I don't see how it can be verified to be authentic. How could a subpoena guarantee results? Couldn't the parties involved just claim that messages are not archived?
Yeah, I would love for this to be the "smoking gun", but that would be too easy.
On the other hand, aren't these types of expenditures under scrutiny for tax purposes? Does it count for anything that Microsoft is [supposedly] being watched by the DoJ? $86 million may be pocket change for Microsoft, but still, is there any way to verify that amount was given to the recipient in question? I would think so, because the alternative is that a corporation could move around multiple millions without any paper trail. And that is bad because that is profit that could disappear (and therefore not be subject to tax).
I don't see too many people saying that Microsoft's EULA is unenforceable, because it clearly is.
What?
There are some parts of the MS EULA that seem perfectly fine to me, but some of their products... Well, there's no way it would be legal. I'm primarly thinking the clause that dictates the operating system cannot be separated from the PC. An installed operating system is not embedded software, so the EULA clearly violates fair use rights under current copyright law.
Intel can afford the millions to sink into Itanic because they do things like release filler products in one product line while perfecting the next. It's a common practice: Win98SE/XP Reloaded for example. Apparently you folks are telling me that the 3000+/400 and 3200+/400 was the filler chip.
Are you going to try and tell me that the P4 is cheaper than an Athlon64 3000+ system?? Let's see: P4 3GHz upgrades to... 3.4GHz max.
Well, people are going to have things like P4 2.4 or 2.66 machines. I didn't realize there was a 3.4GHz ceiling. Why would there be?
Oh yeah, duh. Well, he got his friends to gang up on me. Yeah, that's it!
Re: big cache, big expense. Not necessarily. Both Intel and AMD are producing chips with 1MB L2 cache. They're quite affordable at around $200. Certainly a jump up from no L2 cache on-chip.
Okay, you must have been the guy that moderated me as a troll (lol). Sorry, didn't mean to push your buttons.
The point that I think some of you folks might have skipped over is the upgrade path. This knocks about $150 (average) off the price of the Intel upgrade path, because you can move to their faster P4 CPUs without having to change socket types. The new Prescott CPUs don't require a mainboard with a new socket (assuming your Intel-compatible board is fairly recent). Think about that: If I want to go from my Athlon XP to an Athlon 64, I have to spend another $150 and tear apart my machine. To the average consumer, this means buying a whole new PC. If I had got a socket 478 board, I would just buy the next fastest Intel chip (or whichever was the best balance or price and performance).
A new Athlon 64 may be comparable to last year's P4 chips, but the newest Intel chips with larger on-chip cache are clearly out in front of anything AMD has to offer. I *am* talking about the most expensive chips, but the current price is not relevant, because my whole point was thinking about future upgrades.
I'm not an Intel marketing drone, I've provided benchmarks to back up what I said, and I think offered some pretty clear reasoning in the process. Come on guys, don't label me a troublemaker. I'm an AMD guy, not an Intel guy. I just don't want to see AMD fail, because that's where I've put my money (I've owned 6 machines with AMD processors so far, currently three of those are in use).
Just what I thought: AMD excels when the benchmarks include only moving around chunks of memory. Anything that involves more calculation and Intel has the edge, because their processor cores are running at almost 50 per cent faster. Nice to see AMD ahead of the game with the northbridge-on-die design. Don't worry, Intel will match that soon, since they've already surpassed/matched AMD with regard to FSB speed, on-chip cache and soon 64 bit extensions (all while keeping a healthy lead in clock speed).
No, honestly. SCO isn't currently producing anything, and has little to no prospects for growing their revenue and payroll. Auto Zone, on the other hand, is a thriving nation-wide retail auto parts chain that employs lots of people. Certainly AZ is in a better position to create Bush-loving fat cats.
I'm an AMD lover, but it's my opinion that AMD is making a *huge* mistake with their desktop market. They only produced two marginal FSB400 processors with the "32-bit" Barton core, and then focused all their attention on the Athlon 64s. People who've made a choice in the past year to go with an AMD-compatible FSB400 mainboard are getting the shaft, and AMD is unwittingly forcing them to move to Intel during their next upgrade. Currently Intel's latest 3.0+ GHz offerings are spanking Athlon 64s in benchmarks with 32 bit applications. When users decide to do the next upgrade, they're going to say "hey, I have to replace my mainboard anyway", and they're going to go to Intel because it has more upgrade possibilities, is cheaper than the Athlon 64 for the same level of computing power, and currently performs better.
So this is more of a plea for AMD to extend the Athlon "32" line a bit further. Please AMD, don't prematurely kill off 32-bit Athlon chip development!
I wouldn't want Bush to be re-elected even if he agreed to send me his twin daughters, a Guinness truck, Natalie Portman and a truckload of grits!
Gee, hmmm, I don't know. That's a tough bargain to beat, all for just a single vote. Would that truck be fully stocked, or are we talking about just the truck?
The basis for SCO's belief is the precision and efficiency with which the migration to Linux occurred, which suggests the use of shared libraries to run legacy applications on Linux.
So? They paid for the original licenses, they can do anything the want with the libraries except re-sell them or reverse engineer them with an intent to reveal the information for profit. SCO would only have a case if AZ was paying a maintenance license, and let it expire.
You gotta be kidding me! This isn't an intellectual property issue, it's a EULA-violation issue. I'd be laughing my ass off if it wasn't for the fact that I'm seriously pissed off about Auto Zone (long time customer).
Bush and crew, if you want re-election, look here: Barratry is bad for business! Tell Ashcroft to stop worrying about abortion doctors and start protecting American jobs and investors!
I'd be worried about the companies that do pay. There are a lot of decoys, meta tag garbage etc., out there that exist solely to game the system, and bring in as much traffic as possible to junk domains. This is done without the consent or control of the search engine providers. I haven't seen Yahoo's rates, but those who mistakenly believe they can use the Internet as their own big billboard are in for a surprise; It isn't categorized like a phone book, where the publisher has a reasonably accurate assumption of how the reader will go about finding information. It's basically a free-for-all. Traditional advertising in many regions may be more work (and more costly), but it'll probably bring in more consistent results than a search engine.
If Yahoo is successfully picks up a lot of paying advertisers, they will become one of those aforementioned junk domains that you get redircted to. You know, the ones with about a million advertising links on one page, hawking every conceivable type of product? If that happens, why would web users even bother going to Yahoo?
You have absolutely no idea how ridiculous that sounds. The actual amount of spectrum dedicated to ham radio is so tiny, it makes no sense to go out of one's way to crush it. Anyway, eliminating amateur bands isn't going to solve the interference issues with BPL. There will still be lots of amplified two-way set-ups and repeaters in use by municipal organizations or private companies.
As much as I'd like to believe that the FCC are stoic defenders of the airwaves, if by some odd chance this risky scheme actually works, you'll find support for Hams weak at best. Look at how fast we lost that little piece of FM when they were fishing for wireless phone bandwidth.
My take on it is this.. We shouldn't make a blanket statement about all IP laws. They initially do what they're supposed to: Give the creator control over his property in order to recoup costs of creation. It's also good to let the creator make a profit as well. Pharmaceuticals have a high research and development cost, especially considering the time it takes for FDA approval in the US. Entirely removing IP protections from the area would likely make the industry not want to invest their time.
I feel that tuning the amount of IP protection for different types of industries is helpful for business. Long-term or indefinite-term copyright just doesn't make sense, especially when the original creator is long gone, or the current owner isn't the original creator. Fifty years should really be the maximum, or should be the maximum if the property has been sold by the original owner (thinking of printed materials here). There are some other issues that need to be addressed with the sale of specific types of rights. One example that comes to mind is that of the works of Philip K. Dick. Hollywood basically gave him the "we'll call you later" line while buying movie rights at bargain-basement prices. Now that he is deceased, we've got three big-budget screen adaptations of his work that raked in the dough. There's also the issue of studios which review a script, reject it, then make a movie based on that script (without proper credit) years later. Occasionally a couple of studios will do this, producing similar movies at about the same time. Weakening IP laws in this situation will only hurt the "little guy" even more.
The area that definitely needs the most tuning is IP with regard to technology. There should be some type of orphan clause, if the creator goes bankrupt (or the author dies), and no one had previously made claim to the IP. I'm thinking primarily about software source code lost in limbo. In specialty sofware areas where there isn't a high profit margin this is a major concern when picking the right package: Will this company still be in business 10 years from now? And, of course, (everyone's favorite) tech patents on methods really need an overhaul. Seven years seems to be a bit to long. We really need a new way of reviewing patents. It's not that all of them are overly broad, but a problem that exists because changing a few key words makes something patentable. The "pausing live broadcast" patent should be tossed. The concept has existed and has been implemented since probably the late 1950s for the purposes of "instant replay" during sporting events. Throwing in the words "digital" and "disc", or the amount of time that can be "shifted" shouldn't have a bearing on the validity of the patent. Likewise, the concept of recording in the background shouldn't be patentable either, even if it uses the buzzword "buffer".
If you think Slashdot is a "speed feed", try setting your RSS utility to update from/. every five minutes and see what happens.
Alarmist Rhetoric
on
The Virus Squad
·
· Score: 3, Interesting
If that is the proper term. I think we've passed the point where we have to give count of every single variant of malware that is in existance. Imagine if we did the same thing with taxonomy:
TAXONOMIST 1: Look! This bird has the same marking, but it's 0.000156mm to the left.
TAXONOMIST 2: Woohoo, it's a new species!
(they high-five eachother)
TAXONOMIST 1: Wow, at this rate we'll be discovering 56,000 new species a year!
There may have been 800 new propagating malware programs out there, but I'd be willing to bet that 797 of them were just variants of some existing code. Perhaps anti- "virus" solutions vendors need to classify them this way internally because of their detection methods, but there's no need to feign panic just because some new variant has a different string in it.
I have a problem with the term "virus", because it causes people to view these malware programs as some sort of pathogen, which most are definitely not. The malware does not change its design on its own. Most don't intentionally harm the host computer, either. If I were to classify the most prevalent new malware programs out there, my list would be rather short:
Microsoft Word Macros: Story, Titch, etc. All the same thing. A VB script that attaches itself to an MS Office document. The solution is to either limit what functions can be called from inside MS Office, or give the user a real status and config utility to see what is inside an MS Office document. It's not a "virus", it's just a macro.
Mass-Mailer "Worms": Personally, I think don't like the designation "mass-mailer", I prefer "Outlook for Microsoft Windows Design Flaw Exploiter". These little malware scripts or binaries take advantage of Windows' flawed shell execute functions in conjuction with Outlook's flawed design choice to open automatically every possible data type, instead of just plain text. Every OE malware from Mailissa to Mydoom belongs to this category. Klez could be considered a minor variant because 1) it's binary instead of a script, and 2) it carries with it additional malware programs.
RPC/DOM Worms: Code Red 1 & 2 and the Admin worm (plus all the variants) are all malware programs that effect the same vulnerability. There was another one in this list that caused so much trouble recently, but I can't remember its name.
Internet Explorer as Gateway: All of the "spyware", "adware" and malware that appears in the form of either image formats that exploit vulnerabilities and load code, or malware binaries/ActiveX controls. The latter usually take control of IE and do various naughty things.
Stupid-ware: Sometimes incorrectly called "trojans". Those messages that did not originate from Microsoft but claimed to hold important security updates. It's not a trojan if it doesn't do something useful while it's doing something bad. Just social engineering. Would you take a "cure" from some crazy bum on the street claiming to be a doctor? Oh wait, I forgot, millions of people feed the penis-enlargement spam industry by actually buying those pills.
The only category that worries me is the third, because the vulnerability wasn't obvious to me. The operation of the others is easy to understand, and also easy to avoid. When Mailissa first made an appearance, I promptly banned the use of Outlook and OE as a mail client at work. When we started to get e-mail messages (with attached malware) from the outside, I configured our web-based e-mail client to never display images and to display a warning in big red letters above links to download certain types of attachments. The author of the web-based e-mail is my kind of guy- His program doesn't render HTML, and he steadfastly refuses to make it do so. Klez still managed to get through, but I still have to update our NAT/mail server to scan and dispose of those messages (if only for the fact that they're annoying). I now consider Internet Explorer as a tool only to interf
Or at least severly reduce it. Think of the hidden costs of personal car ownership in terms of infrastructure and city planning. It'd be nice to see a TCO study and shove it in the face of the people who think infrastructure for trains or subways is expensive.
That's because in New York, when people cross the street, they're usually in a huge mob that blocks the entire intersection. An angry cabby has no choice but to stop and wait or risk vehicular homicide. NYC drivers also pay no attention to pedestrians' right-of-way; If the light is green and you're in the crosswalk, you're an obstacle not a pedestrian.
This doesn't surprise me one bit though. My small town (roughly 7,000) paid a great expense to have all the intersections redone with those big red buttons. No one uses them. If that weren't enough, we've got large mobs of unsupervised children on bicycles zipping in front of cars passing through green lights (and kids that stop their bikes in the middle of the lane -during periods of heavy traffic- on purpose). Maybe we should just do away with pedestrian right-of-way?
Good show! I enjoyed reading your response. I just want to reinforce a few points:
Also, the $1800 (mac) includes a nice, quality flatscreen, a good OS, a processor that when instructed correctly can meet or beat the other P4 in terms of performance (altivecs completely blow the water out of the competition, but not many programs use them)
When looking at the system as a whole, the P4 system is faster. Faster front-side bus and "dual-channel" RAM support, faster video card, more total RAM, and faster ATA channels. I've sat at a 1.0G iMac (we've got a couple at work). It is definitely, noticeably less responsive than a P4 hotrod, even though the iMac is superior in design. Those things make an impression on potential customers. The P4 system is also a standard ATX form factor, so it definitely has more upgrade possibilities.
Firstly, I'm not sure I believe this, but anyone could troubleshoot a lack-of-ram problem there.:\ Even so, this is a multi-point. Firstly, Apple now offers many warranty plans. This is not an issue anymore, and hasn't been for quite some time. Second, Apple charges full price for OS X, but you don't mind.
This was the unit as-shipped. It had 256MB of RAM, which was quite a bit for time, and is currently the standard config for a low-end machine. Most people would probably just return the machine. On the other hand, most companies wouldn't have sold it in that condition.
OS 10 is perhaps a different case, but many folks (including me) paid for point releases between 7.x and 9.x, and got mostly minor improvements. We can argue that the situation is different with OS 10, consumers will only believe that to a point, regardless of the truth. Microsoft is the exception to this, because you get their OEM software or else.
Here is where we need to work on what ESR was talking about. People don't realize that well designed UI and integration is worth something!
Apparently no more than 30% of the computing population realizes this. People are used to making ends meet by choosing the sub-par product and putting up with its faults (example: don't stick "microwave safe" W**Mart tupperware in the microwave). There is no reason to believe this wouldn't apply to personal computers, especially when the IBM-compatible has big numbers like "3 GigaHertz". I currently don't plan on buying another Mac. Mostly because I was really ticked off when Apple shutdown the Mac cloner operations (rumour has it that one can still obtain Mac stem cells on the black market). I'm kind of over that now, since Apple always seems to do brilliant things that earn my respect. I just can't afford a Mac, but I can nickel-and-dime my way to a faster PC. Someday I will buy a nice, shiny Mac. I won't be making my choice based on interface design, but because I want to tinker with OS 10 and try to compile all kinds of OSS stuff on it.
I'm looking at the eMac page on Apple's store right now. That machine is equivalent to a three year old Wintel box in terms of power. It also has a very narrow upgrade path because it's one of Apple's integrated designs.
But do tell, what advantages could you list right at this moment that would influence an average consumer to pick this over a Dell at the same price?
Wow, I'm surprised that we're still speculating about the reasons why Apple isn't more popular. After 20 years, it should be pretty obvious. I'm going to make myself a target for flames, but I feel my observations are pretty accurate.
* Cost/Power I'm looking at the Apple store right now. A 17" LCD iMac with a 1.25GHz processor, an Nvidia 5200 3D card, 256MB of PC2700 RAM, and an 80GB hard disk goes for $1800. A friend of mine just bought a 3.0GHz HT P4 system with a 19" monitor, an ATI 9800XT card, and 1GB of PC3200 RAM on a budget of $1500. Apples have always been more expensive. I've owned Apples, a lot of folks I know owned them. When I ask them why they don't any longer, the answer I usually get is, "because they're too expensive."
* Compatibility Consumers learned the hard way that they couldn't just walk in an electronics chain and buy PC accessories and software that was compatible with the Mac (and if you could, your choices were limited). It's a lot better than it used to be, but folks would rather pay less and be able to use just about every accessory.
* Support For many years Apple offered only a 1 year warranty, and only did warranty repair centrally. They also have a habit of charging full price for point releases on their system software. I have a relative who bought a PowerBook that ran slow with OS9, and crawled with OS 10. The later point releases of OS 10 might have been faster, but it took years, and in that time she vowed to buy a Windows machine. When I say slow, I mean, click on a menu and 60 seconds later it drops down - No lie.
The main reason is price. Consumers can get a lot more "stuff" for the same price. I think rather than lamenting the fact that Apple isn't the leader in PC sales, we should just accept it. No more suggestions about what Apple can do better, or how they can compete with Microsoft. Apple's marketing isn't the problem either, their ads are great, and you'd be hard pressed to find someone that doesn't recognize the Apple name. They're going to do their own thing because they're Apple. And that's going to appeal to people that want a computer that feels sophisticated, rather than something that looks like an arc-welding rig with a neon-lit window in the side.
Slashdot Mirror
I don't see how it can be verified to be authentic. How could a subpoena guarantee results? Couldn't the parties involved just claim that messages are not archived?
Yeah, I would love for this to be the "smoking gun", but that would be too easy.
On the other hand, aren't these types of expenditures under scrutiny for tax purposes? Does it count for anything that Microsoft is [supposedly] being watched by the DoJ? $86 million may be pocket change for Microsoft, but still, is there any way to verify that amount was given to the recipient in question? I would think so, because the alternative is that a corporation could move around multiple millions without any paper trail. And that is bad because that is profit that could disappear (and therefore not be subject to tax).
I don't see too many people saying that Microsoft's EULA is unenforceable, because it clearly is.
What?
There are some parts of the MS EULA that seem perfectly fine to me, but some of their products... Well, there's no way it would be legal. I'm primarly thinking the clause that dictates the operating system cannot be separated from the PC. An installed operating system is not embedded software, so the EULA clearly violates fair use rights under current copyright law.
Some random family attorney most likely knows nothing about IP, much less IP in Singapore.
Intel can afford the millions to sink into Itanic because they do things like release filler products in one product line while perfecting the next. It's a common practice: Win98SE/XP Reloaded for example. Apparently you folks are telling me that the 3000+/400 and 3200+/400 was the filler chip.
... 3.4GHz max.
Are you going to try and tell me that the P4 is cheaper than an Athlon64 3000+ system?? Let's see: P4 3GHz upgrades to
Well, people are going to have things like P4 2.4 or 2.66 machines. I didn't realize there was a 3.4GHz ceiling. Why would there be?
Oh yeah, duh. Well, he got his friends to gang up on me. Yeah, that's it!
Re: big cache, big expense. Not necessarily. Both Intel and AMD are producing chips with 1MB L2 cache. They're quite affordable at around $200. Certainly a jump up from no L2 cache on-chip.
After looking at those benchmark results, I'd say: Yeah, sure.
Okay, you must have been the guy that moderated me as a troll (lol). Sorry, didn't mean to push your buttons.
The point that I think some of you folks might have skipped over is the upgrade path. This knocks about $150 (average) off the price of the Intel upgrade path, because you can move to their faster P4 CPUs without having to change socket types. The new Prescott CPUs don't require a mainboard with a new socket (assuming your Intel-compatible board is fairly recent). Think about that: If I want to go from my Athlon XP to an Athlon 64, I have to spend another $150 and tear apart my machine. To the average consumer, this means buying a whole new PC. If I had got a socket 478 board, I would just buy the next fastest Intel chip (or whichever was the best balance or price and performance).
A new Athlon 64 may be comparable to last year's P4 chips, but the newest Intel chips with larger on-chip cache are clearly out in front of anything AMD has to offer. I *am* talking about the most expensive chips, but the current price is not relevant, because my whole point was thinking about future upgrades.
Relevant information
Other relevant information
I'm not an Intel marketing drone, I've provided benchmarks to back up what I said, and I think offered some pretty clear reasoning in the process. Come on guys, don't label me a troublemaker. I'm an AMD guy, not an Intel guy. I just don't want to see AMD fail, because that's where I've put my money (I've owned 6 machines with AMD processors so far, currently three of those are in use).
Just what I thought: AMD excels when the benchmarks include only moving around chunks of memory. Anything that involves more calculation and Intel has the edge, because their processor cores are running at almost 50 per cent faster. Nice to see AMD ahead of the game with the northbridge-on-die design. Don't worry, Intel will match that soon, since they've already surpassed/matched AMD with regard to FSB speed, on-chip cache and soon 64 bit extensions (all while keeping a healthy lead in clock speed).
No, honestly. SCO isn't currently producing anything, and has little to no prospects for growing their revenue and payroll. Auto Zone, on the other hand, is a thriving nation-wide retail auto parts chain that employs lots of people. Certainly AZ is in a better position to create Bush-loving fat cats.
Perhaps we could say Bush is protecting lawyers?
Going to go slightly off-topic here:
I'm an AMD lover, but it's my opinion that AMD is making a *huge* mistake with their desktop market. They only produced two marginal FSB400 processors with the "32-bit" Barton core, and then focused all their attention on the Athlon 64s. People who've made a choice in the past year to go with an AMD-compatible FSB400 mainboard are getting the shaft, and AMD is unwittingly forcing them to move to Intel during their next upgrade. Currently Intel's latest 3.0+ GHz offerings are spanking Athlon 64s in benchmarks with 32 bit applications. When users decide to do the next upgrade, they're going to say "hey, I have to replace my mainboard anyway", and they're going to go to Intel because it has more upgrade possibilities, is cheaper than the Athlon 64 for the same level of computing power, and currently performs better.
So this is more of a plea for AMD to extend the Athlon "32" line a bit further. Please AMD, don't prematurely kill off 32-bit Athlon chip development!
I wouldn't want Bush to be re-elected even if he agreed to send me his twin daughters, a Guinness truck, Natalie Portman and a truckload of grits!
Gee, hmmm, I don't know. That's a tough bargain to beat, all for just a single vote. Would that truck be fully stocked, or are we talking about just the truck?
The basis for SCO's belief is the precision and efficiency with which the migration to Linux occurred, which suggests the use of shared libraries to run legacy applications on Linux.
So? They paid for the original licenses, they can do anything the want with the libraries except re-sell them or reverse engineer them with an intent to reveal the information for profit. SCO would only have a case if AZ was paying a maintenance license, and let it expire.
You gotta be kidding me! This isn't an intellectual property issue, it's a EULA-violation issue. I'd be laughing my ass off if it wasn't for the fact that I'm seriously pissed off about Auto Zone (long time customer).
Bush and crew, if you want re-election, look here: Barratry is bad for business! Tell Ashcroft to stop worrying about abortion doctors and start protecting American jobs and investors!
I'd be worried about the companies that do pay. There are a lot of decoys, meta tag garbage etc., out there that exist solely to game the system, and bring in as much traffic as possible to junk domains. This is done without the consent or control of the search engine providers. I haven't seen Yahoo's rates, but those who mistakenly believe they can use the Internet as their own big billboard are in for a surprise; It isn't categorized like a phone book, where the publisher has a reasonably accurate assumption of how the reader will go about finding information. It's basically a free-for-all. Traditional advertising in many regions may be more work (and more costly), but it'll probably bring in more consistent results than a search engine.
If Yahoo is successfully picks up a lot of paying advertisers, they will become one of those aforementioned junk domains that you get redircted to. You know, the ones with about a million advertising links on one page, hawking every conceivable type of product? If that happens, why would web users even bother going to Yahoo?
You have absolutely no idea how ridiculous that sounds. The actual amount of spectrum dedicated to ham radio is so tiny, it makes no sense to go out of one's way to crush it. Anyway, eliminating amateur bands isn't going to solve the interference issues with BPL. There will still be lots of amplified two-way set-ups and repeaters in use by municipal organizations or private companies.
As much as I'd like to believe that the FCC are stoic defenders of the airwaves, if by some odd chance this risky scheme actually works, you'll find support for Hams weak at best. Look at how fast we lost that little piece of FM when they were fishing for wireless phone bandwidth.
My take on it is this.. We shouldn't make a blanket statement about all IP laws. They initially do what they're supposed to: Give the creator control over his property in order to recoup costs of creation. It's also good to let the creator make a profit as well. Pharmaceuticals have a high research and development cost, especially considering the time it takes for FDA approval in the US. Entirely removing IP protections from the area would likely make the industry not want to invest their time.
I feel that tuning the amount of IP protection for different types of industries is helpful for business. Long-term or indefinite-term copyright just doesn't make sense, especially when the original creator is long gone, or the current owner isn't the original creator. Fifty years should really be the maximum, or should be the maximum if the property has been sold by the original owner (thinking of printed materials here). There are some other issues that need to be addressed with the sale of specific types of rights. One example that comes to mind is that of the works of Philip K. Dick. Hollywood basically gave him the "we'll call you later" line while buying movie rights at bargain-basement prices. Now that he is deceased, we've got three big-budget screen adaptations of his work that raked in the dough. There's also the issue of studios which review a script, reject it, then make a movie based on that script (without proper credit) years later. Occasionally a couple of studios will do this, producing similar movies at about the same time. Weakening IP laws in this situation will only hurt the "little guy" even more.
The area that definitely needs the most tuning is IP with regard to technology. There should be some type of orphan clause, if the creator goes bankrupt (or the author dies), and no one had previously made claim to the IP. I'm thinking primarily about software source code lost in limbo. In specialty sofware areas where there isn't a high profit margin this is a major concern when picking the right package: Will this company still be in business 10 years from now? And, of course, (everyone's favorite) tech patents on methods really need an overhaul. Seven years seems to be a bit to long. We really need a new way of reviewing patents. It's not that all of them are overly broad, but a problem that exists because changing a few key words makes something patentable. The "pausing live broadcast" patent should be tossed. The concept has existed and has been implemented since probably the late 1950s for the purposes of "instant replay" during sporting events. Throwing in the words "digital" and "disc", or the amount of time that can be "shifted" shouldn't have a bearing on the validity of the patent. Likewise, the concept of recording in the background shouldn't be patentable either, even if it uses the buzzword "buffer".
If you think Slashdot is a "speed feed", try setting your RSS utility to update from /. every five minutes and see what happens.
There may have been 800 new propagating malware programs out there, but I'd be willing to bet that 797 of them were just variants of some existing code. Perhaps anti- "virus" solutions vendors need to classify them this way internally because of their detection methods, but there's no need to feign panic just because some new variant has a different string in it.
I have a problem with the term "virus", because it causes people to view these malware programs as some sort of pathogen, which most are definitely not. The malware does not change its design on its own. Most don't intentionally harm the host computer, either. If I were to classify the most prevalent new malware programs out there, my list would be rather short:
Microsoft Word Macros: Story, Titch, etc. All the same thing. A VB script that attaches itself to an MS Office document. The solution is to either limit what functions can be called from inside MS Office, or give the user a real status and config utility to see what is inside an MS Office document. It's not a "virus", it's just a macro.
Mass-Mailer "Worms": Personally, I think don't like the designation "mass-mailer", I prefer "Outlook for Microsoft Windows Design Flaw Exploiter". These little malware scripts or binaries take advantage of Windows' flawed shell execute functions in conjuction with Outlook's flawed design choice to open automatically every possible data type, instead of just plain text. Every OE malware from Mailissa to Mydoom belongs to this category. Klez could be considered a minor variant because 1) it's binary instead of a script, and 2) it carries with it additional malware programs.
RPC/DOM Worms: Code Red 1 & 2 and the Admin worm (plus all the variants) are all malware programs that effect the same vulnerability. There was another one in this list that caused so much trouble recently, but I can't remember its name.
Internet Explorer as Gateway: All of the "spyware", "adware" and malware that appears in the form of either image formats that exploit vulnerabilities and load code, or malware binaries/ActiveX controls. The latter usually take control of IE and do various naughty things.
Stupid-ware: Sometimes incorrectly called "trojans". Those messages that did not originate from Microsoft but claimed to hold important security updates. It's not a trojan if it doesn't do something useful while it's doing something bad. Just social engineering. Would you take a "cure" from some crazy bum on the street claiming to be a doctor? Oh wait, I forgot, millions of people feed the penis-enlargement spam industry by actually buying those pills.
The only category that worries me is the third, because the vulnerability wasn't obvious to me. The operation of the others is easy to understand, and also easy to avoid. When Mailissa first made an appearance, I promptly banned the use of Outlook and OE as a mail client at work. When we started to get e-mail messages (with attached malware) from the outside, I configured our web-based e-mail client to never display images and to display a warning in big red letters above links to download certain types of attachments. The author of the web-based e-mail is my kind of guy- His program doesn't render HTML, and he steadfastly refuses to make it do so. Klez still managed to get through, but I still have to update our NAT/mail server to scan and dispose of those messages (if only for the fact that they're annoying). I now consider Internet Explorer as a tool only to interf
Or at least severly reduce it. Think of the hidden costs of personal car ownership in terms of infrastructure and city planning. It'd be nice to see a TCO study and shove it in the face of the people who think infrastructure for trains or subways is expensive.
That's because in New York, when people cross the street, they're usually in a huge mob that blocks the entire intersection. An angry cabby has no choice but to stop and wait or risk vehicular homicide. NYC drivers also pay no attention to pedestrians' right-of-way; If the light is green and you're in the crosswalk, you're an obstacle not a pedestrian.
This doesn't surprise me one bit though. My small town (roughly 7,000) paid a great expense to have all the intersections redone with those big red buttons. No one uses them. If that weren't enough, we've got large mobs of unsupervised children on bicycles zipping in front of cars passing through green lights (and kids that stop their bikes in the middle of the lane -during periods of heavy traffic- on purpose). Maybe we should just do away with pedestrian right-of-way?
When looking at the system as a whole, the P4 system is faster. Faster front-side bus and "dual-channel" RAM support, faster video card, more total RAM, and faster ATA channels. I've sat at a 1.0G iMac (we've got a couple at work). It is definitely, noticeably less responsive than a P4 hotrod, even though the iMac is superior in design. Those things make an impression on potential customers. The P4 system is also a standard ATX form factor, so it definitely has more upgrade possibilities.
This was the unit as-shipped. It had 256MB of RAM, which was quite a bit for time, and is currently the standard config for a low-end machine. Most people would probably just return the machine. On the other hand, most companies wouldn't have sold it in that condition.
OS 10 is perhaps a different case, but many folks (including me) paid for point releases between 7.x and 9.x, and got mostly minor improvements. We can argue that the situation is different with OS 10, consumers will only believe that to a point, regardless of the truth. Microsoft is the exception to this, because you get their OEM software or else.
Apparently no more than 30% of the computing population realizes this. People are used to making ends meet by choosing the sub-par product and putting up with its faults (example: don't stick "microwave safe" W**Mart tupperware in the microwave). There is no reason to believe this wouldn't apply to personal computers, especially when the IBM-compatible has big numbers like "3 GigaHertz". I currently don't plan on buying another Mac. Mostly because I was really ticked off when Apple shutdown the Mac cloner operations (rumour has it that one can still obtain Mac stem cells on the black market). I'm kind of over that now, since Apple always seems to do brilliant things that earn my respect. I just can't afford a Mac, but I can nickel-and-dime my way to a faster PC. Someday I will buy a nice, shiny Mac. I won't be making my choice based on interface design, but because I want to tinker with OS 10 and try to compile all kinds of OSS stuff on it.
... Real innovators continue to design truly valuable new ideas, but are largely ignored.
I'm looking at the eMac page on Apple's store right now. That machine is equivalent to a three year old Wintel box in terms of power. It also has a very narrow upgrade path because it's one of Apple's integrated designs.
But do tell, what advantages could you list right at this moment that would influence an average consumer to pick this over a Dell at the same price?
Wow, I'm surprised that we're still speculating about the reasons why Apple isn't more popular. After 20 years, it should be pretty obvious. I'm going to make myself a target for flames, but I feel my observations are pretty accurate.
* Cost/Power
I'm looking at the Apple store right now. A 17" LCD iMac with a 1.25GHz processor, an Nvidia 5200 3D card, 256MB of PC2700 RAM, and an 80GB hard disk goes for $1800. A friend of mine just bought a 3.0GHz HT P4 system with a 19" monitor, an ATI 9800XT card, and 1GB of PC3200 RAM on a budget of $1500. Apples have always been more expensive. I've owned Apples, a lot of folks I know owned them. When I ask them why they don't any longer, the answer I usually get is, "because they're too expensive."
* Compatibility
Consumers learned the hard way that they couldn't just walk in an electronics chain and buy PC accessories and software that was compatible with the Mac (and if you could, your choices were limited). It's a lot better than it used to be, but folks would rather pay less and be able to use just about every accessory.
* Support
For many years Apple offered only a 1 year warranty, and only did warranty repair centrally. They also have a habit of charging full price for point releases on their system software. I have a relative who bought a PowerBook that ran slow with OS9, and crawled with OS 10. The later point releases of OS 10 might have been faster, but it took years, and in that time she vowed to buy a Windows machine. When I say slow, I mean, click on a menu and 60 seconds later it drops down - No lie.
The main reason is price. Consumers can get a lot more "stuff" for the same price. I think rather than lamenting the fact that Apple isn't the leader in PC sales, we should just accept it. No more suggestions about what Apple can do better, or how they can compete with Microsoft. Apple's marketing isn't the problem either, their ads are great, and you'd be hard pressed to find someone that doesn't recognize the Apple name. They're going to do their own thing because they're Apple. And that's going to appeal to people that want a computer that feels sophisticated, rather than something that looks like an arc-welding rig with a neon-lit window in the side.