Little Summer needs to grow up a bit, and eat a sammich or two before I'm willing to call her a babe.
Looks like some of us are going to the special hell. Mainly, though its a pity that they didn't employ one of Joss Wheedon's fight choreographers to make full use of her ability to grab someone by the throat while simultaneously kicking them in the back of the head.
But fear not, it looks like we're going to see Morena Baccarin swallowing voles in the re-make of "V". (Re-make a cheesy early-80s SciFi series as serious drama? Where did they get that idea from?)
When the eee PC came out, Linux had a big opportunity.
I think the original EEE PC must be the most successful failure ever. People bought them by the shedload (including me) and raved about them, until it became obvious that they were as much practical use as a chocolate teapot. A very, very cute chocolate teapot maybe, and one that hadn't cost enough to get angry about, but not really a lot of use.
The problem wasn't necessarily Linux - its the hardware: the screen was just too small for running desktop software or full-size websites (iPod Touch/iPhone and Android do better with less because they have purpose-written GUI and app software) and the battery life is atrocious. Had the thing been able to run for 6 hours on a charge, or the screen had cool pan and zoom features then maybe - but to be honest, mine is just a doorstop that I use to try out new netbook linux distros.
The "success" of the EEE was to convince manufacturers that there was a huge market for small, cheap, laptops - the original was just a bit too small and cheap and drank too much power. Newer generation netbooks look a bit more like it - with better screens and better batteries - but are priced more like entry-level laptops.
That's unfortunately not quite the way it is. The seller is often paid to sell Windows.
I'm certainly not denying that there may be serious shenanigans afoot (I don't personally have any first-hand evidence, but I do have a lifetime's supply of cynicism) but even if you apply Hanlon's Razor and assume that everybody is acting in good faith, my point still stands.
If you tell your salesmen that they can offer either heavily advertised, household name Brand X or obscure but arguably technically superior Brand Y then here's a hint: don't bother stocking too many units of Brand Y! Even if Brand X aren't sending out Xmas hampers, the fundamental problem remains: why make the hard sale when you can make the easy one instead?
The price issue is a red herring, anyway: a retail OEM license (er... you know what I mean) for Windows costs, what, $100 ballpark - and I doubt that the likes of Dell pay that much. Anybody serious about pushing Linux boxes needs to accept that (a) there will be some extra support needed for Linux (if only because its not what everybody else uses) (b) there needs to be some investment to ensure that it runs smoothly on your hardware and (c) non-idealist punters will want some paid-for codecs etc. thrown in. You're going to need that money you save (well, assuming you don't have to pay MS anyway).
Remember, the people complaining to Dell aren't regular punters - they're Linux enthusiasts trying to avoid the "M$ tax": nothing wrong with that, but this isn't an issue for A.N.Other User: if Linux is so great, they'll pay extra for it (it works for Apple).
The Linux world is fractured, meaning that a single binary will only work on a small fraction of all Linux distros.
But with Linux, the distro usually comes with comes with all the applications you can eat, either on disc or in the online repositories. This is the preferred way for non-techies to get their apps (whereas no true slashdotter would install a binary package when they could roll their own tarball instead).
Punters need to be told this, not "oh, er, well we do Windows as well if you like".
Because most of the popular applications are Free, the application publisher doesn't have to support every distro and architecture - that can be sorted out downstream.
If someone was serious about investing in shifting Linux boxen, it is perfectly feasible for them to add their own application repository to fill any gaps or omissions in the distro repository (something that would be unthinkable with closed source). Asus started to do this with the EEEPC, but didn't exactly throw their heart and soul into into it once they started offering XP.
I completely agree that Linux could do with a unified installer for the exceptions to this rule, and make things easier for people who did want to sell non-free software. There are things like Autopackage - but I haven't used it enough to know whether its good. Its not as if this sort of thing has to support more that the top 3 or 4 "click'n'drool" distros.
Back in April, Intel said it would support Windows 7 on the Atom later this year, and Intel also says Windows 7 is a good choice for Intel's netbooks, so it doesn't look like they're intentionally burning any bridges between them and Redmond."
Unfortunately, nobody ever sold a new idea by sitting on the fence. Until a computer manufacturer starts pro-actively pushing Linux on their hardware as (rightly or wrongly) better than Windows, Linux will not take off.
As long as the line is "do you want Windows or Linux on that, Sir", and the seller gets paid whichever way, Windows will be the easiest sell to the typical punter and before you know it it will be "Linux? Oh, there's not much demand for that, we'd have to do a special order". That's basically what has been happening to netbooks ever since XP was re-released for them.
Apple manages to persuade people to switch to OS X by selling cool hardware which only comes with OS X and continually telling punters that OSX is better than Windows. Even since the switch to Windows-compatable hardware, they've kept Boot Camp/Parallels/VMWare positioned as an optional "if you really must" add-on (reassuringly expensive when you factor in the cost of a full copy of Windows) - you won't catch them offering a straight choice between Windows and OS/X on your new Mac.
Meanwhile - looking at the screenshots - can someone tell Intel that it is traditional for an icon to have some reasonably obvious thematic link with what it does? The only remotely intelligible one is the "Music" one - but that seems to mean all media rather than music.
Good idea, in theory. In practice, it's immediately followed up with a service request asking what mail address they used when signing up, followed again with the cry that they don't use that mail address anymore and thus you're back to square one.
The policy has to be that you must get the security question right first time and you kept your email address up to date. That's going to work for quite a lot of people - although it might not feel that way to the poor sod on the helldesk.
The real problem, as I've said elsewhere, is that no one is providing a practical solution to "square one". The paradox is we do need a proper (IT-aware) ID card scheme that lets us prove our identities easily when the need arise but (with some justification) don't trust anybody to implement it safely.
Only if it is implemented in such a way that knowing the answer is as good as knowing the password.
There's no reason it can't be used as part of a belt & braces approach (of course, if someone's stolen your belt then its possible that they've stolen your braces as well) and/or where the worst thing that it can trigger is to get a new temporary password mailed to your known address.
It also depends what the stakes are and comes down to a risk analysis between the potential security risk vs. the inconvenience of losing access to the account while your identity is confirmed (...not that there's any really effective way of doing that).
Schneier pointed out years ago how weird it is to have a password-recovery mechanism that is less secure than the password.
Trump that: E.E. 'Doc' Smith pointed out sometime in the 1930s that what the world really, really needed was a foolproof way of establishing someone's identity. Unfortunately, his solution was to have some omnipotent aliens come up with a magic identity bracelet, which isn't particularly helpful.
That's the real problem - these dumb-ass methods of establishing identities come about because there is no good solution on offer to let a service provider check that you are who you say you are - and no way do we trust our wonderfully tech-savvy governments or industries to set up and run one.
I think it's important to note why the adaptations are loose: PK Dick wrote short stories. Very, very good stories, but short. The main idea in the story is told in few words, but well.
I don't think that's it - I suspect that its easier to dream up a few subplots to pad a short out to feature length than it is to condense a full length novel into two hours without messing up the plot.
Anyway - Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep was a full length novel, but Blade Runner was still a very loose adaptation of that. The book is so different from the film (and the message so totally different) that one doesn't really detract from the other.
I think part of the success of the PKD-derived films is that they haven't even pretended to adapt the original stories - just taken the (great) premises and written pretty good action/adventure films around them (well, except Paycheck which was completely "meh" and "Scanner..." which was good but took the arthouse route).
Actually, call me a heretic, but I only read "We can remember it for you wholesale" (Total Recall) and "Minority report" after seeing the films and I actually think that the films told better stories. They certainly told better film stories. In the original, "remember..." had a jokey denouement which could only really be delivered as a big wodge of exposition at the end of a film, and "Minority..." was a logical conundrum as to how a false prediction could arise rather than an exploration of the ethics of "pre-crime".
And I love the "were you paying attention in the first reel" twist in "Total Recall".
If software controlling an aircraft crashes and causes the aircraft to crash too and that kills people, I'm pretty sure the software makers might end up liable too.
Except TFA is about consumer protection: we're only talking about the punter's right to get his money back. If the punter wants to sue for further damages of the authorities want to try for criminal negligence then AFAIK that's always been their prerogative.
Also, note the "consumer" bit. If an aircraft builder kitted out their flight deck at Radio Shack - hardware or software - not only would they be the ones getting sued, but I doubt they'd even be entitled to get their money back from Radio Shack.
Most EUropean countries have clauses in their laws that instruct the judge to take the price of the good into account when considering what would be a reasonable quality for a product. A corollary of that is when you give something away for free, the expected quality level is something like "not known harmful".
This is consumer protection law, not civil damages. The biggest practical upshot of this would be that if you buy a piece of software and it turns out not to be "fit for purpose", you have the right to a refund and maybe compensation for the cost of post and packing to return it. This is obviously moot if you downloaded the product for free.
Your point about price might, however, come into play if I bought a cheap Linux CD and wanted my money back because the Minesweeper implementation wasn't quite up to snuff.
If a product causes serious damage to property or persons and the victim wants to sue for big money, then that is a totally different kettle of fish - and not (AFAIK) what this is all about.
It always amuses me that wikipedia-bashing seems to be predicated on the faith that "traditional" dead-tree-based sources of wisdom are somehow infallible, peer reviewers are always rigorous and impartial, and if it wasn't true they wouldn't print it.
If you think that, when five typical academics peer review a paper (usually an unpaid job with a tight deadline) they double-check any the maths and stats, reproduce any experiments described, then go through every one of the citatons, pull the sources from the library and check that not only is the citation correct but that its not just an onward (and potentially circular) reference and do a literature search to see if anybody has debunked it... well, I have a bridge that you might like to buy.
The real advantage of Wikipedia, though, is that everything goes on in the public eye - you can always look at the history of the article. With a traditional publication, any shenanigans happen behind closed doors.
(* which is a terrific link because if anybody questions the findings about the accuracy of Britannica you just point out that they were published by Nature...:-) )
people are already confused about the multiple meanings of the word "free".
No they're not. Potential users start out completely clear about what "free" means to them: when used in the context of something which you habitually pay money for (like software), it means that it costs $0.00.
Free software advocates are causing confusion by playing silly Humpty Dumpty games ("words mean precisely what I intend them to mean") with a word in common use. If you want to distinguish GPL software from nasty sell-out "Open Source" then call it "software libre", call it "copyleft" or (now here's an idea) call it "GPL". Don't deliberately pick an ambiguous name just so you can score pedant points when people inevitably misunderstand.
The trick to getting wider adoption of Linux is to start finding ways to promote it to people who don't give a damn about access to the source code. Telling them that they're stupid because the word "free" does not mean what they think that it means is not a good sales pitch.
Or something different because "store" implies "costs money"
That doesn't seem to stop people finding all the free stuff in the iPhone App Store. You also missed the point that people moving from Windows expect to pay money for software. Calling it a "store" might reinforce the idea that you're getting something valuable for free.
Of course, another model is to charge money for nicely packaged binaries - no problem with that under the GPL provided you can still get the tarball for free. The iPhone has shown that people are happy to shell out 99c here and there - I'm sure the distro producers could use the cashflow.
I've gotten several people in my family started with Ubuntu, and one weird thing I've observed is that none of them ever seem to spontaneously figure out how to install applications
Not weird: they're used to Windows, which doesn't have a "go get free software" button - and if they have found the "Add/Remove programs button" in Windows, that is almost exclusively used to remove software, so the natural assumption is that the similarly-named button in Ubuntu does the same.
Perhaps that tool should be re-styled, and re-named, along the lines of an "App Store" with a bit of hoopla - user reviews, featured products etc. and kept restricted to end-user friendly, GUI-driven application software. They've already gone partly down this road with the two "levels" of package management (three if you count the CLI tools) - its really the hoopla that's missing.
And do call it an App Store (or something similar if that's too (tm) Apple). Let 'em find out that stuff is free after they've seen something they like.
Of course, if you're setting up a system, you can leave a big friendly shortcut on the desktop...
The way the BBC is funded is magnificent and the envy of the world.
Indeed. Where would Slashdot be without Monty Python and the Hitch-hiker's Guide to the Galaxy?
Anyone who buys a car will be obliged to donate a sum, probably 10% or so of the value of their purchase, to GM, whether they buy a GM car or not.
Probably fairer than funding it from general taxation, so that some of your money goes to GM even if you don't buy a car at all - no?
Well, the BBC operates web sites. Clearly, anyone who uses any sort of web site should be obliged to subscribe, or at least pay something, to the BBC.
Actually, you've hit the nail on the head. The license fee system has worked fairly well for years. What it can't survive, however, is the convergence of TV with PCs and the internet. Its one thing funding public service TV channels with a levy on dedicated TV sets (the BBC channels represent a significant chunk of the available TV channels - especially if you weight for quality) - its quite something else putting a levy on something more general-purpose like a computer (which has zillions of other uses) or the internet (an ocean in which the BBC is a drop). Personally, I think the BBC is doomed in the long run - which is rather sad.
Isn't this similar to why microsoft decided to settle out of court with Lindows.
The fly in the ointment there is not so much that "windows" is used to refer to holes in the walls of houses, but that it also has an established (pre-MS) meaning in the context of computer displays.
MS Windows is so called because it provides a window-based GUI - and "Lindows" could make the same claim.
If Microsoft released a new OS called "Wubuntu", "Wed Hat" or "MS Macintosh" then you wouldn't expect them to get away with it, despite those being words in "common usage".
OTOH, I've seen "Ubuntu cola" on sale...
Being able to copyright a single word that is in common usage would be pretty silly.
This isn't about copyright - it is about trade marks. Completely different purpose, completely different set of rules.
If you don't know, it's because Android is just a single word that's been in the modern language for a couple of generations now.
Let's correct that:
because android is just a single word that's been in the modern language for a couple of generations now.
Spot the difference? Neither party is using the word "android" to describe a fictitious type of humanoid robot - they both want to use it as a trading name for their businesses, neither of which involves the manufacture of robotic overlords. This shouldn't even be a problem if one made furniture and the other made chocolate bars - but unfortunately they're both in the data services industry.
In the same way, neither Apple Inc. or Apple Corp. can prevent grocers selling the fruit of the Malus pumila tree under the name "apple". Nor, back in the old days when one sold music and the other made beige boxes that went "beep" did Apple Corp. ever have much of a case against Apple Computer (not that that stopped the lawyers).
Of course, no one thought that a computer which could just about squeeze out a tinny version of "Daisy Daisy" (that made a Stylophone sound like a Stradivarius) would evolve into a major music distribution platform. I just hope that, a few years from now, my mobile phone looks like Summer Glau!*
* Including Multitouch(tm) features... er... I'll be in my bunk!
Google applied for a trademark for Android in October of 2007, but had that application denied in February of 2008.
I might have more sympathy if the boot were on the other foot, but if you're gonna use a generic name like Android on a high profile product then maybe, just maybe, you should, e.g. run a search on the USPTO database first...
"Can Avatars Make Contracts?" - come on guys, its fine to have an active fantasy life, but turn off the role play when you log out, please. There are perfectly good laws and precedents for dealing with unwritten/informal contracts - whether they are made over the phone or via a chat between avatars sitting on a flying penis should make no difference.
For practical purposes, Second Life, WoW etc. are just chunks of teh interweb offering communications, data storage and application hosting facilities. OK, so the currency issue is a complication, but is it really any differnt from the age-old idea of a "barter network"?
Please, please don't encourage our wonderful lawmakers to get distracted by the pretty 3D graphics and start trying to legislate for "virtual worlds".
If I have a "second life" I want to go to a nice post-scarcity, anarcho-communist* utopia like the Culture or the United Federation of Planets and do what the hell I want provided it stays in the virtual world. I don't want to find that the government has got there first and declared eminent domain because some judge made a batty ruling after being baffled by talk of "virtual real estate".
* For the record, I wouldn't advocate Communism in the real world, but the whole "post-scarcity" thing might just make a difference - as would being able to log out if it all went pear-shaped.
I hope the 'Media Pad / TouchBook' end up being true. Because it would be a product that would be useful to me.
I have an iPod Touch and its great as a quick way of checking email and browsing the web around the house - the screen size and lack of keyboard being the major limitations.
Before that, my solution was an EEEPC 701 - and despite the touch's screen being smaller (physically, and half as many pixels) the slick, multi-touch zooming and panning make it far more usable.
even a 50% bigger iPod Touch would be a killer for me (it wouldn't cure the keyboard issue - although bigger/more keys would help).
...and if it could use the "iPod light" as a 3G modem, hot damn! (I wouldn't hold my breath on that one - but one of my main anti-iPhone motivations is that I don't want to walk home in the rain because I flattened my iPhone playing Tap Defense on the train and can't call a cab...)
NetBooks. Almost, but I don't think they're for me yet. Waiting for the next wave.
Netbooks, although successful, just seem to be turning into entry-level, compact laptops (its not even a new form-factor - its just that laptops this size used to cost $3000 instead of $300). Its tempting to blame MS for pushing Windows on the Netbook market - but the uncomfortable truth is that Asus and co. did not put nearly enough effort in customising the Linux software stack for a 800x480 screen: sticking a Fisher-Price window manager on top of bog-standard Firefox/Thunderbird/OpenOffice is not enough.
Maybe Apple is going to have another run at the "appliance" niche - they have great, small-screen friendly mail and web clients and a whole App Store full of stuff that would probably look OK scaled to a larger screen, until the developers update it (I can tolerate slight blockiness in iFart),
You can also keep in mind that if you know you NEED compatibility with older software, you now have an alternative to running Windows XP until the end of time.
Yes: running XP in a virtual machine until the end of time. Great alternative. What exactly is Win7 doing for me in this scenario apart from using up half my RAM? OK, I use VMs to run Windows on a Mac, but that's because I have good reasons for wanting to use OS X as the primary OS (like: it's Unix guys!)... and its great for opening the occasional Access database or testing a web page in IE but if I want to do anything serious with Windows, its still better to reboot completely into XP.
Plus, I've never met a VM which is 100% compatible with every single application - and, by definition, we're dealing with obscure, awkward (maybe sloppily written) legacy applications here. I wonder how big the overlap between "won't run on Win7" and "won't run in a VM" is going to be?
Anyway, the point is not that VM isn't a useful solution for legacy apps (it can be) but when Apple et. al. have relied on VM or related solutions it has been to enable a complete break with the old architecture, and mainly as an interim solution until software houses release new versions.
Maybe MS will use this to make way for some fundamental changes (e.g. non-privileged user accounts without a confirmation box every 30 seconds)?
Which makes more sense? Hand your mail services for instance over to hotmaile or gmail or set up a server and and your own IP address and roll your own?
It rather depends whether you already have staff who know how to set up and maintain an email server. As you were dealing in IT equipment then that might have been the case for you (but good luck if the guy who set it up leaves and nobody else can figure out his lovingly hand-crafted sendmail.cf file). However, not all businesses deal in IT...
But what if you are a business with 100's or 1000's of customers?
Well, the first thing is you don't use a consumer service like regular gmail! You find a business-oriented service which, as well as trivia like a proper, transferable domain name, offers service level agreements, access to data, backups etc. I'm sure Google would be delighted to quote you for this.
How would it look if Sears for instance had an email addresses like this: Sears-sales@gamil.com
It would look as if they were too stupid/tight to phone Google and ask how much it would cost to get a proper domain name... or even find an ISP with mail forwarding facilities. That has nothing to do with software-as-a-service.
Your article title and selective quote does tend to give an erroneous impression as to what the article was about.
Probably because RMS's views on free software and his love/hate affair with Linux are well known to most/.ers, whereas the poster thought that his latest proclamation on "software as a service" was newsworthy.
Its not as if the article misquotes the interview or takes the comment out of context - RMS does say, categorically, that you should not use "software as a service" even if it is "free" software.
...although I'm not quite sure how you make a distinction between "any sort of program for which use on servers is expected to be an important source of improvements" and "software as a service".
Didn't apple do this with OSX? You can run OS9 apps, but it is in a VM.
I'll see your "circa 2000" and raise you a 1987: Acorn, in the UK, switched from the 6502-based BBC Micro to the ARM-based Archimedes - they produced a "BBC Micro" emulator to run old software (usually much faster).
As well as Classic, Apple used a 68000 emulator to run legacy software when they switched to PowerPC and the "Rosetta" code translator to run PPC code when they went to Intel.
Thing is, though, these were all associated with fundamental, back-to-the-drawing-board changes to the platform - such as changing the CPU or switching to UNIX - which would otherwise have required all-new software from day one.
If MS had produced a completely new OS, free of the constraints of supporting existing software (or maybe gone.NET-only), then bundling an emulation or virtualization solution for legacy code would be essential.
Having a supposedly backwards-compatible OS which also requires a virtual copy of the old OS seems like the worst of both worlds.
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Little Summer needs to grow up a bit, and eat a sammich or two before I'm willing to call her a babe.
Looks like some of us are going to the special hell. Mainly, though its a pity that they didn't employ one of Joss Wheedon's fight choreographers to make full use of her ability to grab someone by the throat while simultaneously kicking them in the back of the head.
But fear not, it looks like we're going to see Morena Baccarin swallowing voles in the re-make of "V". (Re-make a cheesy early-80s SciFi series as serious drama? Where did they get that idea from?)
When the eee PC came out, Linux had a big opportunity.
I think the original EEE PC must be the most successful failure ever. People bought them by the shedload (including me) and raved about them, until it became obvious that they were as much practical use as a chocolate teapot. A very, very cute chocolate teapot maybe, and one that hadn't cost enough to get angry about, but not really a lot of use.
The problem wasn't necessarily Linux - its the hardware: the screen was just too small for running desktop software or full-size websites (iPod Touch/iPhone and Android do better with less because they have purpose-written GUI and app software) and the battery life is atrocious. Had the thing been able to run for 6 hours on a charge, or the screen had cool pan and zoom features then maybe - but to be honest, mine is just a doorstop that I use to try out new netbook linux distros.
The "success" of the EEE was to convince manufacturers that there was a huge market for small, cheap, laptops - the original was just a bit too small and cheap and drank too much power. Newer generation netbooks look a bit more like it - with better screens and better batteries - but are priced more like entry-level laptops.
That's unfortunately not quite the way it is. The seller is often paid to sell Windows.
I'm certainly not denying that there may be serious shenanigans afoot (I don't personally have any first-hand evidence, but I do have a lifetime's supply of cynicism) but even if you apply Hanlon's Razor and assume that everybody is acting in good faith, my point still stands.
If you tell your salesmen that they can offer either heavily advertised, household name Brand X or obscure but arguably technically superior Brand Y then here's a hint: don't bother stocking too many units of Brand Y! Even if Brand X aren't sending out Xmas hampers, the fundamental problem remains: why make the hard sale when you can make the easy one instead?
The price issue is a red herring, anyway: a retail OEM license (er... you know what I mean) for Windows costs, what, $100 ballpark - and I doubt that the likes of Dell pay that much. Anybody serious about pushing Linux boxes needs to accept that (a) there will be some extra support needed for Linux (if only because its not what everybody else uses) (b) there needs to be some investment to ensure that it runs smoothly on your hardware and (c) non-idealist punters will want some paid-for codecs etc. thrown in. You're going to need that money you save (well, assuming you don't have to pay MS anyway).
Remember, the people complaining to Dell aren't regular punters - they're Linux enthusiasts trying to avoid the "M$ tax": nothing wrong with that, but this isn't an issue for A.N.Other User: if Linux is so great, they'll pay extra for it (it works for Apple).
The Linux world is fractured, meaning that a single binary will only work on a small fraction of all Linux distros.
But with Linux, the distro usually comes with comes with all the applications you can eat, either on disc or in the online repositories. This is the preferred way for non-techies to get their apps (whereas no true slashdotter would install a binary package when they could roll their own tarball instead).
Punters need to be told this, not "oh, er, well we do Windows as well if you like".
Because most of the popular applications are Free, the application publisher doesn't have to support every distro and architecture - that can be sorted out downstream.
If someone was serious about investing in shifting Linux boxen, it is perfectly feasible for them to add their own application repository to fill any gaps or omissions in the distro repository (something that would be unthinkable with closed source). Asus started to do this with the EEEPC, but didn't exactly throw their heart and soul into into it once they started offering XP.
I completely agree that Linux could do with a unified installer for the exceptions to this rule, and make things easier for people who did want to sell non-free software. There are things like Autopackage - but I haven't used it enough to know whether its good. Its not as if this sort of thing has to support more that the top 3 or 4 "click'n'drool" distros.
Back in April, Intel said it would support Windows 7 on the Atom later this year, and Intel also says Windows 7 is a good choice for Intel's netbooks, so it doesn't look like they're intentionally burning any bridges between them and Redmond."
Unfortunately, nobody ever sold a new idea by sitting on the fence. Until a computer manufacturer starts pro-actively pushing Linux on their hardware as (rightly or wrongly) better than Windows, Linux will not take off.
As long as the line is "do you want Windows or Linux on that, Sir", and the seller gets paid whichever way, Windows will be the easiest sell to the typical punter and before you know it it will be "Linux? Oh, there's not much demand for that, we'd have to do a special order". That's basically what has been happening to netbooks ever since XP was re-released for them.
Apple manages to persuade people to switch to OS X by selling cool hardware which only comes with OS X and continually telling punters that OSX is better than Windows. Even since the switch to Windows-compatable hardware, they've kept Boot Camp/Parallels/VMWare positioned as an optional "if you really must" add-on (reassuringly expensive when you factor in the cost of a full copy of Windows) - you won't catch them offering a straight choice between Windows and OS/X on your new Mac.
Meanwhile - looking at the screenshots - can someone tell Intel that it is traditional for an icon to have some reasonably obvious thematic link with what it does? The only remotely intelligible one is the "Music" one - but that seems to mean all media rather than music.
Good idea, in theory. In practice, it's immediately followed up with a service request asking what mail address they used when signing up, followed again with the cry that they don't use that mail address anymore and thus you're back to square one.
The policy has to be that you must get the security question right first time and you kept your email address up to date. That's going to work for quite a lot of people - although it might not feel that way to the poor sod on the helldesk.
The real problem, as I've said elsewhere, is that no one is providing a practical solution to "square one". The paradox is we do need a proper (IT-aware) ID card scheme that lets us prove our identities easily when the need arise but (with some justification) don't trust anybody to implement it safely.
Is it me or is this like, you know, STUPID?
Only if it is implemented in such a way that knowing the answer is as good as knowing the password.
There's no reason it can't be used as part of a belt & braces approach (of course, if someone's stolen your belt then its possible that they've stolen your braces as well) and/or where the worst thing that it can trigger is to get a new temporary password mailed to your known address.
It also depends what the stakes are and comes down to a risk analysis between the potential security risk vs. the inconvenience of losing access to the account while your identity is confirmed (...not that there's any really effective way of doing that).
Schneier pointed out years ago how weird it is to have a password-recovery mechanism that is less secure than the password.
Trump that: E.E. 'Doc' Smith pointed out sometime in the 1930s that what the world really, really needed was a foolproof way of establishing someone's identity. Unfortunately, his solution was to have some omnipotent aliens come up with a magic identity bracelet, which isn't particularly helpful.
That's the real problem - these dumb-ass methods of establishing identities come about because there is no good solution on offer to let a service provider check that you are who you say you are - and no way do we trust our wonderfully tech-savvy governments or industries to set up and run one.
I think it's important to note why the adaptations are loose: PK Dick wrote short stories. Very, very good stories, but short. The main idea in the story is told in few words, but well.
I don't think that's it - I suspect that its easier to dream up a few subplots to pad a short out to feature length than it is to condense a full length novel into two hours without messing up the plot.
Anyway - Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep was a full length novel, but Blade Runner was still a very loose adaptation of that. The book is so different from the film (and the message so totally different) that one doesn't really detract from the other.
I think part of the success of the PKD-derived films is that they haven't even pretended to adapt the original stories - just taken the (great) premises and written pretty good action/adventure films around them (well, except Paycheck which was completely "meh" and "Scanner..." which was good but took the arthouse route).
Actually, call me a heretic, but I only read "We can remember it for you wholesale" (Total Recall) and "Minority report" after seeing the films and I actually think that the films told better stories. They certainly told better film stories. In the original, "remember..." had a jokey denouement which could only really be delivered as a big wodge of exposition at the end of a film, and "Minority..." was a logical conundrum as to how a false prediction could arise rather than an exploration of the ethics of "pre-crime".
And I love the "were you paying attention in the first reel" twist in "Total Recall".
If software controlling an aircraft crashes and causes the aircraft to crash too and that kills people, I'm pretty sure the software makers might end up liable too.
Except TFA is about consumer protection: we're only talking about the punter's right to get his money back. If the punter wants to sue for further damages of the authorities want to try for criminal negligence then AFAIK that's always been their prerogative.
Also, note the "consumer" bit. If an aircraft builder kitted out their flight deck at Radio Shack - hardware or software - not only would they be the ones getting sued, but I doubt they'd even be entitled to get their money back from Radio Shack.
Most EUropean countries have clauses in their laws that instruct the judge to take the price of the good into account when considering what would be a reasonable quality for a product. A corollary of that is when you give something away for free, the expected quality level is something like "not known harmful".
This is consumer protection law, not civil damages. The biggest practical upshot of this would be that if you buy a piece of software and it turns out not to be "fit for purpose", you have the right to a refund and maybe compensation for the cost of post and packing to return it. This is obviously moot if you downloaded the product for free.
Your point about price might, however, come into play if I bought a cheap Linux CD and wanted my money back because the Minesweeper implementation wasn't quite up to snuff.
If a product causes serious damage to property or persons and the victim wants to sue for big money, then that is a totally different kettle of fish - and not (AFAIK) what this is all about.
Never use Wikipedia as a source - use a source you can trust, such as a peer reviewed journal or a long-established encyclopedia* instead.
Oh, wait...
It always amuses me that wikipedia-bashing seems to be predicated on the faith that "traditional" dead-tree-based sources of wisdom are somehow infallible, peer reviewers are always rigorous and impartial, and if it wasn't true they wouldn't print it.
If you think that, when five typical academics peer review a paper (usually an unpaid job with a tight deadline) they double-check any the maths and stats, reproduce any experiments described, then go through every one of the citatons, pull the sources from the library and check that not only is the citation correct but that its not just an onward (and potentially circular) reference and do a literature search to see if anybody has debunked it... well, I have a bridge that you might like to buy.
The real advantage of Wikipedia, though, is that everything goes on in the public eye - you can always look at the history of the article. With a traditional publication, any shenanigans happen behind closed doors.
(* which is a terrific link because if anybody questions the findings about the accuracy of Britannica you just point out that they were published by Nature... :-) )
people are already confused about the multiple meanings of the word "free".
No they're not. Potential users start out completely clear about what "free" means to them: when used in the context of something which you habitually pay money for (like software), it means that it costs $0.00.
Free software advocates are causing confusion by playing silly Humpty Dumpty games ("words mean precisely what I intend them to mean") with a word in common use. If you want to distinguish GPL software from nasty sell-out "Open Source" then call it "software libre", call it "copyleft" or (now here's an idea) call it "GPL". Don't deliberately pick an ambiguous name just so you can score pedant points when people inevitably misunderstand.
The trick to getting wider adoption of Linux is to start finding ways to promote it to people who don't give a damn about access to the source code. Telling them that they're stupid because the word "free" does not mean what they think that it means is not a good sales pitch.
Or something different because "store" implies "costs money"
That doesn't seem to stop people finding all the free stuff in the iPhone App Store. You also missed the point that people moving from Windows expect to pay money for software. Calling it a "store" might reinforce the idea that you're getting something valuable for free.
Of course, another model is to charge money for nicely packaged binaries - no problem with that under the GPL provided you can still get the tarball for free. The iPhone has shown that people are happy to shell out 99c here and there - I'm sure the distro producers could use the cashflow.
I've gotten several people in my family started with Ubuntu, and one weird thing I've observed is that none of them ever seem to spontaneously figure out how to install applications
Not weird: they're used to Windows, which doesn't have a "go get free software" button - and if they have found the "Add/Remove programs button" in Windows, that is almost exclusively used to remove software, so the natural assumption is that the similarly-named button in Ubuntu does the same.
Perhaps that tool should be re-styled, and re-named, along the lines of an "App Store" with a bit of hoopla - user reviews, featured products etc. and kept restricted to end-user friendly, GUI-driven application software. They've already gone partly down this road with the two "levels" of package management (three if you count the CLI tools) - its really the hoopla that's missing.
And do call it an App Store (or something similar if that's too (tm) Apple). Let 'em find out that stuff is free after they've seen something they like.
Of course, if you're setting up a system, you can leave a big friendly shortcut on the desktop...
The way the BBC is funded is magnificent and the envy of the world.
Indeed. Where would Slashdot be without Monty Python and the Hitch-hiker's Guide to the Galaxy?
Anyone who buys a car will be obliged to donate a sum, probably 10% or so of the value of their purchase, to GM, whether they buy a GM car or not.
Probably fairer than funding it from general taxation, so that some of your money goes to GM even if you don't buy a car at all - no?
Well, the BBC operates web sites. Clearly, anyone who uses any sort of web site should be obliged to subscribe, or at least pay something, to the BBC.
Actually, you've hit the nail on the head. The license fee system has worked fairly well for years. What it can't survive, however, is the convergence of TV with PCs and the internet. Its one thing funding public service TV channels with a levy on dedicated TV sets (the BBC channels represent a significant chunk of the available TV channels - especially if you weight for quality) - its quite something else putting a levy on something more general-purpose like a computer (which has zillions of other uses) or the internet (an ocean in which the BBC is a drop). Personally, I think the BBC is doomed in the long run - which is rather sad.
Isn't this similar to why microsoft decided to settle out of court with Lindows.
The fly in the ointment there is not so much that "windows" is used to refer to holes in the walls of houses, but that it also has an established (pre-MS) meaning in the context of computer displays.
MS Windows is so called because it provides a window-based GUI - and "Lindows" could make the same claim.
If Microsoft released a new OS called "Wubuntu", "Wed Hat" or "MS Macintosh" then you wouldn't expect them to get away with it, despite those being words in "common usage".
OTOH, I've seen "Ubuntu cola" on sale...
Being able to copyright a single word that is in common usage would be pretty silly.
This isn't about copyright - it is about trade marks. Completely different purpose, completely different set of rules.
If you don't know, it's because Android is just a single word that's been in the modern language for a couple of generations now.
Let's correct that:
because android is just a single word that's been in the modern language for a couple of generations now.
Spot the difference? Neither party is using the word "android" to describe a fictitious type of humanoid robot - they both want to use it as a trading name for their businesses, neither of which involves the manufacture of robotic overlords. This shouldn't even be a problem if one made furniture and the other made chocolate bars - but unfortunately they're both in the data services industry.
In the same way, neither Apple Inc. or Apple Corp. can prevent grocers selling the fruit of the Malus pumila tree under the name "apple". Nor, back in the old days when one sold music and the other made beige boxes that went "beep" did Apple Corp. ever have much of a case against Apple Computer (not that that stopped the lawyers).
Of course, no one thought that a computer which could just about squeeze out a tinny version of "Daisy Daisy" (that made a Stylophone sound like a Stradivarius) would evolve into a major music distribution platform. I just hope that, a few years from now, my mobile phone looks like Summer Glau!*
* Including Multitouch(tm) features... er... I'll be in my bunk!
Also from TFA, though:
Google applied for a trademark for Android in October of 2007, but had that application denied in February of 2008.
I might have more sympathy if the boot were on the other foot, but if you're gonna use a generic name like Android on a high profile product then maybe, just maybe, you should, e.g. run a search on the USPTO database first...
"Can Avatars Make Contracts?" - come on guys, its fine to have an active fantasy life, but turn off the role play when you log out, please. There are perfectly good laws and precedents for dealing with unwritten/informal contracts - whether they are made over the phone or via a chat between avatars sitting on a flying penis should make no difference.
For practical purposes, Second Life, WoW etc. are just chunks of teh interweb offering communications, data storage and application hosting facilities. OK, so the currency issue is a complication, but is it really any differnt from the age-old idea of a "barter network"?
Please, please don't encourage our wonderful lawmakers to get distracted by the pretty 3D graphics and start trying to legislate for "virtual worlds".
If I have a "second life" I want to go to a nice post-scarcity, anarcho-communist* utopia like the Culture or the United Federation of Planets and do what the hell I want provided it stays in the virtual world. I don't want to find that the government has got there first and declared eminent domain because some judge made a batty ruling after being baffled by talk of "virtual real estate".
* For the record, I wouldn't advocate Communism in the real world, but the whole "post-scarcity" thing might just make a difference - as would being able to log out if it all went pear-shaped.
I hope the 'Media Pad / TouchBook' end up being true. Because it would be a product that would be useful to me.
I have an iPod Touch and its great as a quick way of checking email and browsing the web around the house - the screen size and lack of keyboard being the major limitations.
Before that, my solution was an EEEPC 701 - and despite the touch's screen being smaller (physically, and half as many pixels) the slick, multi-touch zooming and panning make it far more usable.
even a 50% bigger iPod Touch would be a killer for me (it wouldn't cure the keyboard issue - although bigger/more keys would help).
...and if it could use the "iPod light" as a 3G modem, hot damn! (I wouldn't hold my breath on that one - but one of my main anti-iPhone motivations is that I don't want to walk home in the rain because I flattened my iPhone playing Tap Defense on the train and can't call a cab...)
NetBooks. Almost, but I don't think they're for me yet. Waiting for the next wave.
Netbooks, although successful, just seem to be turning into entry-level, compact laptops (its not even a new form-factor - its just that laptops this size used to cost $3000 instead of $300). Its tempting to blame MS for pushing Windows on the Netbook market - but the uncomfortable truth is that Asus and co. did not put nearly enough effort in customising the Linux software stack for a 800x480 screen: sticking a Fisher-Price window manager on top of bog-standard Firefox/Thunderbird/OpenOffice is not enough.
Maybe Apple is going to have another run at the "appliance" niche - they have great, small-screen friendly mail and web clients and a whole App Store full of stuff that would probably look OK scaled to a larger screen, until the developers update it (I can tolerate slight blockiness in iFart),
You can also keep in mind that if you know you NEED compatibility with older software, you now have an alternative to running Windows XP until the end of time.
Yes: running XP in a virtual machine until the end of time. Great alternative. What exactly is Win7 doing for me in this scenario apart from using up half my RAM? OK, I use VMs to run Windows on a Mac, but that's because I have good reasons for wanting to use OS X as the primary OS (like: it's Unix guys!)... and its great for opening the occasional Access database or testing a web page in IE but if I want to do anything serious with Windows, its still better to reboot completely into XP.
Plus, I've never met a VM which is 100% compatible with every single application - and, by definition, we're dealing with obscure, awkward (maybe sloppily written) legacy applications here. I wonder how big the overlap between "won't run on Win7" and "won't run in a VM" is going to be?
Anyway, the point is not that VM isn't a useful solution for legacy apps (it can be) but when Apple et. al. have relied on VM or related solutions it has been to enable a complete break with the old architecture, and mainly as an interim solution until software houses release new versions.
Maybe MS will use this to make way for some fundamental changes (e.g. non-privileged user accounts without a confirmation box every 30 seconds)?
Which makes more sense? Hand your mail services for instance over to hotmaile or gmail or set up a server and and your own IP address and roll your own?
It rather depends whether you already have staff who know how to set up and maintain an email server. As you were dealing in IT equipment then that might have been the case for you (but good luck if the guy who set it up leaves and nobody else can figure out his lovingly hand-crafted sendmail.cf file). However, not all businesses deal in IT...
But what if you are a business with 100's or 1000's of customers?
Well, the first thing is you don't use a consumer service like regular gmail! You find a business-oriented service which, as well as trivia like a proper, transferable domain name, offers service level agreements, access to data, backups etc. I'm sure Google would be delighted to quote you for this.
How would it look if Sears for instance had an email addresses like this: Sears-sales@gamil.com
It would look as if they were too stupid/tight to phone Google and ask how much it would cost to get a proper domain name... or even find an ISP with mail forwarding facilities. That has nothing to do with software-as-a-service.
Your article title and selective quote does tend to give an erroneous impression as to what the article was about.
Probably because RMS's views on free software and his love/hate affair with Linux are well known to most /.ers, whereas the poster thought that his latest proclamation on "software as a service" was newsworthy.
Its not as if the article misquotes the interview or takes the comment out of context - RMS does say, categorically, that you should not use "software as a service" even if it is "free" software.
...although I'm not quite sure how you make a distinction between "any sort of program for which use on servers is expected to be an important source of improvements" and "software as a service".
Didn't apple do this with OSX? You can run OS9 apps, but it is in a VM.
I'll see your "circa 2000" and raise you a 1987: Acorn, in the UK, switched from the 6502-based BBC Micro to the ARM-based Archimedes - they produced a "BBC Micro" emulator to run old software (usually much faster).
As well as Classic, Apple used a 68000 emulator to run legacy software when they switched to PowerPC and the "Rosetta" code translator to run PPC code when they went to Intel.
Thing is, though, these were all associated with fundamental, back-to-the-drawing-board changes to the platform - such as changing the CPU or switching to UNIX - which would otherwise have required all-new software from day one.
If MS had produced a completely new OS, free of the constraints of supporting existing software (or maybe gone .NET-only), then bundling an emulation or virtualization solution for legacy code would be essential.
Having a supposedly backwards-compatible OS which also requires a virtual copy of the old OS seems like the worst of both worlds.