All up that seems more expensive for a true development environment using a Microsoft platform.
Another point, is why the guys seek the commercial support options. It's clear with commercial software - M$ gives not much choices to you - but with OSS, costly support is rarely needed.
In my personal experience, it's cheaper to buy e.g. week of time of consultant and then go ahead with development with tools/toolkits he would recommend. Then request help on problems encountered. We did that with two Linux appliances, bought 2 weeks of real time programmer and after two years of development we still had several hours of consulting left.
Additional Point 1. One of my employers had costly contract with MontaVista. That contract was required by support policies set for an industry. In other words, we might have bought QNX - but with its license for the industry, for every sold copy of QNX inside of our appliance, we would have to to pay additional license fee to QNX. But please do not get me wrong: it's not about fees - it's about managing licenses. Several people who have had experience with such licensing practices unanimously told that overhead of managing licensing would require company to hire more bureaucrats than developers. GPL in the end has advantage that there is already whole stack of applications covered by it and due to single license there is no overhead of license management.
Additional Point 2. I have seen several other examples, when HR were going out on street picking random people, giving them R&D badges and trying to develop something. They were buying expensive tools and expensive support contracts: not because they needed them - but because they wanted to jump-start development from ground zero. Needless to say that most of the time ends in failure. (Or if they got lucky, they manage to buy start-up with ready product and start selling it.)
To conclude, I rarely have seen need in such contracts - unless the contract is external requirement. (*) It's always make sense too look inside what you are really buying - and assess do you really need all what you are buying.
(*) e.g. you develop appliance and then sell its design to other companies. Not the appliance itself - but design. As R&D house, you wouldn't want to handle all the load produced by manufacturers.
P.S. Why OSS costs that much? Check out addresses - most of the Linux companies are located in expensive Silicon Valley where lots of expensive American specialists try to make decent (in Silicon Valley sense) living. I once looked for embedded Linux consultants: US - $200/hour, Germany - $40/hour. People, geez, get real, stop reading cools ads in cool magazines and start using Google/Yahoo/AltaVista.
Conviction at the cash register could positively affect other notorious outfits like ATI and nVidia.
At least former have stated why they can't go Open Source. And even releasing specs (which are incomplete) would help little: DirectX 7/8/9 which requires special special software from Microsoft in driver.
Intel on other side always try to push aside Open efforts. Against Open BIOS supported amongst many vendors AMD - it has released EFI. EFI theoretically is also Open Source, but primirily designed to load binary modules from other (e.g. motherboard, BIOS, OEM) vendors. Feel the difference: open source BIOS v. open source stub to load BIOS of binary modules.
Unlike for CPUs, Intel didn't released a single spec for its networking products: wireless are just hot now, but wired adapters have the same fate. It's just Intel did released open source drivers people consult instead of spec. But again, e100/e1000 are rather exception. Intel also didn't release specs for their on-board graphics and ATA/IDE controllers - some people under NDA updated older open source drivers.
What I'm trying to say is that wireless drivers are not exception - Intel cares only about big customers (namely servers) and good publicity (namely benchmarks). Small fry (like F/LOSS vendors) is very low priority - ranting on Slashdot are even more down the list.
"Why would you ever code an app from scratch again? Why would you need to?"
Buhahahahhahahhahhahhahaahahahah!!!!! HERE THEY GO AGAIN!!!!!
I'm writing software for 15 years. And I already lost count of how many times I was told that crap and that "tomorrow" I would be among unemployed, since even idiots would be able to create software using tomorrow's modular platforms. That tomorrow is yet to realize.
I was working with asm/pascal 15 years ago - and were basically rewriting applications from scratch: for new platforms and for new performance requirements.
I now work with C/C++ - and basically rewrite applications from scratch: for new platforms and for new performance requirements.
What'd changed? NOTHING.
Would the idiots ever learn? As computer industry develops and grows - so do requirements for computers. 15 years ago nobody expected to have affordable real-time 3D graphics or on-line simulation algorithms or real-time video encoding. Now we take that for granted. As old fart, of course, I cannot even imagine what would be capable computers in next 15 years - but all that would be possible because of abundance of cheap HW performance and I hope more intelligent software. Not because we would have such performance - but because I'm sure there is and would be ever growing demand for it.
e.g. some AI guys might tomorrow implement autonomous OS which would be voice/etc controlled. So you would be able to plug your photo camera into computer, say "Grab all new photos" and (miracle!) it would do that. Then say "If there are more than N gigs of new photos burn me them on disk as photo album.". Etc. Voice recognition + intelligent interpretation of commands + AI personalization - are tasks not yet possible for computers both hardware-wise and software-wise. NOW. How well fit modern algorithms and applications for tasks in such environment? They are completely unfit. So when development would come to that point - we software developers would have to rewrite all the components and blocks to fit well into new platform/OS/etc to get most out of it. IOW, do not put your GCC aside just yet.
Re:The bookstore has more than just "regular" book
on
Sony Reader Now Available
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· Score: 3, Insightful
Can you take e.g. 10 paperbacks into long journey? After carrying heavy bag for several hours, believe me, $350 wouldn't look all that much.
The message cannot be forwarded, edited, printed or saved, and, once it's been read, it disappears; nothing is cached anywhere. No attachments allowed.
OMG! I'm already using it!! It's my IM client behind our corporate firewall!!!
bringing up antitrust issues as a plaintiff against the RIAA
To bring any antitrust claims into case - with all the evidence - you need a lot and lot of time and evidence. M$ v. DOD antitrust case took about 5 years to resolve. IBM v. DOD case of '80s was around for about a decade. AMD v. Intel started almost 2 years ago - and still in evidence collecting phase.
In that case RIAA has upper hand since it's bigger than LimeWire: it might not have all the resources to fight such case against RIAA. And RIAA are also not idiots, I think they have learned lessons from other industries and companies - and keep some dummy nominal competition just in case. (Even those damm indies would fit the "competitor" bill.) (*)
I wish LimeWire luck. They need it.
(*) Though couple of contracts I have seen between broadcasters and RIAA were pretty clearly fitting "exclusive" criteria. Yet w/o iTMS/subscriptions as witnesses for the claim, LimeWire would have little chances. (And apparently iTMS terms are not exclusive: Apple also lists lots of indies.) But such services have no reasons to provide any evidence which might strengthen their P2P competitors.
C'mon. We would never know who paid Ars Tech to publish that article. No facts, no references to facts == FUD. Period.
It's widely known that F/L/OSS (FireFox/Mozilla) would get statistically much more public bugs^Wvulns, since many of them are found by looking into source code, rather than by actually cracking the code (M$IE, Opera, WebKit).
Many problems fixed in FireFox/Mozilla were never actually exploited. But to force proprietary vendor to patch a hole - exploit must be already in a wild. Otherwise they would blankly deny any security risk. Also Opera was caught on many occasions for not reporting security problems - but silently fixing them in minor releases.
Also note, that there are pretty much of solid software patents. e.g. Frauenhofer's MP3 is one of them. They have come up with idea on how to make efficient digital music compression possible - and they have patented that idea along with adjacent methods to implement the idea. If you read the patents, you would notice that they are very narrow and do not conform to general patent structure "and the kitchen sink".
Though it is very hard to say that MP3 is software: I think now we have parity of number software v. hardware implementations.
I think, that if patents were mandated to be narrow - e.g. like legal documents - we would have seen much less pointless patent litigations.
You need to have watched SCO v. IBM more closely. When time had come for IBM to counter-sue, they have used 7(?) patents they have had for pretty obvious ideas.
It's not about quality - it's about quantity. If I hold 1000 patents you would think twice before suing me on patent infringement: it might take long time to overthrow my counterclaims backed by patents. If your patent is tested in court - that hurts credibility of your patent. And drain your resources to protect yourself from other patent sharks^Wholders like you are.
The software patents are not about technology or ideas anymore - they are now deterioration tool, to keep potential competitors at bay.
You would also then note that M$ doesn't really play important role in OS business per se. M$ really doesn't understand where from its fortune came from.
M$ was earning money making early very different PCs behaving similarly. Or in other words, all those fancy "white boxes" have had all the same interface with the same DOS based OS. M$ power was in control of hardware companies - not in its OS. DOS & Windows was a tool of such control. (Thief's knife has little value unless put against someone's throat.) Billg executed that power perfectly to extort as much money as possible. (Well, as you might notice, M$Office cash cow is just pure bonus to the OS charade.)
In evolutionary current of events, thanks to mono-OS environment, PCs become standardized - all thanks to M$. When I open *any* system in my company I find pretty normal ATX system - w/o any proprietary cruft all the earlier white boxes are so infamous for.
Now M$ try to live up to its image of OS vendor - and it is failing. Just like everybody said before it would. 3rd party applications are the only reasons why people keep M$Windows around. OSs from M$ has little value now - since it has lost it's control over Intel and OEMs. We already have choice of OSs: Linux kernel and *BSD made entry to OS market damn cheap for anybody. But M$ seems yet to understand that the thief's knife itself has little value.
Of course they would roll the OS ball as long as they can - but they just not used to open competition. M$Server 2003 is fine solid product - but why would anyone pay for it all the moneys when they can get all the same from Linux for much less/no money?
Vista comes precisely in the time when it starts to make more and more sense for M$ to release its OS for free (free as in "free beer") as it was suggested by many journalists and observers some time ago. And start making money from its server products (Outlook, Exchange, SQL Server) and M$Office. But yet they used to disregard such the opportunities, since they still believe that they are OS company...:-(
90% of the "economic boom" of the modern computer industry has been due to the Broken Windows Fallacy for the past decade or so.
You are so wrong. You just need to be asked to run small company with all bureaucracy done on paper with typewriter. Absolutely w/o computers. You would understand why the boom happened really: computer market stabilized, became commodity and business at large went from paper-based work flow to computer-based one. In fact, computers now allow small companies to increase business volumes: only because bureaucracy is magnitude cheaper now. Many small/private businesses were often running into NOT limit of productivity - but inability to book all orders properly. Now they can. Computers made that easy.
Though I hardly expect the average underage offsprings of computer era - which are made majority of/. readers/posters - to really understand what really computer and data networks did for small/middle/big companies. We already take all the goods for granted.
Just to give one example, especially important to USA with its large populace of public companies. Before computers came, public companies were really run by few people close to board of directors who have had slight majority of shares. For most of little/private investors it didn't made much of a reason to fly across continent just to participate in meeting/voting regarding some current maters. Now, with advent of computers networks, anyone with no matter how small share of company, can participate in voting - remotely & cheaply. That meant to the public companies whole a lot. Exec officers are now under more scrutiny, since large number of small investors really play role: sum of their votes often is large enough to influence decision making. The sum, to calculate before computers came, was impossible.
Re:A problem that goes beyond the languages...
on
Why Johnny Can't Code
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· Score: 1
The real issue is to give kids a reason to program.
20 years back computers were something new - something fresh. Whatever anybody did - was very new. NAd new is always interesting. Not that we have had any reasons. It was just new.
Now everybody knows what computer is. It's old news. Computer moved from being something new to being something like hammer. We all have them at home. Just in case.
Where is the impetus for someone to choose to program?
When you show kid that he can screw computer to his own liking - most stick to programming very fast. They like idea of screwing something. Though only few kids would consider screwing computer worth time. They have many more dis/attractions this days: game consoles, mobile phones, smart phones, etc.
Also I have to admit that most of the modern kids understand programming pretty fast and naturally. For my parents cascading menu is something barring them from using mobile phones. But kids they already understand that computer as tool already different from hammer - computer has state, while hammer is stateless. My parents' mentality cannot accept device with state more complicated than TV: turned off, warming up, turned on. Understanding of statefullness & flexible interfaces - are all major cornerstones of programming. For example my friend spent two years to learn somehow BASIC in school - that was 15 years ago - his older daughter needed only 4 lessons now to start writing small computational programs in BASIC. Not that you would find her programming - she'd rather go party with friends.
MIPS isn't such a common architecture to teach students anymore, imho.
You miss the point. It's not about software - it's about hardware. Even my friends electronic engineering students once implemented on FPGA core of MIPS plus few Ks of RAM.
x86 isn't so easy to implement due to variable op length and vast number of commands.
ARM, MIPS and now PowerPC is more or less standard examples of CPU designs students can try to implement by themselves during classes.
Well, you can't run M$Windows on them - but some talented kids manage to squeeze NetBSD/Linux in.
Nevermind that WMV DRM is cracked, while QT video DRM isn't.
Probably nobody needed that. DVD John was cracking two times m4p protection - and was saying that the protection can be avoided, since it is applied on client side. Same might be applicable to video.
And that Amazon lets you redownload your videos anytime you want, while iTMS doesn't.
That's interesting bit. In other words iTMS doesn't allow backups for videos as it does for music?
Cannot test by myself - but could anybody test that?
Xeon... Where to start. This is group name for server line of Intel's CPUs.
And yes, Intel keeps HyperThreading on Xeons - even on newer ones. Thou it seems that Dual Core Xeons do not have it: Wikipedia doesn't mention it and 2 new servers my company has bought this spring equipped with 2 dual core Xeons do not have HT.
Also keep in mind many vendors ship HT capable processors with HT disabled. Dell is one of them. It might be there but just turned off.
Did you expected other outcome? When you sign into new service - just to find the same old faces??
Since when we have iTMS? 3? 4 years now? Everybody screamed (and still screams) that service is expensive and restrictive. M$/friends came in. And what? New service - albeit cheaper - is even more restrictive.
People expected competition - especially after so many years. And better service. But thanks to DMCA, RIAA/MPAA got power to manipulate the services and slice markets as they wish - to end result to completely avoid threat of competition.
Shouldn't a pentium-D show up as 4 processors? (2 cores, each with 2 threads)
I have heard that Intel dropped HyperThreading from new CPUs: it's too complicated and doesn't provide any real advantage to applications. Anyway, HT was implemented as a way to workaround Pentium4 stupid design.
In other words, on newer Pentiums you have better design, more real CPU cores along with faster memory interface. No hacks to get most out of the CPU is required.
Hear about those scientists doing research into this electricity thing?
Read on. Then post. Show me were the gov't was involved there. (*)
I have seen many researchers using state funds. And honestly all there were capable - research-wise - find a ways to get another trunk of money.
On other side, I have worked a lot with research institution sponsored by Intel: they do not keep there people who do only theorize. If you can improve something - that's achievement.
When you waste bandwidth e.g. arguing Pluto is planet/not planet (underline correct answer) - to me that what it is - waste of time and resources.
(*) Reminded me of Ronald Reagan saying: "When something starts moving - tax it. If it still moves after that - regulate it. If it starts dying - fund it."
The networks existed before Internet. Learn facts. And Internet at large is privately owned - as communication channels concerned. As well as standards used to back it are collective effort - not affiliated with any gov't. (Though it's true that DARPA sponsored protocol is the Internet Protocol)
> getting rid of your computer
Computers and algorithms were invented about 150 years ago - when science was still considered mostly private matter and not supported by gov'ts.
Well, yes. I do not understand how existence of black/dark/light/whatever mater would help anyone. As well as all the theories about Universe origin: in the beginning there was nothing and then it exploded. I really do not understand.
P.S. What was first - nuclear reactor or nuclear bomb? Bombs were first - and sponsored by government.
in reality, many companies are woefully inept at protecting privacy
How long it would be needed for the privacy advocates to start realizing that the only way to secure your private information is to not give it way. Or in other words always question why company needs your private details.
Personally I still remember times before the dot.com boom, when shops were promising to help with choice of products, advices, etc - to improve the bleak internet shopping experience. And? It sucked back then - it sucks now. They have used then that info to spam us with sensless offers - and now they do all the same.
Let's get real. Why they need my private information in first place? And why do some give that info to them??
Thanks God, that's not my taxes are spent on that very useful research.
I'd rather help my friends artists to make another concert/exhibit - than to watch that sick show of theoretical scientists fighting for next trunk of federal money.
I bet that Vista would just reboot silently - just like 2k/XP does by default. I managed to "reboot" 2k/XP that way three times in first hour after installation - only later I have found that error screen is simply disabled.
Windows gathered pretty much of bad publicity with its BSODs - so by default they do not show them anymore. And from earlier betas I have seen now it is "RSOD" - "red screen of death" - since error background now is red.
Re:But does it have a useable file-save dialogue?
on
GNOME 2.16 Released
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· Score: 3, Interesting
Documentation is what always sucks in Linux desktop. Check out for once M$Windows one.
I loved GNOME 1.x for it was lean and clean - with most of the little bits been documented. I hated KDE1 precisely because it had only dummy automatically generated documentations. Many years have passed and situation reversed 180 degrees: KDE is documented and GNOME documentation is dumb-down to complete unusability level.
I'm given myself a word to not use GNOME until its developers would not document all the magic behind.gtkrc and.gnomerc files - and how the two are interconnected. It was safe bet - no documentation in last 3-4 years emerged and I do not use GNOME anymore;)
Slashdot Mirror
Another point, is why the guys seek the commercial support options. It's clear with commercial software - M$ gives not much choices to you - but with OSS, costly support is rarely needed.
In my personal experience, it's cheaper to buy e.g. week of time of consultant and then go ahead with development with tools/toolkits he would recommend. Then request help on problems encountered. We did that with two Linux appliances, bought 2 weeks of real time programmer and after two years of development we still had several hours of consulting left.
Additional Point 1. One of my employers had costly contract with MontaVista. That contract was required by support policies set for an industry. In other words, we might have bought QNX - but with its license for the industry, for every sold copy of QNX inside of our appliance, we would have to to pay additional license fee to QNX. But please do not get me wrong: it's not about fees - it's about managing licenses. Several people who have had experience with such licensing practices unanimously told that overhead of managing licensing would require company to hire more bureaucrats than developers. GPL in the end has advantage that there is already whole stack of applications covered by it and due to single license there is no overhead of license management.
Additional Point 2. I have seen several other examples, when HR were going out on street picking random people, giving them R&D badges and trying to develop something. They were buying expensive tools and expensive support contracts: not because they needed them - but because they wanted to jump-start development from ground zero. Needless to say that most of the time ends in failure. (Or if they got lucky, they manage to buy start-up with ready product and start selling it.)
To conclude, I rarely have seen need in such contracts - unless the contract is external requirement. (*) It's always make sense too look inside what you are really buying - and assess do you really need all what you are buying.
(*) e.g. you develop appliance and then sell its design to other companies. Not the appliance itself - but design. As R&D house, you wouldn't want to handle all the load produced by manufacturers.
P.S. Why OSS costs that much? Check out addresses - most of the Linux companies are located in expensive Silicon Valley where lots of expensive American specialists try to make decent (in Silicon Valley sense) living. I once looked for embedded Linux consultants: US - $200/hour, Germany - $40/hour. People, geez, get real, stop reading cools ads in cool magazines and start using Google/Yahoo/AltaVista.
At least former have stated why they can't go Open Source. And even releasing specs (which are incomplete) would help little: DirectX 7/8/9 which requires special special software from Microsoft in driver.
Intel on other side always try to push aside Open efforts. Against Open BIOS supported amongst many vendors AMD - it has released EFI. EFI theoretically is also Open Source, but primirily designed to load binary modules from other (e.g. motherboard, BIOS, OEM) vendors. Feel the difference: open source BIOS v. open source stub to load BIOS of binary modules.
Unlike for CPUs, Intel didn't released a single spec for its networking products: wireless are just hot now, but wired adapters have the same fate. It's just Intel did released open source drivers people consult instead of spec. But again, e100/e1000 are rather exception. Intel also didn't release specs for their on-board graphics and ATA/IDE controllers - some people under NDA updated older open source drivers.
What I'm trying to say is that wireless drivers are not exception - Intel cares only about big customers (namely servers) and good publicity (namely benchmarks). Small fry (like F/LOSS vendors) is very low priority - ranting on Slashdot are even more down the list.
Buhahahahhahahhahhahhahaahahahah!!!!! HERE THEY GO AGAIN!!!!!
I'm writing software for 15 years. And I already lost count of how many times I was told that crap and that "tomorrow" I would be among unemployed, since even idiots would be able to create software using tomorrow's modular platforms. That tomorrow is yet to realize.
I was working with asm/pascal 15 years ago - and were basically rewriting applications from scratch: for new platforms and for new performance requirements.
I now work with C/C++ - and basically rewrite applications from scratch: for new platforms and for new performance requirements.
What'd changed? NOTHING.
Would the idiots ever learn? As computer industry develops and grows - so do requirements for computers. 15 years ago nobody expected to have affordable real-time 3D graphics or on-line simulation algorithms or real-time video encoding. Now we take that for granted. As old fart, of course, I cannot even imagine what would be capable computers in next 15 years - but all that would be possible because of abundance of cheap HW performance and I hope more intelligent software. Not because we would have such performance - but because I'm sure there is and would be ever growing demand for it.
e.g. some AI guys might tomorrow implement autonomous OS which would be voice/etc controlled. So you would be able to plug your photo camera into computer, say "Grab all new photos" and (miracle!) it would do that. Then say "If there are more than N gigs of new photos burn me them on disk as photo album.". Etc. Voice recognition + intelligent interpretation of commands + AI personalization - are tasks not yet possible for computers both hardware-wise and software-wise. NOW. How well fit modern algorithms and applications for tasks in such environment? They are completely unfit. So when development would come to that point - we software developers would have to rewrite all the components and blocks to fit well into new platform/OS/etc to get most out of it. IOW, do not put your GCC aside just yet.
Can you take e.g. 10 paperbacks into long journey? After carrying heavy bag for several hours, believe me, $350 wouldn't look all that much.
From RTFA:
OMG! I'm already using it!! It's my IM client behind our corporate firewall!!!
To bring any antitrust claims into case - with all the evidence - you need a lot and lot of time and evidence. M$ v. DOD antitrust case took about 5 years to resolve. IBM v. DOD case of '80s was around for about a decade. AMD v. Intel started almost 2 years ago - and still in evidence collecting phase.
In that case RIAA has upper hand since it's bigger than LimeWire: it might not have all the resources to fight such case against RIAA. And RIAA are also not idiots, I think they have learned lessons from other industries and companies - and keep some dummy nominal competition just in case. (Even those damm indies would fit the "competitor" bill.) (*)
I wish LimeWire luck. They need it.
(*) Though couple of contracts I have seen between broadcasters and RIAA were pretty clearly fitting "exclusive" criteria. Yet w/o iTMS/subscriptions as witnesses for the claim, LimeWire would have little chances. (And apparently iTMS terms are not exclusive: Apple also lists lots of indies.) But such services have no reasons to provide any evidence which might strengthen their P2P competitors.
C'mon. We would never know who paid Ars Tech to publish that article. No facts, no references to facts == FUD. Period.
It's widely known that F/L/OSS (FireFox/Mozilla) would get statistically much more public bugs^Wvulns, since many of them are found by looking into source code, rather than by actually cracking the code (M$IE, Opera, WebKit).
Many problems fixed in FireFox/Mozilla were never actually exploited. But to force proprietary vendor to patch a hole - exploit must be already in a wild. Otherwise they would blankly deny any security risk. Also Opera was caught on many occasions for not reporting security problems - but silently fixing them in minor releases.
+5. Thanks for good laugh ;-)
But it seems that /. public isn't much into metrics, source code analysis and quantifications.
Also note, that there are pretty much of solid software patents. e.g. Frauenhofer's MP3 is one of them. They have come up with idea on how to make efficient digital music compression possible - and they have patented that idea along with adjacent methods to implement the idea. If you read the patents, you would notice that they are very narrow and do not conform to general patent structure "and the kitchen sink".
Though it is very hard to say that MP3 is software: I think now we have parity of number software v. hardware implementations.
I think, that if patents were mandated to be narrow - e.g. like legal documents - we would have seen much less pointless patent litigations.
You need to have watched SCO v. IBM more closely. When time had come for IBM to counter-sue, they have used 7(?) patents they have had for pretty obvious ideas.
It's not about quality - it's about quantity. If I hold 1000 patents you would think twice before suing me on patent infringement: it might take long time to overthrow my counterclaims backed by patents. If your patent is tested in court - that hurts credibility of your patent. And drain your resources to protect yourself from other patent sharks^Wholders like you are.
The software patents are not about technology or ideas anymore - they are now deterioration tool, to keep potential competitors at bay.
You would also then note that M$ doesn't really play important role in OS business per se. M$ really doesn't understand where from its fortune came from.
M$ was earning money making early very different PCs behaving similarly. Or in other words, all those fancy "white boxes" have had all the same interface with the same DOS based OS. M$ power was in control of hardware companies - not in its OS. DOS & Windows was a tool of such control. (Thief's knife has little value unless put against someone's throat.) Billg executed that power perfectly to extort as much money as possible. (Well, as you might notice, M$Office cash cow is just pure bonus to the OS charade.)
In evolutionary current of events, thanks to mono-OS environment, PCs become standardized - all thanks to M$. When I open *any* system in my company I find pretty normal ATX system - w/o any proprietary cruft all the earlier white boxes are so infamous for.
Now M$ try to live up to its image of OS vendor - and it is failing. Just like everybody said before it would. 3rd party applications are the only reasons why people keep M$Windows around. OSs from M$ has little value now - since it has lost it's control over Intel and OEMs. We already have choice of OSs: Linux kernel and *BSD made entry to OS market damn cheap for anybody. But M$ seems yet to understand that the thief's knife itself has little value.
Of course they would roll the OS ball as long as they can - but they just not used to open competition. M$Server 2003 is fine solid product - but why would anyone pay for it all the moneys when they can get all the same from Linux for much less/no money?
Vista comes precisely in the time when it starts to make more and more sense for M$ to release its OS for free (free as in "free beer") as it was suggested by many journalists and observers some time ago. And start making money from its server products (Outlook, Exchange, SQL Server) and M$Office. But yet they used to disregard such the opportunities, since they still believe that they are OS company... :-(
You are so wrong. You just need to be asked to run small company with all bureaucracy done on paper with typewriter. Absolutely w/o computers. You would understand why the boom happened really: computer market stabilized, became commodity and business at large went from paper-based work flow to computer-based one. In fact, computers now allow small companies to increase business volumes: only because bureaucracy is magnitude cheaper now. Many small/private businesses were often running into NOT limit of productivity - but inability to book all orders properly. Now they can. Computers made that easy.
Though I hardly expect the average underage offsprings of computer era - which are made majority of /. readers /posters - to really understand what really computer and data networks did for small/middle/big companies. We already take all the goods for granted.
Just to give one example, especially important to USA with its large populace of public companies. Before computers came, public companies were really run by few people close to board of directors who have had slight majority of shares. For most of little/private investors it didn't made much of a reason to fly across continent just to participate in meeting/voting regarding some current maters. Now, with advent of computers networks, anyone with no matter how small share of company, can participate in voting - remotely & cheaply. That meant to the public companies whole a lot. Exec officers are now under more scrutiny, since large number of small investors really play role: sum of their votes often is large enough to influence decision making. The sum, to calculate before computers came, was impossible.
20 years back computers were something new - something fresh. Whatever anybody did - was very new. NAd new is always interesting. Not that we have had any reasons. It was just new.
Now everybody knows what computer is. It's old news. Computer moved from being something new to being something like hammer. We all have them at home. Just in case.
When you show kid that he can screw computer to his own liking - most stick to programming very fast. They like idea of screwing something. Though only few kids would consider screwing computer worth time. They have many more dis/attractions this days: game consoles, mobile phones, smart phones, etc.
Also I have to admit that most of the modern kids understand programming pretty fast and naturally. For my parents cascading menu is something barring them from using mobile phones. But kids they already understand that computer as tool already different from hammer - computer has state, while hammer is stateless. My parents' mentality cannot accept device with state more complicated than TV: turned off, warming up, turned on. Understanding of statefullness & flexible interfaces - are all major cornerstones of programming. For example my friend spent two years to learn somehow BASIC in school - that was 15 years ago - his older daughter needed only 4 lessons now to start writing small computational programs in BASIC. Not that you would find her programming - she'd rather go party with friends.
You miss the point. It's not about software - it's about hardware. Even my friends electronic engineering students once implemented on FPGA core of MIPS plus few Ks of RAM.
x86 isn't so easy to implement due to variable op length and vast number of commands.
ARM, MIPS and now PowerPC is more or less standard examples of CPU designs students can try to implement by themselves during classes.
Well, you can't run M$Windows on them - but some talented kids manage to squeeze NetBSD/Linux in.
Probably nobody needed that. DVD John was cracking two times m4p protection - and was saying that the protection can be avoided, since it is applied on client side. Same might be applicable to video.
That's interesting bit. In other words iTMS doesn't allow backups for videos as it does for music?
Cannot test by myself - but could anybody test that?
Xeon... Where to start. This is group name for server line of Intel's CPUs.
And yes, Intel keeps HyperThreading on Xeons - even on newer ones. Thou it seems that Dual Core Xeons do not have it: Wikipedia doesn't mention it and 2 new servers my company has bought this spring equipped with 2 dual core Xeons do not have HT.
Also keep in mind many vendors ship HT capable processors with HT disabled. Dell is one of them. It might be there but just turned off.
Did you expected other outcome? When you sign into new service - just to find the same old faces??
Since when we have iTMS? 3? 4 years now? Everybody screamed (and still screams) that service is expensive and restrictive. M$/friends came in. And what? New service - albeit cheaper - is even more restrictive.
People expected competition - especially after so many years. And better service. But thanks to DMCA, RIAA/MPAA got power to manipulate the services and slice markets as they wish - to end result to completely avoid threat of competition.
I have heard that Intel dropped HyperThreading from new CPUs: it's too complicated and doesn't provide any real advantage to applications. Anyway, HT was implemented as a way to workaround Pentium4 stupid design.
In other words, on newer Pentiums you have better design, more real CPU cores along with faster memory interface. No hacks to get most out of the CPU is required.
Read on. Then post. Show me were the gov't was involved there. (*)
I have seen many researchers using state funds. And honestly all there were capable - research-wise - find a ways to get another trunk of money.
On other side, I have worked a lot with research institution sponsored by Intel: they do not keep there people who do only theorize. If you can improve something - that's achievement.
When you waste bandwidth e.g. arguing Pluto is planet/not planet (underline correct answer) - to me that what it is - waste of time and resources.
(*) Reminded me of Ronald Reagan saying: "When something starts moving - tax it. If it still moves after that - regulate it. If it starts dying - fund it."
> logging off /.
The networks existed before Internet. Learn facts. And Internet at large is privately owned - as communication channels concerned. As well as standards used to back it are collective effort - not affiliated with any gov't. (Though it's true that DARPA sponsored protocol is the Internet Protocol)
> getting rid of your computer
Computers and algorithms were invented about 150 years ago - when science was still considered mostly private matter and not supported by gov'ts.
Also transistor was invented again by non-gov't related companies. Check here - http://www.pbs.org/transistor/album1/index.html
> X-rays
X-rays? Check your facts - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/X-ray - before posting.
> applications were not immediately obvious
Well, yes. I do not understand how existence of black/dark/light/whatever mater would help anyone. As well as all the theories about Universe origin: in the beginning there was nothing and then it exploded. I really do not understand.
P.S. What was first - nuclear reactor or nuclear bomb? Bombs were first - and sponsored by government.
True. I'm ignorant. I do not watch "Dr. Who" and "Lexx". Well, I do not have TV at all.
We have wars. We have starving people. We have sicknesses with no cure.
But all news channels are flooded with what? Right. Is Pluto a planet or not? Does black/white/red/whatever matter exists?
Who's ignorant? Me wonders.
How long it would be needed for the privacy advocates to start realizing that the only way to secure your private information is to not give it way. Or in other words always question why company needs your private details.
Personally I still remember times before the dot.com boom, when shops were promising to help with choice of products, advices, etc - to improve the bleak internet shopping experience. And? It sucked back then - it sucks now. They have used then that info to spam us with sensless offers - and now they do all the same.
Let's get real. Why they need my private information in first place? And why do some give that info to them??
Thanks God, that's not my taxes are spent on that very useful research.
I'd rather help my friends artists to make another concert/exhibit - than to watch that sick show of theoretical scientists fighting for next trunk of federal money.
I bet that Vista would just reboot silently - just like 2k/XP does by default. I managed to "reboot" 2k/XP that way three times in first hour after installation - only later I have found that error screen is simply disabled.
Windows gathered pretty much of bad publicity with its BSODs - so by default they do not show them anymore. And from earlier betas I have seen now it is "RSOD" - "red screen of death" - since error background now is red.
Documentation is what always sucks in Linux desktop. Check out for once M$Windows one.
I loved GNOME 1.x for it was lean and clean - with most of the little bits been documented. I hated KDE1 precisely because it had only dummy automatically generated documentations. Many years have passed and situation reversed 180 degrees: KDE is documented and GNOME documentation is dumb-down to complete unusability level.
I'm given myself a word to not use GNOME until its developers would not document all the magic behind .gtkrc and .gnomerc files - and how the two are interconnected. It was safe bet - no documentation in last 3-4 years emerged and I do not use GNOME anymore ;)