Wow. You've not really thought your argument through. With the cloud you are not restricted to the number of mainframes you own. You couldn't flip a switch in the good old days and suddenly a new mainframe would pop out of thin air.
You don't really seem to know what you're talking about. It's almost as if you've never actually used the cloud for anything decent. Your summation as simply being asynchronous form submissions speaks volumes.
Wow, to be blunt you are ignorant. Do you really believe that you don't have to have infrastructure to add nodes in the cloud? It's actually a common piece of ignorance. If you don't own the infrastructure, then you are using someone else' infrastructure.
You don't just snap your fingers and have a new cloud node pop out of thin air as you imply. Someone has to own all of the parts that you are using, someone has to power them up, someone has to manage the layers you don't manage.
Not all cloud applications are using MP. The vast majority are websites or application back-ends. It's not about software using more cores in a single computer, it's software running on the same number of cores, but on many computers
Which is exactly what DMP is. Thanks for doing some checking before responding.
And with the cloud, you don't have to own your own mainframes and allocate them as you see fit - you can just request more computers without having to pay for them when you're not using them.
Which as someone pointed out already, was never an issue. Big companies that wanted a dedicated Main Frame purchased them. Small companies used "Time Share". If you ever heard of the company called EDS, see how they started out. Interesting read, and yes.. I did work for EDS a long long time ago.
You also don't seem to understand what the cloud actually is. I'm sure you're not doing it on purpose, but there are clear and fantastic advantages to cloud computing than mainframes which clearly separate them in terms of their *shudder* "paradigms".
< sarcasm on > Obviously I have no knowledge at all, which is why I am a consultant for a living. Having worked as a consultant during the various time periods I have gained no ability to discuss the parallels between the systems. < sarcasm off >
As I mentioned, "Cloud" does have some purposes (I would not call them "advantages" as you have done. Sounds like you are a cheerleader for a service.). The biggest disadvantage of "Cloud" is that it allows complete morons the ability to think they have the answer to every problem ever posed for distributed compute systems. Honestly, that is the worst part. After some douche bag tells a VP how they will be better off running MS Word in a cloud, there is usually weeks of meetings required to undo that damage. Masses of charts to show why it's not financially better, how it will add to unproductive hours for both users and admins, how it will put their IP at risk, etc...
Lets not forget that in order to hit that 4 or 5 9s, you have to have built in maintenance times which are down time but don't count toward your SLA.
And before you ask, yes.. I believe that most places will stiff a maintenance window when something bad happens and they have down time. So that 4 hour server crash sits in the 4 hour maintenance window and we get 0 down time for the month.
The same problems with scaling now existed back in the main frame days, and the same solutions were present. No matter how many CPUs you throw to a developer, the applications must be developed to scale with them.
Do some digging on DMP (Dynamic Multi-Processor) and SMP (Symetric Multi-Processor) architectures and you will probably be amazed at how long ago these methods were being used.
This to me is the hilarity of the people that push "Cloud". They say things like Microsoft did in their "Yeah Cloud" commercials geared toward home users. Running "Word" in the cloud is simply idiotic since there is no DMP built in to the application. Microsoft Photo does not have it either. Outside of having redundant nodes hosting your data there is absolutely 0 benefit. Most cloud services have no SLA on data you store there either, so the real use of a "Cloud" is very very obscure outside of the sales pitch.
I'm not saying "Cloud" has no use, but the real value is in the same application stacks we saw on Grid computing and it's predecessors ("Main frame" and very large SMP servers).
I think you miss the distinction between regulating and policing. Both have their place and both can be reasonable or unreasonable. Punishing someone for breaking the law is not regulation. The concept of a breath testing device in a car, or a speed governor could be regulation.
After seeing the comments and reading a bit, the French implementation is not a regulation but a novelty. If we all had to have the device courts can already force on to people convicted of drunk driving, it would be regulation.
What you do in your last paragraph is try to excuse any and all lacking regulations. Sorry, but the world is full of problems. We often regulate with that in mind, and of course hopefully a bit of common sense. Yeah, it's not often.. but in the US why does anyone need a car that does 160MPH from the showroom? How about a Motorcycle that does 200MPH out of the showroom? The answer of course is that nobody needs either of those. The Government allows them to be sold because they make a hell of a lot of money by allowing people to break certain laws (and of course catch them breaking the laws). Of course they perpetuate, and let other people perpetuate, an opposite belief to maintain the revenue stream. "It's my right to drive really fast.", and "as long as they don't catch me it's legal." (Then of course piss and moan about how unfair that cop was when you get caught and pay that nice 300.00 fine).
You also completely failed to address what I think was the most salient point I brought up -- a study which states that the vast majority of fatal accidents (for the subset studied
If more fatal accidents happen at lower speeds then would that not bolster a reason for a governor on a car and not negate any reasons? If it means I could no longer get a ticket on the freeway because we are regulating our laws instead of just penalizing people for breaking them I would have no problem with the regulation.
Generally the people that have problems with regulations do so because they disagree with the law, or feel they should not have to follow them. There are ways to address a law you disagree with, while not breaking the law.
Funny how people come up with all kinds of excuses to justify a reduction in common sense regulation.
Some people drive their street vehicles where US traffic laws do not apply.
and
What about when your speedo dies because your car is old and now your governor can't tell how fast you're going?
The governor would be placed on a part that does know how fast you are going, instead of on lets say.. the radiator. Nothing stops people from removing the governor in places outside of the US.
For the person before you:
What about people who like to take their road car to a sanctioned race course? How do you propose this limit be removed for that activity at no cost to them?
Really, you want race your car but don't want to pay for something as simple as lets say having a mechanic on the course disable the governor for the duration of track day? It could be build in to your track fees pretty easily. And if you can't afford a lets say 10.00 fee to suspend the governor then maybe you should not be racing Jethro.
And the person a bit down.
It's 80 during the daytime in west Texas, and the speed limits are widely understood to be unenforced on most interstates in Montana.
I think it would be a given that the governor would have to be set to allow higher than the speed limits slightly. Passing, emergencies, and all that. A place not choosing to enforce law is not an acceptable reason for people to break the law.
Think of the logical conclusion from a speed governor on a car though. You could not get a speeding ticket on a highway. Even if you were doing 10 over, assuming that's what the governor allowed, it would not be illegal since speed is regulated. States would not want such a mandated regulation since they make a whole lot of money with speed traps on weekends. To the majority of people it would be better to not have to worry about getting a speeding ticket.
If it prevents them from driving, how is this a punishment? It's not like it stops you from driving, calls the police and issues you a ticket. It simply stops someone from starting the car if they are drunk.
Okay, I'm ready for the berating. I have no issue with this type of regulation. It's something proactive that backs a current law, and helps with the enforcement of laws. While some may say it's intrusive, it's no more intrusive than some drunk getting behind the wheel and putting themselves on a road where other people will be at risk.
A different common sense regulation to me is a governor on motorized vehicles to prevent insane travel speeds. I always wondered why publicly sold vehicles are capable of doing 180Mph when we have a maximum speed limit of 70 on any road in the US.
As the old saying goes "An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.". And while I have a hard time with some regulations that come out, this one is not so bad.
The shitware makes a big difference in price; that's how the mfgrs are able to sell you a laptop with Windows for less than the same laptop with Linux (which itself is free): your cost is being subsidized by all the pre-loaded shitware. By being forced to spend $300 or whatever for a fully-featured Windows license, you're only being forced to realize the true cost of the software. Of course, the preloaded Windows versions also frequently have various limitations that the higher-cost versions don't, hence the "Starter" edition which only lets you run 3 programs at a time, etc.
Comparing a shitware-loaded OEM Windows version to a Mac is apples and oranges. If the version of Windows you want ends up making your system cost as much as a Mac, then that shows that Windows isn't, in reality, any cheaper, it only appears that way when you use crippled versions and/or various vendor marketing deals that subsidize the cost.
I guess you missed the whole anti-trust case, or should I say "all of them" where Microsoft forces vendors to pre-load Windows in order to keep on the approved list and get bulk discounts right? I guess the cruft that some vendors bloat on to the box may help them a bit with cost, the real issue is much easier to follow. M$ lays out guide lines. VARs must follow those guide lines or be black listed from the M$ approved and published VAR list.
To me what's the difference between any of them? How the play lists are stored and how easy they are to port? I don't use the dancing disco balls or what ever graphics people get in to. I click on a song title or album name and press a button that pretty much always say's "Play" or has a triangle facing to the right.
My Linux Amarok is just as good as iTunes and looks similar enough that it's easy to navigate and function, at least for playing music. The "Store" portion of iTunes is different. Well shit, I guess I figure out how to shop there when I want to buy something.
I have no idea why they ever released Zune let alone spent millions trying to convince people it was a product they should own. Actually I do. They hoped that they could force iTunes out of business by dumping Zune on people for "Free" and get another monopoly like Desktop PCs.
Doing this in light of the fact that iTunes was already free, used by millions, and was more mature and "better" than Zune is rather psychopathic. But it is Microsoft, and I expect nothing less than Evil from them.
What you mention really is the problem with the IP Patent system as a whole.
Numerous people were inventing things simultaneously back in the day. It was primarily MIT, Berkley, AT&T and a mixture of the Government funded DARPA project and people developing tools to help them do their jobs.
Many of these things on the internet people lay claim to are really copies of what we already had in a physical format. Email came out as the equivalent of the "Mail Room", and "Mail Clerks". UUCP and FTP which came out as the "Courier Services" to get data back and forth. HTTP/HTML, and much more came out as primarily the bulletin board.
Over time, we had to add security and could add niceties. We also had numerous flavors of each utility since people had different ways of solving problems and saw different challenges and risks. Lots of these ended up merged, and many just vanished because a different product was better.
Early on, there were no concerns about patents. Back then, it was copyright rules only. Everyone working on projects knew that what they did was for the betterment of the whole. Patents would have hindered or stopped development. I don't think the Government would have allowed a patent even if it was pushed.
To this day, technical people developing services and software generally despise IP patents. It harms the business and kills growth and improvements. It's only the lawyers and money grubbers that like them.
Do I expect to be able to Copyright and enforce the Copyright on my code, Icons, images, etc..? Absolutely. Do I expect to own the ideas I develop? Hell no. If you can do what I do, go right ahead. I hope you do it better, so that I'm challenged to improve myself.
Thanks for the additional points. Honestly, there have been some resources posted regarding the EULAs of several companies that try to do the same thing. "We own any idea you come up with while using our product, because it's obviously our product that gave you the idea. You simply are not capable of having ideas without our stuff." AFAIK, Oracle is the first to try and use this in court.
As an acquaintance of mine says"Very odd times we live in." (instead of bitching about the irrational set of laws being shoved down our throats).
Yes, we saw the same with SCO, Microsoft, and many more. Sadly the plot line reads the same in every script.
Accuser: "They owe us a billion trillion dollars!"
Defendant: "Um, show us what we did wrong."
Accuser: "You stole all the sugar from our candy, and used it in your candy!"
Defendant: "We purchased our own sugar, here's the receipt."
Accuser: "Um.. You owe us one thousand dollars!"
Defendant: "What did we do wrong?"
Accuser: "We were going to buy that sugar, and you cut in line."
So the next act that plays out is going to be whether a jury thinks that taking cuts in line is worth paying the accuser any money for. With SCO, it did not turn out so well. With Microsoft and Apple it has paid off about 1% of the time. Lets hope the court and jury follow the norm and tell Oracle to grow up and act like a big business now.
You know, that was one of the first things I was thinking. Here goes Apple, giving all their IP (whether they wanted to or not) to China. They move all their manufacturing there thinking "It's our in to make assloads of cash! China only does business with people that have lots of business in China! They told us so, and we saw how good that turned out for the Big 3!"
Ah, but if you follow along with the AGW crowd and implement all the regulations and laws they require to "solve" global warming (which incidentally are exactly what one side of the political spectrum wants, but are anathema to the other side) then you must be a patriot right?
I've come to realize recently that I really agree with most of the arguments of AGW.
But
I think they are wildly optimistic at how effective their regulations will be at changing the situation and are oblivious to the fact that regulations with enough impact to make a change will have severely adverse consequences of the economy and personal freedom.
Recently, it was posited on line that it was more likely that the free market and the decreasing supply of fossil fuels (leading to cost increases) will naturally spur on innovations that achieve the goals many environmentalists have, but that many laws proposed have serious negative and draconian impacts on the economy and the people.
Good stuff, I wish I had mod points here.
An opportune question is, if you're paying people to not emit CO2, then how do you effectively stop rampant corruption in the market from people who say that they'll generate less CO2, but just want you to pay them money to do nothing? Cap and Trade is a false market that is incapable of avoiding both fraud and regulatory capture.
Same thoughts here, and it's a shame that people don't discuss it.
Someone needs to develop energy solutions that can replace fossil fuels that deliver the same amount of energy for nearly the same cost. That's where the bar is. If you can do that you'll end up rich and will save the planet, if you can't, taxing people for CO2 emissions isn't going to make it happen.
And before anyone brings it up, yes, subsidies for the fossil fuel industry have to go to keep the marketplace fair and encourage development of new technology.
Alternate energy technology is our only hope. I'm sorry, governmental worldwide restrictions and regulations are too dangerous and too prone to misuse.
The start of your statement is where I have to disagree. We have alternative energies but refuse to implement them. Tidal power, Nuclear power are both sitting dormant. Why? This is where I think we can make a solid correlation between these leaked letters and what's happening on a much bigger scale.
Fact: There is a huge campaign against clean energy. At least once a week I'm hearing about how it takes energy to make solar panels, and wind turbines kill birds so they are horrible. There are numerous fixes for the bird issue, but we sure as hell don't hear about those.
Fact: Lobbyists have shut down every modern attempt at creating a nuclear power plant. Not the people, that's for damn sure. I think I'd have an easy bet if I laid money on Big Oil companies being behind most of the lobbyist money.
I don't think you have to go very far in to the "Globalist Conspiracy" theories to find out why Microsoft is funding this type of thing. Spend a bit of time on InfoWars and you will find lots of funny information linking "The Gates" and Microsoft to odd things.
The Obama administration claims to be for the middle class. That's the rhetoric anyway. But we are cutting 100,000 middle class jobs (Army and Marines), we are cutting science across the board (NASA, Science Grants, Education Grants).
I keep hoping that people wake up, and get rid of these corrupt politicians. But the TV keeps telling everyone how great they are since they own the media. Sheople are so disappointing.
Don't you have the option to "hide" that bar so that it's not in the way? That's what the auto-hide feature that's been there since Gnome 1.x is about. Lets remember that if you want the Average user to adopt Linux, then it needs to be usable to the average user. I don't mean this as an insult to you, but that thought is what seems to be lacking when ever I see comments like yours (or new distro's spring up, or changes such as Gnome has made in 3.x and plans for in 4.x).
Tech heads can figure out how to remove bars, or move crap around. If an average user can't figure out how to run an application.. well, they will stick with Windows.
Honestly, I find KDE to be faster and better than any other desktop UI. You claim it's bloated, but it starts faster than Gnome on anything I own. With everything possible running, KDE is at around 300Mb. Compared to Gnome and Java at 350'ish.
Here are some simple things I have commended the KDE team for, which even Microsoft does not get.
Window placement on open is logical, and organized. Unlike Gnome and Windows where the window pops up in random locations. Windows centers splash screens, but it's always in the foreground as well.
KDevelop - Nothing more needs to be said. KDE is not required, but does make it much nicer.
Konquer - Gnome just can't seem to release a consistent functional file manager. Nautilus sucked, and sucks. So did it's predecessor.
Multi-media support - I like being able to listen to tunes as I work. Gnome's support is half ass at best.
Logical layout - Windows had this as well (Pre-ribbon days) and people like it. It's organized, and I can find what I need. Gnome and the other fads.. well, good luck finding what you want. And be prepared to spend hours creating your own tool bars or learning command lines for all the GUIs.
Gnome had something right early on. A CDE replacement in Java which could be used for free by the big iron vendors. But support blows, and the chronic massive changes could not be tolerated by the big players. Sun tried to play along for a while, but gave up long before Oracle bought them out. "this part is buggy" translated to the Gnome team as "Hell, lets re-write it all and move everything around. While we are at it, lets rename everything possible and bring in new buggy code to replace the old buggy code.
There are some that thrive on the hand given story. They don't want to be creative, they just want to blow some sh^%$ up! Twisted Metal was one of those games, and at the time was an exceptionally made one. Similar to Unreal Tournament, you get things designed for you and play on maps designed for you. That's not to say no skill is involved, but you don't have to be creative on solutions. Aim well, drive well, learn the maps, and get high scores. Those games are great, but also have limited life. Play for an hour and then go on to something else.
The other half of the gaming community though prefers to make things up as they go, and create their own game. This is the popularity of Skyrim and World of Warcraft. (One may argue that WoW's content is all hand picked, which it is, but the quests one does and which realm they play on and what armor and weapons they choose, etc.. are all up to the player.). Milestones still need to be marked, and a cut-scene is the best way of marking those milestones. These kind of games really don't end, at least in story line. Content can be added, players can go do old quests they missed, or start a new character and see the world from a different angle.
So I agree with him for the more arcade type games. Disagree with him when it comes to story based games.
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Wow. You've not really thought your argument through. With the cloud you are not restricted to the number of mainframes you own. You couldn't flip a switch in the good old days and suddenly a new mainframe would pop out of thin air.
You don't really seem to know what you're talking about. It's almost as if you've never actually used the cloud for anything decent. Your summation as simply being asynchronous form submissions speaks volumes.
Wow, to be blunt you are ignorant. Do you really believe that you don't have to have infrastructure to add nodes in the cloud? It's actually a common piece of ignorance. If you don't own the infrastructure, then you are using someone else' infrastructure.
You don't just snap your fingers and have a new cloud node pop out of thin air as you imply. Someone has to own all of the parts that you are using, someone has to power them up, someone has to manage the layers you don't manage.
Not all cloud applications are using MP. The vast majority are websites or application back-ends. It's not about software using more cores in a single computer, it's software running on the same number of cores, but on many computers
Which is exactly what DMP is. Thanks for doing some checking before responding.
And with the cloud, you don't have to own your own mainframes and allocate them as you see fit - you can just request more computers without having to pay for them when you're not using them.
Which as someone pointed out already, was never an issue. Big companies that wanted a dedicated Main Frame purchased them. Small companies used "Time Share". If you ever heard of the company called EDS, see how they started out. Interesting read, and yes.. I did work for EDS a long long time ago.
You also don't seem to understand what the cloud actually is. I'm sure you're not doing it on purpose, but there are clear and fantastic advantages to cloud computing than mainframes which clearly separate them in terms of their *shudder* "paradigms".
< sarcasm on > Obviously I have no knowledge at all, which is why I am a consultant for a living. Having worked as a consultant during the various time periods I have gained no ability to discuss the parallels between the systems. < sarcasm off >
As I mentioned, "Cloud" does have some purposes (I would not call them "advantages" as you have done. Sounds like you are a cheerleader for a service.). The biggest disadvantage of "Cloud" is that it allows complete morons the ability to think they have the answer to every problem ever posed for distributed compute systems. Honestly, that is the worst part. After some douche bag tells a VP how they will be better off running MS Word in a cloud, there is usually weeks of meetings required to undo that damage. Masses of charts to show why it's not financially better, how it will add to unproductive hours for both users and admins, how it will put their IP at risk, etc...
Lets not forget that in order to hit that 4 or 5 9s, you have to have built in maintenance times which are down time but don't count toward your SLA.
And before you ask, yes.. I believe that most places will stiff a maintenance window when something bad happens and they have down time. So that 4 hour server crash sits in the 4 hour maintenance window and we get 0 down time for the month.
The same problems with scaling now existed back in the main frame days, and the same solutions were present. No matter how many CPUs you throw to a developer, the applications must be developed to scale with them.
Do some digging on DMP (Dynamic Multi-Processor) and SMP (Symetric Multi-Processor) architectures and you will probably be amazed at how long ago these methods were being used.
This to me is the hilarity of the people that push "Cloud". They say things like Microsoft did in their "Yeah Cloud" commercials geared toward home users. Running "Word" in the cloud is simply idiotic since there is no DMP built in to the application. Microsoft Photo does not have it either. Outside of having redundant nodes hosting your data there is absolutely 0 benefit. Most cloud services have no SLA on data you store there either, so the real use of a "Cloud" is very very obscure outside of the sales pitch.
I'm not saying "Cloud" has no use, but the real value is in the same application stacks we saw on Grid computing and it's predecessors ("Main frame" and very large SMP servers).
I think you miss the distinction between regulating and policing. Both have their place and both can be reasonable or unreasonable. Punishing someone for breaking the law is not regulation. The concept of a breath testing device in a car, or a speed governor could be regulation.
After seeing the comments and reading a bit, the French implementation is not a regulation but a novelty. If we all had to have the device courts can already force on to people convicted of drunk driving, it would be regulation.
What you do in your last paragraph is try to excuse any and all lacking regulations. Sorry, but the world is full of problems. We often regulate with that in mind, and of course hopefully a bit of common sense. Yeah, it's not often.. but in the US why does anyone need a car that does 160MPH from the showroom? How about a Motorcycle that does 200MPH out of the showroom? The answer of course is that nobody needs either of those. The Government allows them to be sold because they make a hell of a lot of money by allowing people to break certain laws (and of course catch them breaking the laws). Of course they perpetuate, and let other people perpetuate, an opposite belief to maintain the revenue stream. "It's my right to drive really fast.", and "as long as they don't catch me it's legal." (Then of course piss and moan about how unfair that cop was when you get caught and pay that nice 300.00 fine).
You also completely failed to address what I think was the most salient point I brought up -- a study which states that the vast majority of fatal accidents (for the subset studied
If more fatal accidents happen at lower speeds then would that not bolster a reason for a governor on a car and not negate any reasons? If it means I could no longer get a ticket on the freeway because we are regulating our laws instead of just penalizing people for breaking them I would have no problem with the regulation.
Generally the people that have problems with regulations do so because they disagree with the law, or feel they should not have to follow them. There are ways to address a law you disagree with, while not breaking the law.
Funny how people come up with all kinds of excuses to justify a reduction in common sense regulation.
Some people drive their street vehicles where US traffic laws do not apply.
and
What about when your speedo dies because your car is old and now your governor can't tell how fast you're going?
The governor would be placed on a part that does know how fast you are going, instead of on lets say.. the radiator. Nothing stops people from removing the governor in places outside of the US.
For the person before you:
What about people who like to take their road car to a sanctioned race course? How do you propose this limit be removed for that activity at no cost to them?
Really, you want race your car but don't want to pay for something as simple as lets say having a mechanic on the course disable the governor for the duration of track day? It could be build in to your track fees pretty easily. And if you can't afford a lets say 10.00 fee to suspend the governor then maybe you should not be racing Jethro.
And the person a bit down.
It's 80 during the daytime in west Texas, and the speed limits are widely understood to be unenforced on most interstates in Montana.
I think it would be a given that the governor would have to be set to allow higher than the speed limits slightly. Passing, emergencies, and all that. A place not choosing to enforce law is not an acceptable reason for people to break the law.
Think of the logical conclusion from a speed governor on a car though. You could not get a speeding ticket on a highway. Even if you were doing 10 over, assuming that's what the governor allowed, it would not be illegal since speed is regulated. States would not want such a mandated regulation since they make a whole lot of money with speed traps on weekends. To the majority of people it would be better to not have to worry about getting a speeding ticket.
If it prevents them from driving, how is this a punishment? It's not like it stops you from driving, calls the police and issues you a ticket. It simply stops someone from starting the car if they are drunk.
Okay, I'm ready for the berating. I have no issue with this type of regulation. It's something proactive that backs a current law, and helps with the enforcement of laws. While some may say it's intrusive, it's no more intrusive than some drunk getting behind the wheel and putting themselves on a road where other people will be at risk.
A different common sense regulation to me is a governor on motorized vehicles to prevent insane travel speeds. I always wondered why publicly sold vehicles are capable of doing 180Mph when we have a maximum speed limit of 70 on any road in the US.
As the old saying goes "An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.". And while I have a hard time with some regulations that come out, this one is not so bad.
I'd be willing to bet that they get paid for any information provided as well. The Govt generally has sweet deals for this type of action.
The shitware makes a big difference in price; that's how the mfgrs are able to sell you a laptop with Windows for less than the same laptop with Linux (which itself is free): your cost is being subsidized by all the pre-loaded shitware. By being forced to spend $300 or whatever for a fully-featured Windows license, you're only being forced to realize the true cost of the software. Of course, the preloaded Windows versions also frequently have various limitations that the higher-cost versions don't, hence the "Starter" edition which only lets you run 3 programs at a time, etc.
Comparing a shitware-loaded OEM Windows version to a Mac is apples and oranges. If the version of Windows you want ends up making your system cost as much as a Mac, then that shows that Windows isn't, in reality, any cheaper, it only appears that way when you use crippled versions and/or various vendor marketing deals that subsidize the cost.
I guess you missed the whole anti-trust case, or should I say "all of them" where Microsoft forces vendors to pre-load Windows in order to keep on the approved list and get bulk discounts right? I guess the cruft that some vendors bloat on to the box may help them a bit with cost, the real issue is much easier to follow. M$ lays out guide lines. VARs must follow those guide lines or be black listed from the M$ approved and published VAR list.
To me what's the difference between any of them? How the play lists are stored and how easy they are to port? I don't use the dancing disco balls or what ever graphics people get in to. I click on a song title or album name and press a button that pretty much always say's "Play" or has a triangle facing to the right.
My Linux Amarok is just as good as iTunes and looks similar enough that it's easy to navigate and function, at least for playing music. The "Store" portion of iTunes is different. Well shit, I guess I figure out how to shop there when I want to buy something.
I have no idea why they ever released Zune let alone spent millions trying to convince people it was a product they should own. Actually I do. They hoped that they could force iTunes out of business by dumping Zune on people for "Free" and get another monopoly like Desktop PCs.
Doing this in light of the fact that iTunes was already free, used by millions, and was more mature and "better" than Zune is rather psychopathic. But it is Microsoft, and I expect nothing less than Evil from them.
The "EDITOR" variable has been around since the 70s, so your statement is false.
What you mention really is the problem with the IP Patent system as a whole.
Numerous people were inventing things simultaneously back in the day. It was primarily MIT, Berkley, AT&T and a mixture of the Government funded DARPA project and people developing tools to help them do their jobs.
Many of these things on the internet people lay claim to are really copies of what we already had in a physical format. Email came out as the equivalent of the "Mail Room", and "Mail Clerks". UUCP and FTP which came out as the "Courier Services" to get data back and forth. HTTP/HTML, and much more came out as primarily the bulletin board.
Over time, we had to add security and could add niceties. We also had numerous flavors of each utility since people had different ways of solving problems and saw different challenges and risks. Lots of these ended up merged, and many just vanished because a different product was better.
Early on, there were no concerns about patents. Back then, it was copyright rules only. Everyone working on projects knew that what they did was for the betterment of the whole. Patents would have hindered or stopped development. I don't think the Government would have allowed a patent even if it was pushed.
To this day, technical people developing services and software generally despise IP patents. It harms the business and kills growth and improvements. It's only the lawyers and money grubbers that like them.
Do I expect to be able to Copyright and enforce the Copyright on my code, Icons, images, etc..? Absolutely. Do I expect to own the ideas I develop? Hell no. If you can do what I do, go right ahead. I hope you do it better, so that I'm challenged to improve myself.
Nothing more will need to be said!
Thanks for the additional points. Honestly, there have been some resources posted regarding the EULAs of several companies that try to do the same thing. "We own any idea you come up with while using our product, because it's obviously our product that gave you the idea. You simply are not capable of having ideas without our stuff." AFAIK, Oracle is the first to try and use this in court.
As an acquaintance of mine says"Very odd times we live in." (instead of bitching about the irrational set of laws being shoved down our throats).
Yes, we saw the same with SCO, Microsoft, and many more. Sadly the plot line reads the same in every script.
Accuser: "They owe us a billion trillion dollars!"
Defendant: "Um, show us what we did wrong."
Accuser: "You stole all the sugar from our candy, and used it in your candy!"
Defendant: "We purchased our own sugar, here's the receipt."
Accuser: "Um.. You owe us one thousand dollars!"
Defendant: "What did we do wrong?"
Accuser: "We were going to buy that sugar, and you cut in line."
So the next act that plays out is going to be whether a jury thinks that taking cuts in line is worth paying the accuser any money for. With SCO, it did not turn out so well. With Microsoft and Apple it has paid off about 1% of the time. Lets hope the court and jury follow the norm and tell Oracle to grow up and act like a big business now.
You know, that was one of the first things I was thinking. Here goes Apple, giving all their IP (whether they wanted to or not) to China. They move all their manufacturing there thinking "It's our in to make assloads of cash! China only does business with people that have lots of business in China! They told us so, and we saw how good that turned out for the Big 3!"
Dumbasses, great business model and planning.
Ah, but if you follow along with the AGW crowd and implement all the regulations and laws they require to "solve" global warming (which incidentally are exactly what one side of the political spectrum wants, but are anathema to the other side) then you must be a patriot right?
I've come to realize recently that I really agree with most of the arguments of AGW.
But
I think they are wildly optimistic at how effective their regulations will be at changing the situation and are oblivious to the fact that regulations with enough impact to make a change will have severely adverse consequences of the economy and personal freedom.
Recently, it was posited on line that it was more likely that the free market and the decreasing supply of fossil fuels (leading to cost increases) will naturally spur on innovations that achieve the goals many environmentalists have, but that many laws proposed have serious negative and draconian impacts on the economy and the people.
Good stuff, I wish I had mod points here.
An opportune question is, if you're paying people to not emit CO2, then how do you effectively stop rampant corruption in the market from people who say that they'll generate less CO2, but just want you to pay them money to do nothing? Cap and Trade is a false market that is incapable of avoiding both fraud and regulatory capture.
Same thoughts here, and it's a shame that people don't discuss it.
Someone needs to develop energy solutions that can replace fossil fuels that deliver the same amount of energy for nearly the same cost. That's where the bar is. If you can do that you'll end up rich and will save the planet, if you can't, taxing people for CO2 emissions isn't going to make it happen.
And before anyone brings it up, yes, subsidies for the fossil fuel industry have to go to keep the marketplace fair and encourage development of new technology.
Alternate energy technology is our only hope. I'm sorry, governmental worldwide restrictions and regulations are too dangerous and too prone to misuse.
The start of your statement is where I have to disagree. We have alternative energies but refuse to implement them. Tidal power, Nuclear power are both sitting dormant. Why? This is where I think we can make a solid correlation between these leaked letters and what's happening on a much bigger scale.
Fact: There is a huge campaign against clean energy. At least once a week I'm hearing about how it takes energy to make solar panels, and wind turbines kill birds so they are horrible. There are numerous fixes for the bird issue, but we sure as hell don't hear about those.
Fact: Lobbyists have shut down every modern attempt at creating a nuclear power plant. Not the people, that's for damn sure. I think I'd have an easy bet if I laid money on Big Oil companies being behind most of the lobbyist money.
I don't think you have to go very far in to the "Globalist Conspiracy" theories to find out why Microsoft is funding this type of thing. Spend a bit of time on InfoWars and you will find lots of funny information linking "The Gates" and Microsoft to odd things.
The Obama administration claims to be for the middle class. That's the rhetoric anyway. But we are cutting 100,000 middle class jobs (Army and Marines), we are cutting science across the board (NASA, Science Grants, Education Grants).
I keep hoping that people wake up, and get rid of these corrupt politicians. But the TV keeps telling everyone how great they are since they own the media. Sheople are so disappointing.
Don't you have the option to "hide" that bar so that it's not in the way? That's what the auto-hide feature that's been there since Gnome 1.x is about. Lets remember that if you want the Average user to adopt Linux, then it needs to be usable to the average user. I don't mean this as an insult to you, but that thought is what seems to be lacking when ever I see comments like yours (or new distro's spring up, or changes such as Gnome has made in 3.x and plans for in 4.x).
Tech heads can figure out how to remove bars, or move crap around. If an average user can't figure out how to run an application.. well, they will stick with Windows.
Honestly, I find KDE to be faster and better than any other desktop UI. You claim it's bloated, but it starts faster than Gnome on anything I own. With everything possible running, KDE is at around 300Mb. Compared to Gnome and Java at 350'ish.
Here are some simple things I have commended the KDE team for, which even Microsoft does not get.
Window placement on open is logical, and organized. Unlike Gnome and Windows where the window pops up in random locations. Windows centers splash screens, but it's always in the foreground as well.
KDevelop - Nothing more needs to be said. KDE is not required, but does make it much nicer.
Konquer - Gnome just can't seem to release a consistent functional file manager. Nautilus sucked, and sucks. So did it's predecessor.
Multi-media support - I like being able to listen to tunes as I work. Gnome's support is half ass at best.
Logical layout - Windows had this as well (Pre-ribbon days) and people like it. It's organized, and I can find what I need. Gnome and the other fads.. well, good luck finding what you want. And be prepared to spend hours creating your own tool bars or learning command lines for all the GUIs.
Gnome had something right early on. A CDE replacement in Java which could be used for free by the big iron vendors. But support blows, and the chronic massive changes could not be tolerated by the big players. Sun tried to play along for a while, but gave up long before Oracle bought them out. "this part is buggy" translated to the Gnome team as "Hell, lets re-write it all and move everything around. While we are at it, lets rename everything possible and bring in new buggy code to replace the old buggy code.
To me, he's crossing genres.
There are some that thrive on the hand given story. They don't want to be creative, they just want to blow some sh^%$ up! Twisted Metal was one of those games, and at the time was an exceptionally made one. Similar to Unreal Tournament, you get things designed for you and play on maps designed for you. That's not to say no skill is involved, but you don't have to be creative on solutions. Aim well, drive well, learn the maps, and get high scores. Those games are great, but also have limited life. Play for an hour and then go on to something else.
The other half of the gaming community though prefers to make things up as they go, and create their own game. This is the popularity of Skyrim and World of Warcraft. (One may argue that WoW's content is all hand picked, which it is, but the quests one does and which realm they play on and what armor and weapons they choose, etc.. are all up to the player.). Milestones still need to be marked, and a cut-scene is the best way of marking those milestones. These kind of games really don't end, at least in story line. Content can be added, players can go do old quests they missed, or start a new character and see the world from a different angle.
So I agree with him for the more arcade type games. Disagree with him when it comes to story based games.