If Microsoft would charge me only $500 for a copy of Windows that can compete with Ubuntu I'd be happy to buy it. Unfortunately Microsoft charges more than twice as much for their standard edition of Windows. (of course you can get the dumbed down versions without network capabilities, but I want real network support)
Hmm, actually what would be if PC companies would just sell virtualisation pre-installed? Installing Linux+Virtualbox+virtualized Windows is not much harder than just installing Windows as you don't need to worry about drivers.
I mean, viruses used to be a problem way back when people installed Windows natively on their machines. But today, you can simply run your Windows inside of a virtual machine you backup regularly. If you notice some odd behaviour you can simply roll back to the old version. Or you can roll back daily.
Microsoft has the problem that nobody in the big iron business takes them seriously. They hope Windows on Mainframes gives them more credibility.
IBM has the problem, that the little kids just don't do mainframes anymore. They hope to attract more Windows people to mainframes.
It's not a product anybody will actually buy. You not only need the software, but also dedicated hardware. Linux for example runs on those mainframes natively or under the virtualisation. No extra hardware required.
Of course, and even if I wanted to have Windows on my PC, I surely wouldn't want Vista or XP home. I'd probably want to go with one of the server variations as that provides basic functionality I would expect of any modern OS.
Well still, the server provider might be evil or required to log your IP-Address and hand to evil people.
Besides in many countries there are no anonymous IP-addresses anymore. Most providers now log the IP-address you have and happily hand out that information to anybody who wants to have it.
It would work if the network would work a bit more like a telephone network. You tell the router to open a connection to the server. And the router will do the same. No, this is incompatible with the way it's done now, but all the other ways have the same problem.
Actually most of the problems on the internet come from to much controll, not to little controll. The 2 big problems are net neutrality and privacy. Both are in danger because companies are able to record information like your IP-Address.
So if you want to make a new Internet, get rid of source IP-Addresses. Make the router aware of connections.
First: Point him to the many 'patches' that are availiable in order to get certain licence check features out of certain applications. People _do_ modify closed source software. It's a bit harder, but it's done.
Second: Just point him at average times between the discovery of a bug and a fix beeing availiable.
Third: Make him prove that there are no backdoors in closed source software. Backdoors are a lot easier to find in open source software so the risk of them beeing found is way bigger. Microsoft has a track record of putting in malicious code in their software. One example is Windows 3.x checking if it's MS-DOS or DR-DOS, and refusing to run propperly if it's DR-DOS.
The comparison of the install-time is not really realistic as with Ubuntu you get a complete working desktop system, including an office package. With Windows that's a whole different product you need to install seperately.
I have seen retailers claiming that glossy displays are more expensive than non glossy ones.
To clarify that, making something glossy is easy. You just do nothing as the thin sheets of glass the LCD is made out of are glossy by default. To make them non glossy you have to apply a special coating.
I guess the best way of dealing with glossy displays is to take a baseball bat into the computer store and say to the vendor loud and clear that you are going to hit him hard with it if he offers you a glossy display.
Anyway, it's mostly stupid to worry about the physical media, when it is the filesystem format that determines the ability migrate to new media or even new types of media. The file formats, however, have the ultimate, final say in whether or not the data is accessible.
True, but there are often situations when copying the data is infeasible, especially in long-term-storage. If you need to copy your data every decade and there is a few decade long war, you have problems.
I don't think file-formats will be much of a problem. It used to be one in the 80s and 90s, but today proprietary file formats pretty much died out. I mean nobody really uses Microsoft Word or something anymore, do they? Or Wordstar or Visicalc. Those packages have died out a long time ago.
Well one problem is probably the flash ROM used to hold the BIOS. I'm not sure if it'll hold it's data so long. After all it's just electrons trapped in a layer. They could diffuse into the surrounding areas easily. This has nothing to do with the battery. The battery is only supporting the clock and the BIOS settings.
The magnetic areas on a harddisk also diffuse with time.
Optical discs, especially cheap CDs also only tend to last for a couple of decades.
Please note that using LEDs for this is obviously a dead-end solution when it comes to bandwidth. The light is not monocromatic enought to be suitable for high bandwidth solutions (>1 GBit/sec)
Obviously you can now implement all kinds of things in there. For example you could implement a simple wireless mesh router which would still work when your computer is in standby.
Well but if you only have a binary only interface you can still only do what the manufacturer allows you. And if the manufacturer says that you cannot do whatever you are doing, it can simply stop you from doing that.
But of course you are right, there is a large chance that CPU-based rendering might make dedicated GPUs obsolete again.
Well ATI recently anounced that they want to start supporting open source drivers again. It's just a matter of time, I hope. Otherwise I'll have to go with Intel for my next chipset.
I mean seriously, as long as they don't publish the hardware specifications so you can write your own software for it, it's preety much useless. The only thing you can do with it is play games. And even then you have to fear every little software update as it might trigger some bug in the binary only drivers the manufacturer provides.
Well there just are 32 bits for the address. So they need to make new headers and thus a new protocoll.
Further more there are a lot of features in IPv4 which seemed like a good idea, but turned out to be bad ideas. Those features have been fixed in IPv6.
Now you can still get n times 2^80 IP-Addresses for free from tunnel brokers like Sixxs.net. They even offer reverse DNS delegation and such things. You won't get that level of service from your local ISP, ever.
Yes, but rational potential customers have stopped using Microsoft Office years ago. And the ones that still do don't care about the quality of software.
Nobody buys Microsoft products because of quality. Although Microsoft definitely doesn't have the worst products on the market, they aren't particularily good.
Slashdot Mirror
If Microsoft would charge me only $500 for a copy of Windows that can compete with Ubuntu I'd be happy to buy it. Unfortunately Microsoft charges more than twice as much for their standard edition of Windows. (of course you can get the dumbed down versions without network capabilities, but I want real network support)
3D acceleration works in Virtual Box for example.
Hmm, actually what would be if PC companies would just sell virtualisation pre-installed? Installing Linux+Virtualbox+virtualized Windows is not much harder than just installing Windows as you don't need to worry about drivers.
I mean, viruses used to be a problem way back when people installed Windows natively on their machines. But today, you can simply run your Windows inside of a virtual machine you backup regularly. If you notice some odd behaviour you can simply roll back to the old version. Or you can roll back daily.
Microsoft has the problem that nobody in the big iron business takes them seriously. They hope Windows on Mainframes gives them more credibility.
IBM has the problem, that the little kids just don't do mainframes anymore. They hope to attract more Windows people to mainframes.
It's not a product anybody will actually buy. You not only need the software, but also dedicated hardware. Linux for example runs on those mainframes natively or under the virtualisation. No extra hardware required.
Of course, and even if I wanted to have Windows on my PC, I surely wouldn't want Vista or XP home. I'd probably want to go with one of the server variations as that provides basic functionality I would expect of any modern OS.
Well still, the server provider might be evil or required to log your IP-Address and hand to evil people.
Besides in many countries there are no anonymous IP-addresses anymore. Most providers now log the IP-address you have and happily hand out that information to anybody who wants to have it.
It would work if the network would work a bit more like a telephone network. You tell the router to open a connection to the server. And the router will do the same. No, this is incompatible with the way it's done now, but all the other ways have the same problem.
Actually most of the problems on the internet come from to much controll, not to little controll. The 2 big problems are net neutrality and privacy. Both are in danger because companies are able to record information like your IP-Address.
So if you want to make a new Internet, get rid of source IP-Addresses. Make the router aware of connections.
True. Microsoft as well as many other companies are known for such FUD.
Well, only if you assume no malicious attempts or lazyness on the side of the programmer.
First: Point him to the many 'patches' that are availiable in order to get certain licence check features out of certain applications. People _do_ modify closed source software. It's a bit harder, but it's done.
Second: Just point him at average times between the discovery of a bug and a fix beeing availiable.
Third: Make him prove that there are no backdoors in closed source software. Backdoors are a lot easier to find in open source software so the risk of them beeing found is way bigger. Microsoft has a track record of putting in malicious code in their software. One example is Windows 3.x checking if it's MS-DOS or DR-DOS, and refusing to run propperly if it's DR-DOS.
The comparison of the install-time is not really realistic as with Ubuntu you get a complete working desktop system, including an office package. With Windows that's a whole different product you need to install seperately.
I have seen retailers claiming that glossy displays are more expensive than non glossy ones.
To clarify that, making something glossy is easy. You just do nothing as the thin sheets of glass the LCD is made out of are glossy by default. To make them non glossy you have to apply a special coating.
I guess the best way of dealing with glossy displays is to take a baseball bat into the computer store and say to the vendor loud and clear that you are going to hit him hard with it if he offers you a glossy display.
Anyway, it's mostly stupid to worry about the physical media, when it is the filesystem format that determines the ability migrate to new media or even new types of media. The file formats, however, have the ultimate, final say in whether or not the data is accessible.
True, but there are often situations when copying the data is infeasible, especially in long-term-storage. If you need to copy your data every decade and there is a few decade long war, you have problems.
I don't think file-formats will be much of a problem. It used to be one in the 80s and 90s, but today proprietary file formats pretty much died out. I mean nobody really uses Microsoft Word or something anymore, do they? Or Wordstar or Visicalc. Those packages have died out a long time ago.
Well one problem is probably the flash ROM used to hold the BIOS. I'm not sure if it'll hold it's data so long. After all it's just electrons trapped in a layer. They could diffuse into the surrounding areas easily. This has nothing to do with the battery. The battery is only supporting the clock and the BIOS settings.
The magnetic areas on a harddisk also diffuse with time.
Optical discs, especially cheap CDs also only tend to last for a couple of decades.
http://ronja.twibright.com/
They started that project in 1998.
Please note that using LEDs for this is obviously a dead-end solution when it comes to bandwidth. The light is not monocromatic enought to be suitable for high bandwidth solutions (>1 GBit/sec)
Absolutely. You could also optimice the protocoll for many situations.
Obviously you can now implement all kinds of things in there. For example you could implement a simple wireless mesh router which would still work when your computer is in standby.
Well but if you only have a binary only interface you can still only do what the manufacturer allows you. And if the manufacturer says that you cannot do whatever you are doing, it can simply stop you from doing that.
But of course you are right, there is a large chance that CPU-based rendering might make dedicated GPUs obsolete again.
Well ATI recently anounced that they want to start supporting open source drivers again. It's just a matter of time, I hope. Otherwise I'll have to go with Intel for my next chipset.
I mean seriously, as long as they don't publish the hardware specifications so you can write your own software for it, it's preety much useless. The only thing you can do with it is play games. And even then you have to fear every little software update as it might trigger some bug in the binary only drivers the manufacturer provides.
Yes, but right now you can get them from 2 guys in swiss insteadt of some big company which wants to charge you extra for access to Wikipedia.
IPv6 solves most technical problems, but unfortunately many problems are not technical, but caused by greedy ISPs.
Having a neutral ISP is a big advantage.
Well there just are 32 bits for the address. So they need to make new headers and thus a new protocoll.
Further more there are a lot of features in IPv4 which seemed like a good idea, but turned out to be bad ideas. Those features have been fixed in IPv6.
Now you can still get n times 2^80 IP-Addresses for free from tunnel brokers like Sixxs.net. They even offer reverse DNS delegation and such things. You won't get that level of service from your local ISP, ever.
Yes, but rational potential customers have stopped using Microsoft Office years ago. And the ones that still do don't care about the quality of software.
Nobody buys Microsoft products because of quality. Although Microsoft definitely doesn't have the worst products on the market, they aren't particularily good.