And it's pretty clear that the facts show that Windows provides a lower total cost of ownership than Linux; the number of security vulnerabilities is lower on Windows, and Windows responsiveness on security is better than Linux
I wonder if their TCO figures include rebooting all your servers weekly to install new patches...
Oh, and let me guess... the Linux vulnerability count includes all issues found in an entire distribution, while the Windows count includes only the base OS. I'll bet we'd get a much more accurate picture if they included IIS, SQL Server, Outlook, etc.
I've seen people plug iPods into friends' computers, not thinking, and have their entire library removed (and replaced with their friends). These are the same people that don't read the warning message, but it's happened so often I wonder if the warning is clear enough.
iPods don't let you copy music both directions? Wow. iPods are even more absurd than I thought they were. For the cost of one of these color iPods, you could get a color WiFi-capable PDA and SD card. You wouldn't be able to hold quite as much music, but the massive iPod capacity seems unlikely to be usable if you have to sync everything from one machine at one time and can't just collect tracks from multiple sources as you go.
Or, for a tenth of the cost of one of these new iPods, you could get a CD-based MP3 player. Not as sexy as an iPod, sure, but a whole lot more cost-effective. Plus, the same MP3 CDs will play on your computer or DVD player. No hidden surprises.
It was my understanding that hardware manufacturers already have extremely slim margins (on budget items, anyway; I'm not talking about your GeForce 6800GT). I'd certainly like to see a $100 PC, but I don't think it could currently be built with off-the-shelf components unless it was at a loss.
It would probably be possible to build a substantially cheaper PC by sacrificing modularity--the motherboard would come off the assembly line with a low-power CPU, memory, network controller, and video card soldered on. A couple USB ports would be provided for expansion. (Hmm... this is starting to sound like an Xbox.)
In any event, making hardware involves real raw materials and manufacturing costs, whereas reproducing software has zero incremental cost. Sure there's a lot of R&D up front, but that gets paid back after a year or two when your sales are as big as Microsoft's. Today there's no real reason Microsoft couldn't sell Windows 98 to bargain-basement system builders for $5--that would discourage piracy.
The IBM PCjr had a "tweaked" CGA that supported 16 colors at 160x200, though. Actually, it supported 16 colors at 320x200 if you added additional memory.
The price of the OS has increased by an order of magnitude relative to hardware costs... and the cause of piracy is expensive hardware? Pull your head out, Ballmer.
I was just commenting the other day about how SCO hasn't been in the news much lately. After all, yesterday's interview with Linus Torvalds didn't even mention SCO. That would have been unheard of a year ago.
Just when I thought SCO had finally slinked into irrelevance, Darl's spouting off to the press again. Maybe it's attempted damage control against upcoming summary judgments with IBM.
Apple, which makes the popular iPod portable music player, has insisted on using its own propriety format for songs downloaded from iTunes music store, while rival sites use alternative technology developed by Microsoft.
However, the decisions have caused havoc for consumers - tracks downloaded from iTunes will only play on an iPod while tracks downloaded from rival services such as Napster, My Coke Music and MSN will not.
Why is the recording industry overlooking the obvious solution? Dont' use DRM at all!
Seriously. No form of DRM that allows you to listen to the music will prevent it from being digitized. Everything is already available in unencumbered formats through file sharing networks.
Get it free and unencumbered online, or pay to get an inferior product that you can only listen to on a handful of platforms, and that can disappear at will. And they're wondering why people still trade files online?
All DRM does is punish the honest users. I'd buy music online if it wasn't DRMed.
IBM. Why? Probably because IBM has so many patents up the wazoo that to sue it for patent infringement will almost certainly result in a countersuit for twice as much for twice as many patents.
Don't you think that at least one of the 34 companies Honeywell is suing will decide to do just that?
In any event, it's nice to see that Honeywell is doing its part to ensure LCDs don't become too cheap, because then I won't want to rush out and buy one.
I'm not really opposed - it's enough to stop most casual (ab)users, and makes it a clear and decided act to infringe if you really want to save the image.
Infringe? See, that's what I don't like. It's okay for me to look at a picture on my computer screen, but now it's not okay for me to save or print it. In other words, there is no fair use--whatever isn't specifically allowed is forbidden.
This "protection" scheme is, of course, largely ineffectual. Will publishers complain and call for "stronger" measures? How long before browsers have to remove the "View Source" option and encrypt the contents of the Internet cache under DMCA threats?
Well, you can browse a few pages, learn more about the topics explored by the book, buy it, or commit a selection to memory. To further protect your book content, printing and image copying functions are disabled on all Google Print content pages.(emphasis added)
Google for Mastering Digital Photography and you'll see a Google Print link up front. The page is shown as a graphic, with search hits highlighted in yellow. Google somehow (probably a though a CSS hack) manages to substitute a 1x1 white pixel.GIF file for the page if you try to print it or copy its location. They also disable the browser's context menu on the entire page (not just over the image), although Mozilla can deny it the right to do that (Prefs | Advanced | Scripts & Plugins).
I'm not sure I like this. This is fairly innocuous (they can't stop a screen capture), but it still bothers me a bit that a company whose motto is "Do No Evil" is dabbling in DRM...
Now they can prove/disprove our trip to the moon, just point them at the moon, and look for the lunar rover, landing pad, etc.
Anyone who doesn't believe we went to the moon won't be convinced by some grainy pictures of grayish blobs. It's too easy to fake photographs.
That said, probably the easiest-to-find evidence of the lunar missions would be the wreckage of the Saturn V third stages they crashed into the moon to create artificial moonquakes. Those probably left pretty big craters.
If you don't like what the legal system is encouraging, then lobby against software patents. Support the EFF, which is lobbying against software patents. Don't blame a company which is just trying to turn an honest buck (well, billion bucks).
Honest?
I thought honest money was earned by real work, not legalized predation. Kodak is digging their own grave as far as I'm concerned.
In short, Creative pulled out a patent they claim covers Carmack's Reverse shadow rendering algorithm, and blackmailed Id Software into supporting Creative EAX in future versions of the Doom 3 engine.
What's more, the technique was actually first published by NVIDIA... at a conference hosted at Creative Labs.
And Creative's side of the story is utter bollocks. It goes something like "Id was thumbing through some patents and discovered, 'Wow! Creative Labs holds a patent on our shadowing algorithm! We'd better contact Creative and license it!' But we, in our benevolence, don't want to charge them money for the use of our patent, so we'll kindly ask them to incorporate our 3D sound technology in the Doom 3 engine."
Years ago, you needed a Creative Labs sound card if you wanted to play games. Third-party clones were just horrible. But these days, unless you're an audiophile, integrated sound solutions on new motherboards are 100% satisfactory. So Creative, in an effort to remain relevant, basically wants to be able to say that new and future games need an Audigy in order to be fully experienced. Hence pressuring Id into supporting EAX. Carmack was against the idea from the beginning, since he wants the sound to be identical on any machine. But future Id titles will have to have special support for Creative's glorified reverb engine.
I am a software developer and amateur photography enthusiast, and I have recently learned about Kodak's patent infringement suit against Sun Microsystems. It is a shame that companies with failing business models consistently try to earn money through litigation rather than production and innovation. I realize that the proliferation of digital photography has caused hardship for the Eastman Kodak Company, but the use of this vague and overbroad patent against the software industry is unconscionable. As a direct result of this litigation, I will never again purchase another Kodak product, and I will encourage my family and colleagues to do the same. Malicious litigation is not an acceptable substitute for honest business.
One pro for the Sempron is that it supports Cool'nQuiet, but I haven't been able to find a 2.4 patch that will support Cool'nQuiet for the Sempron yet.
Only the Socket 754 Sempron supports Cool'n'Quiet. The Socket-A Semprons are nothing more than rebadged Athlon XPs using the Thoroughbred or Thorton core, and with an inflated performance rating designed to line up with clock speeds on the Celeron D instead of the Pentium 4.
Slashdot Mirror
I wonder if their TCO figures include rebooting all your servers weekly to install new patches...
Oh, and let me guess... the Linux vulnerability count includes all issues found in an entire distribution, while the Windows count includes only the base OS. I'll bet we'd get a much more accurate picture if they included IIS, SQL Server, Outlook, etc.
I've seen people plug iPods into friends' computers, not thinking, and have their entire library removed (and replaced with their friends). These are the same people that don't read the warning message, but it's happened so often I wonder if the warning is clear enough.
iPods don't let you copy music both directions? Wow. iPods are even more absurd than I thought they were. For the cost of one of these color iPods, you could get a color WiFi-capable PDA and SD card. You wouldn't be able to hold quite as much music, but the massive iPod capacity seems unlikely to be usable if you have to sync everything from one machine at one time and can't just collect tracks from multiple sources as you go.
Or, for a tenth of the cost of one of these new iPods, you could get a CD-based MP3 player. Not as sexy as an iPod, sure, but a whole lot more cost-effective. Plus, the same MP3 CDs will play on your computer or DVD player. No hidden surprises.
I've never understood the allure of the iPod...
The solution is to make non-DRM-encrusted backup copies of your music. Here's a program that will do that:
http://hymn-project.org/
Get it now, before Apple shuts it down with the DMCA...
It was my understanding that hardware manufacturers already have extremely slim margins (on budget items, anyway; I'm not talking about your GeForce 6800GT). I'd certainly like to see a $100 PC, but I don't think it could currently be built with off-the-shelf components unless it was at a loss.
It would probably be possible to build a substantially cheaper PC by sacrificing modularity--the motherboard would come off the assembly line with a low-power CPU, memory, network controller, and video card soldered on. A couple USB ports would be provided for expansion. (Hmm... this is starting to sound like an Xbox.)
In any event, making hardware involves real raw materials and manufacturing costs, whereas reproducing software has zero incremental cost. Sure there's a lot of R&D up front, but that gets paid back after a year or two when your sales are as big as Microsoft's. Today there's no real reason Microsoft couldn't sell Windows 98 to bargain-basement system builders for $5--that would discourage piracy.
There are photos of a much cooler lego-box computer here.
And SVGA is 800x600, not 1600x1200.
The IBM PCjr had a "tweaked" CGA that supported 16 colors at 160x200, though. Actually, it supported 16 colors at 320x200 if you added additional memory.
20 years ago:
Hardware:
5MHz CPU
512KB RAM
20MB HDD
14" monochrome CRT
Total price: $3000
Software:
MS-DOS: $60
Operating system = 2% of total cost
Today:
Hardware:
2.4GHz Celeron
256MB RAM
40GB HDD
15" SVGA LCD monitor
Total cost: $500
Software:
Windows XP Home OEM: $100
Operating system = 20% of system cost
The price of the OS has increased by an order of magnitude relative to hardware costs... and the cause of piracy is expensive hardware? Pull your head out, Ballmer.
I was just commenting the other day about how SCO hasn't been in the news much lately. After all, yesterday's interview with Linus Torvalds didn't even mention SCO. That would have been unheard of a year ago.
Just when I thought SCO had finally slinked into irrelevance, Darl's spouting off to the press again. Maybe it's attempted damage control against upcoming summary judgments with IBM.
But did you buy copy protected VHS tapes or DRMed DVDs?
If so you're part of the reason the labels believe that DRM works!
How well has CD copy protection been received? Does it actually increase sales, or just break Macintoshes? Why do you think Sony is scrapping copy protected CDs?
That normally means cold as hell...
Eh? I didn't think it was particularly cold there. Has SCO won their litigation or something?
Why is the recording industry overlooking the obvious solution? Dont' use DRM at all!
Seriously. No form of DRM that allows you to listen to the music will prevent it from being digitized. Everything is already available in unencumbered formats through file sharing networks.
Get it free and unencumbered online, or pay to get an inferior product that you can only listen to on a handful of platforms, and that can disappear at will. And they're wondering why people still trade files online?
All DRM does is punish the honest users. I'd buy music online if it wasn't DRMed.
Raman Spectroscopy
So do I observe the spectrum before adding the little flavor packet to the noodles, or after?
IBM. Why? Probably because IBM has so many patents up the wazoo that to sue it for patent infringement will almost certainly result in a countersuit for twice as much for twice as many patents.
Don't you think that at least one of the 34 companies Honeywell is suing will decide to do just that?
In any event, it's nice to see that Honeywell is doing its part to ensure LCDs don't become too cheap, because then I won't want to rush out and buy one.
I'm not really opposed - it's enough to stop most casual (ab)users, and makes it a clear and decided act to infringe if you really want to save the image.
Infringe? See, that's what I don't like. It's okay for me to look at a picture on my computer screen, but now it's not okay for me to save or print it. In other words, there is no fair use--whatever isn't specifically allowed is forbidden.
This "protection" scheme is, of course, largely ineffectual. Will publishers complain and call for "stronger" measures? How long before browsers have to remove the "View Source" option and encrypt the contents of the Internet cache under DMCA threats?
Google for Mastering Digital Photography and you'll see a Google Print link up front. The page is shown as a graphic, with search hits highlighted in yellow. Google somehow (probably a though a CSS hack) manages to substitute a 1x1 white pixel
I'm not sure I like this. This is fairly innocuous (they can't stop a screen capture), but it still bothers me a bit that a company whose motto is "Do No Evil" is dabbling in DRM...
Now they can prove/disprove our trip to the moon, just point them at the moon, and look for the lunar rover, landing pad, etc.
Anyone who doesn't believe we went to the moon won't be convinced by some grainy pictures of grayish blobs. It's too easy to fake photographs.
That said, probably the easiest-to-find evidence of the lunar missions would be the wreckage of the Saturn V third stages they crashed into the moon to create artificial moonquakes. Those probably left pretty big craters.
This was the second space-reaching flight of SpaceShipOne. I'm sure Gordo knew about the first one.
Actually, it was the third. Mike Melvill piloted SS1 on its first space voyage in June.
If you don't like what the legal system is encouraging, then lobby against software patents. Support the EFF, which is lobbying against software patents. Don't blame a company which is just trying to turn an honest buck (well, billion bucks).
Honest?
I thought honest money was earned by real work, not legalized predation. Kodak is digging their own grave as far as I'm concerned.
PS Why Creative Labs?
Read about it here.
In short, Creative pulled out a patent they claim covers Carmack's Reverse shadow rendering algorithm, and blackmailed Id Software into supporting Creative EAX in future versions of the Doom 3 engine.
What's more, the technique was actually first published by NVIDIA... at a conference hosted at Creative Labs.
And Creative's side of the story is utter bollocks. It goes something like "Id was thumbing through some patents and discovered, 'Wow! Creative Labs holds a patent on our shadowing algorithm! We'd better contact Creative and license it!' But we, in our benevolence, don't want to charge them money for the use of our patent, so we'll kindly ask them to incorporate our 3D sound technology in the Doom 3 engine."
Years ago, you needed a Creative Labs sound card if you wanted to play games. Third-party clones were just horrible. But these days, unless you're an audiophile, integrated sound solutions on new motherboards are 100% satisfactory. So Creative, in an effort to remain relevant, basically wants to be able to say that new and future games need an Audigy in order to be fully experienced. Hence pressuring Id into supporting EAX. Carmack was against the idea from the beginning, since he wants the sound to be identical on any machine. But future Id titles will have to have special support for Creative's glorified reverb engine.
Feel free to use/adapt my letter (in the parent post). Here's where to send your letter:
Eastman Kodak Company
Attn: Corporate Information
343 State Street
Rochester, New York 14650
There are probably other reasons to boycott Kodak besides the fact that they pulled a SCRambus--such as their offshoring.
I am a software developer and amateur photography enthusiast, and I have recently learned about Kodak's patent infringement suit against Sun Microsystems. It is a shame that companies with failing business models consistently try to earn money through litigation rather than production and innovation. I realize that the proliferation of digital photography has caused hardship for the Eastman Kodak Company, but the use of this vague and overbroad patent against the software industry is unconscionable. As a direct result of this litigation, I will never again purchase another Kodak product, and I will encourage my family and colleagues to do the same. Malicious litigation is not an acceptable substitute for honest business.
Who am I missing?
Not quite.
One pro for the Sempron is that it supports Cool'nQuiet, but I haven't been able to find a 2.4 patch that will support Cool'nQuiet for the Sempron yet.
Only the Socket 754 Sempron supports Cool'n'Quiet. The Socket-A Semprons are nothing more than rebadged Athlon XPs using the Thoroughbred or Thorton core, and with an inflated performance rating designed to line up with clock speeds on the Celeron D instead of the Pentium 4.
Yes, and we're also supposed to grumble about how Adobe is going to pull a submarine patent on this format to lock out the GIMP.