start to see a not soo nice picture of what the company really is...
Gee, this is another Lindows/Windows thing.... but in this case its even worse.... an apple has been a generic term far longer.. when will there be a simple way in the legal system to dismiss these absurdities from even coming into being?.
What's the point.... now I can play on a bigger screen a game that was designed to work on a much small one....you gain nothing and loose all the portibility. its just like hooking up your palm to a 17" monitor.
but that's my two cents.
Sympatico which has this restriction already in place serves as a case in point... I had a quick chat about the subject recently with one of their upper management folk at a talk that I attended. Turns out that they feel that 5 GB is sufficient for the average user as most don't even get close.
However, she did hint that in the "near future" (she wouldn't be more specific) they were planning on rolling out much "higher speed" connections (again she was being vague)... When I presented the fact that higher speeds were useless if the service was capped at such a mediocre amount she seemed puzzled. She sited the fact that the "new" service would bring things like on-demand videos, music, games, etc, but didn't seem to have a concept of the bandwidth these things require. And what's worse, (however there was no official comment) I got the impression that the mediocre cap was there to stay.
I have been working with streaming video for the last few years, and I know that broadband targeted quality streaming videos can take hundreds of megabytes for say a full length movie.... Hell my data files that I recently copied from work to home to do some work was 8 gigs alone...so from my disappointing conversation it seems people like me either have to cough up the cash or move over to the competitor (which I did a long time ago) who isn't capped but have slightly higher prices and a slower connection.
What a new age this is... It's the long distance monopoly surcharge all over again.
With the long history of slow moving approavals for the OpenGL community, I hope that politics doesn't take over and bring the approval system back to a crawl after Version 2 is released.
Slashdot Mirror
Firewire is low end consumer product...even with its successor (which is taking longer than expected to ship) running at 800Mbits/s (100 Megabytes/second) it falls short of current SCSI technology running @ 320MB/s. As such there is no one who would seriously consider firewire for a large scale server handling many gigabytes/terabytes of data. Firewire is just too slow of a bus for big needs, but does fills its convenience needs in the consumer market. Everything has it's own niche... that's why heavily marked up servers/mainframes/supercomputers still exist instead of cheaper home machines which just can't fill the requirements.
With PCI-X 1066 8.6GB/s bus tranfers are possible so that should be too much of a problem. Also, the InfiniBand aims to solve that problem. One can see that 6GB bus' were planned even in this older dell whitepaper suggests.
Going up?
Last time i checked you only needed to keep records seven years... the apple case ended close to eleven years ago... Looks to me that they might have won an empty victory.
That would sound like a great idea, as a nonbiased comparison is greatly needed including how you got those TCO results. However, your choice to support this document as factual is poor. Consider the following excerts.
Intentional Vulnerability - Microsoft demands access to your computers and network over the Internet, without your consent and without your knowledge (it's in the license agreement for Windows XP and Windows 2000 SP3). To expect a computer system outfitted with these "features" to be in any way secure is purest fantasy.
Deliberate "Back Doors" - It is strongly suspected that Microsoft has provided government agencies with keys and codes allowing secret entry into Windows systems. This is a major reason why China and the German Bundeswehr are dumping Windows. Further, Microsoft developers have hidden whole games within the code of Microsoft Office. It's absurd to think they haven't put in a few convenient entry points. Many think the sudden surrender of the Bush Department of Justice to Microsoft, after the antitrust case was decisively won and upheld on appeal, was in return for Microsoft inserting access points into Windows - access points that are probably redundant, but asked for as a result of the now famous lack of communication among U.S. security agencies.
Not only are these wild claims that he attemps to pass as fact but they are pure speculation on his part not even supported by his references. There are countless examples throughout this document where massive bias is attempted to pass as fact, some of which have been noted in other posts here. One only needs to look at his choice of references to see what his bias lies, nothing really pro microsoft listed..
My point is simple, we can do a lot better as a community. We don't have to sink to trying to convince people with wild claims that even a layperson can see right through. Our attempt to show material ultimately demonstrates who we are and if we push crap we look like crap. If we push quality material then we look good.
The net isn't perfect, but we can all understand that waiting a month or two until the court case is done isn't going to hurt no one and potentially prevent a mistrial which worse come to shove could hurt somebody (eg.. and acquittal). This is especially the case seeing that the ban is only applicable during the actual trial.
But that's my 2 cents.
What does that say of the subject matter that it was inspired from??... to me it would be an action figure of some crazy nut that perhaps goes to the gym a tad too much... but the law would suggest otherwise seeing that its obviously not capturing a human in it's representation.
Honestly... reading the article it seems that the judge goes out on a limb trying to justify her answers... hell... a gypsy fortuneteller that can tell you the future would not be considered human seeing that there the obvious costume and overuse of makeup would definitely not make them human.
Sometime in the technicalities of the law the obvious gets lost.,
But that's my 2 cents.
I agree with what your saying.... but then there would be no need to have the JNI interface that comes with the official java that lets you use native features of any os...
see... you miss what happened during the slow evelotion of Java... JNI has been described to me (as I have never had the need to use it, as extremely cumberson. What Microsoft did was to make a clean version of that interface that allowed transparent mapping of things like COM into java... Either way you needed to do this way back in the day when this was a really big issue as graphics/file access/print access had no real native API under Java. So, the big Java joke was that sun's slogan was totally off... eg.. write once run everywhere ... seeing that if you played with video for example you had to make custom JNI calls for every platform you intended your application to run.
What microsoft was really guilty was giving Java and edge on windows and potentially creating a movent that Sun couldn't control, eg... All versions of java needed to have fast video support or the ability to do multilayering video with overlays... etc... defeating the goal of having one basic runtime that ran on everything. Sun has since moved away from that slightly by providing smaller more compact version of java to run on smaller devices (but pretty much basically the same)
Sorry about that... It appeared that you were supporting his argument... :)
Correct me if i'm wrong... but isn't that exactly what Microsoft does?.... eg.. OS needs internet... IE becomes part of OS... WIN32's are fundementally flawed and OS must include native high level networking functionality ala .Net. People work in a task based environment the OS should be task oriented... Longhorn(so it's been reported). A File System is the wrong way to store your files... Ala database file system (as been reported.).
Linux plays the game very well on Microsoft's terms and its convinced some big names to stand behind it and it didn't need to sue to maintain its support. It only means that it can be done... Now wether ther're the motivation on Sun's part to do it's another. Like the Post points out... Sun could easily get what they're looking for just by dumping 4 million with OEMs... I'm pretty sure they're spending a lot more on legal right now.
I couldn't totally disagree more... .Net is tied to windows, just like COM+. So to give an analogy with your thread of though would be COM+ will take over everything else like RPC,CORBA, Web services, etc... even though its only available on windows...
Java doesn't have a great web presence on the client (there are numbers lying around the net that I couldn't find for this post). Its a fact that's been true for a long time. And for that matter, interactive stuff on the client hasn't been a big success for Microsoft either. Players like Real, Macromedia, and the like have a far greater penetration in that market then both Microsoft and Sun combined.
The real stronghold of java tend to lie in business backends and middle stuff that sits between the servers and clients. This isn't going to change any time soon regardless of what .Net produces.
The reason Sun is picking on .Net is that it wants more market share period and with microsoft finally heading in what seems to be the right direction they want to stomp it out at the start instead of having to deal with it later.
Put a whole bunch of enthusiast you get innovation.. Put as whole bunch of mega corps you get ripoffs and lawsuits.
Here's the problem that your statments runs into... Microsoft's exentions to Java were put there was to allow programmers easy access to the Win32/Com components that underline windows. It was a combersome process to do that via Sun's own api's. So... the point is... anyone using the microsoft extensions were basically using built in features of the OS that were really hard to get at via the builtin interfaces... The fact is... once the settlement came in... those programmer just switched from using the microsoft easy access API to sun's more cumbersome one to access local system functionality or toughed it out. In the end... neither app was compatible with all versions of java.
The real reason it happened was for power... Sun likes control just like Microsoft/Apple, etc etc etc.
Here's the problem with that statement. .NET is Microsoft's replacement for the dreaded Win32's and the DLL hell problem that has plagued them for years. It in itself is not a direct competitor to java as it aims to fix windows related problems. Longhorn (the next edition of windows) are to include a new API set based on .Net and begin the phase out of the win32s.
If you don't believe me that .Net is not a direct competitor, just compare the two philosophies: Sun write once, run everywhere on anything, Microsoft: Runs Amazing on windows, and maybe if we have the time other places (eg, IE for Sun, Mac). Yes .Net works on other platforms but just count the number of platforms it runs on... (Hint 3, windows, Mac OS and BSD) and only one of them you have a legal license you use it for commercial stuff. There's work being done for the other Unix like mono, but none will really have the power of the full functionality set found in Microsoft's proprietary implementation, .Net as we know it. The free one just doesn't come with critical things like ASP, ADO, Winforms, etc. Without this fundamental functionality other projects like mono or Rotor don't even come close!. Oh... and did I mention that Rotor implementation doesn't include a GUI api?..
It seem more to me that Sun is finding it more difficult to sell its Java vision (that being that everything would run it, from a mainframe down to a ring. If you don't believe me, just look at what they're trying to get out of their settlement.
Unbundled tied products like Internet Explorer, IIS, Active Directory, Exchange, Windows server and .NET framework
Removing Active Directory form of administration from the windows world is as fundamentally removing shell scripting and the telnet daemon from a unix box. They're both key ways of working with the platform and have nothing to do with java. If Sun wants more admins and end users to accept java, they should focus on making the end user experience the best instead of trying to throw stuff down your throat as they claim Microsoft does. They've gotten better but they've had a terrible history, I certainly had a hell of a time installing Java 1.x way back in the day because the instruction were far too cryptic, hell I even caught unix setup instruction in the win32 distrib man. If they want to woo the average man or admin they should embrace the platform their on and use what's there. An Intellimirror install that could be admin'd and easly distributed by Active Directory would go a lot father in helping than trying to cripple windows by removing something unrelated. It only shows that Sun is trying to be as anticompetitive as they are claiming Microsoft is by trying to cripple windows so that you don't have much of a choice but to switch.
My philosophy is if your going to pick a fight and you can't beat them your way, beat them their way... that way the victory is soo much sweeter.
But that's my 2 cents.
For the average joe the more relevant case involves how he can now log into his phone, computer, laptop, pda, etc, and be able to identify himself such that he can get access to stuff like his contacts in an easy fashion. The example for this can be seen in web ICQ or MSN messenger.
Directly from the article "As a second gauge of spending, ComScore also looks for trends in the credit card statements that about 30,000 of its panelists view online." and "ComScore gains access to people's Internet travels by giving them free security software and programs that speed up their Internet connections. With its capacity to download 18 billion Web page views annually, ComScore expects this year to capture 800 million Internet searches and 5 million online transactions." now after a quick serch of of the site ComScore Networks Inc i couldn't find any reference to this free security software... So, is it just be or does it sound pretty fishy that this site looks at all your web queries, your online credit card statements, what you buy and dont, but isn't recognized by the company?....
Dare i scream invasion of privacy?
but that's just my 2 cents.
I agree with your points. Its not always the heads that intiate a fight or action, however, they do set the mood that help lead such initiatives.
Now as far as ATI is concerned, they have far more reason to be anoyed at apple than you might suspect. the "incident" is just icing on the cake... Everybody was excepting new machines to come out it wall all over the press for weeks... what was actually released by one ATI employee was that he was under the impression that there was going to be such a release. In any other situation this would be considered a rumor and nothing more, and of course Steve just hates rumors.... Apple has done far far worse, but has played the media and hidden behind NDA's so that unprivilaged and average folk don't really hear the stories.
As far as the rumor sites go... read the links...and if the one i provided isn't good enough i can pull about a hundred more that describe the situation. There were a lot of ligitimate people who didn't get their passes... That's what the bid deal was about. And even if they were legit, these people help create the mac culture that has stood the test of time. Steve is only hurting Apple by angrying these people. And the only reason Steve is doing it is because they take the wind out of his sails when he stands out in front of everyone at macworld to show them a keynote of new stuff.
look at the bigger picture and you'll start to see that the fuzzy Apple that a lot of people grew up with is now a big monster company with a mission and an attitude to match.
Apple is Steve's persona.... and it tends to be a lot of controlled show... once you talk with people who have worked with companies that deal with apple you start to see a not soo nice picture of what the company really is...
Gee, this is another Lindows/Windows thing.... but in this case its even worse.... an apple has been a generic term far longer.. when will there be a simple way in the legal system to dismiss these absurdities from even coming into being?.
What's the point.... now I can play on a bigger screen a game that was designed to work on a much small one....you gain nothing and loose all the portibility. its just like hooking up your palm to a 17" monitor. but that's my two cents.
However, she did hint that in the "near future" (she wouldn't be more specific) they were planning on rolling out much "higher speed" connections (again she was being vague)... When I presented the fact that higher speeds were useless if the service was capped at such a mediocre amount she seemed puzzled. She sited the fact that the "new" service would bring things like on-demand videos, music, games, etc, but didn't seem to have a concept of the bandwidth these things require. And what's worse, (however there was no official comment) I got the impression that the mediocre cap was there to stay.
I have been working with streaming video for the last few years, and I know that broadband targeted quality streaming videos can take hundreds of megabytes for say a full length movie.... Hell my data files that I recently copied from work to home to do some work was 8 gigs alone...so from my disappointing conversation it seems people like me either have to cough up the cash or move over to the competitor (which I did a long time ago) who isn't capped but have slightly higher prices and a slower connection.
What a new age this is... It's the long distance monopoly surcharge all over again.
But that's my 2 cents.
New trend of impotence traced to new laptops carrying radioactive power plants as batteries...
Hmm.. its 4 in the morning... and we're still on slashdot ....
crap... this would probably be the reason i'm single..
sniff. sniff.
With the long history of slow moving approavals for the OpenGL community, I hope that politics doesn't take over and bring the approval system back to a crawl after Version 2 is released.