I think the interesting thing about this is the projection of the greatest growth in the "BRIC" countries. I don't think it's so much that they aren't locked into Windows, as much as Microsoft has (inadvertently on their part) pushed it along. When MS started its big "anti-piracy" crackdown, it mostly hit in these parts of the world. Add in the high cost of Windows, and the ever-increasing hardware requirements for it, and a free OS that can run on existing hardware looks pretty darn good.
The problem desktop Linux is still facing is getting more penetration in the biggest market - the United States. There are still areas where improvements need to made, and in some areas, applications to be developed. One thing that we have to recognize is that MS is not going to give up its stranglehold on the OEM installed market. The only way Linux going to be able to make any strides is to recognize that the user is going to have to do the install, and to make it easy for them. There's a project going on for Ubuntu which shows some promise, called Winbuntu - it's a Windows installer for Linux. I don't know how it'll work out, but it shows the concept.
HL7? You should put a spew alert on that! When I worked in healthcare IT, the biggest joke we heard from our software vendors was "Yes, we do standard HL7 feeds". Which was always a clue that we were going to be doing extensive tinkering to get the middleware working to ensure that their "standard HL7" would work and play well with other applications "standard HL7." That's also ignoring the poor scalability of HL7, and the difficulties in getting it to tie different aspects to the same encounter.
Now, some of that is addressed by the HL7 version 3, but you still have a lot of outstanding issues, and it's taken them several years to even get to that point.
The biggest problem is that "EMR" is a generic term. What an EMR means to a patient, to a clinician, to an administrator, or to an IT person are frequently not in agreement. Which is why there's a plethora of standards and frequently poorly-implemented software packages. What makes sense to the IT person can be a god-awful kludge to a clinician, what makes sense to a clinician doesn't make any sense to an administrator, and so on. Add in that there's no nationally or internationally recognized "standard" for an EMR framework, together with the number of standards for data messaging, and you end up with a nightmare.
an example of a prestigious journal published by a for-profit company?
Well, you might start here for a start on one publisher. Quite a number of them are the "prestige" journals in their field, and are in those cases at least, stringently peer-reviewed.
What you not know is that these articles are subject to a publication fee. So, it's actually a multi-profit system for them. They get money from the researchers, and they get money from subscriptions.
What this is, is simply a new variation on the theme we've been through with RIAA, MPAA, and others. "OMG!!! Our profits are in danger from this Internet thing! We must DO something!" From a researcher's standpoint, it actually is a better thing if they don't have to deal with the for-profit publishers. They get their work out to the community, and they don't have to pay "reprint charges," etc. It works for other researchers and libraries, since they're not shelling out several hundred dollars each for subscriptions, and the works are easily searchable. So, of course the publishers are panicking! Their gravy train is threatened! It's FUD time!
I consider this a "killer issue" for ISO (but i'm not on any of the national standards bureaux so rest assured:-)), what is your opinion?
Which is why I said that there are going to be contradictions. In fact, I doubt this is going to go through as an ISO standard as submitted. There are a number of non-standard calls in the specification, besides the ones you pointed out. The handling of dates, for example doesn't use the ISO specification, but an MS specification. Those are real issues that MS is going to have to address and change if it's going to expect to get this through ISO.
But that was my point. There are a number of real issues with OOXML which can and should be pointed out. There's no need to indulge in FUD , but it seems that some people just can't resist doing it.
no matter who is doing it. Microsoft has a long history of using FUD to advance it goals and maintain its position. No one, except MS flacks, argues that. But if it is wrong for MS to do so, and get (rightfully) slammed for it, then it is wrong to use FUD against MS to advance a competitor!
I wouldn't be surprised if there were contradictions or issues in the OOXML specifications. Any specification that runs 6000 pages is likely to have them! However, the real issues are whether they're addressable, and whether they're "killer issues" for ISO. In order to know that, we should cut through the FUD and look at the facts. Yes, ODF is an ISO standard, but just because it's our favorite standard is not evidence that OOXML is completely duplicative, or can't be made into an ISO standard, if the contradictions are resolved. The best way to argue this case is to drop the FUD, and let the arguments stand on their merits.
With Verizon aggressively rolling out high-speed FiOS (FTTP) in its service area, what will happen to the consumers stuck with a smaller telco like those moving to FairPoint?
FairPoint isn't a "small" telco, it's actually fairly big one, just not in the large Baby Bell category. The customers will get exactly the same service they have now - unfortunately. In my area, which is extremely rural, the company providing phone service has changed hands several times over the past decade. Each time, the same lines, the same services, and the same issues. It wasn't until two years ago that they finally decided to offer limited DSL service in this area. Yes, the 256K I spend an additional $30 a month on is is better than the 24K dial-up that's the other option, but it's not all that great a service, either.
I do understand that it's expensive to roll out fiber, particularly when you're talking running a line 20 to 30 miles between small population centers over a wide area. Which is why the rural areas are usually the last to see it, unless it gets mandated. Which is also why Verizon is so willing to dump a couple of states. It neatly avoids any mandates, and saves them a lot of money.
What I found interesting in this submission is that there seems to be a grudging admission by the record companies (not RIAA) that DRM is now hurting their bottom line. It hasn't hit the motion picture and some book publishing executives yet, but it might in time.
If anything, the sales figures are proving that RIAA was talking through its hat all along. Yes, I know, obvious to everyone on Slashdot, but sometimes reality has to slap executives around for a few years before the message gets through.
What's interesting is that the companies that "get it" and have dropped the DRM restrictions have been doing better than those who have clung to it. DRM is expensive to implement, and you end up in a continuing cycle of trying to "protect" things as each new version gets broken, and as consumers start to stay away from it, since they can't do anything with it. Those that dropped it, or didn't bother in the first place have lesser costs, and better customer relations, which equals profit.
It's sad that it takes that much to get the message through. People prefer to be honest. People will buy reasonably priced content. People do not like being told what to do with something they bought, and most definitely don't enjoy being treated like thieves instead of customers! These are obvious points that seems to get missed when you're insulated in an executive suite.
Cisco said Tuesday it had been negotiating for several years with Apple over a licensing agreement, but that Apple lawyers had not signed and returned the final contract.
I'd be willing to bet that the product and marketing people thought all was well with rolling it out, and it turns out that "Umm...err...Uh, we didn't sign the contract! Didn't you get the memo?" I think there's going to be some openings in the Apple legal department soon.
The filesystem of course is one thing that instantly sets the two apart,/usr,/tmp,/etc, - these mean absolutely nothing to the guy that's been looking at c:\windows, c:\program files, c:\documents and settings, since school.
There is a Linux distro which takes that on. http://www.gobolinux.org/index.php is an alternative that makes the Linux system look a little more "familiar" to a Windows user. On another front, I'm a bit disappointed that no one seems to be touting Linspire/Freespire as a distribution. It's one of the few that's really been targeting the consumer market.
Which is why I also think you have a point about the ideological baggage. A lot of initiatives (like the Linux Standard Base project) get bogged down or caught in the crossfire of the various faction wars. Ideological purity isn't going to move people over to Linux, it's going to be whether they can set it up with a minimum of fuss and have it work, and have the applications they want available for it. We can whine all we want about Microsoft's desktop dominance and how they strong-arm OEM's into installing it. Yes, that's true. It also means that if we want the average user to switch, we have to make it easy for them to install Linux on their own, and have it "just work." Otherwise, they're not going to bother.
This is the question that keeps crossing my mind, every time I see one of these stories. Is a PS3 (or XBox, or Wii) giving you so much more capability as a Linux box than a box you've built from readily available components? Yeah, great, you got X distro of Linux to run on this platform. Can you still play the PS3 games on it? If you can't, WTF is the point, besides proving it can be done? It was interesting the first time someone did it, after that it's pretty much "me too."
I may be wrong, but doesn't Wild Tangent have a rep for being pseudo spyware?
Yes, it does. It's also a bitch to get off a computer once it's on! I don't know how many hours I've spent at various times getting it off of people's computers. That's why I find it particularly ironic that their CEO would be complaining about Vista's restrictions. I have no plans to ever put Vista on any computer I have, and am not a particular fan of Microsoft, but anything they did that prevents Wild Tangent from getting on a computer earns a "thumbs up" from me! Who'd have thought, Microsoft did something right, out of the box?
One of the tactics that large companies have used in the past, when dealing with critics - particularly grass-roots activists - was the SLAPP : Strategic Lawsuits Against Public Participation. Someone against your project, or annoying you? File a lawsuit against them. Since you have the money to push it, and they generally don't (if you pick your target well), the only way out of it for them was to shut up. This had the "benefit" of shutting up your other critics, too.
It appears that Disney has dusted off the tactic here. Yeah, Spocko did nothing illegal. All he did was advocate a position, comment legally on what he saw wrong, and point it out to those who finance it. Rather than actually change anything, Disney decided the best move was to shut the critic up. This seems be backfiring though - and it'll be interesting to watch how Disney will twist and turn to try to spin this in a better light.
Is an apt metaphor for this. My goodness, a well-known (sort of) "celebrity" gets videotaped having sex and somehow the video makes itself public! Shocked, shocked I am, that this would happen! You'd think that with so many of these incidents in the past that they might become just a bit cautious. Really, how hard is it to follow the simple ideas of:
a) Don't videotape yourself having sex.
b) If you do, invest in a safe. A very good one.
c) Don't have sex in public. No, really, people have cellphones now to shoot footage of interesting things like that, besides the ever-popular video cameras.
d) If you break up with someone, and you've taped yourselves having sex, get the tapes before walking out!
Because once it's out, it's out. Court orders, forcing various sites to remove it just don't work. All it does is add to the publicity. I'd be willing to bet that within a week (if that) you'll see the video all over the binary groups, P2P networks, bittorrent, and various pr0n sites. Blocking one site is simply an attempt to bail out the Titanic with a bucket - nice try, but it won't work.
Ah yes, once again someone predicts that the Internet (or major portion thereof) will "collapse" at a certain point! Which would be frightening, except that such predictions have been made on a regular basis for quite some time.
Robert Metcalfe used to regularly predict this, each time moving the target date when it didn't happen on schedule. It appears that Cringely has decided to pick up the ball and keep it going. If I'm counting correctly, the Internet was supposed to have collapsed under the weight of traffic about a dozen times so far. It hasn't yet, but let's not let past performance stop future predictions!
I'm sure that the last mile is competitive if you're talking about areas with relatively high-density populations. Once you get out of those areas, forget it. There is no competition. Like you, I have one choice for high-speed, in this case, the local phone company. The cable company here doesn't offer any sort of Internet service. Hell, they don't even offer much in the way of service, period! I've been in areas where you might find a few hundred households inside a 25-50 mile radius. It simply isn't cost-effective for anyone to "compete" for that market.
If the software was created using a robust process, the design diagrams, use cases and requirements documents are already written. That's the hard part; any coder worth his salt should be able to exactly duplicate the application from those artifacts.
You make it sound so easy! How many times have you actually done it?
I ask this because I have done it, several times. Each time, I knew exactly the logic of the processes, knew all the applicable algorithms, and had all the documentation and flow charts. Writing from scratch a program to replace the COBOL code was a non-trivial exercise, involving several months of coding and testing. Those were, in retrospect, rather small programs (10-25K lines) too. The only reason I did it in the first place was that we needed to have a better front-end data entry, and there were some issues with batch output file sizes - this was in the early '80's.
Yes, it sound really easy to say "just rewrite", but the reality is that even in optimal circumstances, it isn't always simple to transfer between languages, and particularly not when you start getting into major applications. "Legacy" is not necessarily a dirty word.
Even back in the early '80's, it was an axiom that COBOL was "dying," and would soon be replaced. Amazingly enough, it hasn't happened, but many of the "more powerful, better" languages that were supposed to supplant it are pretty much forgotten or not commonly used. This leads up to the question of exactly which language do you plan on rewriting in? You, yourself, have postulated a thirty year lifespan. Which of today's "hot" and "powerful" languages do you think is going to last that long? C? C++? D? Pascal? Java? Python? Perl? All of them have had (or are having)their day as the new "best" programming language. Some of them have also fallen by the wayside, or are having people start to leave them for the new "next best thing." Is someone in thirty years going to know how to program in one of them, or learn the language easily?
I wouldn't take too many bets on that. Maybe I'm wrong, but I would be willing to take some serious money on COBOL still being around. It does what it's supposed to do, it's easy to learn, it's portable, and it works. That's pretty much all we can ask of any programming language. Which is why this language has lasted as long as it has, while many of its "replacements" have gone away, whether any of us like it or not.
I started as a systems admin at one place about 6 months after they had started their move into a new data center. While the new center was being built, they moved into "temporary" quarters. The "temporary" turned out to be for another 18 months. The server room was a converted office space, which was carpeted. There wasn't much room to move around in, because of the number of servers that had been shoved into the room. That doesn't even include the number of cables running around, the "temporary" wiring, the use of small UPC's to try to minimize some of the power issues. Let's not forget the large number of static pads we put in, to try to minimize the inevitable static charges.
My "favorite" hack was the clear plastic boxes we duct-taped over the power switches to two of the servers I had. That was to stop the rest of the IT staff from turning off the servers when they bumped into them - which happened about once a day until we did that. About six months after I started, I discovered a server in the room that no one had remembered. It was a print server, which had the simple job of determining which printer a given document was supposed to be sent to, and routing it accordingly. One of our vendors had made some requested changes in document formats, and we'd added in a new printer, which caused all printing to come to a screeching halt. It didn't take long to figure out that the print server was locked up. The problem was that no one seemed to know where it was. After searching through the server room for almost an hour, I happened to notice an old PC stuck way back in a corner on the floor under a desk - which turned out to be the print server.
Whether their education is incomplete or they have simply been misguided since science class doesn't really matter, because these people honestly believe what they're saying, and they would probably continue to defend their comments even when presented with boatloads of evidence to the contrary.
The problem is that sometimes they'll even go and do something that's the exact opposite of what they're espousing, without blinking an eye. I for one, find breathtaking displays of hypocrisy rather common. Several years ago you couldn't turn around without seeing Alex Baldwin & Kim Basinger shilling about the "cruelty" of having elephants in a circus, and the "horror" of using trained animals for entertainment. Then they went and starred in movies involving a trained bear (Baldwin) and trained elephants (Basinger). It's a rather common phenomenon - they're against something until it affects their paycheck.
The problem is that celebrities often do this to make themselves look good. Many of them are simply jumping on the cause du jour bandwagon, and doing what they do best - look good and spout lines. That the lines they're spouting may have little or no relationship to scientific facts or reality isn't their concern. The biggest problem is that people tend to believe them more than real experts.
Memory is dirt-cheap these days, and if you've got it you might as well put it to use.
You have an interesting definition of "dirt cheap". Doing a quick check, 1GB RAM is running around $175-$200. Admittedly, that's a lot cheaper than 12 to 15 years ago, when it was averaging $25 a MB, but I don't consider that "dirt cheap." The problem, as you pointed out, is that they grab as "much as they need", or more correctly, as the developer(s) think it needs. That's fine in an isolated system, where it's the only application running, and usually developer's computers have more power than most people's computers, so it works there. It is not true in real life. I get a little fed up every time I get told to throw hardware at a problem. I'm running a computer that's more than an order more powerful than the one I had a few years ago, and I'm still running out of RAM.
In reading this article, I started to wonder a lot about this. writing to conserve memory is a bad thing? I will say that I haven't noticed that in most software, regardless of whether it's OSS or closed-source. If anything, there seems to be a variation of Parkinson's Law in effect. Yes, computers these days have a lot more memory available, however, the number of applications and the size demands of each application has grown almost in lock-step with that. 15 or so years ago, yes, you had one OS and one application running - maybe, if you were lucky or were running TSR apps, two or three. These days, the OS takes up a hefty chunk, and it's not uncommon to see 8 or 9 (if not more) applications running at once. What they all seem to have in common is that they assume they have access to all the RAM, or as much of it as they can grab.
I have to wonder if he's actually looked at things these days. I don't see where programming (properly done) to conserve memory is a bad thing. If anything, it seems that few are actually doing it.
The way this article is worded, it is obvious they are talking about servers.
Exactly. This is important, but (sighs) the usual meandering into Linux on the desktop crept in. The big problem is the confusion between server - business desktop - home desktop. Linux as a server operating system has been "ready" for a long time, and has been steadily making inroads. That it's just becoming obvious to upper-level management isn't terribly surprising, they're usually among the last to grasp the obvious. It isn't "news" that businesses are moving server applications to Linux, it's been growing steadily for years. While it's fashionable to bash the "big companies," their (grudging or not) move to support Linux is important. If I rely on (for example) Oracle for my business, the consideration on server OS depends on what I can run Oracle on. That is, I can either run this on Windows 2003 Server, Solaris, or Linux, and my primary consideration is which OS gives me the best ROI. In this case Linux looks very good.
In the business desktop arena, Linux as an OS is a yes, maybe, or no proposition. Yes, there are businesses for which it is absolutely, no question, ready to go. The security features and applications are all there, and it's mostly a matter of breaking the reflex to go with Windows to implement it. Maybe, in that there are some businesses which need some Windows-only applications, but they might be able to run under Wine, or the applications aren't quite as good as the proprietary apps. No, there are some businesses whose critical applications simply do not exist in Linux, and will not run under Wine.
In the home user market, it's not ready. Yes, there are a few Linux distro's which have targeted this (Linspire, Ubuntu), but for the most part Linux isn't quite there.
The key is that there is a difference between these environments. A server is generally set up, and is supposed to run with minimal intervention. Yes, you'll have to add/delete users, you'll have to apply patches and so on, but for the most part, it has limited functions/hardware, and it's supposed to just work. A business desktop is a restricted version of the home desktop. You generally don't want users installing their own software, and you don't want them doing certain things with their computers. In both of these instances, Linux fits the bill quite nicely. In the home computer market, people are going to do a wide variety of things - multimedia, games, internet, installing their own software, etc. It's here that Linux doesn't fit the bill. It's improved a lot, but it's still got a ways to go.
This sounds more like Service Pack 1 of Vista. Of course, calling it that would be admitting that maybe they didn't get everything right the first time. I'm sure the very idea that Microsoft wouldn't get something right the first time comes as a major shock to Slashdot readers.:-p
Seriously, though, announcing a new "updated" version and your next-generation OS strikes me as a really good way to tank initial sales, particularly in the business arena. A good many CIO's have finally gotten it that it's usually a good idea to wait for SP-1 of any MS OS before rolling out, and "leaking" that an SP1 (by whatever name) is being released in two years pretty much seals it for them. Not that there was tremendous enthusiasm for migration in the first place. This is actually a good time for Linux to start trying to push itself onto the business desktop. You have MS not releasing an OS on time, let alone reliable hardware requirements until the last minute, there's no compelling application which can't be run on XP, and they're hinting at a new release in two years. All of which is not calculated to be endearing to someone who's in charge of a major rollout.
The "next generation OS" sounds like a bunch of wishful thinking, more than any actual code.
At first glance, this almost sounds reasonable, until you stop and think about it. It relies on the content creator to somehow guess what's "objectionable," and put the tag in the appropriate place. That's always assuming they're going to bother, and that every browser is going to go and put the ability to properly render this in.
If it passes, I can see a whole new range of "NSF" attributes. "Not safe for children.(NSFC)" "Not safe for (fill in the blank)". Now that I think about it, the NSFC tag would have a certain appeal, but it's still a dumb idea.
It's a figure that sounds impressive, until you start looking at how little it really is. I took a look at two legally downloaded media clips, running 21 and 25MB. The 25MB (WMV) is a whopping five and a half minutes, the 21MB (MPEG) is just over a minute. I might, with a small screen size, lossy compression and choosing some different codecs be able to fit 5 to 6 minutes into a 10MB file, but that's a far cry from an entire episode of a show or a complete movie.
Slashdot Mirror
I think the interesting thing about this is the projection of the greatest growth in the "BRIC" countries. I don't think it's so much that they aren't locked into Windows, as much as Microsoft has (inadvertently on their part) pushed it along. When MS started its big "anti-piracy" crackdown, it mostly hit in these parts of the world. Add in the high cost of Windows, and the ever-increasing hardware requirements for it, and a free OS that can run on existing hardware looks pretty darn good.
The problem desktop Linux is still facing is getting more penetration in the biggest market - the United States. There are still areas where improvements need to made, and in some areas, applications to be developed. One thing that we have to recognize is that MS is not going to give up its stranglehold on the OEM installed market. The only way Linux going to be able to make any strides is to recognize that the user is going to have to do the install, and to make it easy for them. There's a project going on for Ubuntu which shows some promise, called Winbuntu - it's a Windows installer for Linux. I don't know how it'll work out, but it shows the concept.
HL7? You should put a spew alert on that! When I worked in healthcare IT, the biggest joke we heard from our software vendors was "Yes, we do standard HL7 feeds". Which was always a clue that we were going to be doing extensive tinkering to get the middleware working to ensure that their "standard HL7" would work and play well with other applications "standard HL7." That's also ignoring the poor scalability of HL7, and the difficulties in getting it to tie different aspects to the same encounter.
Now, some of that is addressed by the HL7 version 3, but you still have a lot of outstanding issues, and it's taken them several years to even get to that point.
The biggest problem is that "EMR" is a generic term. What an EMR means to a patient, to a clinician, to an administrator, or to an IT person are frequently not in agreement. Which is why there's a plethora of standards and frequently poorly-implemented software packages. What makes sense to the IT person can be a god-awful kludge to a clinician, what makes sense to a clinician doesn't make any sense to an administrator, and so on. Add in that there's no nationally or internationally recognized "standard" for an EMR framework, together with the number of standards for data messaging, and you end up with a nightmare.
an example of a prestigious journal published by a for-profit company?
Well, you might start here for a start on one publisher. Quite a number of them are the "prestige" journals in their field, and are in those cases at least, stringently peer-reviewed.
What you not know is that these articles are subject to a publication fee. So, it's actually a multi-profit system for them. They get money from the researchers, and they get money from subscriptions.
What this is, is simply a new variation on the theme we've been through with RIAA, MPAA, and others. "OMG!!! Our profits are in danger from this Internet thing! We must DO something!" From a researcher's standpoint, it actually is a better thing if they don't have to deal with the for-profit publishers. They get their work out to the community, and they don't have to pay "reprint charges," etc. It works for other researchers and libraries, since they're not shelling out several hundred dollars each for subscriptions, and the works are easily searchable. So, of course the publishers are panicking! Their gravy train is threatened! It's FUD time!
I consider this a "killer issue" for ISO (but i'm not on any of the national standards bureaux so rest assured :-)), what is your opinion?
Which is why I said that there are going to be contradictions. In fact, I doubt this is going to go through as an ISO standard as submitted. There are a number of non-standard calls in the specification, besides the ones you pointed out. The handling of dates, for example doesn't use the ISO specification, but an MS specification. Those are real issues that MS is going to have to address and change if it's going to expect to get this through ISO.
But that was my point. There are a number of real issues with OOXML which can and should be pointed out. There's no need to indulge in FUD , but it seems that some people just can't resist doing it.
no matter who is doing it. Microsoft has a long history of using FUD to advance it goals and maintain its position. No one, except MS flacks, argues that. But if it is wrong for MS to do so, and get (rightfully) slammed for it, then it is wrong to use FUD against MS to advance a competitor!
I wouldn't be surprised if there were contradictions or issues in the OOXML specifications. Any specification that runs 6000 pages is likely to have them! However, the real issues are whether they're addressable, and whether they're "killer issues" for ISO. In order to know that, we should cut through the FUD and look at the facts. Yes, ODF is an ISO standard, but just because it's our favorite standard is not evidence that OOXML is completely duplicative, or can't be made into an ISO standard, if the contradictions are resolved. The best way to argue this case is to drop the FUD, and let the arguments stand on their merits.
FTA: even a slicker version of Solitaire
What more could you want?
With Verizon aggressively rolling out high-speed FiOS (FTTP) in its service area, what will happen to the consumers stuck with a smaller telco like those moving to FairPoint?
FairPoint isn't a "small" telco, it's actually fairly big one, just not in the large Baby Bell category. The customers will get exactly the same service they have now - unfortunately. In my area, which is extremely rural, the company providing phone service has changed hands several times over the past decade. Each time, the same lines, the same services, and the same issues. It wasn't until two years ago that they finally decided to offer limited DSL service in this area. Yes, the 256K I spend an additional $30 a month on is is better than the 24K dial-up that's the other option, but it's not all that great a service, either.
I do understand that it's expensive to roll out fiber, particularly when you're talking running a line 20 to 30 miles between small population centers over a wide area. Which is why the rural areas are usually the last to see it, unless it gets mandated. Which is also why Verizon is so willing to dump a couple of states. It neatly avoids any mandates, and saves them a lot of money.
What I found interesting in this submission is that there seems to be a grudging admission by the record companies (not RIAA) that DRM is now hurting their bottom line. It hasn't hit the motion picture and some book publishing executives yet, but it might in time.
If anything, the sales figures are proving that RIAA was talking through its hat all along. Yes, I know, obvious to everyone on Slashdot, but sometimes reality has to slap executives around for a few years before the message gets through.
What's interesting is that the companies that "get it" and have dropped the DRM restrictions have been doing better than those who have clung to it. DRM is expensive to implement, and you end up in a continuing cycle of trying to "protect" things as each new version gets broken, and as consumers start to stay away from it, since they can't do anything with it. Those that dropped it, or didn't bother in the first place have lesser costs, and better customer relations, which equals profit.
It's sad that it takes that much to get the message through. People prefer to be honest. People will buy reasonably priced content. People do not like being told what to do with something they bought, and most definitely don't enjoy being treated like thieves instead of customers! These are obvious points that seems to get missed when you're insulated in an executive suite.
FTA:
Cisco said Tuesday it had been negotiating for several years with Apple over a licensing agreement, but that Apple lawyers had not signed and returned the final contract.
I'd be willing to bet that the product and marketing people thought all was well with rolling it out, and it turns out that "Umm...err...Uh, we didn't sign the contract! Didn't you get the memo?" I think there's going to be some openings in the Apple legal department soon.
The filesystem of course is one thing that instantly sets the two apart, /usr, /tmp, /etc, - these mean absolutely nothing to the guy that's been looking at c:\windows, c:\program files, c:\documents and settings, since school.
There is a Linux distro which takes that on. http://www.gobolinux.org/index.php is an alternative that makes the Linux system look a little more "familiar" to a Windows user. On another front, I'm a bit disappointed that no one seems to be touting Linspire/Freespire as a distribution. It's one of the few that's really been targeting the consumer market.
Which is why I also think you have a point about the ideological baggage. A lot of initiatives (like the Linux Standard Base project) get bogged down or caught in the crossfire of the various faction wars. Ideological purity isn't going to move people over to Linux, it's going to be whether they can set it up with a minimum of fuss and have it work, and have the applications they want available for it. We can whine all we want about Microsoft's desktop dominance and how they strong-arm OEM's into installing it. Yes, that's true. It also means that if we want the average user to switch, we have to make it easy for them to install Linux on their own, and have it "just work." Otherwise, they're not going to bother.
This is the question that keeps crossing my mind, every time I see one of these stories. Is a PS3 (or XBox, or Wii) giving you so much more capability as a Linux box than a box you've built from readily available components? Yeah, great, you got X distro of Linux to run on this platform. Can you still play the PS3 games on it? If you can't, WTF is the point, besides proving it can be done? It was interesting the first time someone did it, after that it's pretty much "me too."
I may be wrong, but doesn't Wild Tangent have a rep for being pseudo spyware?
Yes, it does. It's also a bitch to get off a computer once it's on! I don't know how many hours I've spent at various times getting it off of people's computers. That's why I find it particularly ironic that their CEO would be complaining about Vista's restrictions. I have no plans to ever put Vista on any computer I have, and am not a particular fan of Microsoft, but anything they did that prevents Wild Tangent from getting on a computer earns a "thumbs up" from me! Who'd have thought, Microsoft did something right, out of the box?
One of the tactics that large companies have used in the past, when dealing with critics - particularly grass-roots activists - was the SLAPP : Strategic Lawsuits Against Public Participation. Someone against your project, or annoying you? File a lawsuit against them. Since you have the money to push it, and they generally don't (if you pick your target well), the only way out of it for them was to shut up. This had the "benefit" of shutting up your other critics, too.
It appears that Disney has dusted off the tactic here. Yeah, Spocko did nothing illegal. All he did was advocate a position, comment legally on what he saw wrong, and point it out to those who finance it. Rather than actually change anything, Disney decided the best move was to shut the critic up. This seems be backfiring though - and it'll be interesting to watch how Disney will twist and turn to try to spin this in a better light.
Is an apt metaphor for this. My goodness, a well-known (sort of) "celebrity" gets videotaped having sex and somehow the video makes itself public! Shocked, shocked I am, that this would happen! You'd think that with so many of these incidents in the past that they might become just a bit cautious. Really, how hard is it to follow the simple ideas of:
a) Don't videotape yourself having sex.
b) If you do, invest in a safe. A very good one.
c) Don't have sex in public. No, really, people have cellphones now to shoot footage of interesting things like that, besides the ever-popular video cameras.
d) If you break up with someone, and you've taped yourselves having sex, get the tapes before walking out!
Because once it's out, it's out. Court orders, forcing various sites to remove it just don't work. All it does is add to the publicity. I'd be willing to bet that within a week (if that) you'll see the video all over the binary groups, P2P networks, bittorrent, and various pr0n sites. Blocking one site is simply an attempt to bail out the Titanic with a bucket - nice try, but it won't work.
Ah yes, once again someone predicts that the Internet (or major portion thereof) will "collapse" at a certain point! Which would be frightening, except that such predictions have been made on a regular basis for quite some time.
Robert Metcalfe used to regularly predict this, each time moving the target date when it didn't happen on schedule. It appears that Cringely has decided to pick up the ball and keep it going. If I'm counting correctly, the Internet was supposed to have collapsed under the weight of traffic about a dozen times so far. It hasn't yet, but let's not let past performance stop future predictions!
I'm sure that the last mile is competitive if you're talking about areas with relatively high-density populations. Once you get out of those areas, forget it. There is no competition. Like you, I have one choice for high-speed, in this case, the local phone company. The cable company here doesn't offer any sort of Internet service. Hell, they don't even offer much in the way of service, period! I've been in areas where you might find a few hundred households inside a 25-50 mile radius. It simply isn't cost-effective for anyone to "compete" for that market.
If the software was created using a robust process, the design diagrams, use cases and requirements documents are already written. That's the hard part; any coder worth his salt should be able to exactly duplicate the application from those artifacts.
You make it sound so easy! How many times have you actually done it?
I ask this because I have done it, several times. Each time, I knew exactly the logic of the processes, knew all the applicable algorithms, and had all the documentation and flow charts. Writing from scratch a program to replace the COBOL code was a non-trivial exercise, involving several months of coding and testing. Those were, in retrospect, rather small programs (10-25K lines) too. The only reason I did it in the first place was that we needed to have a better front-end data entry, and there were some issues with batch output file sizes - this was in the early '80's.
Yes, it sound really easy to say "just rewrite", but the reality is that even in optimal circumstances, it isn't always simple to transfer between languages, and particularly not when you start getting into major applications. "Legacy" is not necessarily a dirty word.
Even back in the early '80's, it was an axiom that COBOL was "dying," and would soon be replaced. Amazingly enough, it hasn't happened, but many of the "more powerful, better" languages that were supposed to supplant it are pretty much forgotten or not commonly used. This leads up to the question of exactly which language do you plan on rewriting in? You, yourself, have postulated a thirty year lifespan. Which of today's "hot" and "powerful" languages do you think is going to last that long? C? C++? D? Pascal? Java? Python? Perl? All of them have had (or are having)their day as the new "best" programming language. Some of them have also fallen by the wayside, or are having people start to leave them for the new "next best thing." Is someone in thirty years going to know how to program in one of them, or learn the language easily?
I wouldn't take too many bets on that. Maybe I'm wrong, but I would be willing to take some serious money on COBOL still being around. It does what it's supposed to do, it's easy to learn, it's portable, and it works. That's pretty much all we can ask of any programming language. Which is why this language has lasted as long as it has, while many of its "replacements" have gone away, whether any of us like it or not.
I started as a systems admin at one place about 6 months after they had started their move into a new data center. While the new center was being built, they moved into "temporary" quarters. The "temporary" turned out to be for another 18 months. The server room was a converted office space, which was carpeted. There wasn't much room to move around in, because of the number of servers that had been shoved into the room. That doesn't even include the number of cables running around, the "temporary" wiring, the use of small UPC's to try to minimize some of the power issues. Let's not forget the large number of static pads we put in, to try to minimize the inevitable static charges.
My "favorite" hack was the clear plastic boxes we duct-taped over the power switches to two of the servers I had. That was to stop the rest of the IT staff from turning off the servers when they bumped into them - which happened about once a day until we did that. About six months after I started, I discovered a server in the room that no one had remembered. It was a print server, which had the simple job of determining which printer a given document was supposed to be sent to, and routing it accordingly. One of our vendors had made some requested changes in document formats, and we'd added in a new printer, which caused all printing to come to a screeching halt. It didn't take long to figure out that the print server was locked up. The problem was that no one seemed to know where it was. After searching through the server room for almost an hour, I happened to notice an old PC stuck way back in a corner on the floor under a desk - which turned out to be the print server.
Whether their education is incomplete or they have simply been misguided since science class doesn't really matter, because these people honestly believe what they're saying, and they would probably continue to defend their comments even when presented with boatloads of evidence to the contrary.
The problem is that sometimes they'll even go and do something that's the exact opposite of what they're espousing, without blinking an eye. I for one, find breathtaking displays of hypocrisy rather common. Several years ago you couldn't turn around without seeing Alex Baldwin & Kim Basinger shilling about the "cruelty" of having elephants in a circus, and the "horror" of using trained animals for entertainment. Then they went and starred in movies involving a trained bear (Baldwin) and trained elephants (Basinger). It's a rather common phenomenon - they're against something until it affects their paycheck.
The problem is that celebrities often do this to make themselves look good. Many of them are simply jumping on the cause du jour bandwagon, and doing what they do best - look good and spout lines. That the lines they're spouting may have little or no relationship to scientific facts or reality isn't their concern. The biggest problem is that people tend to believe them more than real experts.
Memory is dirt-cheap these days, and if you've got it you might as well put it to use.
You have an interesting definition of "dirt cheap". Doing a quick check, 1GB RAM is running around $175-$200. Admittedly, that's a lot cheaper than 12 to 15 years ago, when it was averaging $25 a MB, but I don't consider that "dirt cheap." The problem, as you pointed out, is that they grab as "much as they need", or more correctly, as the developer(s) think it needs. That's fine in an isolated system, where it's the only application running, and usually developer's computers have more power than most people's computers, so it works there. It is not true in real life. I get a little fed up every time I get told to throw hardware at a problem. I'm running a computer that's more than an order more powerful than the one I had a few years ago, and I'm still running out of RAM.
In reading this article, I started to wonder a lot about this. writing to conserve memory is a bad thing? I will say that I haven't noticed that in most software, regardless of whether it's OSS or closed-source. If anything, there seems to be a variation of Parkinson's Law in effect. Yes, computers these days have a lot more memory available, however, the number of applications and the size demands of each application has grown almost in lock-step with that. 15 or so years ago, yes, you had one OS and one application running - maybe, if you were lucky or were running TSR apps, two or three. These days, the OS takes up a hefty chunk, and it's not uncommon to see 8 or 9 (if not more) applications running at once. What they all seem to have in common is that they assume they have access to all the RAM, or as much of it as they can grab.
I have to wonder if he's actually looked at things these days. I don't see where programming (properly done) to conserve memory is a bad thing. If anything, it seems that few are actually doing it.
The way this article is worded, it is obvious they are talking about servers.
Exactly. This is important, but (sighs) the usual meandering into Linux on the desktop crept in. The big problem is the confusion between server - business desktop - home desktop. Linux as a server operating system has been "ready" for a long time, and has been steadily making inroads. That it's just becoming obvious to upper-level management isn't terribly surprising, they're usually among the last to grasp the obvious. It isn't "news" that businesses are moving server applications to Linux, it's been growing steadily for years. While it's fashionable to bash the "big companies," their (grudging or not) move to support Linux is important. If I rely on (for example) Oracle for my business, the consideration on server OS depends on what I can run Oracle on. That is, I can either run this on Windows 2003 Server, Solaris, or Linux, and my primary consideration is which OS gives me the best ROI. In this case Linux looks very good.
In the business desktop arena, Linux as an OS is a yes, maybe, or no proposition. Yes, there are businesses for which it is absolutely, no question, ready to go. The security features and applications are all there, and it's mostly a matter of breaking the reflex to go with Windows to implement it. Maybe, in that there are some businesses which need some Windows-only applications, but they might be able to run under Wine, or the applications aren't quite as good as the proprietary apps. No, there are some businesses whose critical applications simply do not exist in Linux, and will not run under Wine.
In the home user market, it's not ready. Yes, there are a few Linux distro's which have targeted this (Linspire, Ubuntu), but for the most part Linux isn't quite there.
The key is that there is a difference between these environments. A server is generally set up, and is supposed to run with minimal intervention. Yes, you'll have to add/delete users, you'll have to apply patches and so on, but for the most part, it has limited functions/hardware, and it's supposed to just work. A business desktop is a restricted version of the home desktop. You generally don't want users installing their own software, and you don't want them doing certain things with their computers. In both of these instances, Linux fits the bill quite nicely. In the home computer market, people are going to do a wide variety of things - multimedia, games, internet, installing their own software, etc. It's here that Linux doesn't fit the bill. It's improved a lot, but it's still got a ways to go.
This sounds more like Service Pack 1 of Vista. Of course, calling it that would be admitting that maybe they didn't get everything right the first time. I'm sure the very idea that Microsoft wouldn't get something right the first time comes as a major shock to Slashdot readers. :-p
Seriously, though, announcing a new "updated" version and your next-generation OS strikes me as a really good way to tank initial sales, particularly in the business arena. A good many CIO's have finally gotten it that it's usually a good idea to wait for SP-1 of any MS OS before rolling out, and "leaking" that an SP1 (by whatever name) is being released in two years pretty much seals it for them. Not that there was tremendous enthusiasm for migration in the first place. This is actually a good time for Linux to start trying to push itself onto the business desktop. You have MS not releasing an OS on time, let alone reliable hardware requirements until the last minute, there's no compelling application which can't be run on XP, and they're hinting at a new release in two years. All of which is not calculated to be endearing to someone who's in charge of a major rollout.
The "next generation OS" sounds like a bunch of wishful thinking, more than any actual code.
At first glance, this almost sounds reasonable, until you stop and think about it. It relies on the content creator to somehow guess what's "objectionable," and put the tag in the appropriate place. That's always assuming they're going to bother, and that every browser is going to go and put the ability to properly render this in.
If it passes, I can see a whole new range of "NSF" attributes. "Not safe for children.(NSFC)" "Not safe for (fill in the blank)". Now that I think about it, the NSFC tag would have a certain appeal, but it's still a dumb idea.
It's a figure that sounds impressive, until you start looking at how little it really is. I took a look at two legally downloaded media clips, running 21 and 25MB. The 25MB (WMV) is a whopping five and a half minutes, the 21MB (MPEG) is just over a minute. I might, with a small screen size, lossy compression and choosing some different codecs be able to fit 5 to 6 minutes into a 10MB file, but that's a far cry from an entire episode of a show or a complete movie.