You are wrong. They don't want a high quality product that people would prefer to use, they want a product that people be forced to use. They don't want a standard that everybody be able to implement in their software. They just want to be the only company having that privilege, just as always were.
They are incapable of producing a high quality product that people would prefer to use-- and they know it, consequently they must resort to forcing people to use it because that is the only way left they have to keep market share. The problem with that strategy is that trapping customers into using your products is not a good long-term strategy for success. Microsoft needs repeat business to survive, and their ham-handed approach to product development is eroding that customer base. So they attempt to stick their finger in the dike by underhanded means.
There will be points when the technology advances where lock-in traps cannot prevent an exodus to other products. At that point, there will again be the opportunity to choose from the entire product field. At that point a companies reputation and product quality do count. It doesn't happen at the same time for all situations, some people have already reached the point of exodus opportunity and have chosen to move on from Microsoft. Many others have not but they will someday and at that point the quality of the product certainly matters. Microsoft has not simply chosen to develop inferior product because the don't need quality products given the artificial lock-ins in place, they are truly inept-- not surprising given the corporate culture-- management by intimidation. Intimidation is how they do business in general, it shows to anyone who's perceptive, and now the customers are often no longer the unsophisticated rubes they were when they first entered the computer age. Intimidation is a desperate strategy, and in the end not the best way to keep your repeat customer base-- for Microsoft though, it is apparently the only way available to them.
Actually, the main problem with Microsoft is that they have absolutely no confidence in their own ability to compete. They are desperately looking for some way to cheat the system in order to win. It's rather pathetic, really, as any company that had any confidence in itself would simply use that confidence with some backbone and produce a high quality product that people would prefer to use.
The movement to Linux isn't because it's cheaper. The movement to Linux is because it's better-- in particular, because it doesn't try to bundle stuff in that you don't need and don't want simply because the developer wants extra lock-ins, subscription payments or is getting payola to add DRM from media companies. Linux is better because it leaves control over your computer system in your hands. The marketplace would often pay extra for such capabilities-- the fact that Linux is low cost is mostly irrelevant to its success. In the early days of the PC, many corporations didn't know much about computers and trusted companies like Microsoft out of their ignorance, and because the risk was relatively low. Now however, their entire business is running on computers and they now realize that trusting the future of such a critical resource can no longer be left in the hands of others-- they require the control that Linux can give them and Microsoft refuses to.
Microsoft's only way out of this mess is to let go of the OS and focus on products that will run on Linux or other open environments. They'll be dragged kicking and screaming into that though, as they've seen the OS as their core competency (obviously why they have no confidence in themselves-- as it's actually become their core incompetency). It'll happen eventually, as the OS is nothing but an application delivery system and as such must be as fully open and empowering as any common carrier. Microsoft was blindsided by the Internet, and even more so by the need for the open OS-- so much so that they're still blind to its critical importance to the future of computing.
... a thought which should be enough to illustrate that the argument "would endanger national security" is pure nanny-state. "If you don't have anything to hide, what are you worried about?" Government by neo-facist paranoiacs, that's what. People are trying to kill them, sure, but their behaviour is that of cowards and bullies, the likes of which have been known to do a lot of damage.
Yes, the problem with Real is about trust-- they violated it seriously in the past and that makes them PNG (persona non grata).
Frankly, I suspect this is a lead-in to a DRM lock-in power grab. As another poster opined-- this puts them in a position to undermine the ability of their competitors to provide protected streams. They can ultimately choose to only provide this downloading feature for all streaming schemes except their own proprietary format to be utilized by those who pay them for the download protection.
Why do you think they coughed up $150M to shore up the HD-DVD format? Because they want to undermine disk formats entirely in favor of downloadable HD content. But the far bigger barrier to downloadable HD content is the lack of fast enough pipes to the home-- so I rest assured that our Microsoft overlords will be coming to the rescue here very soon...
Why can't Microsoft compete without buying the outcome of the game? Are their products that poor?
Well, it's pretty obvious they're "that poor." What's interesting though is that these sort of tactics show that it's obvious not just to us but to them as well. They have far more confidence in their ability to game the system than they do in their ability to produce products that are competitive on a level playing field (though fortunately, they're often poor at gaming the system as well).
It's simply their corporate culture. I expect it may have to do with the fact that a large number of their programming workforce were hired right out of college without a lot of real-world experience, combined with the fact that their management style is apparently, management by intimidation. Combined, those factors make a pretty lousy recipe for producing quality products on time.
Have you seen the difference in quality of a HD movie vs a DVD movie when played on a screen that can handle it? It's an amazing difference. Most consumers have -not- seen this, and probably won't until there's good market penetration.
Many of the movies I like to watch on DVD aren't even taking full advantage of DVD resolution-- I like old movies and TV shows, and often the only available prints are not that great, or the only available DVD is from some cheapo publisher that is using a beat-up old print. Somehow I don't think that content is likely to get singificantly better, if it will be available at all in the HD market. In fact, I think it's probably the point-- the corporations producing the new movies are tired of having to compete with the OLD movies which are often better, IMHO. What better way to eliminate the competition from history than by making sure the new movies always look way better than old movies. Problem is, looks better ain't enough to get past the overreliance on effects, poor scripts, bad acting, formula or juvenile plots, that most new mainstream movies consist of. Sure, there will be lots of people who like the new movies and will buy into the HD bandwagon, but I'm certainly not one of those, and I probably spend now on DVDs more than they can afford to spend on HDs-- (and my collection can be backed up and format converted so it will be able to be played on anything indefinately)...
Seems to me the best way to get Microsoft interested in this bid is for Google to go public about their interest. My guess is Google doesn't even want it but wants to see M$ pony up some big $$$, influence the price and help set some conditions.
I mean get real, if Google really did want the spectrum, it would seem to be a big mistake to telegraph their interest the way they have, especially knowing that M$ has a big interest in anything that would hamstring Google...
Why do you need to? Its all just a Linux kernel, with X most likely installed. All the closed source Linux developers (MIT with DrScheme anyone?) seem to have no trouble.
Maybe I should ask the guys at DrScheme-- their web site shows 4 different downloads for Linux i386-- Fedora Core 6, Debian Unstable, Ubuntu, and Ubuntu Feisty, not to mention an x86_64 version. Looks like they had to create 5 different builds depending on which Linux platform you have. How did they arrive at those? Will those cover Red Hat, SUSE, Slackware, Gentoo, etc., or are some distros not supported? Can I use an existing package manager format such as rpm, or do I need to resort to some other thing as a least-common-denominator (tar perhaps)?
How would you handle different versions of Windows? What if 2000 didn't have something you needed? Since we're talking about boxed products I assume you'll be putting this on a CD or DVD. Since CD's are pretty spacious, even today (Ubuntu fits on one CD with many programs preinstalled) there really shouldn't be any problem with static compiling.
There are essentially two, or perhaps three, different versions of windows-- the 95/98/ME core, the NT/W2K/XP/Vista core, and possibly 64 bit (which I'm not really familiar with, so that's just a guess). Most programs don't even support the 95/98/ME core anymore, and programs written for the NT family will for the most part run on any of them. Yes, there can be issues with available dlls or other dependencies, and yes, some software will include them or things like a certain version of DirectX that may be needed. My point is not that a Linux package should somehow not need this sort of thing, but simply that I am wondering if such handling is well defined enough so an existing commercial software shop that might consider producing a Linux package could readily determine what steps are necessary to insure compatibility with the OS.
If what you say is true then now that Dell is shipping Linux PCs, I would think we should start seeing some shrink-wrapped Linux software on store shelves here and there (beyond just the OS itself). And, given all that I would agree that Linux is in fact, "ready for prime time." I just haven't quite seen it yet, so am looking for some clarification...
Hmm.. I just tried their web version, and while interesting it's not quite as simple as it seems-- I thought I was entering "here are my answers" and when I was done saw that what it read was "here are move and swear." I presume I'd get better at entering it eventually, but it was confusing because I'd often spot the letter I was looking for in the look-ahead for a letter that I didn't want before I'd see it as the *next* letter I was looking for-- it was not quite obvious how to deal with the problem.
The only thing is Linux is ready for prime time. And users can run it dual-boot if they still need their wondows training wheels.
Ready for prime time? Then I have a question for you. If I wanted to produce a commercial product that runs on Linux, to enclose in a box, shrink wrap and distribute to shelves at Office Max & the like, how would I do it?
How would I
- Handle the different distributions-- does it need to run on everything or just certain major distributions such as Ubuntu, Red Hat, Debian, etc.-- and how do I come up with that list? What steps do I have to take in the software in order to insure it will run on all the qualifying distributions?
- Handle the different versions-- including future versions. Should I compile everything statically because I can't be sure what versions of shared libraries will be available? Carry copies of the shared libraries I need with the package and install these with my program?
- Handle the different GUIs? Which should it run on?...
In essence, I need to know exactly what to put on the outside of the box where it says "System Requirements", and how to insure that those are in fact workable and saleable.
It seems to me that if Linux is ready for prime time there must be clear answers to these questions. There is an army of salespeople out there who work at brick & mortar stores that average people go to to get their computer equipment and software. These stores & salesmen make their living from margins on commercial computer products, and in order for them to get excited enough about it to sell their customers Linux and be able to continue that living, they need all those add ons-- and developers who make a living selling such software addons like games & business utilities need to know just how they would produce an equivalent Linux package.
So, if Linux is really ready as you say, I presume clear answers to these questions have been arrived at within the Linux community, and I'm just ignorant. Assuming that is the case, can you enlighten me?
I wouldn't want to assume that watermarks can't be devised that could survive multiple passes-- the actual data added in a watermark is pretty small, and a whole variety of statistical techniques could be used all with significant redundancy, the whole point being to resist efforts to remove the watermark. Even attempts to average the same track from different sources could have the effect of inserting *all* the individual watermark IDs (purchaser, etc.) into the composite so that you end up with a distributable that can be tracked back to multiple original copies. Also, watermark technology is subject to change so what works to clean it up today may not work tomorrow, or multiple techniques may need to be applied.
What may be more interesting is that it could be argued that attempts to remove watermarks are likely to degrade the audio quality in the process. Consequently, "cleaned" audio files may essentially be perceived to be like 2nd generation audio-tape copies, and how do you know they've really been "cleaned" if you haven't done it yourself? Just who are you going to trust to tell you that the watermark has been cleaned? Yet additional "cleanings" potentially further degrade the audio quality. That may be enough to add value to the legal originals to make them worth purchasing over free cleaned duplicates...
On the other hand, how is ownership of legitimate watermarked content tracked? If it's not any better than the current tracking of CD content, I'm not sure watermarking will buy much-- it might help somewhat with mass internet distribution of bootleg content, or help to catch the clueless, but I don't think that's where the problem is-- as long as you can get a disk full of your friends MP3 files by hand, watermarked or not, the dike is still leaking a deluge. Sure, if you buy a bunch of iTunes and it gets watermarked with your ID on it you may not give it to all your friends, but that will likely not end up the preferred method of initial purchase if it becomes an issue, and certainly will not be the only source of legitimate audio-- that only people who can ever buy music will be registered iTunes users is pretty doubtful.
Not only that, I don't think it's completely clear that giving your friends a copy of one of your CDs is necessarily illegal, neither is lending them your original, and if they take it upon themselves to dup it exactly how is that your problem? How does that change with watermarking of MP3 files if you didn't use the open internet to do the transfer? If it is in fact legal to "lend" a friend some music, what about if you put it in an FTP directory for your friend to access, but *oops* it wasn't secured the way you thought and the whole universe downloaded it?
Over time a lot of watermarked music from different sources will make it into the pipe where noone cares if it's watermarked with someone's ID because they know it's not theirs-- music can be acquired by stealing it off someones diskdrive, from stolen iPods-- what happens to that guy's huge collection of legal MP3s after he got hit by that bus or shot by that gang member? And watermarking is only useful when the means of transmission is via internet (because it can be monitored), and probably not always even there-- and it's not by any means the only method of music trading that's going on...
I don't know if anyone else here has noticed, but I had been listening to Podcasts of some music programs from broadcast radio-- as they essentially allowed me to time-shift programs that I otherwise would miss. Once SoundExchange extortion appeared, these podcast posts on the radio station websites dried up.
However, while I'm disappointed I can't listen to those radio programs anymore, I'm thinking this could ultimately end up being a boon to free independent music streams that aren't connected to broadcast radio stations-- they could end up having an edge over "classic" broadcast music if they can find a way over the hurdle of verifying the rights to transmit that independent music. They end up in a position to be able to transmit independent music at no cost while the traditional channels have cough up the SoundExchange mafiaa, which IMHO may not be all that bad of a thing...
The funny thing is, with some of these DRM systems, even if you have the platform that it is supposed to work on, many people still can't make it work. I downloaded a legal FREE download of a TV program from AOL and found that it just wouldn't run on my Windows XP box due to some DRM issue with the computer (now, this is a FREE download, mind you). I'd like the program bad enough to actually PAY for a DVD of it if one were available. Whoever the content provider is can actually get MONEY out of me for this if what they provide isn't defective, but given they haven't I'm spending this weeks media budget on someone else's content. Doesn't matter if it's FREE, it's useless if it's defective. Ya gotta laugh at the arrogant and clueless minds that conceived of this stuff.
In my book, it's not about free stuff. I'm perfectly happy to pay for content. But, it must have these characteristics for that to happen:
1. Not just downloadable. I want something physical for my money-- a disk in the mail, primarily. Frankly, if I'm paying, one of the things I'm paying for is something that preserves the value of my purchase-- my purchase must be resaleable, and that legitimate disk is that resaleable entity. Etherial datastreams have little percieved value, and the media corporations insistence on it in the face of new distribution and replication technologies is IMHO the reason for the drop in their sales.
2. No time limit. It can't "stop working" after awhile, either based on elapsed time since purchase or the number of times it's been watched or listened to.
3. In an OPEN format. A format that can be made to play on future devices that don't even exist yet, possibly on a different media, that can be converted and that can be backed up.
4. Reasonable cost. DVDs <$20, CDs < $10 (don't ask me about HD, I'm in no particular hurry to go there and it doesn't yet meet #3).
Note that most of these criteria are about preserving value. I rarely go to the movie theater because the experience does not justify the cost for me. I will go to a live concert or live theater performance, and there the cost is justified-- I can't see paying $8 or whatever movies cost these days to sit in a too-small theater and have to pay inflated prices for unhealthy snacks when I can buy the DVD and watch in the comfort of my own home and pause it when someone has to take a leak or refill their snack dish. Even at home though, I'm not willing to pay $5-$20 for media that I can only watch for a limited time, won't work with the next generation of playback systems, that I can't let friends borrow or can't resell.
Can such a combination be abused? Undoubtedly, but that's the age we live in-- even without P2P music trading, college students can still convert their CDs to MP3 and trade them en-masse to their local circle of friends, which can significantly propagate the content. Welcome to the information age, guys. GET USED TO IT. The RIAA isn't gonna fix it, and their pathetic attempts are *really* bad PR. And DRM doesn't stop the abuse, it just pisses off those who try to legitmately access the content and motivates them to look for alternatives that actually work.
That's my criteria for spending $$$ on content. I buy quite a bit of media that fits all the above criteria (though DVDs only do because of deCSS, and not all DVDs because many are overpriced). But I don't buy ANY media that does not, and waste no more time on supposedly FREE media that's simply, broken.
Want my money you big media corporations? It's simple-- all you have to do is EARN it.
The thing is, this wasn't in the right budget. If you've been telling the boss that "hey, things are going great, we're goin' after 'em", it makes it kinda tough to subsequently go to him and say "oh BTW, you owe these guys 68K"...
I'm generally pretty satisfied with Google, but their search logic and interface has been slowly changing of lat and it's not always for the better...
For example, you used to always be informed of how many articles are on a groups.google.com discussion thread, now you often just get the line with the date & author but no article count-- which for a while I assumed meant there was only 1, but I've since realized that's not the case-- which is *really* annoying-- I've long wished you could filter on thread count >1, but now not only you can't do that but you actually have to click on a thread to find out if there's followups associated or not.
Also, groups search sometimes doesn't do that great of a job screening by groupname anymore-- the last couple of days I had the occasion to do a lot of searching in the *.delphi.* group and often would get a lot of hits in completely unrelated groups that didn't have delphi in the name (or I would think, be cross-posted either)-- I tried a few just now and can't reproduce so it may have been a transient glitch. I had also found that searching for things in a group with a group filter of *delphi* vs *.delphi.* made more of a difference than I would have expected, but when I was seeing the irrelevant hits neither method would filter them out very well.
And Google's language screening has always been pretty terrible-- I'll get a bunch of hits in Deutsch or something & go back and switch to English-only and end up with many of the same German-language hits.
Their symbol searching has gotten a little better though-- searching for.NET or C++ now seems to get a lot less erroneous at least on the web at large. A discussion group search qualified by.NET still seems to produce a lot of useless results, though now mainly because there are a lot of www.website.net URLs when some time ago it seemed completely unable to differentiate between NET and.NET
I just hope they don't do away with the "Google Classic" interface-- that is the main thing that I use them for and like that I don't have to think about it-- I do know about many of their other services though and use gmail, bookmarks and several other of their features. Those I don't mind as much if they are a little more cluttered-- as long as fundamental search is not cluttered.
Amazon for example, has been sticking motion trailers on their front page now and often sticking stuff in front of my face I don't want to see-- to the point I'm considering adding a rule or two to my HTTP filter to remove some of their excess junk.
The version I remember playing had both "maze of twisty little passages, all alike," but also the brilliant enhancement-- "twisty little maze of passages, all different," where each description had the words in a different order-- I'm curious as to when that got added, as it would appear to be after this original source...
It's been my experience that with smaller companies like this it's far better for them to be marketing driven, rather than engineering driven (and that's speaking as an engineer). What happens in engineering driven companies is the management quickly comes to realize the importance of marketing, but being engineers are fish out of water and go into panic mode trying to figure out how to keep it afloat. In a marketing driven company, the management are salespeople who are comfortable with marketing, which in a small company is the more critical function at least in the beginning, and the whole enterprise seems to be a lot "calmer" in it's operation. While either way there can be scheduling pressures, there tends to be more rewards, IMHO when there are solid marketeers at the top. While there may be downsides to marketing driven small companies, I haven't seen much of that, they've done very well for me...
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Despite what you obviously think, no one gives a fuck about your Special Olympics level analysis of the situation.
Special Olympics?
Methinks you should give a little more thought to the appropriateness of your analysis as well...
You are wrong. They don't want a high quality product that people would prefer to use, they want a product that people be forced to use. They don't want a standard that everybody be able to implement in their software. They just want to be the only company having that privilege, just as always were.
They are incapable of producing a high quality product that people would prefer to use-- and they know it, consequently they must resort to forcing people to use it because that is the only way left they have to keep market share. The problem with that strategy is that trapping customers into using your products is not a good long-term strategy for success. Microsoft needs repeat business to survive, and their ham-handed approach to product development is eroding that customer base. So they attempt to stick their finger in the dike by underhanded means.
There will be points when the technology advances where lock-in traps cannot prevent an exodus to other products. At that point, there will again be the opportunity to choose from the entire product field. At that point a companies reputation and product quality do count. It doesn't happen at the same time for all situations, some people have already reached the point of exodus opportunity and have chosen to move on from Microsoft. Many others have not but they will someday and at that point the quality of the product certainly matters. Microsoft has not simply chosen to develop inferior product because the don't need quality products given the artificial lock-ins in place, they are truly inept-- not surprising given the corporate culture-- management by intimidation. Intimidation is how they do business in general, it shows to anyone who's perceptive, and now the customers are often no longer the unsophisticated rubes they were when they first entered the computer age. Intimidation is a desperate strategy, and in the end not the best way to keep your repeat customer base-- for Microsoft though, it is apparently the only way available to them.
Actually, the main problem with Microsoft is that they have absolutely no confidence in their own ability to compete. They are desperately looking for some way to cheat the system in order to win. It's rather pathetic, really, as any company that had any confidence in itself would simply use that confidence with some backbone and produce a high quality product that people would prefer to use.
The movement to Linux isn't because it's cheaper. The movement to Linux is because it's better-- in particular, because it doesn't try to bundle stuff in that you don't need and don't want simply because the developer wants extra lock-ins, subscription payments or is getting payola to add DRM from media companies. Linux is better because it leaves control over your computer system in your hands. The marketplace would often pay extra for such capabilities-- the fact that Linux is low cost is mostly irrelevant to its success. In the early days of the PC, many corporations didn't know much about computers and trusted companies like Microsoft out of their ignorance, and because the risk was relatively low. Now however, their entire business is running on computers and they now realize that trusting the future of such a critical resource can no longer be left in the hands of others-- they require the control that Linux can give them and Microsoft refuses to.
Microsoft's only way out of this mess is to let go of the OS and focus on products that will run on Linux or other open environments. They'll be dragged kicking and screaming into that though, as they've seen the OS as their core competency (obviously why they have no confidence in themselves-- as it's actually become their core incompetency). It'll happen eventually, as the OS is nothing but an application delivery system and as such must be as fully open and empowering as any common carrier. Microsoft was blindsided by the Internet, and even more so by the need for the open OS-- so much so that they're still blind to its critical importance to the future of computing.
... a thought which should be enough to illustrate that the argument "would endanger national security" is pure nanny-state. "If you don't have anything to hide, what are you worried about?" Government by neo-facist paranoiacs, that's what. People are trying to kill them, sure, but their behaviour is that of cowards and bullies, the likes of which have been known to do a lot of damage.
Actually, the conservatives who went to Iraq at least deserve some respect. It's those who didn't, or only did as a token, who are complete scum...
With every new scientific enhancement comes the man-made horrors that Hollywood is more than willing to capitalize upon...
Yes, the problem with Real is about trust-- they violated it seriously in the past and that makes them PNG (persona non grata).
Frankly, I suspect this is a lead-in to a DRM lock-in power grab. As another poster opined-- this puts them in a position to undermine the ability of their competitors to provide protected streams. They can ultimately choose to only provide this downloading feature for all streaming schemes except their own proprietary format to be utilized by those who pay them for the download protection.
Somehow, I don't think the GPL 3 was so poorly written that it could be circumvented so easily.
Why not? It's just another form of DRM-- and we all know how easy that is to crack...
Why do you think they coughed up $150M to shore up the HD-DVD format? Because they want to undermine disk formats entirely in favor of downloadable HD content. But the far bigger barrier to downloadable HD content is the lack of fast enough pipes to the home-- so I rest assured that our Microsoft overlords will be coming to the rescue here very soon...
Why can't Microsoft compete without buying the outcome of the game? Are their products that poor?
Well, it's pretty obvious they're "that poor." What's interesting though is that these sort of tactics show that it's obvious not just to us but to them as well. They have far more confidence in their ability to game the system than they do in their ability to produce products that are competitive on a level playing field (though fortunately, they're often poor at gaming the system as well).
It's simply their corporate culture. I expect it may have to do with the fact that a large number of their programming workforce were hired right out of college without a lot of real-world experience, combined with the fact that their management style is apparently, management by intimidation. Combined, those factors make a pretty lousy recipe for producing quality products on time.
Or are they going to buy a legit copy for him?
Have you seen the difference in quality of a HD movie vs a DVD movie when played on a screen that can handle it? It's an amazing difference. Most consumers have -not- seen this, and probably won't until there's good market penetration.
Many of the movies I like to watch on DVD aren't even taking full advantage of DVD resolution-- I like old movies and TV shows, and often the only available prints are not that great, or the only available DVD is from some cheapo publisher that is using a beat-up old print. Somehow I don't think that content is likely to get singificantly better, if it will be available at all in the HD market. In fact, I think it's probably the point-- the corporations producing the new movies are tired of having to compete with the OLD movies which are often better, IMHO. What better way to eliminate the competition from history than by making sure the new movies always look way better than old movies. Problem is, looks better ain't enough to get past the overreliance on effects, poor scripts, bad acting, formula or juvenile plots, that most new mainstream movies consist of. Sure, there will be lots of people who like the new movies and will buy into the HD bandwagon, but I'm certainly not one of those, and I probably spend now on DVDs more than they can afford to spend on HDs-- (and my collection can be backed up and format converted so it will be able to be played on anything indefinately)...
Seems to me the best way to get Microsoft interested in this bid is for Google to go public about their interest. My guess is Google doesn't even want it but wants to see M$ pony up some big $$$, influence the price and help set some conditions.
I mean get real, if Google really did want the spectrum, it would seem to be a big mistake to telegraph their interest the way they have, especially knowing that M$ has a big interest in anything that would hamstring Google...
Why do you need to? Its all just a Linux kernel, with X most likely installed. All the closed source Linux developers (MIT with DrScheme anyone?) seem to have no trouble.
Maybe I should ask the guys at DrScheme-- their web site shows 4 different downloads for Linux i386-- Fedora Core 6, Debian Unstable, Ubuntu, and Ubuntu Feisty, not to mention an x86_64 version. Looks like they had to create 5 different builds depending on which Linux platform you have. How did they arrive at those? Will those cover Red Hat, SUSE, Slackware, Gentoo, etc., or are some distros not supported? Can I use an existing package manager format such as rpm, or do I need to resort to some other thing as a least-common-denominator (tar perhaps)?
How would you handle different versions of Windows? What if 2000 didn't have something you needed? Since we're talking about boxed products I assume you'll be putting this on a CD or DVD. Since CD's are pretty spacious, even today (Ubuntu fits on one CD with many programs preinstalled) there really shouldn't be any problem with static compiling.
There are essentially two, or perhaps three, different versions of windows-- the 95/98/ME core, the NT/W2K/XP/Vista core, and possibly 64 bit (which I'm not really familiar with, so that's just a guess). Most programs don't even support the 95/98/ME core anymore, and programs written for the NT family will for the most part run on any of them. Yes, there can be issues with available dlls or other dependencies, and yes, some software will include them or things like a certain version of DirectX that may be needed. My point is not that a Linux package should somehow not need this sort of thing, but simply that I am wondering if such handling is well defined enough so an existing commercial software shop that might consider producing a Linux package could readily determine what steps are necessary to insure compatibility with the OS.
If what you say is true then now that Dell is shipping Linux PCs, I would think we should start seeing some shrink-wrapped Linux software on store shelves here and there (beyond just the OS itself). And, given all that I would agree that Linux is in fact, "ready for prime time." I just haven't quite seen it yet, so am looking for some clarification...
Hmm.. I just tried their web version, and while interesting it's not quite as simple as it seems-- I thought I was entering "here are my answers" and when I was done saw that what it read was "here are move and swear." I presume I'd get better at entering it eventually, but it was confusing because I'd often spot the letter I was looking for in the look-ahead for a letter that I didn't want before I'd see it as the *next* letter I was looking for-- it was not quite obvious how to deal with the problem.
Interesting idea though...
The only thing is Linux is ready for prime time. And users can run it dual-boot if they still need their wondows training wheels.
Ready for prime time? Then I have a question for you. If I wanted to produce a commercial product that runs on Linux, to enclose in a box, shrink wrap and distribute to shelves at Office Max & the like, how would I do it?
How would I
- Handle the different distributions-- does it need to run on everything or just certain major distributions such as Ubuntu, Red Hat, Debian, etc.-- and how do I come up with that list? What steps do I have to take in the software in order to insure it will run on all the qualifying distributions?
- Handle the different versions-- including future versions. Should I compile everything statically because I can't be sure what versions of shared libraries will be available? Carry copies of the shared libraries I need with the package and install these with my program?
- Handle the different GUIs? Which should it run on?...
In essence, I need to know exactly what to put on the outside of the box where it says "System Requirements", and how to insure that those are in fact workable and saleable.
It seems to me that if Linux is ready for prime time there must be clear answers to these questions. There is an army of salespeople out there who work at brick & mortar stores that average people go to to get their computer equipment and software. These stores & salesmen make their living from margins on commercial computer products, and in order for them to get excited enough about it to sell their customers Linux and be able to continue that living, they need all those add ons-- and developers who make a living selling such software addons like games & business utilities need to know just how they would produce an equivalent Linux package.
So, if Linux is really ready as you say, I presume clear answers to these questions have been arrived at within the Linux community, and I'm just ignorant. Assuming that is the case, can you enlighten me?
I wouldn't want to assume that watermarks can't be devised that could survive multiple passes-- the actual data added in a watermark is pretty small, and a whole variety of statistical techniques could be used all with significant redundancy, the whole point being to resist efforts to remove the watermark. Even attempts to average the same track from different sources could have the effect of inserting *all* the individual watermark IDs (purchaser, etc.) into the composite so that you end up with a distributable that can be tracked back to multiple original copies. Also, watermark technology is subject to change so what works to clean it up today may not work tomorrow, or multiple techniques may need to be applied.
What may be more interesting is that it could be argued that attempts to remove watermarks are likely to degrade the audio quality in the process. Consequently, "cleaned" audio files may essentially be perceived to be like 2nd generation audio-tape copies, and how do you know they've really been "cleaned" if you haven't done it yourself? Just who are you going to trust to tell you that the watermark has been cleaned? Yet additional "cleanings" potentially further degrade the audio quality. That may be enough to add value to the legal originals to make them worth purchasing over free cleaned duplicates...
On the other hand, how is ownership of legitimate watermarked content tracked? If it's not any better than the current tracking of CD content, I'm not sure watermarking will buy much-- it might help somewhat with mass internet distribution of bootleg content, or help to catch the clueless, but I don't think that's where the problem is-- as long as you can get a disk full of your friends MP3 files by hand, watermarked or not, the dike is still leaking a deluge. Sure, if you buy a bunch of iTunes and it gets watermarked with your ID on it you may not give it to all your friends, but that will likely not end up the preferred method of initial purchase if it becomes an issue, and certainly will not be the only source of legitimate audio-- that only people who can ever buy music will be registered iTunes users is pretty doubtful.
Not only that, I don't think it's completely clear that giving your friends a copy of one of your CDs is necessarily illegal, neither is lending them your original, and if they take it upon themselves to dup it exactly how is that your problem? How does that change with watermarking of MP3 files if you didn't use the open internet to do the transfer? If it is in fact legal to "lend" a friend some music, what about if you put it in an FTP directory for your friend to access, but *oops* it wasn't secured the way you thought and the whole universe downloaded it?
Over time a lot of watermarked music from different sources will make it into the pipe where noone cares if it's watermarked with someone's ID because they know it's not theirs-- music can be acquired by stealing it off someones diskdrive, from stolen iPods-- what happens to that guy's huge collection of legal MP3s after he got hit by that bus or shot by that gang member? And watermarking is only useful when the means of transmission is via internet (because it can be monitored), and probably not always even there-- and it's not by any means the only method of music trading that's going on...
I don't know if anyone else here has noticed, but I had been listening to Podcasts of some music programs from broadcast radio-- as they essentially allowed me to time-shift programs that I otherwise would miss. Once SoundExchange extortion appeared, these podcast posts on the radio station websites dried up.
However, while I'm disappointed I can't listen to those radio programs anymore, I'm thinking this could ultimately end up being a boon to free independent music streams that aren't connected to broadcast radio stations-- they could end up having an edge over "classic" broadcast music if they can find a way over the hurdle of verifying the rights to transmit that independent music. They end up in a position to be able to transmit independent music at no cost while the traditional channels have cough up the SoundExchange mafiaa, which IMHO may not be all that bad of a thing...
The funny thing is, with some of these DRM systems, even if you have the platform that it is supposed to work on, many people still can't make it work. I downloaded a legal FREE download of a TV program from AOL and found that it just wouldn't run on my Windows XP box due to some DRM issue with the computer (now, this is a FREE download, mind you). I'd like the program bad enough to actually PAY for a DVD of it if one were available. Whoever the content provider is can actually get MONEY out of me for this if what they provide isn't defective, but given they haven't I'm spending this weeks media budget on someone else's content. Doesn't matter if it's FREE, it's useless if it's defective. Ya gotta laugh at the arrogant and clueless minds that conceived of this stuff.
In my book, it's not about free stuff. I'm perfectly happy to pay for content. But, it must have these characteristics for that to happen:
1. Not just downloadable. I want something physical for my money-- a disk in the mail, primarily. Frankly, if I'm paying, one of the things I'm paying for is something that preserves the value of my purchase-- my purchase must be resaleable, and that legitimate disk is that resaleable entity. Etherial datastreams have little percieved value, and the media corporations insistence on it in the face of new distribution and replication technologies is IMHO the reason for the drop in their sales.
2. No time limit. It can't "stop working" after awhile, either based on elapsed time since purchase or the number of times it's been watched or listened to.
3. In an OPEN format. A format that can be made to play on future devices that don't even exist yet, possibly on a different media, that can be converted and that can be backed up.
4. Reasonable cost. DVDs <$20, CDs < $10 (don't ask me about HD, I'm in no particular hurry to go there and it doesn't yet meet #3).
Note that most of these criteria are about preserving value. I rarely go to the movie theater because the experience does not justify the cost for me. I will go to a live concert or live theater performance, and there the cost is justified-- I can't see paying $8 or whatever movies cost these days to sit in a too-small theater and have to pay inflated prices for unhealthy snacks when I can buy the DVD and watch in the comfort of my own home and pause it when someone has to take a leak or refill their snack dish. Even at home though, I'm not willing to pay $5-$20 for media that I can only watch for a limited time, won't work with the next generation of playback systems, that I can't let friends borrow or can't resell.
Can such a combination be abused? Undoubtedly, but that's the age we live in-- even without P2P music trading, college students can still convert their CDs to MP3 and trade them en-masse to their local circle of friends, which can significantly propagate the content. Welcome to the information age, guys. GET USED TO IT. The RIAA isn't gonna fix it, and their pathetic attempts are *really* bad PR. And DRM doesn't stop the abuse, it just pisses off those who try to legitmately access the content and motivates them to look for alternatives that actually work.
That's my criteria for spending $$$ on content. I buy quite a bit of media that fits all the above criteria (though DVDs only do because of deCSS, and not all DVDs because many are overpriced). But I don't buy ANY media that does not, and waste no more time on supposedly FREE media that's simply, broken.
Want my money you big media corporations? It's simple-- all you have to do is EARN it.
The thing is, this wasn't in the right budget. If you've been telling the boss that "hey, things are going great, we're goin' after 'em", it makes it kinda tough to subsequently go to him and say "oh BTW, you owe these guys 68K"...
I'm generally pretty satisfied with Google, but their search logic and interface has been slowly changing of lat and it's not always for the better...
.NET or C++ now seems to get a lot less erroneous at least on the web at large. A discussion group search qualified by .NET still seems to produce a lot of useless results, though now mainly because there are a lot of www.website.net URLs when some time ago it seemed completely unable to differentiate between NET and .NET
For example, you used to always be informed of how many articles are on a groups.google.com discussion thread, now you often just get the line with the date & author but no article count-- which for a while I assumed meant there was only 1, but I've since realized that's not the case-- which is *really* annoying-- I've long wished you could filter on thread count >1, but now not only you can't do that but you actually have to click on a thread to find out if there's followups associated or not.
Also, groups search sometimes doesn't do that great of a job screening by groupname anymore-- the last couple of days I had the occasion to do a lot of searching in the *.delphi.* group and often would get a lot of hits in completely unrelated groups that didn't have delphi in the name (or I would think, be cross-posted either)-- I tried a few just now and can't reproduce so it may have been a transient glitch. I had also found that searching for things in a group with a group filter of *delphi* vs *.delphi.* made more of a difference than I would have expected, but when I was seeing the irrelevant hits neither method would filter them out very well.
And Google's language screening has always been pretty terrible-- I'll get a bunch of hits in Deutsch or something & go back and switch to English-only and end up with many of the same German-language hits.
Their symbol searching has gotten a little better though-- searching for
I just hope they don't do away with the "Google Classic" interface-- that is the main thing that I use them for and like that I don't have to think about it-- I do know about many of their other services though and use gmail, bookmarks and several other of their features. Those I don't mind as much if they are a little more cluttered-- as long as fundamental search is not cluttered.
Amazon for example, has been sticking motion trailers on their front page now and often sticking stuff in front of my face I don't want to see-- to the point I'm considering adding a rule or two to my HTTP filter to remove some of their excess junk.
The version I remember playing had both "maze of twisty little passages, all alike," but also the brilliant enhancement-- "twisty little maze of passages, all different," where each description had the words in a different order-- I'm curious as to when that got added, as it would appear to be after this original source...
Don't F*** with the PENGUIN!
Actually, I wonder if they couldn't sue SCO to get the money back. Better act quickly though, while they still have any to get...
It's been my experience that with smaller companies like this it's far better for them to be marketing driven, rather than engineering driven (and that's speaking as an engineer). What happens in engineering driven companies is the management quickly comes to realize the importance of marketing, but being engineers are fish out of water and go into panic mode trying to figure out how to keep it afloat. In a marketing driven company, the management are salespeople who are comfortable with marketing, which in a small company is the more critical function at least in the beginning, and the whole enterprise seems to be a lot "calmer" in it's operation. While either way there can be scheduling pressures, there tends to be more rewards, IMHO when there are solid marketeers at the top. While there may be downsides to marketing driven small companies, I haven't seen much of that, they've done very well for me...