53. That Microsoft's market share and the applications barrier to entry together endow the company with monopoly power in the market for Intel-compatible PC operating systems is directly evidenced by the sustained absence of realistic commercial alternatives to Microsoft's PC operating-system products.
This is a good point for the time being, but Apple has the same applications barrier to entry on the Motorola 68000/PowerPC line of PC operating systems. BSD and Linux both exist for them. Apple recently made their OS based on BSD. What if Microsoft chose to do the same thing?
Just because Microsoft is the most distributed OS and has the most applications built around it today doesn't mean that the software market doesn't turn around really fast.
Microsoft is successful because of all the applications built around it. It's an ecosystem. Legally tying Microsoft's hands will actually do more to hurt that ecosystem (most people who use it) than to help it. Since this computing ecosystem has 90+% of all the worlds computers, it is a standard. People gravitate towards the standard, which makes it more of a standard.
People use MS products because there are more products working with MS products than with any other. It's like a big black hole in the center of a galaxy. Most of the other bodies gravitate around it, adding to the mass at the center, until the system of gravity is too strong. Weakening the ability for the center to improve itself might enable some outside forces to balance out that pull, but it's more likely to harm most people depending on the ability of the system to be stable.
What is the next threat to Microsoft? Is it legal? Is it technical? Maybe it's in cheaper devices. I bet that MSR has a few niche technologies that will come out built in to their next OS. Speech and handwriting recognition. Face and voice biometric recognition. They certainly do a LOT of AI and Graphics work. I think that the next threat to Microsoft is competition which doesn't charge and provides the same value. It's hard to measure in $ the amount of time/work put into Linux/OSS, but it isn't hard to understand that it is a threat to Microsoft, even if it doesn't integrate as tightly. Eventually, someone will package it.
Microsoft's advantage is in its ability to integrate its products and provide the whole solution for a cheaper price than it would take people to build it themselves. This is only an advantage while it is true. Certain people today can build you a computer for cheap, and put no OS on it or a free OS on it, but they cost about the same price as a Dell with Windows. Microsoft only charges something like $50 per license on these machines (note that MS doesn't even make the CDs or install them in these cases -- MS just gets $50 for the license - a 0.001 cent piece of paper), and Dell has mastery of mass production.
This is business. It's just as political as it is cut-throat, and the future is never certain. In the software business, the industry can turn on a dime, and a company with 90% market share like Netscape can be an also ran the next day. Microsoft having $50B in the bank doesn't guarantee it will have $10B in revenues next year.
Fire trucks in my area change the lights so that ALL 4 directions get RED. Then because they are an emergency vehicle, they can cross into the ongoing lane and pass all the normal traffic in the intersection. This wouldn't help normal people unless they had blinking lights and sirens on their cars.
Is not the Macintosh OS X OS a commercially viable alternative to Windows? It seems to be the #2 OS in the consumer space, but even though it is dwarfed by Windows, that doesn't make it irrelevant.
"How hard can it be to design a GUI interface that collects people's voting selections and saves them to a file (or database)? This sounds like an exceedingly simple problem. Why are these voting machine companies having so much trouble coming up with a viable solution???
And why hasn't the EFF come up with a lobbying plan to lobby for open-source-only voting machines?"
It's not a hard problem, it's a political problem. Open source is a nice thought, but can you convince politicians that making the source to their software makes it harder to hack instead of easier?
They aren't software engineers, they are people engineers, and they want what's best for them, not what's most fair for you. Politicians are people who seek power.
The best recommendation I've heard so far is to make a touch-screen voting machine which prints out a card which is then read by a card reader. You have a written receipt for your vote which you can validate, and in the case of a recount can be counted by hand.
At my company, which regularly gets us opening day/night tickets to nerdy/geeky movies, an admin for our group got us a special screening at 8:00AM yesterday (PST) (Tuesday). I can only say that the reactions from my team were mixed. I wasn't expecting great acting, and they didn't provide it. They provided what had worked in the previous movies, and some of what didn't work.
Highlights include lots of CG. Lowlights are that some scenes lasted far longer than they should have. I used the rest room during one such scene and was pleasantly surprised when I came back to the movie that the scene was _almost_ over and I didn't miss anything. In fact, I was quite glad to miss that piss poor acting scene, because they followed it up with some interesting CG.
All in all, I'd say wait for this one on DVD rental, and save your money.
You asked the most FAQ on DPReview.com
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Digital 35mm SLRs?
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· Score: 1
pipingguy asks: Canon has released the first(?) 'low-priced' digital 35mm SLR with interchangeable lenses with the Digital Rebel. I've owned a few digital and non-digital cameras over the years (and am by no means a photography expert), and most annoying was the lack of manual zoom and focus, not to mention the barely-noticeable millisecond delay between button click and shutter closure. Can any owners of this and other digitals provide some opinions on how this new model compares to the more expensive digital 35mm's and typical $300 SLRs? Is it time to buy?
It is time to buy. Consider 35mm film at $10 per roll to purchase and develop per 25 frames. That's $.40 per frame. I've shot over 5,000 frames with my EOS 10D since I bought it in March (7 months). That means that I've already paid for the camera ($1500) and $500 worth of accessories (512MB CF 30X Card, USB2 Card Reader, extra battery, 550EX Flash, etc). In the money I will save over the next 6 months, I don't know what I might buy (photo related or otherwise).
You might be happy with the 300D's cheaper price and amazing feature set for its price, but I am happy with my 5,000 photos that I took with the 10D, which has the same sensor and better feature set.
The tradeoff between waiting for the next big release and buying the best now is the opportunity cost of taking all the photos. I shot 6,000+ photos with my first Digital before I bought the Elan 7, and replaced the Elan 7 ($350) with the 10D ($1500). They are identical cameras in features, except for that I've already paid off the 10D in film costs.
I wouldn't purchase a Rebel class camera because from my experience with a digital P&S, I know that I would become unhappy with the limitations. But don't take my word for it, go to www.DPReview.com and look in the 300D forum.
Don't consider just the price of the camera. Consider also what you will need to get the most out of it. Consider that you will need to buy a DVD burner and DVDs to backup the 1-2 GB of files you can shoot in a weekend. Or consider that you'll buy a 20GB portable storage device so that you can hold 3000 photos on a 10 day trip. USB1 of the camera won't do. You'll need a USB2 card reader. Don't forget that your computer probably isn't as good as it needs to be to process the hundreds of megs of files you dump into it in anything close to real time.
For $900 of camera, you need a lot of additional devices to make sense of all the data it generates.
> I hook up my 11 megapixel Canon EOS 1Ds to a > laptiop with slott-in GPRS / GSM card. That > gives me an 11 Mpx (nearly-)mobile phone.
No it doesn't. Regardless of how you measurebate your camera (I have an EOS 10D, so I can talk about measurebation), it is not a cell phone, nor will it ever be capable of fitting inside of a cell phone. Those expensive optics take up space. Also, at 11MP, your files are so large that it would probably take > 5 minutes before your picture was finished sending on the cell phone... Whereas a.6 MP image would be there instantly.
Think about this for a moment before you call me a troll, mark this post as flamebait, or bash me for being a MS supporter on the issue. It's not funny, it's serious.
Palladium/TCPA is a security measure, not just a DRM platform. Enabling DRM is impossible in the sense that DRM doesn't cover the analog hole. As long as people have the ability to reproduce video and audio, DRM will only prevent people who do not have other recording mechanisms from copying raw data. Digital cameras get cheaper each day. Multimedia devices are falling in price and becoming higher quality every day. Today I saw a $50 DVD/CD/MP3 player. Star Trek like systems will be here before most of us die of cancer.
Now lets get back to our topic. Security. Palladium. The thing which Palladium prevents is unsigned code from executing. It's literally a form of sandbox for x86 code. Say that you write a program which attempts to install itself into my system registry and that installer mechanism isn't signed, my computer can prevent you from installing software on it. Of course, if I (as the user of the machine) am given the choice, and let you install the software anyway, knowing it is unsigned, then at least I can share the blame for the insecurity.
Bill Gates is no stupid man. It is right that these systems are systems based on trust. If you don't trust Microsoft, it doesn't work. If the magic key-granting-key for granting root keys is ever discovered or hacked at Microsoft headquarters in Redmond, then the game is over. Of course, in the Linux world, that magic key is somewhere else. Maybe there is a new key for each distribution.
Now, I'm not saying that this system doesn't have potential for being abused. If I sign my worm for Red Hat Linux, then the protection system is useless. Worms might still be able to get inside via the older flawed software. Microsoft needs legacy applications to continue its business. The reason that MS owns so much of the computer market is that it had so much of the application share before and it didn't ruin feature compatibility with newer versions, among MS apps and with 3rd parties that were important.
The initial hole in Palladium is the same hole in DRM: In order for it to be successful, it has to work. DRM doesn't work (analog hole, memory and simulation based attacks), and Palladium may make a huge dent in internet worms, but it won't stop Macro Viruses or prevent IE from popping up new windows.
Palladium is one step in the right direction: locking down the OS to only perform installs of "trusted"/signed software. There are several other serious security measures which need to be taken: 1) Buffer Overflow prevention 2) Unsigned Device Driver prevention, and strict certification of Device Drivers 3) Lock-Down of all user and administration activities into appropriate accounts 4) Making all of the above trivial to set up for a newbie
Microsoft isn't much farther along than Linux in any of these areas, but Linux won't gain any momentum among novice users if it doesn't improve in ease of use. The next 4 years should be very interesting in the software market. The industry has matured a great deal recently after its adolescence period/dot com crash.
David Stein wrote: Eventually, the legal system will have to come to grips with the fact that its current M.O. of penalizing corporations isn't deterring anyone. They smile, pay it, and move on to bigger and better market exploits.
If by move on to bigger and better maket exploits, you mean that they create products, and sell stuff, then I agree with you. You are free to compete, but they have more money and more lawyers and more patents. The only way that you can "win" is to give away your products or provide some different feature sets/offer something of a different value.
Does Linux do this? Sure. That's what makes MS compete with it. Microsoft for once has a competitor that is worthy of the name competitor. Will Linux win? Not in the sense that it is any better or cheaper to use than MS products. Linux will win in the case that it will change people's minds. Sure, they violate a few patents that MS wouldn't sue for because they already have enough legal battles and aren't stupid enough to pull a SCO. MS can't sue Linux to win. MS wins by selling product and establishing market dominance in the corporate world. Just because MS has a home division doesn't mean that they don't make their money from Office and Windows sold to enterprises and governments.
And in case those of you staunch Linux supporters out there think that Linux isn't in any way, shape, or form produced by the industry, but rather by cool geeks like you, then let me dispel the myth. Linux is the OS produced by IBM and RedHat, not you. Yes, you may be submitting your lines of code to the Kernel or some utility, but when you submit lines of your code to Linux, you are giving your time to IBM. IBM is not compensating you for it. IBM is selling your developments to others, and you cannot prevent it from happening. The GPL already absorbed your patent rights.
Is Microsoft evil? Hardly. They make products that appeal to the market, and people buy those products because of the way that Microsoft positions them. From time to time, Microsoft buys technologies and competition, and from time to time, Microsoft actually produces something you can call innovative (for example, amouse you might actually want to use with multiple buttons, a scroll wheel, and a stylish finish).
In the business world, there are many failed ventures for every one which succeeds. For example, can anyone tell me what you might be able to do with a product known as Microsoft Liquid Motion? Microsoft purchased the company which produced it according to this press release.
Here's a quick list of some of these corporations that are out to "make money" in the hardware/software industry, maybe MS has Billions of dollars, so do all of these companies. Why? Well, you can't live without the products and services they have provided, continue to provide, and might provide in the future:
IBM (the marketers of Linux, and the founder of the Computer Industry, whose people produced such famous inventions as ASCII and the Personal Computer),
AT&T (they brought you several things including the Transistor and UNIX),
Oracle (if you ever use a credit card, your transactions were made using their software),
Apple (Jobs and Woz were the first to make an affordable hobbyist PC),
Microsoft (MS was the first Software company, and established the software licensing business model),
Sun (makers of expensive hardware which run all that Oracle DB software, and Java), Xerox (They didn't patent the GUI, the Mouse, or WYSIWG, but they invented them),
HP (printers, calculators, computers).
So I don't see Microsoft or the computer industry as all that bad, they produced all the technology that enables you and I to have this discussion. They made Billions of dollars and will spend Billions of dollars this year to make it even better.
"I'm a 17 year old proud Nintendo zealot, asking flamebait questions of a director of advanced technology in the XBox group because I want to irk her.
I put what I can remember of the conversation on my blog and post to/. so that I can brag about it to all my friends. I feel cool because I got canned answers to uninteresting questions that have been asked by other zealots like me."
This post wasn't insightful or interesting. It maybe even deserved a flamebait rating. I don't find childish antics to be a way of gaining respect. Before you irk someone on your own side of the OSS debate for giving credence to the "all Linux users are immature male teens" argument, go back to your room and think about it.
I'll answer both questions technically:
Q: Why does Microsoft refuse to give Linux a legitimate license for use?
A: The XBox is a game console which is sold as a loss leader, so that the money can be made back in licensing fees from Microsoft and 3rd party software for the platform. Running Linux on it gains no licensing fees, damages the reputation among gamers that it is a game console and NOT a computer, opens the console to a market of people who aren't profitable (the people who buy games), and if Microsoft has had _any_ legal claim (Patent, trade secret, etc) to _any_ form of IP infringed on by Linux, selling Linux would nullify Microsoft's rights. Sony's PS/2 Linux is an example of a console implementation of Linux failing to produce anything of value to Sony. Microsoft doesn't need to repeat Sony's mistakes to learn from them.
Q: What does Microsoft plan to do about the fact that they are in third place worldwide?
A: Microsoft will study its competition and determine what it needs to do to compete in the long term. Being 3rd place selling over 10 Million units after 2 years of a V1 product from Microsoft is actually quite a success, and you can bet that Ms. Fryer is busy working out deals to acquire whatever advanced technologies she can to make the division more profitable, and in general turning around the revenue stream from being a losing money proposition in the short term to a profitable enterprise in the long term.
Which technologies she's getting into she probably won't tell you, but I'm guessing that you will be able to do video chat at some point using the XBox 2, or maybe even the XBox. Do they really need all that horsepower (733MHz P3) as it is? The XBox is more powerful than my main computer throughout my 4 years of college!
This year, a 3.06 GHz P4 with hyperthreading and 6 USB 2 ports is $1000. Imagine what kinds of things software on this device will be able to do in a box under your TV next year. You had an opportunity to ask someone who produces cool advanced technologies about what they thought was coming in 5 to 10 years, and maybe even influence her, and all you could do is rant to boost your "proud 17-year-old ego". This is exactly the kind of mentality that brings down/., and here it is with a score of 5, Interesting.
Confused parents and grand parents will pick up the XGameStation for their kids. Wow, I thought the X thing was $200, but this one was half off! Little Jimmy will be thrilled!
If this guy manages to sell any at all in the retail stores, then maybe. Odds are that this won't sell simply because it's not a mass-marketable item. It's a niche. 1% of the population that plays video games actually goes out and produces one, and even if they did, there are far more powerful platforms, such as a hacked XBox or PS2. This is simply a waste of time/money.
Intellectual Property Comes in the form of 4 things: 1) Copyright. It is hard to make a case for copying the code to MS products in GPL code.
2) Patents. This is the primary form of IP that MS produces.
3) Trade Secret. This is a form of IP that really should have been patented, but the business didn't have the foresight to file for a patent before product release (non-US) or within a year of releasing the product (US). Undeniably, trade secrets are discovered by reverse engineering.
4) Trade Marks. These are used with a product to distinguish one brand from another. Lindows is an example of an area where MS is fighting in court over IP of that nature.
So here's the question: Can you think of any cases where Linux and/or other OSS are violating one or more of these 4 kinds of IP?
Does MS sue OSS people? Not really. MS sues people with deeper pockets who have knowingly or unknowingly stepped on MS toes in the proverbial sense. Patents are a defensive thing in the business world, not an offensive thing.
Yes, no doubt, Bill isn't happy that there are OSS projects treading on MS Patents, but the damages will only be sued for when they amount to something. That is how patents work. Don't expect a lawsuit for another 5 years if OSS is successful...
Just for completeness, there's another kind of IP: mask works. This is appropriate in the chip manufacturing world. Think of it like the negative in the photography world, but this kind of negative produces a circuit on silicon. MS doesn't have any IP in this category yet...
"You violate patent 56254, 65475, and 325723. That'll be $1B"
The only reason that things like Microsoft EULA's exist is so that someone can take away the freedom of their users and exhibit a system of power over them as people.
The reason an EULA is there is to protect the IP rights of the owner of the IP. These are hard things to protect without IP law. I get paid to develop software. Every time you pirate that software, it hurts me, or people like me. The money that my company loses means that I lose the opportunity to get a raise or a bonus or be promoted. I cannot physically prevent you from mass-redistributing that software. No such barrier is effective. The bits of data are trivially duplicatable and the medium to store them costs $1 per GB. This doesn't just affect the big companies.
Back in the 80's, my father's < 50 person company developed a compiler product and sold it for about $400. There was no copy protection devices in it. A few copies were sold in Europe. Several years later, we learned that it was a popular compiler in research labs in Europe. We didn't know the order of magnitude of copies that had been pirated, but my father could quite possibly retire today if the money had been legitimately paid to his company. My father's business was reasonably successful because they sold hardware as well (mainly Intel 80*87 and Weitek coprocessors). Today, they're downsizing because of the tech slump. We really could have used that cash to hire more developers and build better products.
My point here is that piracy doesn't just hurt big companies like Microsoft. Piracy hurts small development houses much, much worse.
The arguement that companies must protect their intellectual property is flawed because the money that they make generally doesn't go into paying for the costs of distrobution. It goes into things like making Bill Gates a very rich man. That's a system not at all concerned with compensating the developers, once you make an analysis and really think about it.
Bill Gates is an incredably sharp businessman. Regardless of what it costs per byte to distribute software, it costs far more to develop, market, and sell that software. You pay people to run a company, manage employees, manage facilities, design, develop, and test the software, and so many other things.
Back in the day, all of these responsibilities were in the developer's hands. In large companies, these are done by teams. Those teams need direction, management, etc. You have to give people vacations and benefits, and you have to pay people to find and hire the people who you will stake your company's reputation on.
In short, software is NOT an easy business. I hate to break it to you, but one of the only markets where it's easy to be profitable in software is in large corporations/government organizations, where the demand for software is in the 1000s of employees per organization. Why? Because they need the bulk orders, the premium support, and they get the best prices but they can't afford the lawsuit if they pirate software.
Free software is nice and all, and it even has its market. But I love writing software, and that's what I get paid to do working for a software producing corporation. Bill Gates is the man who lived what most of us can only dream. Imagine what it must be like to have an army of software developers listening to your words. If I were in his shoes all I would be saying would be 'make it better, and make it more open'.
If the system wasn't concerned with compensating developers, then I wouldn't be thankful that I have a good paycheck. I work hard for my money. It's nice that people are willing to give away their software goods to the masses, but most of us have to put food on the table, too.
It's the same in the music industry. Computer Programmers are like recording artists. We create the goods which others consume. The goods are in the form of something which can be e
Identity theft is a serious crime, and mass identity theft by stealing passwords, etc. Could lead to significant losses to all of the people using that computer system. The fact is that most people don't have more than one password. Who knows if they use the same password to protect their finances as they do to log into their ISP?
I'm not saying that you didn't do the right thing by calling the people you did, but perhaps you can take action in other ways. Are there any laws to protect you from ISPs who don't care about your security? I'm not suggesting that you should sue your ISP over lost security, but if they don't follow up once they've been notified of a security problem, it's a big deal. Stealing personal information (passwords, etc) is an invasion of privacy and there should be laws against it.
Go ask a laywer for some advice and see if that makes people care a tad bit more. If the RIAA can sue Verizon for names, so can you. The FBI is TOO HIGH a level to complain. The ISP phone people are too incompetant. A lawyer will get the ball rolling. Try the ones who are paid by the state first, AKA the DA.
LZW is a dictionary compression method. There are fundamentally 2 kinds of lossless compression techniques: dictionary and statistical. With the patent released on one of the first good well known dictionary compression, homebrew developers like myself are free to use that algorithm to develop our own compression techniques with no fear of repurcussion. This is a wonderful thing for people like me who are interested in making a better compression format for images. Now all I have to wait is for the patent on wavelets to go, and I can release my secret compression technique involving LZW and the secret wavelet transform of death!
Muhahahahahahahahaha.
1> Create radically awesome compression scheme. 2> Sell to some megacorp. 3> Profit!
All through the complaints on what they are lacking one point is missed... THEY COST $199.00! they are basically a bare-bones PC. hell add another $59.00 and you can get a low end Geforce 4 and make it scream for games.
for $199.00 these things are great.
and the fact they are windows free are even better.
The specs mentioned on these PCs include a 1.1GHz CPU, 128MB of games, a 3GB "old slow laptop" HD, and you think that a GeForce 4 will make it good for games??? How many games run on Linux/Lindows? Where can I buy them? If I go into an EB, what games run on Linux?
Being Windows free means that 99.9% of consumer software won't run on it. Having good USB support is critical to using the computer for anything with external devices. If I am Joe 6 Pack and I go to CompUSA and buy a NEW $200 digital camera, then I am screwed if the camera doesn't have Linux drivers. If I get one that's cheaper than that, I am even MORE screwed (how many geeks do you know that buy a < 1MP camera and write drivers for Linux).
I'm not asking about do-it-yourself computer nerds with 10 years of Linux experience, I'm asking about normal people who are intimidated by what they don't understand. Most smart teenagers can wrap their head around Linux, but given the choice between Linux on a REALLY cheap PC and Windows on all their school computers and their friends computers, which do you think they're going to have a more positive experience with?
Also, I'm sure that these PCs come with a CD-ROM, but do they come with CD-RW? How similar to Windows is the OS? When I insert a blank CD ready to burn, what happens? Can I drag and drop to manage my files? Is there a manual? Help? Support? Microsoft Windows has a "Help and Support" section built in to the start menu, and step-by-step help instructions for doing just about anything tricky for a typical PC user. Most Linux software is aimed squarely at the do-it-yourselfer-with-the-CLI.
I'm not trying to dis the system as non-functional. I'm simply saying that for the low end computer user, it's going to be a real struggle to use when anything new comes out, and 99.9% of software that a consumer will want to run only runs on Windows. The other.1% is obscure and hard to find. $89 for Windows XP isn't unreasonable. A $150 pile of hardware will seem like a 5 year old computer when compared to a $400 computer with decent specs in today's market. Imagine what that computer will be able to do in 2-5 years.
My best home PC is an 850MHz Athlon with 512MB RAM, 120GB HD, USB2+Firewire, a GeForce 2 card, and it runs Windows XP Pro/Office XP Pro. The hardware cost about $1000 2 years ago. That's a little more than $1 per day that I've gotten out of it. Imagine that software costs an additional $1000 for Office XP, Windows XP, and Photoshop 7. I've spend about $2 per day on this computer over the last 2 years, and over the course of the 5 year lifetime of the computer, it will be averaged to about $0.50 per day.
The nice thing about this computer is that when Windows XP detects a new device, it either installs the driver from the Microsoft driver cache/horde somewhere, or pops up a window to help you find the driver. In my experience, I only need drivers for new, exotic devices like my $1500 Digital SLR. The other devices like my new USB2/Firewire PCI card and the CF card reader that attaches to it just work. All you see is a little balloon in the corner notify you that Windows found the driver and you can now use your device.
I very rarely need to install the floppy or CD that came with the new hardware, but even if I did I can be confident that the CD works with my Windows computer as long as the CD says Windows (XP) somewhere on it, which all of the CDs that come with my hardware do. Many of these also supports Mac OS. I haven't purchased a single device which comes with any support for Lindows, or Linux, or BSD.
Lindows is just not as big of
Sun doesn't understand their market.
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Sun's Last Stand
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· Score: 1
Sun Microsystems was a creator of premium datacenter servers, with the scalability and stability that the top dollar bought. Enter Java. Java was a new technology that bridged the gap between many of Sun's diverse platform of computers. It was a great thing for Sun's customers because it meant that applications could be written across all of their diverse product line.
Enter Microsoft. Java made it possible to write software on the Windows client, too. It was almost as easy as VB. Developers in a middle market between professional and VB flocked to Java, as did colleges. I myself made the jump from VB to Java my Junior year in HS. Microsoft, however, understands its customer base and knows what they are looking to do. Microsoft very quickly integrated Java into Windows in the way that they saw fit to do so, and made their J++ tools perfect for taking advantage of the rich APIs that already existed.
The problem with Sun's Java is that it was free, just like with Netscape. Sun's technology was given away, and the company failed to innovate in the places which make money: Premium servers and support. IBM and Dell and Intel and Microsoft had no problems picking up the slack when Sun attempted to diversify outside of its strengths.
IBM is a very interesting opponent, and I'm going to put the blame on IBM and not Microsoft for Sun's downfall. IBM will readily adopt "cheap" technology, integrate their sales and consultant "services" around it, and sell it to their customers for a markup. IBM has success with this in Open Source software like Linux as well as with open platforms like Java. IBM can SELL Java, whereas Sun can't.
There are essentially two security models developing in the world of computing right now: Microsoft's.NET/Palladium/Hardware based model, which is Windows-specific; and Sun/IBM/Etc.'s Java/Liberty/Software based model, which in theory should be OS-independent, but ultimately MS will try their best to prevent it from working on Windows, and so will likely only function in the Linux/Unix realm.
Each passing day, MS brings the world closer to their MS-specific security model. As much as all of us want to avoid having to pay the Microsoft tax when we use technology, if left to their own devices, MS will attempt to erect a virtual toll-booth within as much aspects of technology as possible - be that the internet, PC's, or digital devices.
So there's a problem with this in Open Source. That problem is that DRM requires people who write the protection code to not distribute it. Why? Well, say you can decrypt data X, and release the code to do such a thing. Well then I can take your code and tweak it so that it decrypts data X and stores it in an unencrypted fashion. The issue is in protecting the data itself from being converted to a format trivial to redistribute and violate the law as it is done today. That challenge will become harder as the encryption/decryption is done in hardware with keys that are not retrievable without extraordinary measures.
There is no Open Source DRM. DRM cannot work if it is Open Source. However, it is not a bad thing if you produce say, a home movie, and don't want your neighbor distributing it to the world. With tapes and older non-digital media, there was a quality penalty for copying, which for the most part prevented people from distributing copies of the information. With digital information, this is naturally hard to prevent. OSS thrives on this model of free distribution of information. My friend John, who incidentally works at Microsoft likes to say: "Information wants to be free."
I like to put it slightly differently: Information is free, until I sell it to you.
Scenario #1: Say I run a small Linux server on my DSL line. I have a friend give me a DNS entry off of his domain, as I have a static IP on my server. I now have a DNS which can receive emails, only that it won't reverse DNS the same because my ISP owns the IP address block. I can't send emails now from my server because nobody reverse authenticates me.
Scenario #2: Say that I am a student on a university campus, which for some reason won't allow SMTP sending from outside the network as inside the network. This is as it should be, right? But it does allow POP. My computer is on the campus network and configured with whatever mail client it uses. Then suddenly, I'm on spring break, and I bring my laptop home to my families DSL/WiFi network. I can still download my mail, but since I'm off campus network, I can't be authenticated as myself to the mail server. No problem. My ISP lets me send mail with their mail server. Oh wait, new restrictions prevent me from sending this email.
If you think that this second scenario is a joke, I worked as a Help Desk worker at a University which did this, and the University tried to pawn off a mostly broken web interface as the answer to checking email from home on break. Imagine answering the phones a day later, trying to explain to users all day long why they can't send their email. Now multiply that pain by all ISPs across the world. The problem isn't backwards compatability. The problem is forwards compatability. The new servers won't accept you as a sender unless you are now listed in DNS. The old ones will be the only servers accepting any mail...
The real problem here is not actually solved... The problem is that authentication of the sender of an SMTP email doesn't exist. If mail sending servers authenticated themselves, then this could work without sweeping changes. Making the sender be authenticated by DNS is a bad idea. I can spoof any IP I want to with the right TCP/IP packets. PGP signatures already solve the authentication problem. Why don't we have mail clients/servers sign their messages with a private key corresponding to a public key retrievable from the mail exchanger. Compliant servers will then check when they receive email from any mail exchanger that the origin's mail exchanger has the public key for the message AND that it authenticates that the private key did sign the message.
Any time you use a client compatible with this system, your public key + password would produce your private key to sign your documents and then your identity is validated by your server. Yes, this would basically mean that the Verify SMTP command would be a MUST if you send out signed mail in this fashion. It would mean opt in. Of course, PGP already does this... but take it to the mailserver level, and do it automatically as part of SMTP, and this would be far more effective than breaking SMTP with checks against DNS. SMTP servers already have to store lots of information about their accounts. Why not add the overhead of storing a public/private key pair along with a password to unlock the private key for sending, or do like the POP3 and MD5 hash the password after appended to a unique time/date/random stamp to authenticate.
One nice feature of this protocol is that if you attempt to mass email, you actually commit a small type of pseudo-DOS attack of authentications against your mail server.
There are several good scenarios which depend upon the way the SMTP system works currently that will break as a result of a change like this.
What do we do for the millions and millions of users who currently send mail via older software from their home system, tell them that they are screwed out of sending email? The beauty of SMTP is that it works. Assuming that this change is implemented, it will probably cause millions of users pain, and those users won't put up with it.
Once those users switch to a different email system, say for example, Microsoft Exchange. The damage to SMTP will be complete. Then again, what am I saying... I have stock in M$... Bring it on.:P
Seriously, though. Filtering is the responsibility of the client, not the server. Why do we need to impose new rules, which are just as easy to fake, rather than working on making the system work better for the user.
but it's a billion dollars that those companies didn't have to spend to buy software. therefore they are able to use the money for more urgent and important things.
Uhhm, no they couldn't. They didn't have that billion dollars in the first place. This is the point the parent post was making but it obviously went right over your head. Non-profit orgs can't spend the money on software. Microsoft can't charge them for software. But giving away the software actually benefits Microsoft.
And the point which you missed entirely is that it doesn't just benefit Microsoft, it also benefits the non-profit orgs. Microsoft is a company which produces several great products. There are also several great OSS "products" as well. Microsoft giving away software is somehow seen as "evil", at least on/. Any company giving away anything to those who can't afford it seems to me to be a good thing, regardless of the cost to produce those goods. And it's not free to engineer software. I'm a salaried software engineer, and my team is a good sized team. We all have computers, and an internet connection, and parking, and facilities, and there are lots of other expenses to running a company. It's nice from a recent-college-grad perspective that so many people out there donate their spare thought cycles to developing public/communal software. However, it's also nice to be able to earn a living creating software for a paycheck.
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Just because Microsoft is the most distributed OS and has the most applications built around it today doesn't mean that the software market doesn't turn around really fast.
Microsoft is successful because of all the applications built around it. It's an ecosystem. Legally tying Microsoft's hands will actually do more to hurt that ecosystem (most people who use it) than to help it. Since this computing ecosystem has 90+% of all the worlds computers, it is a standard. People gravitate towards the standard, which makes it more of a standard.
People use MS products because there are more products working with MS products than with any other. It's like a big black hole in the center of a galaxy. Most of the other bodies gravitate around it, adding to the mass at the center, until the system of gravity is too strong. Weakening the ability for the center to improve itself might enable some outside forces to balance out that pull, but it's more likely to harm most people depending on the ability of the system to be stable.
What is the next threat to Microsoft? Is it legal? Is it technical? Maybe it's in cheaper devices. I bet that MSR has a few niche technologies that will come out built in to their next OS. Speech and handwriting recognition. Face and voice biometric recognition. They certainly do a LOT of AI and Graphics work. I think that the next threat to Microsoft is competition which doesn't charge and provides the same value. It's hard to measure in $ the amount of time/work put into Linux/OSS, but it isn't hard to understand that it is a threat to Microsoft, even if it doesn't integrate as tightly. Eventually, someone will package it.
Microsoft's advantage is in its ability to integrate its products and provide the whole solution for a cheaper price than it would take people to build it themselves. This is only an advantage while it is true. Certain people today can build you a computer for cheap, and put no OS on it or a free OS on it, but they cost about the same price as a Dell with Windows. Microsoft only charges something like $50 per license on these machines (note that MS doesn't even make the CDs or install them in these cases -- MS just gets $50 for the license - a 0.001 cent piece of paper), and Dell has mastery of mass production.
This is business. It's just as political as it is cut-throat, and the future is never certain. In the software business, the industry can turn on a dime, and a company with 90% market share like Netscape can be an also ran the next day. Microsoft having $50B in the bank doesn't guarantee it will have $10B in revenues next year.
Fire trucks in my area change the lights so that ALL 4 directions get RED. Then because they are an emergency vehicle, they can cross into the ongoing lane and pass all the normal traffic in the intersection. This wouldn't help normal people unless they had blinking lights and sirens on their cars.
Is not the Macintosh OS X OS a commercially viable alternative to Windows? It seems to be the #2 OS in the consumer space, but even though it is dwarfed by Windows, that doesn't make it irrelevant.
They aren't software engineers, they are people engineers, and they want what's best for them, not what's most fair for you. Politicians are people who seek power.
The best recommendation I've heard so far is to make a touch-screen voting machine which prints out a card which is then read by a card reader. You have a written receipt for your vote which you can validate, and in the case of a recount can be counted by hand.
At my company, which regularly gets us opening day/night tickets to nerdy/geeky movies, an admin for our group got us a special screening at 8:00AM yesterday (PST) (Tuesday). I can only say that the reactions from my team were mixed. I wasn't expecting great acting, and they didn't provide it. They provided what had worked in the previous movies, and some of what didn't work.
Highlights include lots of CG. Lowlights are that some scenes lasted far longer than they should have. I used the rest room during one such scene and was pleasantly surprised when I came back to the movie that the scene was _almost_ over and I didn't miss anything. In fact, I was quite glad to miss that piss poor acting scene, because they followed it up with some interesting CG.
All in all, I'd say wait for this one on DVD rental, and save your money.
pipingguy asks:
Canon has released the first(?) 'low-priced' digital 35mm SLR with interchangeable lenses with the Digital Rebel. I've owned a few digital and non-digital cameras over the years (and am by no means a photography expert), and most annoying was the lack of manual zoom and focus, not to mention the barely-noticeable millisecond delay between button click and shutter closure. Can any owners of this and other digitals provide some opinions on how this new model compares to the more expensive digital 35mm's and typical $300 SLRs? Is it time to buy?
It is time to buy. Consider 35mm film at $10 per roll to purchase and develop per 25 frames. That's $.40 per frame. I've shot over 5,000 frames with my EOS 10D since I bought it in March (7 months). That means that I've already paid for the camera ($1500) and $500 worth of accessories (512MB CF 30X Card, USB2 Card Reader, extra battery, 550EX Flash, etc). In the money I will save over the next 6 months, I don't know what I might buy (photo related or otherwise).
You might be happy with the 300D's cheaper price and amazing feature set for its price, but I am happy with my 5,000 photos that I took with the 10D, which has the same sensor and better feature set.
The tradeoff between waiting for the next big release and buying the best now is the opportunity cost of taking all the photos. I shot 6,000+ photos with my first Digital before I bought the Elan 7, and replaced the Elan 7 ($350) with the 10D ($1500). They are identical cameras in features, except for that I've already paid off the 10D in film costs.
I wouldn't purchase a Rebel class camera because from my experience with a digital P&S, I know that I would become unhappy with the limitations. But don't take my word for it, go to www.DPReview.com and look in the 300D forum.
Don't consider just the price of the camera. Consider also what you will need to get the most out of it. Consider that you will need to buy a DVD burner and DVDs to backup the 1-2 GB of files you can shoot in a weekend. Or consider that you'll buy a 20GB portable storage device so that you can hold 3000 photos on a 10 day trip. USB1 of the camera won't do. You'll need a USB2 card reader. Don't forget that your computer probably isn't as good as it needs to be to process the hundreds of megs of files you dump into it in anything close to real time.
For $900 of camera, you need a lot of additional devices to make sense of all the data it generates.
hajejan wrote:
.6 MP image would be there instantly.
> You call that impressive?
> I hook up my 11 megapixel Canon EOS 1Ds to a
> laptiop with slott-in GPRS / GSM card. That
> gives me an 11 Mpx (nearly-)mobile phone.
No it doesn't. Regardless of how you measurebate your camera (I have an EOS 10D, so I can talk about measurebation), it is not a cell phone, nor will it ever be capable of fitting inside of a cell phone. Those expensive optics take up space. Also, at 11MP, your files are so large that it would probably take > 5 minutes before your picture was finished sending on the cell phone... Whereas a
These are two different camera markets.
-Mike
Think about this for a moment before you call me a troll, mark this post as flamebait, or bash me for being a MS supporter on the issue. It's not funny, it's serious.
Palladium/TCPA is a security measure, not just a DRM platform. Enabling DRM is impossible in the sense that DRM doesn't cover the analog hole. As long as people have the ability to reproduce video and audio, DRM will only prevent people who do not have other recording mechanisms from copying raw data. Digital cameras get cheaper each day. Multimedia devices are falling in price and becoming higher quality every day. Today I saw a $50 DVD/CD/MP3 player. Star Trek like systems will be here before most of us die of cancer.
Now lets get back to our topic. Security. Palladium. The thing which Palladium prevents is unsigned code from executing. It's literally a form of sandbox for x86 code. Say that you write a program which attempts to install itself into my system registry and that installer mechanism isn't signed, my computer can prevent you from installing software on it. Of course, if I (as the user of the machine) am given the choice, and let you install the software anyway, knowing it is unsigned, then at least I can share the blame for the insecurity.
Bill Gates is no stupid man. It is right that these systems are systems based on trust. If you don't trust Microsoft, it doesn't work. If the magic key-granting-key for granting root keys is ever discovered or hacked at Microsoft headquarters in Redmond, then the game is over. Of course, in the Linux world, that magic key is somewhere else. Maybe there is a new key for each distribution.
Now, I'm not saying that this system doesn't have potential for being abused. If I sign my worm for Red Hat Linux, then the protection system is useless. Worms might still be able to get inside via the older flawed software. Microsoft needs legacy applications to continue its business. The reason that MS owns so much of the computer market is that it had so much of the application share before and it didn't ruin feature compatibility with newer versions, among MS apps and with 3rd parties that were important.
The initial hole in Palladium is the same hole in DRM: In order for it to be successful, it has to work. DRM doesn't work (analog hole, memory and simulation based attacks), and Palladium may make a huge dent in internet worms, but it won't stop Macro Viruses or prevent IE from popping up new windows.
Palladium is one step in the right direction: locking down the OS to only perform installs of "trusted"/signed software. There are several other serious security measures which need to be taken:
1) Buffer Overflow prevention
2) Unsigned Device Driver prevention, and strict certification of Device Drivers
3) Lock-Down of all user and administration activities into appropriate accounts
4) Making all of the above trivial to set up for a newbie
Microsoft isn't much farther along than Linux in any of these areas, but Linux won't gain any momentum among novice users if it doesn't improve in ease of use. The next 4 years should be very interesting in the software market. The industry has matured a great deal recently after its adolescence period/dot com crash.
Eventually, the legal system will have to come to grips with the fact that its current M.O. of penalizing corporations isn't deterring anyone. They smile, pay it, and move on to bigger and better market exploits.
If by move on to bigger and better maket exploits, you mean that they create products, and sell stuff, then I agree with you. You are free to compete, but they have more money and more lawyers and more patents. The only way that you can "win" is to give away your products or provide some different feature sets/offer something of a different value.
Does Linux do this? Sure. That's what makes MS compete with it. Microsoft for once has a competitor that is worthy of the name competitor. Will Linux win? Not in the sense that it is any better or cheaper to use than MS products. Linux will win in the case that it will change people's minds. Sure, they violate a few patents that MS wouldn't sue for because they already have enough legal battles and aren't stupid enough to pull a SCO. MS can't sue Linux to win. MS wins by selling product and establishing market dominance in the corporate world. Just because MS has a home division doesn't mean that they don't make their money from Office and Windows sold to enterprises and governments.
And in case those of you staunch Linux supporters out there think that Linux isn't in any way, shape, or form produced by the industry, but rather by cool geeks like you, then let me dispel the myth. Linux is the OS produced by IBM and RedHat, not you. Yes, you may be submitting your lines of code to the Kernel or some utility, but when you submit lines of your code to Linux, you are giving your time to IBM. IBM is not compensating you for it. IBM is selling your developments to others, and you cannot prevent it from happening. The GPL already absorbed your patent rights.
Is Microsoft evil? Hardly. They make products that appeal to the market, and people buy those products because of the way that Microsoft positions them. From time to time, Microsoft buys technologies and competition, and from time to time, Microsoft actually produces something you can call innovative (for example, amouse you might actually want to use with multiple buttons, a scroll wheel, and a stylish finish).
In the business world, there are many failed ventures for every one which succeeds. For example, can anyone tell me what you might be able to do with a product known as Microsoft Liquid Motion? Microsoft purchased the company which produced it according to this press release.
Here's a quick list of some of these corporations that are out to "make money" in the hardware/software industry, maybe MS has Billions of dollars, so do all of these companies. Why? Well, you can't live without the products and services they have provided, continue to provide, and might provide in the future: IBM (the marketers of Linux, and the founder of the Computer Industry, whose people produced such famous inventions as ASCII and the Personal Computer), AT&T (they brought you several things including the Transistor and UNIX), Oracle (if you ever use a credit card, your transactions were made using their software), Apple (Jobs and Woz were the first to make an affordable hobbyist PC), Microsoft (MS was the first Software company, and established the software licensing business model), Sun (makers of expensive hardware which run all that Oracle DB software, and Java), Xerox (They didn't patent the GUI, the Mouse, or WYSIWG, but they invented them), HP (printers, calculators, computers).
So I don't see Microsoft or the computer industry as all that bad, they produced all the technology that enables you and I to have this discussion. They made Billions of dollars and will spend Billions of dollars this year to make it even better.
I'll answer both questions technically:
Q: Why does Microsoft refuse to give Linux a legitimate license for use?
A: The XBox is a game console which is sold as a loss leader, so that the money can be made back in licensing fees from Microsoft and 3rd party software for the platform. Running Linux on it gains no licensing fees, damages the reputation among gamers that it is a game console and NOT a computer, opens the console to a market of people who aren't profitable (the people who buy games), and if Microsoft has had _any_ legal claim (Patent, trade secret, etc) to _any_ form of IP infringed on by Linux, selling Linux would nullify Microsoft's rights. Sony's PS/2 Linux is an example of a console implementation of Linux failing to produce anything of value to Sony. Microsoft doesn't need to repeat Sony's mistakes to learn from them.
Q: What does Microsoft plan to do about the fact that they are in third place worldwide?
A: Microsoft will study its competition and determine what it needs to do to compete in the long term. Being 3rd place selling over 10 Million units after 2 years of a V1 product from Microsoft is actually quite a success, and you can bet that Ms. Fryer is busy working out deals to acquire whatever advanced technologies she can to make the division more profitable, and in general turning around the revenue stream from being a losing money proposition in the short term to a profitable enterprise in the long term.
Which technologies she's getting into she probably won't tell you, but I'm guessing that you will be able to do video chat at some point using the XBox 2, or maybe even the XBox. Do they really need all that horsepower (733MHz P3) as it is? The XBox is more powerful than my main computer throughout my 4 years of college!
This year, a 3.06 GHz P4 with hyperthreading and 6 USB 2 ports is $1000. Imagine what kinds of things software on this device will be able to do in a box under your TV next year. You had an opportunity to ask someone who produces cool advanced technologies about what they thought was coming in 5 to 10 years, and maybe even influence her, and all you could do is rant to boost your "proud 17-year-old ego". This is exactly the kind of mentality that brings down /., and here it is with a score of 5, Interesting.
If this guy manages to sell any at all in the retail stores, then maybe. Odds are that this won't sell simply because it's not a mass-marketable item. It's a niche. 1% of the population that plays video games actually goes out and produces one, and even if they did, there are far more powerful platforms, such as a hacked XBox or PS2. This is simply a waste of time/money.
Intellectual Property Comes in the form of 4 things:
1) Copyright. It is hard to make a case for copying the code to MS products in GPL code.
2) Patents. This is the primary form of IP that MS produces.
3) Trade Secret. This is a form of IP that really should have been patented, but the business didn't have the foresight to file for a patent before product release (non-US) or within a year of releasing the product (US). Undeniably, trade secrets are discovered by reverse engineering.
4) Trade Marks. These are used with a product to distinguish one brand from another. Lindows is an example of an area where MS is fighting in court over IP of that nature.
So here's the question:
Can you think of any cases where Linux and/or other OSS are violating one or more of these 4 kinds of IP?
Does MS sue OSS people? Not really. MS sues people with deeper pockets who have knowingly or unknowingly stepped on MS toes in the proverbial sense. Patents are a defensive thing in the business world, not an offensive thing.
Yes, no doubt, Bill isn't happy that there are OSS projects treading on MS Patents, but the damages will only be sued for when they amount to something. That is how patents work. Don't expect a lawsuit for another 5 years if OSS is successful...
Just for completeness, there's another kind of IP: mask works. This is appropriate in the chip manufacturing world. Think of it like the negative in the photography world, but this kind of negative produces a circuit on silicon. MS doesn't have any IP in this category yet...
"You violate patent 56254, 65475, and 325723. That'll be $1B"
The reason an EULA is there is to protect the IP rights of the owner of the IP. These are hard things to protect without IP law. I get paid to develop software. Every time you pirate that software, it hurts me, or people like me. The money that my company loses means that I lose the opportunity to get a raise or a bonus or be promoted. I cannot physically prevent you from mass-redistributing that software. No such barrier is effective. The bits of data are trivially duplicatable and the medium to store them costs $1 per GB. This doesn't just affect the big companies.
Back in the 80's, my father's < 50 person company developed a compiler product and sold it for about $400. There was no copy protection devices in it. A few copies were sold in Europe. Several years later, we learned that it was a popular compiler in research labs in Europe. We didn't know the order of magnitude of copies that had been pirated, but my father could quite possibly retire today if the money had been legitimately paid to his company. My father's business was reasonably successful because they sold hardware as well (mainly Intel 80*87 and Weitek coprocessors). Today, they're downsizing because of the tech slump. We really could have used that cash to hire more developers and build better products.
My point here is that piracy doesn't just hurt big companies like Microsoft. Piracy hurts small development houses much, much worse.
Bill Gates is an incredably sharp businessman. Regardless of what it costs per byte to distribute software, it costs far more to develop, market, and sell that software. You pay people to run a company, manage employees, manage facilities, design, develop, and test the software, and so many other things.
Back in the day, all of these responsibilities were in the developer's hands. In large companies, these are done by teams. Those teams need direction, management, etc. You have to give people vacations and benefits, and you have to pay people to find and hire the people who you will stake your company's reputation on.
In short, software is NOT an easy business. I hate to break it to you, but one of the only markets where it's easy to be profitable in software is in large corporations/government organizations, where the demand for software is in the 1000s of employees per organization. Why? Because they need the bulk orders, the premium support, and they get the best prices but they can't afford the lawsuit if they pirate software.
Free software is nice and all, and it even has its market. But I love writing software, and that's what I get paid to do working for a software producing corporation. Bill Gates is the man who lived what most of us can only dream. Imagine what it must be like to have an army of software developers listening to your words. If I were in his shoes all I would be saying would be 'make it better, and make it more open'.
If the system wasn't concerned with compensating developers, then I wouldn't be thankful that I have a good paycheck. I work hard for my money. It's nice that people are willing to give away their software goods to the masses, but most of us have to put food on the table, too.
It's the same in the music industry. Computer Programmers are like recording artists. We create the goods which others consume. The goods are in the form of something which can be e
Identity theft is a serious crime, and mass identity theft by stealing passwords, etc. Could lead to significant losses to all of the people using that computer system. The fact is that most people don't have more than one password. Who knows if they use the same password to protect their finances as they do to log into their ISP?
I'm not saying that you didn't do the right thing by calling the people you did, but perhaps you can take action in other ways. Are there any laws to protect you from ISPs who don't care about your security? I'm not suggesting that you should sue your ISP over lost security, but if they don't follow up once they've been notified of a security problem, it's a big deal. Stealing personal information (passwords, etc) is an invasion of privacy and there should be laws against it.
Go ask a laywer for some advice and see if that makes people care a tad bit more. If the RIAA can sue Verizon for names, so can you. The FBI is TOO HIGH a level to complain. The ISP phone people are too incompetant. A lawyer will get the ball rolling. Try the ones who are paid by the state first, AKA the DA.
LZW is a dictionary compression method. There are fundamentally 2 kinds of lossless compression techniques: dictionary and statistical. With the patent released on one of the first good well known dictionary compression, homebrew developers like myself are free to use that algorithm to develop our own compression techniques with no fear of repurcussion. This is a wonderful thing for people like me who are interested in making a better compression format for images. Now all I have to wait is for the patent on wavelets to go, and I can release my secret compression technique involving LZW and the secret wavelet transform of death!
Muhahahahahahahahaha.
1> Create radically awesome compression scheme.
2> Sell to some megacorp.
3> Profit!
<strongbad>Seriously, I'm so awesome!</strongbad>
The specs mentioned on these PCs include a 1.1GHz CPU, 128MB of games, a 3GB "old slow laptop" HD, and you think that a GeForce 4 will make it good for games??? How many games run on Linux/Lindows? Where can I buy them? If I go into an EB, what games run on Linux?
Being Windows free means that 99.9% of consumer software won't run on it. Having good USB support is critical to using the computer for anything with external devices. If I am Joe 6 Pack and I go to CompUSA and buy a NEW $200 digital camera, then I am screwed if the camera doesn't have Linux drivers. If I get one that's cheaper than that, I am even MORE screwed (how many geeks do you know that buy a < 1MP camera and write drivers for Linux).
I'm not asking about do-it-yourself computer nerds with 10 years of Linux experience, I'm asking about normal people who are intimidated by what they don't understand. Most smart teenagers can wrap their head around Linux, but given the choice between Linux on a REALLY cheap PC and Windows on all their school computers and their friends computers, which do you think they're going to have a more positive experience with?
Also, I'm sure that these PCs come with a CD-ROM, but do they come with CD-RW? How similar to Windows is the OS? When I insert a blank CD ready to burn, what happens? Can I drag and drop to manage my files? Is there a manual? Help? Support? Microsoft Windows has a "Help and Support" section built in to the start menu, and step-by-step help instructions for doing just about anything tricky for a typical PC user. Most Linux software is aimed squarely at the do-it-yourselfer-with-the-CLI.
I'm not trying to dis the system as non-functional. I'm simply saying that for the low end computer user, it's going to be a real struggle to use when anything new comes out, and 99.9% of software that a consumer will want to run only runs on Windows. The other .1% is obscure and hard to find. $89 for Windows XP isn't unreasonable. A $150 pile of hardware will seem like a 5 year old computer when compared to a $400 computer with decent specs in today's market. Imagine what that computer will be able to do in 2-5 years.
My best home PC is an 850MHz Athlon with 512MB RAM, 120GB HD, USB2+Firewire, a GeForce 2 card, and it runs Windows XP Pro/Office XP Pro. The hardware cost about $1000 2 years ago. That's a little more than $1 per day that I've gotten out of it. Imagine that software costs an additional $1000 for Office XP, Windows XP, and Photoshop 7. I've spend about $2 per day on this computer over the last 2 years, and over the course of the 5 year lifetime of the computer, it will be averaged to about $0.50 per day.
The nice thing about this computer is that when Windows XP detects a new device, it either installs the driver from the Microsoft driver cache/horde somewhere, or pops up a window to help you find the driver. In my experience, I only need drivers for new, exotic devices like my $1500 Digital SLR. The other devices like my new USB2/Firewire PCI card and the CF card reader that attaches to it just work. All you see is a little balloon in the corner notify you that Windows found the driver and you can now use your device.
I very rarely need to install the floppy or CD that came with the new hardware, but even if I did I can be confident that the CD works with my Windows computer as long as the CD says Windows (XP) somewhere on it, which all of the CDs that come with my hardware do. Many of these also supports Mac OS. I haven't purchased a single device which comes with any support for Lindows, or Linux, or BSD.
Lindows is just not as big of
Sun Microsystems was a creator of premium datacenter servers, with the scalability and stability that the top dollar bought. Enter Java.
Java was a new technology that bridged the gap between many of Sun's diverse platform of computers. It was a great thing for Sun's customers because it meant that applications could be written across all of their diverse product line.
Enter Microsoft. Java made it possible to write software on the Windows client, too. It was almost as easy as VB. Developers in a middle market between professional and VB flocked to Java, as did colleges. I myself made the jump from VB to Java my Junior year in HS. Microsoft, however, understands its customer base and knows what they are looking to do. Microsoft very quickly integrated Java into Windows in the way that they saw fit to do so, and made their J++ tools perfect for taking advantage of the rich APIs that already existed.
The problem with Sun's Java is that it was free, just like with Netscape. Sun's technology was given away, and the company failed to innovate in the places which make money: Premium servers and support. IBM and Dell and Intel and Microsoft had no problems picking up the slack when Sun attempted to diversify outside of its strengths.
IBM is a very interesting opponent, and I'm going to put the blame on IBM and not Microsoft for Sun's downfall. IBM will readily adopt "cheap" technology, integrate their sales and consultant "services" around it, and sell it to their customers for a markup. IBM has success with this in Open Source software like Linux as well as with open platforms like Java. IBM can SELL Java, whereas Sun can't.
Microsoft researchers suggesting that there is a place for Linux in the future... My goodness. Bill and Steve will be mad.
There is no Open Source DRM. DRM cannot work if it is Open Source. However, it is not a bad thing if you produce say, a home movie, and don't want your neighbor distributing it to the world. With tapes and older non-digital media, there was a quality penalty for copying, which for the most part prevented people from distributing copies of the information. With digital information, this is naturally hard to prevent. OSS thrives on this model of free distribution of information. My friend John, who incidentally works at Microsoft likes to say: "Information wants to be free."
I like to put it slightly differently: Information is free, until I sell it to you.
Scenario #1:
Say I run a small Linux server on my DSL line. I have a friend give me a DNS entry off of his domain, as I have a static IP on my server. I now have a DNS which can receive emails, only that it won't reverse DNS the same because my ISP owns the IP address block. I can't send emails now from my server because nobody reverse authenticates me.
Scenario #2:
Say that I am a student on a university campus, which for some reason won't allow SMTP sending from outside the network as inside the network. This is as it should be, right? But it does allow POP. My computer is on the campus network and configured with whatever mail client it uses. Then suddenly, I'm on spring break, and I bring my laptop home to my families DSL/WiFi network. I can still download my mail, but since I'm off campus network, I can't be authenticated as myself to the mail server. No problem. My ISP lets me send mail with their mail server. Oh wait, new restrictions prevent me from sending this email.
If you think that this second scenario is a joke, I worked as a Help Desk worker at a University which did this, and the University tried to pawn off a mostly broken web interface as the answer to checking email from home on break. Imagine answering the phones a day later, trying to explain to users all day long why they can't send their email. Now multiply that pain by all ISPs across the world. The problem isn't backwards compatability. The problem is forwards compatability. The new servers won't accept you as a sender unless you are now listed in DNS. The old ones will be the only servers accepting any mail...
The real problem here is not actually solved...
The problem is that authentication of the sender of an SMTP email doesn't exist. If mail sending servers authenticated themselves, then this could work without sweeping changes. Making the sender be authenticated by DNS is a bad idea. I can spoof any IP I want to with the right TCP/IP packets. PGP signatures already solve the authentication problem. Why don't we have mail clients/servers sign their messages with a private key corresponding to a public key retrievable from the mail exchanger. Compliant servers will then check when they receive email from any mail exchanger that the origin's mail exchanger has the public key for the message AND that it authenticates that the private key did sign the message.
Any time you use a client compatible with this system, your public key + password would produce your private key to sign your documents and then your identity is validated by your server. Yes, this would basically mean that the Verify SMTP command would be a MUST if you send out signed mail in this fashion. It would mean opt in. Of course, PGP already does this... but take it to the mailserver level, and do it automatically as part of SMTP, and this would be far more effective than breaking SMTP with checks against DNS. SMTP servers already have to store lots of information about their accounts. Why not add the overhead of storing a public/private key pair along with a password to unlock the private key for sending, or do like the POP3 and MD5 hash the password after appended to a unique time/date/random stamp to authenticate.
One nice feature of this protocol is that if you attempt to mass email, you actually commit a small type of pseudo-DOS attack of authentications against your mail server.
There are several good scenarios which depend upon the way the SMTP system works currently that will break as a result of a change like this.
:P
What do we do for the millions and millions of users who currently send mail via older software from their home system, tell them that they are screwed out of sending email? The beauty of SMTP is that it works. Assuming that this change is implemented, it will probably cause millions of users pain, and those users won't put up with it.
Once those users switch to a different email system, say for example, Microsoft Exchange. The damage to SMTP will be complete. Then again, what am I saying... I have stock in M$... Bring it on.
Seriously, though. Filtering is the responsibility of the client, not the server. Why do we need to impose new rules, which are just as easy to fake, rather than working on making the system work better for the user.
And the point which you missed entirely is that it doesn't just benefit Microsoft, it also benefits the non-profit orgs. Microsoft is a company which produces several great products. There are also several great OSS "products" as well. Microsoft giving away software is somehow seen as "evil", at least on