Yawn. If you buy into a DRM system you surrender control and trust. It's inevitable that your trust will be broken and the cost of surrendering control will become apparent. They're actually teaching you with these methods why you can't trust them with the keys to your system and the content you buy. My rant on this issue is two and a half years old now, and it's as true as ever. DRM won't work. DRM can't work.
It is good though to see yet another technology scammer taking the media giants for yet another ride on the DRM dream train. I hope they got their cash up front.
If Microsoft pushes further into hardware, I think it will be because the OEM/desktop model starts to go away and people expect off-the-shelf machines with little customization.
And if hardware vendors push further into software I think it will be because the software model is moving network-centric and standards-based. In this environment there's no longer any need for computer manufacturers to license OEM OS software. They have free access to a firm foundation that works on their platforms that can be customized to add features and value, provide market differentiation and reduce cost. And they can do this without getting the permission and consent of Microsoft, whose interests run contrary to all of those goals. They just have to follow a few simple rules most of us learned in kindergarten: share and share alike, don't break somebody else's toys, etc. When the IBM PC was launched in 1976, this was not an option. It is an option now and it's time it stopped being overlooked.
Their biggest customers re-image the machines with their own bulk-licensed OS anyway, and will continue to do so. There's no reason why they have to sell them an OEM copy to throw away also.
There's no reason for them to cannibalize the entire industry.
Yes, there is. Microsoft's share price is premised upon the continuation of growth they've experienced since 1979. Since they now own substantially all of the market for commercial operating systems and office applications as well as sold through all of the server operating systems they can reasonably expected to garner, they're stuck. You can't get more of a market than all of it. They own maybe 8% of the HPC environment and they aren't going to grow share there because the propellerheads that build supercomputers are (shock!) remarkably good at math.
If they don't expand the scope of their dominion, they're done. They can't achieve their growth numbers without grabbing hardware markets. And so their day is done because much like ancient Rome they rely on continuous growth to fuel their system and when that system reaches saturation it cannot continue to grow. Hardware OEMs will not tolerate Microsoft's intrusion on their domain because they dare not. They see where that got software companies:
"I once preached peaceful coexistence with Windows. You may laugh at my expense -- I deserve it." Jean-Louis Gassée, former CEO, BeOS
This tells us where Microsoft's astroturf campaign is going without having to aggregate all the various anonymous trolls. We really do appreciate you reading out your playbook like this for us. Now clean out your desk, because when your boss reads my post you're done.
None of the stuff in your post is a common experience. It's a summary of the historical pain points that have since been overcome. Even the newest novice can avoid all of these issues just by installing from the latest CD of Ubuntu, which is free, or buying their Linux PC preinstalled from a major vendor with support. You manage to mention all of the major vendors and escape mentioning that they all sell Linux preinstalled in a way that uses all of the hardware on the machine, and does it better than Windows ever did. HP? Give me a break. HP spends billions on Linux and they support eight major distros. Kernel.org runs on HP servers donated by HP and it has for many years.
For the typical consumer how has no idea what Linux is, there is little point in a preloaded Linux system.
Have you heard of Splashtop? It's a linux distro ASUS is including on every motherboard. It boots in five seconds. You can browse the internet, watch Youtube videos and do Skype with it, among other things.
There's a lot of point in that. Five seconds from power to browsing videos on Youtube. What's the point in that? The point is that the bloated pig Windows has become can be avoided for most uses, and optionally loaded only when you must have those occasionally useful programs that require that crutch because they're poorly written to depend on it. As people more and more avoid the pain of loading Windows more and more software houses will get the point that if they want their apps to be run, they had better run in the lightweight environment that is used by most of the people most of the time.
Westlake I suggest you get the facts before you post this "Windoze owns the market" nonsense again because it's provably false and lying in such an obvious way does not move your message at all. Not here where we know better.
HP has had for more than a decade their own Linux distribution called "Insight Diagnostics". You can download it from HP.com and use it to do diagnostic tests on almost all the hardware that HP computers come with. It's special purpose and has no install to HD option. This disk includes at the least drivers for almost all HP provided hardware, even if it's third party. Most come with a physical disk, but you can always get the ISO from HP.com no matter what other OS the PC was shipped with.
I really don't understand why HP Linux wasn't mentioned in TFS. You can get all HP servers with Linux, and most desktops as well. HP has thousands of FOSS projects they fully fund. They partner with standards organizations at the highest levels. You can get many different distros from them including Debian, Mandrake, RedHat, RedFlag and SuSE. Almost all of the 36% of the top500 supercomputers that use HP nodes are Linux. They don't make a big deal of it, but the option is there. Is this a matter of complaining about the people who are on the fence so we can get them to change?
/Disclosure: I don't work for HP, but I fix most of 'em - laptops, desktops, workstations servers and blades (but not superdome or nonstop). My opinions are most definitely not my employer's.
In partnership with a hardware company in India called Zenith, Microsoft is a PC OEM for a system called the IQpc. That was really not a smart move on Microsoft's part.
All the next billion users are not belong to Microsoft. Not theirs. The backlash from this decision is just now reaching the upper levels of Microsoft management as their platform is deprecated by long term partners who understand that if Microsoft gets share in this market, they're dead. This is the same reason you don't have a Microsoft branded cellular phone.
If the first 50 launches blew up on the pad and I was offered the rare privilege of riding in the 51st, I would go. Perhaps I'm insane. Perhaps the people who volunteer for such things all are. The prairie is littered with the arrow ridden corpses of the pioneers. Still they risk it and I would too. Who are you to deny us a beautiful death, reaching for the frontier? Somebody has to go. All of us are given with our life one death. Not all of us get to spend it reaching to expand the realm of all mankind. If there are none better qualified who would go, send me!
If NASA said they could strap rockets on a 1976 Pinto and use that for the next launch vehicle,would you ride in it?
Yes. That's an unreserved YES! If they think it's got any chance of making orbit and they'll have me - I'll go!
And if you're too much of a Nancy to stand the risk, well, there's five billion more where you came from. Stay home. I'm sure whoever was picked from the thousands of volunteers will send you back pictures.
I was very young but I think the thing went like this: Flight. Study of safer flight. Assessment of safety of various methods of flight. Cost assessments of various safe methods of flight. WAR. What were we talking about again? Oh, yeah. Civil rights. Drug war. Popular topics. TV. Moonwalk denial "reality TV". American Idol.
So who do you think will win the American Idol challenge this year?
Ok, so I exaggerated a little. This is expected. 12 megapixels approaches professional 35mm film resolution. You can get a 40" telescope at retail. The distance involved is LEO minimum which is 100 miles, with good stability in the platform and low relative mobility in the subject. Decent automagic optical focusing eliminates atmospheric blur, and if that won't then postprocessing will.
Are you still so sure about the rest of it? And if that's what you can get at retail, what can a TLA do with an unlimited budget?
Excuse me, but where does "safer" as a value weigh in with the importance of exploring the unknown? Does it scare you? Then stay home and brew some tea.
As for me and mine - if you won't go, I will. Strap a nuke to my butt with 3" of lead for shielding and a 1% chance of survival. But I might get to the great unknown? Let's go!
You are likely preaching to the choir when it comes to putting people and things into space and space exploration in general. But trying to "strengthen" your argument with a serious mention of Toynbee Tiles makes it all seem a bit, well, nutty.
Look, I very likely am a wingnut. I get that. In the wacko world that is my internal dialog the message of the tiles: "Football in space" have a place in any discussion that involves the abandonment of space capability by a state that would hope to remain sovereign. That it also lets me extend the legend that is the tiles is just a bonus. Be glad I didn't mention John Titor.
But in a discussion regarding the US abandonment of spaceflight capability, Toynbee's analogy of space to a game of football is relevant. Will we cede the end zone to the other team?
And so a reference to the Tiles that make Toynbee's message persist across media where forgettage is the mode of the day is fair game.
I'm comfy with my/. audience here. There's enough of an eclectic audience that my post will strike a chord. I've got 4 responses on a late post already and the odds are good that my post will not cost me any Karma.
Inquire at the placement office of your local junior college the next time your office has an opening of any kind.
You'll find that there are a number or folks with a serious nerd factor who also are good at office admin, driving trucks, or warehouse work who BTW also can admin your Windows server, organize a solid backup regimen and build you a good corporate Golden Image with reasonable security. They'd be glad to dig whatever ditch you've got to dig as long as their title was "IT Administrator," or if you're generous, "Director of IT".
Geekiness is well worth the extra two bucks an hour. That's $4k/yr and you'll easily save that in external services. You'll probably need a new one every few years if your work environment isn't pure bliss (you did mention a PHB) but them's the breaks. If they mention Linux in the interview, that's a slam dunk. Linux geeks can do the Windows thing too (who can't?), but they know their fundamentals better than the rest.
They're also willing to take part time gigs while they're still finishing their educations, in case you haven't got room even for a full-time anything.
It's potentially evil to point out that they'll also work part time for free while they're still in school if you'll offer an adequate "intern" reference. Don't abuse that. That would be bad, and fishing for the bottom end gets you in a lot of trouble. Your IT admin has more effect on your operations than you would think possible. Your local laws may differ from mine so consult your attorney.
Reboot your computer. Now uninstall conflicting applications. Now reinstall the OS from scratch to isolate the problem. Replace all the hardware. Oh! It's clearly the other vendor's fault.
Because of the content of your post I'm guessing at that you've had a "support" call go differently than this at least once in your life. I have to ask: what are you doing that I'm not? No matter what HW+OS+App I have problems with, that's the inevitable response from the "support" if I can even get somebody that speaks English as their first or second language.
If you haven't had a helpful support person at least once in a long life of experience, why are you paying for support? You know it's a marketing myth.
If you need support for your HW/OS/Apps, hire people who really know what they're doing.
Having lived through one such gap in my lifetime I have to say they seem brief at first, but can extend some. A lot more than you would think at first.
It is not acceptable to me to surrender U.S. spaceflight capability. Not for one minute. Not for 12 years. Not at all. Dammit do we have to let the rest of the world own space? Did you hear? There's a lot more space in space than there is land on land. And more resources. There are entire moons made of hydrocarbons. And the conquering of space leads to us learning valuable lessons that help everyone stuck to this ball of mud. And then there's that whole "an 8' length of rebar dropped from low earth orbit can destroy any tank ever made" thing.
Hey, I heard that a retail 12 megapixel camera attached to a retail telescope can, from orbit, discriminate objects as small as fingerprints, and that advanced video analysis software can identify an individual by his gait if not by his impossible-to-mask facial features. Doesn't that make you wonder what the kind or money that launches stuff into orbit could buy? Could they scan you for cancer? Do I have your attention yet?
Obligatory Toynbee Tiles reference. If you don't know what they are, it behooves you to find out.
I'm probably preaching to the choir here, but no. Just no. We will not surrender space. It is not in our national interest to do so. If the odds of survival are 1:9 we'll still have enough volunteers that filtering them is the biggest challenge of the endeavor. Money is not an issue.
The operating system that wiped the disk is not the one that was running on the PC, but a "known good" one. Otherwise a rootkit in the PC could lie to the wiping software about overwriting the disk.
The disk wiping completes successfuly overwriting all the blocks, not just the first few blocks of partition table and directory structure - all the data must be overwritten.
Although I use DBAN by preference because it's faster and wipes multiple drives at once, dd is a capable choice.
For "failed to wipe" drives, physical destruction is required.
Why yes. If you look closely at the footage from TOS, the tags could be there:-). To quote a brilliant parody: "Merchandising! It's where the real money from the movie is made!"
Really, though, it was cute to see little colonies of tribbles hidden in corners throughout the set and the store. It was a little crass that both the "experiences" exited in the gift shop.
Rabid fans will be glad to hear the next movie opens May 8, 2009 and lots of spoilers are available here.
Was that he didn't see the MPAA's trap before he died. Now the cultural icons he created and his contribution to our culture will be gradually forgotten, locked away in the vaults, his message lost as the icon vendors grope to fine unexploited pop memes.
They have defeated him, and us. A shame, too. His was a message of hope.
Slashdot Mirror
Yawn. If you buy into a DRM system you surrender control and trust. It's inevitable that your trust will be broken and the cost of surrendering control will become apparent. They're actually teaching you with these methods why you can't trust them with the keys to your system and the content you buy. My rant on this issue is two and a half years old now, and it's as true as ever. DRM won't work. DRM can't work.
It is good though to see yet another technology scammer taking the media giants for yet another ride on the DRM dream train. I hope they got their cash up front.
And if hardware vendors push further into software I think it will be because the software model is moving network-centric and standards-based. In this environment there's no longer any need for computer manufacturers to license OEM OS software. They have free access to a firm foundation that works on their platforms that can be customized to add features and value, provide market differentiation and reduce cost. And they can do this without getting the permission and consent of Microsoft, whose interests run contrary to all of those goals. They just have to follow a few simple rules most of us learned in kindergarten: share and share alike, don't break somebody else's toys, etc. When the IBM PC was launched in 1976, this was not an option. It is an option now and it's time it stopped being overlooked.
Their biggest customers re-image the machines with their own bulk-licensed OS anyway, and will continue to do so. There's no reason why they have to sell them an OEM copy to throw away also.
Yes, there is. Microsoft's share price is premised upon the continuation of growth they've experienced since 1979. Since they now own substantially all of the market for commercial operating systems and office applications as well as sold through all of the server operating systems they can reasonably expected to garner, they're stuck. You can't get more of a market than all of it. They own maybe 8% of the HPC environment and they aren't going to grow share there because the propellerheads that build supercomputers are (shock!) remarkably good at math.
If they don't expand the scope of their dominion, they're done. They can't achieve their growth numbers without grabbing hardware markets. And so their day is done because much like ancient Rome they rely on continuous growth to fuel their system and when that system reaches saturation it cannot continue to grow. Hardware OEMs will not tolerate Microsoft's intrusion on their domain because they dare not. They see where that got software companies:
This tells us where Microsoft's astroturf campaign is going without having to aggregate all the various anonymous trolls. We really do appreciate you reading out your playbook like this for us. Now clean out your desk, because when your boss reads my post you're done.
None of the stuff in your post is a common experience. It's a summary of the historical pain points that have since been overcome. Even the newest novice can avoid all of these issues just by installing from the latest CD of Ubuntu, which is free, or buying their Linux PC preinstalled from a major vendor with support. You manage to mention all of the major vendors and escape mentioning that they all sell Linux preinstalled in a way that uses all of the hardware on the machine, and does it better than Windows ever did. HP? Give me a break. HP spends billions on Linux and they support eight major distros. Kernel.org runs on HP servers donated by HP and it has for many years.
Obvious troll is obvious.
Have you heard of Splashtop? It's a linux distro ASUS is including on every motherboard. It boots in five seconds. You can browse the internet, watch Youtube videos and do Skype with it, among other things.
There's a lot of point in that. Five seconds from power to browsing videos on Youtube. What's the point in that? The point is that the bloated pig Windows has become can be avoided for most uses, and optionally loaded only when you must have those occasionally useful programs that require that crutch because they're poorly written to depend on it. As people more and more avoid the pain of loading Windows more and more software houses will get the point that if they want their apps to be run, they had better run in the lightweight environment that is used by most of the people most of the time.
The Truth: Yes, it does. It is on half of the most popular netbooks on Amazon.com right now.
Westlake I suggest you get the facts before you post this "Windoze owns the market" nonsense again because it's provably false and lying in such an obvious way does not move your message at all. Not here where we know better.
HP has had for more than a decade their own Linux distribution called "Insight Diagnostics". You can download it from HP.com and use it to do diagnostic tests on almost all the hardware that HP computers come with. It's special purpose and has no install to HD option. This disk includes at the least drivers for almost all HP provided hardware, even if it's third party. Most come with a physical disk, but you can always get the ISO from HP.com no matter what other OS the PC was shipped with.
I really don't understand why HP Linux wasn't mentioned in TFS. You can get all HP servers with Linux, and most desktops as well. HP has thousands of FOSS projects they fully fund. They partner with standards organizations at the highest levels. You can get many different distros from them including Debian, Mandrake, RedHat, RedFlag and SuSE. Almost all of the 36% of the top500 supercomputers that use HP nodes are Linux. They don't make a big deal of it, but the option is there. Is this a matter of complaining about the people who are on the fence so we can get them to change?
/Disclosure: I don't work for HP, but I fix most of 'em - laptops, desktops, workstations servers and blades (but not superdome or nonstop). My opinions are most definitely not my employer's.
In partnership with a hardware company in India called Zenith, Microsoft is a PC OEM for a system called the IQpc. That was really not a smart move on Microsoft's part.
All the next billion users are not belong to Microsoft. Not theirs. The backlash from this decision is just now reaching the upper levels of Microsoft management as their platform is deprecated by long term partners who understand that if Microsoft gets share in this market, they're dead. This is the same reason you don't have a Microsoft branded cellular phone.
It turns out that water is mostly oxygen, didn't you know? And there's lots of that all over everywhere. Let's go!
If the first 50 launches blew up on the pad and I was offered the rare privilege of riding in the 51st, I would go. Perhaps I'm insane. Perhaps the people who volunteer for such things all are. The prairie is littered with the arrow ridden corpses of the pioneers. Still they risk it and I would too. Who are you to deny us a beautiful death, reaching for the frontier? Somebody has to go. All of us are given with our life one death. Not all of us get to spend it reaching to expand the realm of all mankind. If there are none better qualified who would go, send me!
Yes. That's an unreserved YES! If they think it's got any chance of making orbit and they'll have me - I'll go!
And if you're too much of a Nancy to stand the risk, well, there's five billion more where you came from. Stay home. I'm sure whoever was picked from the thousands of volunteers will send you back pictures.
I was very young but I think the thing went like this: Flight. Study of safer flight. Assessment of safety of various methods of flight. Cost assessments of various safe methods of flight. WAR. What were we talking about again? Oh, yeah. Civil rights. Drug war. Popular topics. TV. Moonwalk denial "reality TV". American Idol.
So who do you think will win the American Idol challenge this year?
Ok, so I exaggerated a little. This is expected. 12 megapixels approaches professional 35mm film resolution. You can get a 40" telescope at retail. The distance involved is LEO minimum which is 100 miles, with good stability in the platform and low relative mobility in the subject. Decent automagic optical focusing eliminates atmospheric blur, and if that won't then postprocessing will.
Are you still so sure about the rest of it? And if that's what you can get at retail, what can a TLA do with an unlimited budget?
Excuse me, but where does "safer" as a value weigh in with the importance of exploring the unknown? Does it scare you? Then stay home and brew some tea.
As for me and mine - if you won't go, I will. Strap a nuke to my butt with 3" of lead for shielding and a 1% chance of survival. But I might get to the great unknown? Let's go!
Look, I very likely am a wingnut. I get that. In the wacko world that is my internal dialog the message of the tiles: "Football in space" have a place in any discussion that involves the abandonment of space capability by a state that would hope to remain sovereign. That it also lets me extend the legend that is the tiles is just a bonus. Be glad I didn't mention John Titor.
But in a discussion regarding the US abandonment of spaceflight capability, Toynbee's analogy of space to a game of football is relevant. Will we cede the end zone to the other team?
And so a reference to the Tiles that make Toynbee's message persist across media where forgettage is the mode of the day is fair game.
I'm comfy with my /. audience here. There's enough of an eclectic audience that my post will strike a chord. I've got 4 responses on a late post already and the odds are good that my post will not cost me any Karma.
Inquire at the placement office of your local junior college the next time your office has an opening of any kind.
You'll find that there are a number or folks with a serious nerd factor who also are good at office admin, driving trucks, or warehouse work who BTW also can admin your Windows server, organize a solid backup regimen and build you a good corporate Golden Image with reasonable security. They'd be glad to dig whatever ditch you've got to dig as long as their title was "IT Administrator," or if you're generous, "Director of IT".
Geekiness is well worth the extra two bucks an hour. That's $4k/yr and you'll easily save that in external services. You'll probably need a new one every few years if your work environment isn't pure bliss (you did mention a PHB) but them's the breaks. If they mention Linux in the interview, that's a slam dunk. Linux geeks can do the Windows thing too (who can't?), but they know their fundamentals better than the rest.
They're also willing to take part time gigs while they're still finishing their educations, in case you haven't got room even for a full-time anything.
It's potentially evil to point out that they'll also work part time for free while they're still in school if you'll offer an adequate "intern" reference. Don't abuse that. That would be bad, and fishing for the bottom end gets you in a lot of trouble. Your IT admin has more effect on your operations than you would think possible. Your local laws may differ from mine so consult your attorney.
Reboot your computer. Now uninstall conflicting applications. Now reinstall the OS from scratch to isolate the problem. Replace all the hardware. Oh! It's clearly the other vendor's fault.
Because of the content of your post I'm guessing at that you've had a "support" call go differently than this at least once in your life. I have to ask: what are you doing that I'm not? No matter what HW+OS+App I have problems with, that's the inevitable response from the "support" if I can even get somebody that speaks English as their first or second language.
If you haven't had a helpful support person at least once in a long life of experience, why are you paying for support? You know it's a marketing myth.
If you need support for your HW/OS/Apps, hire people who really know what they're doing.
Having lived through one such gap in my lifetime I have to say they seem brief at first, but can extend some. A lot more than you would think at first.
It is not acceptable to me to surrender U.S. spaceflight capability. Not for one minute. Not for 12 years. Not at all. Dammit do we have to let the rest of the world own space? Did you hear? There's a lot more space in space than there is land on land. And more resources. There are entire moons made of hydrocarbons. And the conquering of space leads to us learning valuable lessons that help everyone stuck to this ball of mud. And then there's that whole "an 8' length of rebar dropped from low earth orbit can destroy any tank ever made" thing.
Hey, I heard that a retail 12 megapixel camera attached to a retail telescope can, from orbit, discriminate objects as small as fingerprints, and that advanced video analysis software can identify an individual by his gait if not by his impossible-to-mask facial features. Doesn't that make you wonder what the kind or money that launches stuff into orbit could buy? Could they scan you for cancer? Do I have your attention yet?
Obligatory Toynbee Tiles reference. If you don't know what they are, it behooves you to find out.
I'm probably preaching to the choir here, but no. Just no. We will not surrender space. It is not in our national interest to do so. If the odds of survival are 1:9 we'll still have enough volunteers that filtering them is the biggest challenge of the endeavor. Money is not an issue.
The operating system that wiped the disk is not the one that was running on the PC, but a "known good" one. Otherwise a rootkit in the PC could lie to the wiping software about overwriting the disk.
The disk wiping completes successfuly overwriting all the blocks, not just the first few blocks of partition table and directory structure - all the data must be overwritten.
Although I use DBAN by preference because it's faster and wipes multiple drives at once, dd is a capable choice.
For "failed to wipe" drives, physical destruction is required.
Actually, this ad does work...
_
.
ÿ
About as well as their software.
But then I remembered I promised my S.O. she could change the password on my slashdot account so I could take an enforced break from it.
It's been nice knowin' y'all.
Why yes. If you look closely at the footage from TOS, the tags could be there :-). To quote a brilliant parody: "Merchandising! It's where the real money from the movie is made!"
Really, though, it was cute to see little colonies of tribbles hidden in corners throughout the set and the store. It was a little crass that both the "experiences" exited in the gift shop.
Rabid fans will be glad to hear the next movie opens May 8, 2009 and lots of spoilers are available here.
Too bad. You get 'em anyway. Link
Was that he didn't see the MPAA's trap before he died. Now the cultural icons he created and his contribution to our culture will be gradually forgotten, locked away in the vaults, his message lost as the icon vendors grope to fine unexploited pop memes.
They have defeated him, and us. A shame, too. His was a message of hope.
You weren't allowed to photograph the attractions. I have a few shots of the bridge of the Enterprise and the attractions. I'll try to put some up.