Apple and Microsoft are going to have a hard time surviving in the 2010s.
Not Apple. The goals of the new Apple have always been selling the hardware. That won't change, and they can bring out new stuff when they feel the need for it. The software is just the icing on the cake.
For Microsoft, however, it's a real problem. They're selling ONLY cake frosting, and sometimes people decide they want pie or pudding instead. And they can't go into the cake, pie or pudding business because they have all these partners (OEM) already established in those areas and doing so would mean stabbing them in the back.
Whenever they tried taking over industries this way it has happened: gaming consoles, music players, now mobile phones. If they had had a resonating success in those areas at least they would have come out with something, but they haven't. So they just decimated their former partners and destroyed their markets for nothing.
I'm watching them fascinated, to see if they will be so stupid as to cannibalize their last standing market, the PC, and try to stab the OEMs in the back. Because they would SO abandon Windows and move to Linux. The new wave of ARM processors will show the way.
What will stop Microsoft? Apparently, Microsoft itself. I'm amazed to see that it's not so much all the external factors but the mistakes the company does itself that mess things up for it.
Then why are we still paying for copies of classic newspapers and magazines even though they have ads in them? Why am I paying for the TV channels I get on cable even though they come with advertising? Why pay admission to a concert AND see ads to various brands everywhere on the grounds?
I like the idea, but are customer pay-per-item and ads really mutually exclusive? And if there's some kind of revolution in the making, what is it? Are we finally saying 'no' to advertising? Really? Really really?
Exactly there is nothing novel about this. Companies have been setting up deals to get their software installed by OEMs for decades. The only reason this was posted was to try to push an anti-Microsoft spin and nothing else.
Not really. While it's true that companies have payed OEMs to add their software to computers, Internet Explorer stands in a category of its own. For as long as Windows had absolute dominance in the OEM market, for more than a decade, no OEM dared to question IE as the default browser on the machines they were selling.
Is it so easy to forget that Microsoft actively engaged in anti-competitive deals with the OEMs? That there was a time not so long ago when the only stuff you could add to a laptop was stuff that didn't compete with Microsoft's stuff?
We are seeing the end of an era here, and I consider that newsworthy. OEM bundling is one of the last, and strongest, Microsoft holdouts against the competition. The network effect is another and it's also breaking apart. Patent and copyright lawsuits will soon be all they have left.
Granted, there are web apps which would benefit from a push model as opposed to pull. But that main problem here is actually NAT, not the push/pull model of web apps. What they're trying to achieve, basically, has nothing to do with web browser or web apps, it has to do with seamless NAT traversal without having the server maintain a huge number of persistent connections initiated by the client.
Which is an entirely different type of fish and one which is STUPID to expect to solve by adding a server to the browser. That would do NOTHING to pass NAT. What you want is STUN or IPv6.
I love the way TFA says "let's put aside the NAT issue for now" and then goes on beating around the bush.:) NAT isn't just a minor quirk here, it's THE problem. And they're going the wrong way about it.
This is why Other OS is a Good Thing for Sony: it removes the incentive to bypass their security for a lot of people.
It wouldn't remove the incentive. The kind of people who want to tinker with their hardware out of passion would still push the envelope even if the Slim was Linux-friendly. People hack stuff that's completely open as well.
There's a much greater issue here. People buy a piece of hardware end expect to be able to do whatever they want with it, including getting all the guts out and putting them in upside down if they want to. It's a basic, logic, assumption. It's a natural impulse towards creativity.
But the manufacturer comes in with stuff such as the DMCA+DRM and says "No, you can't do that. Yes, you payed for the stuff, but I can still dictate what you can[not] do with it, even in the privacy of your own home."
Why do that? It's all part of a great delusion. Any person with an ounce of logic and some basic technical understanding will tell you that once you give me some software and expect it to run unattended, locally, on a piece of hardware I own, there's no way in hell you can still control it. It can be reversed engineered, hacked to pieces and modified.
But they don't want that. Which is why they're attempting to achieve the impossible in two ways. The first is passing a law (DMCA) which says "you can't do that". Which is just as effective as passing a law denying the gravity pull. The second method is trying to sell you hardware spiked with DRM, which will ask remote permission before doing stuff (and using the DMCA to, again, say you can't pull out or circumvent the DRM bits).
Result: absolutely nil. In spite of DRM, in spite of whatever measures they take, someone will hack the Slim. And in case it is so dependent on remote control that you can't hack it, you gotta ask yourself: do I really want to spend my money on the illusion I own a product which is in fact a complete zombie that someone else controls?
Why does this industry suck so badly? Anyone have any insight?
Windows is a wildly popular OS but unfortunately improperly secured, which combined with the rise of network connectivity and the fact Windows users tend to install things they found "on the net", has combined into the perfect malware platform. It also doesn't help that there are a miriad applications for Windows, with varying levels of quality, many of which re-invent the wheel instead of relying on common libraries, and thus reintroduce the same vulnerabilities over and over.
What to do about it? Why, of course, let's attempt to classify ALL possible pieces of malware out there and attempt to keep track of them AFTER they've entered your PC. 'Cause that makes much more sense than, say, DEP and ASLR, mandatory whitelists of software that is allowed to run, or *gasp* FIXING bad software.
In today's day and age blacklisting is utterly stupid. It may have made sense back in the 80's and 90's when there was much fewer malware, but they have grown exponentially since then.
Right now the antivirus companies are just running a protection scheme and interested in perpetuating the status quo. They don't want malware to go away. Malware is their bread and butter.
Programmers get dozens of ideas while working on whatever it is they're working on. What do you propose to do about it? Short of keeping their brains in a jar, I mean. They will share those ideas, IF they feel motivated and IF they work environment is responsive enough to new ideas. Is yours?
I've worked in many companies who took a bit too much of the "plantation owner" approach towards the programmers, and then wondered why they never contributed ideas or, indeed, why productivity itself suffered. At some point, the programmer tells himself "screw this", starts doing the bare minimum and keeps the ideas to himself.
Also it would be good to remember that an idea, by itself, is nothing. It needs testing, it needs refining. At least half of the ideas that pop-up while programming would prove to be unfeasible in some way, if tested out.
Also, you can't shut the brain down at will. A good programmer is a person whose brain is a finely tuned instrument, who loves his work and who thinks of it in the most odd places and occasions. Furthermore, sources of input are all intertwined. So when a programmer gets an idea, it may happen anytime, anyplace, in response to stimuli that may have come from anywhere, including (but not exclusively) the workplace.
Who's to say what had the defining merit for an idea? It may have been the work he does for you, but then again it may not. If you're deluded into thinking that programming is a 9-5 job and that programmers don't explore other areas of thinking (arts, math, tech, history, philosophy, sports, hobbies) on their own, then you've already fallen into the slave driver rut.
My advice: treat programmers nicely, motivate them to contribute and feel they're doing themselves a service when they bring forth ideas, and count on their professional ethics. But remember that you'll never own all their ideas, and that using a heavy-handed approach will drive them away and STILL not get them to share their ideas.
I'm glad to see I'm not alone in this. I have a very clear perception of the prices these small devices would be worth to me and I think they're all still about a $100 overpriced at the moment.
I would pay up to $100 (preferrably less) for a device that's strictly an ebook reader: up to 500g weight (a bit over 1 pound), 6+ hours of running battery life (AA or ability to plug directly into mains), 6-10in screen (grayscale LCD is fine too, I'm not fussy), SD card slot, ability to choose from several fonts and sizes and tweak the color of text and background, and a simple system that will simply pick the ebooks from the SD card, which I would manage with a card reader. If the device can be plugged in USB and seen as a storage device, bonus. The eBookwise is the only one that comes close (which proves it's perfectly possible), but they have a completely brain-dead scheme for getting ebooks on the device, not to mention extra features which I DON'T want (a modem? WTF).
I would pay up to $200 for a device with certain additional features (a "web tablet"): color LCD touchscreen, SD card slot, on-screen keyboard, music player and audio jack, WiFi and ethernet, web browser, note taker and agenda, plus USB which makes the device double as card reader for the SD card. These are the bare minimum. But since such a device already tends to feature a full-fledged OS, it can probably also take generic applications, which can expand its capabilities. Bonus for such applications, such as book reader, GPS map navigation, simple document processor, image browser. Also bonus for Bluetooth connectivity. Acceptable weight: up to 1.75 lbs or 800 grams.
I would pay up to $300 for a netbook, which is to say a mini-laptop with 8-10in screen, keyboard and perhaps touchpad, SD and CF slots, USB plugs and ability to server as host for card readers, mice, flash sticks, printers, audio out, DVI/VGA out, webcam, Bluetooth, WiFi and ethernet, 4-6 hours of average battery life. Since it's a full OS, I expect to be able to do anything on it, provided the hardware can offer the juice. I think 1 GHz CPU and 2 GB of RAM should be quite adequate for 90% of the usual tasks. HD decoding should be relegated to a dedicated chip or the GPU (yes, I want HD decoding and movie playback). Weight: up to 1.5 kg (3.3 lbs).
I realize producers need to come off the high horse and competition is needed before prices drop, but at the same time I'm NOT going to pay $200+ for a book reader in a million years. $150 is the absolute maximum I would begrudgingly pay, but it would have to be an outstanding device for that $50 premium.
All these makeshift solutions are just temporary workarounds. What we need to do is address the root causes: stop using fossil fuel, reduce heat emissions in everything and so on.
You know what would happen if such a solution would give us 11 extra years? We'd just use those 11 years to put off working on the real thing. Don't imagine for a moment we'd use them to get started on the real problems.
Man is a strange animal in that respect. It loves its vices and won't give them up until it's too late. We love our smoking, big fat cars, wasteful PC's and wasting resources of all kinds, and we'll take instant gratification over long term planning any day. I guess we're all still children, as far as civilization maturity is concerned.
Information is not a physical product. The same rules don't (can't) apply. Illegal distribution of information, in various forms, is seldom "stealing".
Please try to wrap your head around this basic point, because until you do you'll keep producing false analogies like the above.
Unlike a car, it's much easier to slip you a piece of unauthorised information (whatever "unauthorised" means) and make it look like you got it willingly. Making this a criminal act would affect YOU first of all, so in your place I wouldn't be so quick to shout "thief!"
Still not convinced? What if I told you that I hold the copyright to this comment, which you've just downloaded and that you are now a criminal? You've stolen my "intellectual property", haven't you? It has no price sticker on it, but that's no excuse, right?
And suddenly, you're looking at it with different eyes, and probably turning to a completely different set of laws and rules to defend yourself. Which is alright, as long as you learn the difference.
Personally, I think it's absurd to try and make Linux a Windows killer, but it seems like a large majority of the Linux community wants to make that happen.
I disagree, no matter what you mean by "Linux community".
If you mean the developers, they're all after scracthing a personal itch and mostly don't care about the big picture. Even those who get payed by a company to work on Linux stuff, they're actually scratching the company's itch. And companies may have larger visions, but nobody, on the whole, cares about Linux per se, but about how it enables them to attain their personal goals. The entities developing for Linux are all selfish, to various degrees.
If you mean the end-users, they have a very ingrate role in the Linux community. Basically, they're reduced to exactly 3 (three) things: beta testing; lip service; and enablers for the sale of other products. Non-trivial things, granted, but they're not in the position to affect decisions, either.
IMHO this is (one aspect of) the fundamental shift from commercial software to open software that's so hard for many people to wrap their heads around: the tug-of-war between software-maker and consumer is gone. The new system levels the field and entry bar for anybody willing to become a software maker, and relegates non-software makers to a strictly utilitarian middle ground. Anybody can invent a new scratching pole for their itch, profit from it, everybody else can benefit from the new pole and improve it, and those who don't contribute in any way can take it or leave it. It's as close to a meritocracy as you can get.
If it still sounds utopian, consider a simple fact that's still true after all these years: FOSS keeps growing and producing high quality software. Without any central entity or direction, without artificial marketing props. The growth is slow, yes, but it keeps on going and doesn't stop. It's being called "weeds" or "cancer" by those who see their old business models being affected, but it benefits anybody willing to accept the change, so it can't be all that bad.
No dude, it just means some people confuse "right" with "write", because they sound the same. Silly mistake to make, sure, but neither an attempt to overthrow the Berne Convention, nor a signal for the hunt to begin for the skin of their ears.
Speaking of which, are there "WYSIWYG" languages, where there's a clear one-to-one match between written and spoken words?
Now...what Dell would REALLY lose is the bundling. McAfee or Norton (whichever is their default) and whatever flavor of the month toolbar and Roxio and Sonic would be left in the dust and that would end up bringing up the price of the system.
They wouldn't lose anything, quite the contrary. As it is now, if a customer wants Linux he's gonna demand that Dell takes the OS off the machine, with the appropriate rebate. So they don't benefit from bundling anyway.
On the other hand, why not do bundling on Linux? That's one of its main strenghts, the fact that you can customize the desktop much more than you can with Windows. And there is stuff, like the browser, which would be VERY interesting to investors.
Do you really thing there wouldn't be companies lining up to have their products bundled with the default Linux desktop on all Dell products?
Firefox and Opera would likely be very interested in becoming the default browser. Not to mention Google/Yahoo wanting to be the default search engine or default home-page. Think of a Yahoo+Opera combination, or consider Apple backing up Epiphany-webkit.
Adobe will want to have Reader as the default PDF handler.
Google will want to put some of their stuff in there (like Picasa and Google Earth), and will have to compete with Yahoo who will want the same for Flickr, or choose to ship a branded version of Pidgin.
Roxio has a Linux version of their burner.
I wouldn't be very suprised to see a commercial audio/video player, complete with MP3 licensing and official DVD support.
Makers of IDE and programming editors will likely want to push their product.
I dare say people would be very interested in a small and pretty image editor (or image browser), given the constant criticism I get to hear about Gimp.
IBM may wish to bundle Lotus Symphony.
And that's just off the top of my head.
Even if it's a small market, it has a lot of potential, and the commercial customization is ripe for the plucking.
Many of us MySQL users see your Postgres question the same way: why use Postgres?
Because MyISAM, which is what most MySQL users use, is not fucking ACID compliant.
Take a look at the potential problems. Take a look at recommended use cases: "Tables which contain read-only data, throw-away data, data which can be quickly re-generated." Are you bloody kidding me!?
I can't believe my eyes when I read questions (or posts) such as the above. Because it betrays your huge ignorance. Every man and his dog has heard of MySQL and is probably using it, true. But it's also true that most of them have no bloody idea of what ACID is or why it's desirable, or that MySQL with its MyISAM tables goes completely happy-go-lucky on the whole concept. These are the same people who probably don't bother using foreign keys, or have never even heard of transactions, or can't think why they'd need them.
Sure, MySQL offers InnoDB, which is supposed to rectify those issues. But how does it go about it, may I ask? Why, take a looksy. It's an entire bloody SECTION of the manual, which goes to great lengths to explain all kinds of issues and exceptions to the rules and whatnot. Summary: "It locks rows like this, except if it's a full moon then you have to blink your left eye every five seconds, and if you're doing a particular SELECT you need to stand on one leg, except on Fridays when it's the right leg."
Now compare with the Postgres manual page describing their ACID implementation. It's a couple of pages, keeping things clear and simple, so that anybody can understand them.
Not to forget that if you want InnoDB you give up full text search capabilities. And you ask why we should use Postgres? Really?
MySQL has lowered the bar for complexity of use. But in doing so it has facilitated DB access to a whole bunch of people who don't have any idea what they're doing, or don't really care about data integrity. It's fast and it works most of the time so it's alright, yes? Yes, granted, nobody will care much if your personal blog goes tits up because of MySQL. But I expect people will care if a database in which data actually counts for something has problems. And in such cases I expect people will want a real database.
Not necessarily. I think the media brainwash has taken effect to *some* degree, if people are starting to think like this. There are still countries where the act of downloading ie. obtaining material in breach of copyright, is not criminalized in any way. It is permitted, since it is recognized that doing otherwise would be STUPID, because otherwise I could offer the lot of you a link to something that breaks copyright (a picture taken from a another site and posted somewhere) and you'd all be breaking the law, wouldn't you.
Even more, in some places people are also allowed by law to share any materials (intellectual products) with close friends and family.
Basically, it is the act of distributing (uploading) that is criminalized, and it is the ones who upload who are guilty under such laws. If you get an illegal copy, even if you know it's illegal and you actively search for it, you're not guilty, whoever gave it to you is. So the above should read "sure you break the law when you upload".
I'm not very familiar with the US law, but I thought it once had something called "fair use".
It is a little early but it is looking eerily like the beginning of pandemic spread (late season, high mortality rate among generally healthy, H1N1). It may not be much, but the easiest, safest, cheapest method of dealing with it is rapid isolation. Like closing borders.
Realistically (and cinically) the best hope for survival humanity has in case of a pandemic is if the virus kills quickly, thus limiting its own spread. Viruses tipically survive only 2 hours out in the open, but live as long as the host does, inside it. Humans moving around is THE number one problem that will either curb or facilitate the spread.
I see to recall the netbook remix release was going to be released a few days after the desktop version. In which case, what you found is some sort of RC at best.
You know what? Wake me up when the antivirus and generally the anti-malware industry goes out of business. THEN we'll know for sure we got a safe Windows OS.
In the meantime, all Microsoft's claims are just more marketing bullshit to me.
That depends. Locking people in with the likes of DRM is one way to profit from hardware. One that won't be easy to make people swallow.
There are others. Consider the huge variety of hardware types that is in need of an OS. Because it's cheaper to use a generic CPU+RAM+storage solution and slap a customized OS on top then to customize dedicated hardware chips.
What are the manufacturers going to use for an OS? Windows is not flexible enough, plus anybody who deals with Microsoft ends up regretting it more or less. Mac OS X is tightly controlled as to what hardware it ends up on. Linux is free, feature rich, extremely flexible and the licensing ensures there is a steady stream of improvements added which can't be hidden or taken away later.
Sure, so it requires that you give up the old ways of treating software like potatoes. I think the potential benefits may still prevail.
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Not Apple. The goals of the new Apple have always been selling the hardware. That won't change, and they can bring out new stuff when they feel the need for it. The software is just the icing on the cake.
For Microsoft, however, it's a real problem. They're selling ONLY cake frosting, and sometimes people decide they want pie or pudding instead. And they can't go into the cake, pie or pudding business because they have all these partners (OEM) already established in those areas and doing so would mean stabbing them in the back.
Whenever they tried taking over industries this way it has happened: gaming consoles, music players, now mobile phones. If they had had a resonating success in those areas at least they would have come out with something, but they haven't. So they just decimated their former partners and destroyed their markets for nothing.
I'm watching them fascinated, to see if they will be so stupid as to cannibalize their last standing market, the PC, and try to stab the OEMs in the back. Because they would SO abandon Windows and move to Linux. The new wave of ARM processors will show the way.
What will stop Microsoft? Apparently, Microsoft itself. I'm amazed to see that it's not so much all the external factors but the mistakes the company does itself that mess things up for it.
Then why are we still paying for copies of classic newspapers and magazines even though they have ads in them? Why am I paying for the TV channels I get on cable even though they come with advertising? Why pay admission to a concert AND see ads to various brands everywhere on the grounds?
I like the idea, but are customer pay-per-item and ads really mutually exclusive? And if there's some kind of revolution in the making, what is it? Are we finally saying 'no' to advertising? Really? Really really?
Not really. While it's true that companies have payed OEMs to add their software to computers, Internet Explorer stands in a category of its own. For as long as Windows had absolute dominance in the OEM market, for more than a decade, no OEM dared to question IE as the default browser on the machines they were selling.
Is it so easy to forget that Microsoft actively engaged in anti-competitive deals with the OEMs? That there was a time not so long ago when the only stuff you could add to a laptop was stuff that didn't compete with Microsoft's stuff?
We are seeing the end of an era here, and I consider that newsworthy. OEM bundling is one of the last, and strongest, Microsoft holdouts against the competition. The network effect is another and it's also breaking apart. Patent and copyright lawsuits will soon be all they have left.
TFA is completely misguided.
Granted, there are web apps which would benefit from a push model as opposed to pull. But that main problem here is actually NAT, not the push/pull model of web apps. What they're trying to achieve, basically, has nothing to do with web browser or web apps, it has to do with seamless NAT traversal without having the server maintain a huge number of persistent connections initiated by the client.
Which is an entirely different type of fish and one which is STUPID to expect to solve by adding a server to the browser. That would do NOTHING to pass NAT. What you want is STUN or IPv6.
I love the way TFA says "let's put aside the NAT issue for now" and then goes on beating around the bush. :) NAT isn't just a minor quirk here, it's THE problem. And they're going the wrong way about it.
It wouldn't remove the incentive. The kind of people who want to tinker with their hardware out of passion would still push the envelope even if the Slim was Linux-friendly. People hack stuff that's completely open as well.
There's a much greater issue here. People buy a piece of hardware end expect to be able to do whatever they want with it, including getting all the guts out and putting them in upside down if they want to. It's a basic, logic, assumption. It's a natural impulse towards creativity.
But the manufacturer comes in with stuff such as the DMCA+DRM and says "No, you can't do that. Yes, you payed for the stuff, but I can still dictate what you can[not] do with it, even in the privacy of your own home."
Why do that? It's all part of a great delusion. Any person with an ounce of logic and some basic technical understanding will tell you that once you give me some software and expect it to run unattended, locally, on a piece of hardware I own, there's no way in hell you can still control it. It can be reversed engineered, hacked to pieces and modified.
But they don't want that. Which is why they're attempting to achieve the impossible in two ways. The first is passing a law (DMCA) which says "you can't do that". Which is just as effective as passing a law denying the gravity pull. The second method is trying to sell you hardware spiked with DRM, which will ask remote permission before doing stuff (and using the DMCA to, again, say you can't pull out or circumvent the DRM bits).
Result: absolutely nil. In spite of DRM, in spite of whatever measures they take, someone will hack the Slim. And in case it is so dependent on remote control that you can't hack it, you gotta ask yourself: do I really want to spend my money on the illusion I own a product which is in fact a complete zombie that someone else controls?
Pfft, why nukes when we have stuff like the Large Hadron Collider. An elegant weapon, for a more civilized age.
Windows is a wildly popular OS but unfortunately improperly secured, which combined with the rise of network connectivity and the fact Windows users tend to install things they found "on the net", has combined into the perfect malware platform. It also doesn't help that there are a miriad applications for Windows, with varying levels of quality, many of which re-invent the wheel instead of relying on common libraries, and thus reintroduce the same vulnerabilities over and over.
What to do about it? Why, of course, let's attempt to classify ALL possible pieces of malware out there and attempt to keep track of them AFTER they've entered your PC. 'Cause that makes much more sense than, say, DEP and ASLR, mandatory whitelists of software that is allowed to run, or *gasp* FIXING bad software.
In today's day and age blacklisting is utterly stupid. It may have made sense back in the 80's and 90's when there was much fewer malware, but they have grown exponentially since then.
Right now the antivirus companies are just running a protection scheme and interested in perpetuating the status quo. They don't want malware to go away. Malware is their bread and butter.
It's not realistic, that's all.
Programmers get dozens of ideas while working on whatever it is they're working on. What do you propose to do about it? Short of keeping their brains in a jar, I mean. They will share those ideas, IF they feel motivated and IF they work environment is responsive enough to new ideas. Is yours?
I've worked in many companies who took a bit too much of the "plantation owner" approach towards the programmers, and then wondered why they never contributed ideas or, indeed, why productivity itself suffered. At some point, the programmer tells himself "screw this", starts doing the bare minimum and keeps the ideas to himself.
Also it would be good to remember that an idea, by itself, is nothing. It needs testing, it needs refining. At least half of the ideas that pop-up while programming would prove to be unfeasible in some way, if tested out.
Also, you can't shut the brain down at will. A good programmer is a person whose brain is a finely tuned instrument, who loves his work and who thinks of it in the most odd places and occasions. Furthermore, sources of input are all intertwined. So when a programmer gets an idea, it may happen anytime, anyplace, in response to stimuli that may have come from anywhere, including (but not exclusively) the workplace.
Who's to say what had the defining merit for an idea? It may have been the work he does for you, but then again it may not. If you're deluded into thinking that programming is a 9-5 job and that programmers don't explore other areas of thinking (arts, math, tech, history, philosophy, sports, hobbies) on their own, then you've already fallen into the slave driver rut.
My advice: treat programmers nicely, motivate them to contribute and feel they're doing themselves a service when they bring forth ideas, and count on their professional ethics. But remember that you'll never own all their ideas, and that using a heavy-handed approach will drive them away and STILL not get them to share their ideas.
I'm glad to see I'm not alone in this. I have a very clear perception of the prices these small devices would be worth to me and I think they're all still about a $100 overpriced at the moment.
I realize producers need to come off the high horse and competition is needed before prices drop, but at the same time I'm NOT going to pay $200+ for a book reader in a million years. $150 is the absolute maximum I would begrudgingly pay, but it would have to be an outstanding device for that $50 premium.
All these makeshift solutions are just temporary workarounds. What we need to do is address the root causes: stop using fossil fuel, reduce heat emissions in everything and so on.
You know what would happen if such a solution would give us 11 extra years? We'd just use those 11 years to put off working on the real thing. Don't imagine for a moment we'd use them to get started on the real problems.
Man is a strange animal in that respect. It loves its vices and won't give them up until it's too late. We love our smoking, big fat cars, wasteful PC's and wasting resources of all kinds, and we'll take instant gratification over long term planning any day. I guess we're all still children, as far as civilization maturity is concerned.
Of course you're not. If anybody is, it's UK, followed closely by the 52nd (Australia).
Information is not a physical product. The same rules don't (can't) apply. Illegal distribution of information, in various forms, is seldom "stealing".
Please try to wrap your head around this basic point, because until you do you'll keep producing false analogies like the above.
Unlike a car, it's much easier to slip you a piece of unauthorised information (whatever "unauthorised" means) and make it look like you got it willingly. Making this a criminal act would affect YOU first of all, so in your place I wouldn't be so quick to shout "thief!"
Still not convinced? What if I told you that I hold the copyright to this comment, which you've just downloaded and that you are now a criminal? You've stolen my "intellectual property", haven't you? It has no price sticker on it, but that's no excuse, right?
And suddenly, you're looking at it with different eyes, and probably turning to a completely different set of laws and rules to defend yourself. Which is alright, as long as you learn the difference.
I disagree, no matter what you mean by "Linux community".
If you mean the developers, they're all after scracthing a personal itch and mostly don't care about the big picture. Even those who get payed by a company to work on Linux stuff, they're actually scratching the company's itch. And companies may have larger visions, but nobody, on the whole, cares about Linux per se, but about how it enables them to attain their personal goals. The entities developing for Linux are all selfish, to various degrees.
If you mean the end-users, they have a very ingrate role in the Linux community. Basically, they're reduced to exactly 3 (three) things: beta testing; lip service; and enablers for the sale of other products. Non-trivial things, granted, but they're not in the position to affect decisions, either.
IMHO this is (one aspect of) the fundamental shift from commercial software to open software that's so hard for many people to wrap their heads around: the tug-of-war between software-maker and consumer is gone. The new system levels the field and entry bar for anybody willing to become a software maker, and relegates non-software makers to a strictly utilitarian middle ground. Anybody can invent a new scratching pole for their itch, profit from it, everybody else can benefit from the new pole and improve it, and those who don't contribute in any way can take it or leave it. It's as close to a meritocracy as you can get.
If it still sounds utopian, consider a simple fact that's still true after all these years: FOSS keeps growing and producing high quality software. Without any central entity or direction, without artificial marketing props. The growth is slow, yes, but it keeps on going and doesn't stop. It's being called "weeds" or "cancer" by those who see their old business models being affected, but it benefits anybody willing to accept the change, so it can't be all that bad.
No dude, it just means some people confuse "right" with "write", because they sound the same. Silly mistake to make, sure, but neither an attempt to overthrow the Berne Convention, nor a signal for the hunt to begin for the skin of their ears.
Speaking of which, are there "WYSIWYG" languages, where there's a clear one-to-one match between written and spoken words?
Heh. Terminator meets Back to the Future 2. Now that would be a fun movie.
"Pedal faster, T-99, we need to get this train up to speed AND lose T-1000".
They wouldn't lose anything, quite the contrary. As it is now, if a customer wants Linux he's gonna demand that Dell takes the OS off the machine, with the appropriate rebate. So they don't benefit from bundling anyway.
On the other hand, why not do bundling on Linux? That's one of its main strenghts, the fact that you can customize the desktop much more than you can with Windows. And there is stuff, like the browser, which would be VERY interesting to investors.
Do you really thing there wouldn't be companies lining up to have their products bundled with the default Linux desktop on all Dell products?
And that's just off the top of my head.
Even if it's a small market, it has a lot of potential, and the commercial customization is ripe for the plucking.
Because MyISAM, which is what most MySQL users use, is not fucking ACID compliant.
Take a look at the potential problems. Take a look at recommended use cases: "Tables which contain read-only data, throw-away data, data which can be quickly re-generated." Are you bloody kidding me!?
I can't believe my eyes when I read questions (or posts) such as the above. Because it betrays your huge ignorance. Every man and his dog has heard of MySQL and is probably using it, true. But it's also true that most of them have no bloody idea of what ACID is or why it's desirable, or that MySQL with its MyISAM tables goes completely happy-go-lucky on the whole concept. These are the same people who probably don't bother using foreign keys, or have never even heard of transactions, or can't think why they'd need them.
Sure, MySQL offers InnoDB, which is supposed to rectify those issues. But how does it go about it, may I ask? Why, take a looksy. It's an entire bloody SECTION of the manual, which goes to great lengths to explain all kinds of issues and exceptions to the rules and whatnot. Summary: "It locks rows like this, except if it's a full moon then you have to blink your left eye every five seconds, and if you're doing a particular SELECT you need to stand on one leg, except on Fridays when it's the right leg."
Now compare with the Postgres manual page describing their ACID implementation. It's a couple of pages, keeping things clear and simple, so that anybody can understand them.
Not to forget that if you want InnoDB you give up full text search capabilities. And you ask why we should use Postgres? Really?
MySQL has lowered the bar for complexity of use. But in doing so it has facilitated DB access to a whole bunch of people who don't have any idea what they're doing, or don't really care about data integrity. It's fast and it works most of the time so it's alright, yes? Yes, granted, nobody will care much if your personal blog goes tits up because of MySQL. But I expect people will care if a database in which data actually counts for something has problems. And in such cases I expect people will want a real database.
Not necessarily. I think the media brainwash has taken effect to *some* degree, if people are starting to think like this. There are still countries where the act of downloading ie. obtaining material in breach of copyright, is not criminalized in any way. It is permitted, since it is recognized that doing otherwise would be STUPID, because otherwise I could offer the lot of you a link to something that breaks copyright (a picture taken from a another site and posted somewhere) and you'd all be breaking the law, wouldn't you.
Even more, in some places people are also allowed by law to share any materials (intellectual products) with close friends and family.
Basically, it is the act of distributing (uploading) that is criminalized, and it is the ones who upload who are guilty under such laws. If you get an illegal copy, even if you know it's illegal and you actively search for it, you're not guilty, whoever gave it to you is. So the above should read "sure you break the law when you upload".
I'm not very familiar with the US law, but I thought it once had something called "fair use".
You're most likely joking, but just to be safe: the swine flu is not transmitted by pork (unlike the bird flu which was transmitted by chicken meat).
Realistically (and cinically) the best hope for survival humanity has in case of a pandemic is if the virus kills quickly, thus limiting its own spread. Viruses tipically survive only 2 hours out in the open, but live as long as the host does, inside it. Humans moving around is THE number one problem that will either curb or facilitate the spread.
Ah, but think about the versatile prayers you can achieve with lambda functions.
I see to recall the netbook remix release was going to be released a few days after the desktop version. In which case, what you found is some sort of RC at best.
I think that's being prepared for the next release.
You know what? Wake me up when the antivirus and generally the anti-malware industry goes out of business. THEN we'll know for sure we got a safe Windows OS.
In the meantime, all Microsoft's claims are just more marketing bullshit to me.
That depends. Locking people in with the likes of DRM is one way to profit from hardware. One that won't be easy to make people swallow.
There are others. Consider the huge variety of hardware types that is in need of an OS. Because it's cheaper to use a generic CPU+RAM+storage solution and slap a customized OS on top then to customize dedicated hardware chips.
What are the manufacturers going to use for an OS? Windows is not flexible enough, plus anybody who deals with Microsoft ends up regretting it more or less. Mac OS X is tightly controlled as to what hardware it ends up on. Linux is free, feature rich, extremely flexible and the licensing ensures there is a steady stream of improvements added which can't be hidden or taken away later.
Sure, so it requires that you give up the old ways of treating software like potatoes. I think the potential benefits may still prevail.