Now that somebody posted the article, I see that the writer wasn't actually going that far, but:
My point was, what if it got to the point where we could reboot on the fly--cf: solid state hard drives--and thus, application writers could AT THEIR OPTION, use the entire (open source) OS as reusable code.... like a really huge source code library.
Thus you would still get the no-need-to-rewrite advantages of having an OS, but you COULD rewrite the parts that were slowing down your app, if you wanted to maximize performance.
In other words, if the standard Linux methods for addressing video memory were a compromise that allowed all sorts of applications to run on top of them,(they are) you could just rewrite them so that your 3-D FPPSEU game ran insanely fast, although the resulting OS would suck at running spreadsheets.
Just a thought, but it is one possible outgrowth of the open source phenomenon.
I haven't read the article (I will), but is he actually suggesting that developers will modify the OS to their own ends?
No comments so far on that little tidbit, but that seems like a pretty damned big deal to me; what exactly does he mean?
If I were going to run Quake XIII on my 2Ghz Linux box, is he implying that I would optimize my experience by booting with a recompiled QuakeLinux(tm)?
I guess that might actually be sort of a possibility, once we all move to Solid State hard drives or are in some other manner able to reboot almost instantly.
Far out. Does anyone else find the idea of an application-optimized OS as weird as I do?
Sony has been pushing this stuff for a while. In fact, my next computer (the Sony 505ZX) is going to have a slot for Memory Sticks built-in.
The question is, why should we all get so excited about a new standard that doesn't offer much of an advantage over, say, Compact Flash? Compact flash actually costs less than Memory Stick at this point, and near as I can tell, it's smaller too.
I have a little Olympus camera that stores on Compact Flash, and a new 4 meg clip costs about $20 bucks, vs. $30 for a 4 meg memory stick (if I recall.
CF is thinner and shorter than memory stick, though a little wider.
I haven't seen specs, but I assume they are about the same speed, since they are based on similar technology.
Thus I have to conclude that Sony is just trying to push a proprietary spec on us so they can make an extra buck, even though there is an equivalent and cheaper technology already available.
Therefore all the ZDNET and CNET and even New York Times articles on itis corporate hype and we should probably ignore it.
As for the MP3 killer part, why would anyone buy a Sony machine that doesn't do copies when they can get one that does, and uses the widely available MP3 format? The answer, oddly enough, is that they probably will. Oh well.
None of you have read the article, as best I can determine.
The point was much more interesting than the headline suggests.
Here's a nutshell:
AOL/Netscape -vs- Wintel; AOL goes to war with Wintel by building Emachines-style boxes, loading them with a free OS like Linux (Windows now costs a significant portion of the computer price), and giving them away to anyone who signs up with them for Internet access.
In the process, say goodbye to Apple with their proprietary OS. People will either buy a Wintel if they want to blow a lot of money, or take a free AOLbox if they are cheapos.
It's an interesting point, I'd say.
We've all seen that the market for cheapo PCs is actually quite big. That's why Intel is in trouble, and why Apple might be...
The basic explanation for why people behave so poorly in Internet interactions seems to be pretty simple: it's the impersonal nature of the medium.
Despite the fact that users KNOW there are other real-live humans on the other end of the wires, it is hard to get past the illusion that you are interacting with a computer that couldn't care less how many ways you flame it.
All you ever actually see is the keyboard and CRT, not JonKatz as he reads your ridiculously hostile, inarticulate rant. Actually, that's wrong; remember, it's Jon Katz, not some entity called JonKatz...
[Think of the Turing problem]
There is a very closely analogous situation in the "Road Rage" phenomenon. When you are driving down the highway and some idiot in a red Lexus cuts you off, you KNOW that it is actually some middle aged guy headed to his dead-end job in the city and he just wasn't paying attention when he pulled into your lane.
But on a different level, you have been out on the highway for 45 minutes, and the music on the radio sucks, and you have started to sort of forget that the drivers in the other cars are people, and started to anthropomorphize their cars--think of them as living competitors for space on the road.
That's why you start screaming, making obscene gestures, and maybe rear end the goddamned Lexus.
In all our new, nontraditional relationships, we have to remember to maintain the kind of empathy we reserve for flesh-and-blood, everyday interactions.
Then perhaps you have seen what I am talking about. The talking heads on CNN jabber away about what a nice, high-employment economy we've got, but I somehow fail to appreciate it walking around in West Philadelphia...
People who live in the 'burbs seem to just rest comfortably in the televised illusion of what a great economy they are floating on, unaware of the drowned corpses in the water underneath.
>standing up for people who could >not stand for themselves
Hmm, like Reagan in Grenada, huh? or Bush in Panama, huh? or those poor deluded Cubans, we sure helped them in 1960, right?
Or I particularly liked how we helped out the Cambodians by bombing the shit out of them until the whole country went insane and basically committed suicide (cf:Khmer Rouge)
Okay bud, I don't know where you live, but get out of your 'Burbclave and check out a real American city, and then come back and talk to me about the unemployment situation.
The unemployment levels among the American poor are horrific. Their standard of living has fallen through the floor since the 70s and 80s, and all these so-called jobs the Feds use to fake the unemployment statistics are low-pay-no-security-no-health-benefits horrors.
Things have gotten worse under the Greenspan regime for those who are the worst off; there is really no denying that.
Meanwhile, his inflation obsession has certainly helped the richest 10 percent pretty significantly. (Note: I am a member of the richest 10 percent)
Why else do 25 percent of American black males end up in jail at some point, do you suppose?
Personally, I would be willing to lose some value on my stock portfolio if everyone at the bottom was a little better off.
I just think sometimes people put too much faith in their forebears, and in abstract symbols like the U.S. Constitution.
What I was saying is that people should think critically about EVERYTHING, including the constitution that dictates how they are governed.
I actually agree with you that the Constitution is a symbol of a lot of important things about this country. But you have to admit that it falls short in certain very important areas. For example, it was written before the joint-stock corporation had been invented.
Constitutional lawyers have since argued successfully that corporations are more or less "people" as the constitution defines people. As such they are entitled to many of the same protections we are.
That has caused a lot of the problems that plague our country and in fact the planet as a whole.
As far as the Army is concerned, I think it's a damned good thing that people in the Army believe in the Constitution. Because that has undoubtedly been one of the reasons our democratic government has lasted longer than any other one. i.e. no military coups de'etat yet...
Also keep in mind that I was reacting to a rather strange, but interesting document pointed out by the originator of this thread.
When he famously sits down in that easy chair by the fire, and starts thinking about what he actually knows about the world, Descartes decides that everything he has ever perceived might be an illusion foisted on him by an "evil genius"/devil who is lying to him.
It's interesting how many of these technology-as-the-root-of-evil films come out of Hollywood. Are they merely mirroring our own fears of replacement/domination by machines?
"14 - They have made instruments not backed by gold or silver legal tender for the payment of debts, and illegally allowed the Federal Reserve, a privately owned corporation, to control the money and credit system of the country without being properly owned or controlled by the People."
Okay, so some of it is a little wacky, Klom. You've got to admit that it would be a little tough to run our economy on a gold standard. Besides, gold's objective value is nearly as much an illusion as that of paper.
As for the Federal Reserve, I don't know if I'd go so far as to say they are a #private# bank...more like an independent one--albeit a perhaps-too-powerful-one. I do wish Greenspan worried less about inflation and more about jobs.
As for the "it's pro-constitution" part, what's so great about the constitution? It's a 200-year-old document primarily obsessed with preventing us from crowning a king in the George III style. I'm not sure why the militia crowd (and I'm NOT throwing you in there with them) are always so fanatical about the constitution; it's almost a religious symbol to them.
Fascintating stuff nonetheless. It's got something for everyone--a mix of Libertarian, Leftist, and even right-wing-black-helicopters-style griping about the feds. Most interesting, of course, is the stuff about corporations...Thanks for posting it.
Schoen seems to be making a pretty thin argument here--that Apple is violating the Open Source spec by requiring that exporters of its software abide by US law.
Personally, I'm not much of a fan of either our bizarre software export restrictions or of the rather strange series of countries we seem to hate. Cuba???
But Schoen is probably wrong to say that by incorporating US law (however stupid that law may be)into its license, Apple is violating open source rules.
US companies have to abide by US law. And like it or not, that's what Apple is doing here. If abiding by US law precludes companies from participating, Schoen and the rest of the Open Source Stalinists should probably move to Russia. Or wherever.
More importantly, Schoen et. al. ought to realize that the neat thing about open source is that it CAN withstand a bunch of big, evil corportations wading in. That's fundamental to the whole thing.
And who knows, mac-heads might even end up with a better operating system to boot. Protected memory on that new iMac anyone?
I am to some extent echoing other comments here, but I just want to throw in my own support to the limited collaborative filtering model y'all have introduced.
I hate to say it, but I was on the verge of abandoning what has probably been my favorite site because I have grown so tired of all the nonsense comments of late.
Like most people here, I want every reader to be able to say something, but sometimes I only want to be able to read the relatively intelligent responses. At other times, I like to wade into a good flame war. The new system will allow either type of user to utilize the site.
I actually haven't seen much in the way of results from the system yet, though. I suspect you probably ought to get the percentages up so something like a third of articles are moderated on a given thread.
By the way, I love seeing a good site like/. evolve.
I'm sure I have heard some kind of an argument before for how MP3 can possibly make money, but I sure would appreciate it if somebody would re-explain the process to me.
Here is the problem: I can see how a couple of little companies like Goodnoise can make a few bucks as long as they are essentially novelties. Lots of people will probably buy a few tunes from them as long as they feel like (1) they are supporting a nascent industry and (2) they get most of their tunes for free anyway.
But as soon as the tech gets a little better--ie, MP3 boxes for regular home stereo systems appear, and there is high-bandwidth access for all (to make distribution a breeze for non-geeks), your average listener will probably stop paying for music altogether. I certainly would.
Now that sounds great, except that musicians are not going to work for free. So as I see it, MP3 must be stopped at all costs. Even though I have about a hundred megs of the damned things myself.
I'm not trying to start a flame war here, I am just hoping a few of you out there will stop to make a rational argument to me regarding how the music industry as a whole can survive mass-based (not boutique) MP3 distribution. An argument taking account of the economics of the music industry.
Somebody up there mentioned using BECs to make a kind of laser that shoots atoms instead of photons. Well, here's MIT's page on doing exactly that: ufn.ioc.ac.ru:8200/news/eng/1997/0397.html
They are announcing this so-called hyper computer, and they don't even have any patents on it.
This is transparent nonsense. The only hint of legitimacy derives from the fact that they scammed a couple of Mormon newspapers and TV stations into buying it.
I don't understand where the flaw in PGP comes in.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but if I recall, you can throw your private keyring anywhere you want, and as long as your passphrase isn't something idiotic like your name, your data is completely safe.
As far as these virus writers go, they are by no means idiots. The FTP upload is a fairly elegant idea, and of course they have to deny that the virus got out on purpose.
Call me crazy, but this flurry of announcements that major computer manufacturers are optionally bundling Linux with their machines seems to have a hint of the Chairman's work behind it.
The M$soft anti-trust trial is gradually winding up, and the Feds have made an awfully strong case that the boys in Redmond have been shoving the rest of the industry around a lot.
I suspect Microsoft has been dropping some broad hints to the OEMs that giving users an alternative OS, especially one like Linux (which due to a slight learning curve will only appeal to a narrow band of savvy users at the moment) isn't such a bad idea.
Then they can go running back to the Feds and say "look, there is an alternative OS out there, being shipped by most of the major manufacturers, that has quadrupled (or whatever) its user base in the past 9 months."
With these minor concessions, Bill G preserves his complete dominance in the consumer market, makes it look like he is permitting competition, loses some very minor market share, defeats the Feds, then moves in in 11 months and wipes out Linux (how he's going to pull off that last bit is a puzzle to me; maybe he'll just keep it shoved into a specialized corner, like OS/2, until it becomes irrelevant; maybe he doesn't mind losing 5 percent of the market permanently).
Here's a question worth examining; are the major OEMs changing their attitudes toward installing Linux on servers? That's where Linux poses a real threat to M$oft at the moment...
Indonesia may release E. Timor//+comment on "War"
on
First Virtual War
·
· Score: 2
Ironically, given this so-called Cyber War (read:load of hysterical media crap)launched yesterday, Indonesian government sources are today indicating that they may simply give up on East Timor, possibly giving it complete independence.
My analysis: With the society teetering on the verge of complete economic collapse, and the government's legitimacy called into question by student massacres and show trials, and fundamentalist/nationalist tendencies on the rise, a fractious colony like E. Timor might just be too much of a headache.
This so-called "Cyber War" was obviously the work of a bunch of kids, not Indonesian security services.
A real electronic war would involve, say, disconnecting a country's central bank from the financial network, or disabling the power grid, not crashing some stupid Web server in Ireland.
Slashdot Mirror
Now that somebody posted the article, I see that the writer wasn't actually going that far, but:
My point was, what if it got to the point where we could reboot on the fly--cf: solid state hard drives--and thus, application writers could AT THEIR OPTION, use the entire (open source) OS as reusable code.... like a really huge source code library.
Thus you would still get the no-need-to-rewrite advantages of having an OS, but you COULD rewrite the parts that were slowing down your app, if you wanted to maximize performance.
In other words, if the standard Linux methods for addressing video memory were a compromise that allowed all sorts of applications to run on top of them,(they are) you could just rewrite them so that your 3-D FPPSEU game ran insanely fast, although the resulting OS would suck at running spreadsheets.
Just a thought, but it is one possible outgrowth of the open source phenomenon.
More like $3 for Minidiscs. Thats the MOST I ever pay.
I haven't read the article (I will), but is he actually suggesting that developers will modify the OS to their own ends?
No comments so far on that little tidbit, but that seems like a pretty damned big deal to me; what exactly does he mean?
If I were going to run Quake XIII on my 2Ghz Linux box, is he implying that I would optimize my experience by booting with a recompiled QuakeLinux(tm)?
I guess that might actually be sort of a possibility, once we all move to Solid State hard drives or are in some other manner able to reboot almost instantly.
Far out. Does anyone else find the idea of an application-optimized OS as weird as I do?
Sony has been pushing this stuff for a while. In fact, my next computer (the Sony 505ZX) is going to have a slot for Memory Sticks built-in.
The question is, why should we all get so excited about a new standard that doesn't offer much of an advantage over, say, Compact Flash? Compact flash actually costs less than Memory Stick at this point, and near as I can tell, it's smaller too.
I have a little Olympus camera that stores on Compact Flash, and a new 4 meg clip costs about $20 bucks, vs. $30 for a 4 meg memory stick (if I recall.
CF is thinner and shorter than memory stick, though a little wider.
I haven't seen specs, but I assume they are about the same speed, since they are based on similar technology.
Thus I have to conclude that Sony is just trying to push a proprietary spec on us so they can make an extra buck, even though there is an equivalent and cheaper technology already available.
Therefore all the ZDNET and CNET and even New York Times articles on itis corporate hype and we should probably ignore it.
As for the MP3 killer part, why would anyone buy a Sony machine that doesn't do copies when they can get one that does, and uses the widely available MP3 format? The answer, oddly enough, is that they probably will. Oh well.
In case you haven't noticed, Intel's marketshare in the low-end microprocessor market has been eroding faster than the Louisiana coastline.
They are actually being dominated by AMD in certain sectors. That's a pretty radical shift, and I would say signals a certain amount of trouble.
None of you have read the article, as best I can determine.
The point was much more interesting than the headline suggests.
Here's a nutshell:
AOL/Netscape -vs- Wintel; AOL goes to war with Wintel by building Emachines-style boxes, loading them with a free OS like Linux (Windows now costs a significant portion of the computer price), and giving them away to anyone who signs up with them for Internet access.
In the process, say goodbye to Apple with their proprietary OS. People will either buy a Wintel if they want to blow a lot of money, or take a free AOLbox if they are cheapos.
It's an interesting point, I'd say.
We've all seen that the market for cheapo PCs is actually quite big. That's why Intel is in trouble, and why Apple might be...
The basic explanation for why people behave so poorly in Internet interactions seems to be pretty simple: it's the impersonal nature of the medium.
Despite the fact that users KNOW there are other real-live humans on the other end of the wires, it is hard to get past the illusion that you are interacting with a computer that couldn't care less how many ways you flame it.
All you ever actually see is the keyboard and CRT, not JonKatz as he reads your ridiculously hostile, inarticulate rant. Actually, that's wrong; remember, it's Jon Katz, not some entity called JonKatz...
[Think of the Turing problem]
There is a very closely analogous situation in the "Road Rage" phenomenon. When you are driving down the highway and some idiot in a red Lexus cuts you off, you KNOW that it is actually some middle aged guy headed to his dead-end job in the city and he just wasn't paying attention when he pulled into your lane.
But on a different level, you have been out on the highway for 45 minutes, and the music on the radio sucks, and you have started to sort of forget that the drivers in the other cars are people, and started to anthropomorphize their cars--think of them as living competitors for space on the road.
That's why you start screaming, making obscene gestures, and maybe rear end the goddamned Lexus.
In all our new, nontraditional relationships, we have to remember to maintain the kind of empathy we reserve for flesh-and-blood, everyday interactions.
You live in Cleveland.
Then perhaps you have seen what I am talking about. The talking heads on CNN jabber away about what a nice, high-employment economy we've got, but I somehow fail to appreciate it walking around in West Philadelphia...
People who live in the 'burbs seem to just rest comfortably in the televised illusion of what a great economy they are floating on, unaware of the drowned corpses in the water underneath.
>standing up for people who could
>not stand for themselves
Hmm, like Reagan in Grenada, huh?
or Bush in Panama, huh?
or those poor deluded Cubans, we sure helped them in 1960, right?
Or I particularly liked how we helped out the Cambodians by bombing the shit out of them until the whole country went insane and basically committed suicide (cf:Khmer Rouge)
Okay bud, I don't know where you live, but get out of your 'Burbclave and check out a real American city, and then come back and talk to me about the unemployment situation.
The unemployment levels among the American poor are horrific. Their standard of living has fallen through the floor since the 70s and 80s, and all these so-called jobs the Feds use to fake the unemployment statistics are low-pay-no-security-no-health-benefits horrors.
Things have gotten worse under the Greenspan regime for those who are the worst off; there is really no denying that.
Meanwhile, his inflation obsession has certainly helped the richest 10 percent pretty significantly. (Note: I am a member of the richest 10 percent)
Why else do 25 percent of American black males end up in jail at some point, do you suppose?
Personally, I would be willing to lose some value on my stock portfolio if everyone at the bottom was a little better off.
Re: constitution, see below
I was obviously being polemical.
I just think sometimes people put too much faith in their forebears, and in abstract symbols like the U.S. Constitution.
What I was saying is that people should think critically about EVERYTHING, including the constitution that dictates how they are governed.
I actually agree with you that the Constitution is a symbol of a lot of important things about this country. But you have to admit that it falls short in certain very important areas. For example, it was written before the joint-stock corporation had been invented.
Constitutional lawyers have since argued successfully that corporations are more or less "people" as the constitution defines people. As such they are entitled to many of the same protections we are.
That has caused a lot of the problems that plague our country and in fact the planet as a whole.
As far as the Army is concerned, I think it's a damned good thing that people in the Army believe in the Constitution. Because that has undoubtedly been one of the reasons our democratic government has lasted longer than any other one. i.e. no military coups de'etat yet...
Also keep in mind that I was reacting to a rather strange, but interesting document pointed out by the originator of this thread.
When he famously sits down in that easy chair by the fire, and starts thinking about what he actually knows about the world, Descartes decides that everything he has ever perceived might be an illusion foisted on him by an "evil genius"/devil who is lying to him.
It's interesting how many of these technology-as-the-root-of-evil films come out of Hollywood. Are they merely mirroring our own fears of replacement/domination by machines?
...who wrote perhaps the best summation of the matter, in a wonderfully readable book called "Jihad vs.McWorld.".
"14 - They have made instruments not backed by gold or silver legal tender for the payment of debts, and illegally allowed the Federal Reserve, a privately owned corporation, to control the money and credit system of the country without being properly owned or controlled by the People."
Okay, so some of it is a little wacky, Klom. You've got to admit that it would be a little tough to run our economy on a gold standard. Besides, gold's objective value is nearly as much an illusion as that of paper.
As for the Federal Reserve, I don't know if I'd go so far as to say they are a #private# bank...more like an independent one--albeit a perhaps-too-powerful-one. I do wish Greenspan worried less about inflation and more about jobs.
As for the "it's pro-constitution" part, what's so great about the constitution? It's a 200-year-old document primarily obsessed with preventing us from crowning a king in the George III style. I'm not sure why the militia crowd (and I'm NOT throwing you in there with them) are always so fanatical about the constitution; it's almost a religious symbol to them.
Fascintating stuff nonetheless. It's got something for everyone--a mix of Libertarian, Leftist, and even right-wing-black-helicopters-style griping about the feds. Most interesting, of course, is the stuff about corporations...Thanks for posting it.
How much you want to bet the dumb bastard DIDN'T go through the basic effort of spoofing his GUID and AOL accounts?
Melissa and Skyroket's previous efforts were created before the whole GUID mess erupted into public.
Personally, I'm not much of a fan of either our bizarre software export restrictions or of the rather strange series of countries we seem to hate. Cuba???
But Schoen is probably wrong to say that by incorporating US law (however stupid that law may be)into its license, Apple is violating open source rules.
US companies have to abide by US law. And like it or not, that's what Apple is doing here. If abiding by US law precludes companies from participating, Schoen and the rest of the Open Source Stalinists should probably move to Russia. Or wherever.
More importantly, Schoen et. al. ought to realize that the neat thing about open source is that it CAN withstand a bunch of big, evil corportations wading in. That's fundamental to the whole thing.
And who knows, mac-heads might even end up with a better operating system to boot. Protected memory on that new iMac anyone?
I hate to say it, but I was on the verge of abandoning what has probably been my favorite site because I have grown so tired of all the nonsense comments of late.
Like most people here, I want every reader to be able to say something, but sometimes I only want to be able to read the relatively intelligent responses. At other times, I like to wade into a good flame war. The new system will allow either type of user to utilize the site.
I actually haven't seen much in the way of results from the system yet, though. I suspect you probably ought to get the percentages up so something like a third of articles are moderated on a given thread.
By the way, I love seeing a good site like /. evolve.
Here is the problem: I can see how a couple of little companies like Goodnoise can make a few bucks as long as they are essentially novelties. Lots of people will probably buy a few tunes from them as long as they feel like (1) they are supporting a nascent industry and (2) they get most of their tunes for free anyway.
But as soon as the tech gets a little better--ie, MP3 boxes for regular home stereo systems appear, and there is high-bandwidth access for all (to make distribution a breeze for non-geeks), your average listener will probably stop paying for music altogether. I certainly would.
Now that sounds great, except that musicians are not going to work for free. So as I see it, MP3 must be stopped at all costs. Even though I have about a hundred megs of the damned things myself.
I'm not trying to start a flame war here, I am just hoping a few of you out there will stop to make a rational argument to me regarding how the music industry as a whole can survive mass-based (not boutique) MP3 distribution. An argument taking account of the economics of the music industry.
Looks more like Vector Development than Apple Computer to me, homez. News.Com just got bamboozled.
Somebody up there mentioned using BECs to make a kind of laser that shoots atoms instead of photons. Well, here's MIT's page on doing exactly that: ufn.ioc.ac.ru:8200/news/eng/1997/0397.html
They are announcing this so-called hyper computer, and they don't even have any patents on it.
This is transparent nonsense. The only hint of legitimacy derives from the fact that they scammed a couple of Mormon newspapers and TV stations into buying it.
Nice little fantasy though.
I don't understand where the flaw in PGP comes in.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but if I recall, you can throw your private keyring anywhere you want, and as long as your passphrase isn't something idiotic like your name, your data is completely safe.
As far as these virus writers go, they are by no means idiots. The FTP upload is a fairly elegant idea, and of course they have to deny that the virus got out on purpose.
Call me crazy, but this flurry of announcements that major computer manufacturers are optionally bundling Linux with their machines seems to have a hint of the Chairman's work behind it.
The M$soft anti-trust trial is gradually winding up, and the Feds have made an awfully strong case that the boys in Redmond have been shoving the rest of the industry around a lot.
I suspect Microsoft has been dropping some broad hints to the OEMs that giving users an alternative OS, especially one like Linux (which due to a slight learning curve will only appeal to a narrow band of savvy users at the moment) isn't such a bad idea.
Then they can go running back to the Feds and say "look, there is an alternative OS out there, being shipped by most of the major manufacturers, that has quadrupled (or whatever) its user base in the past 9 months."
With these minor concessions, Bill G preserves his complete dominance in the consumer market, makes it look like he is permitting competition, loses some very minor market share, defeats the Feds, then moves in in 11 months and wipes out Linux (how he's going to pull off that last bit is a puzzle to me; maybe he'll just keep it shoved into a specialized corner, like OS/2, until it becomes irrelevant; maybe he doesn't mind losing 5 percent of the market permanently).
Here's a question worth examining; are the major OEMs changing their attitudes toward installing Linux on servers? That's where Linux poses a real threat to M$oft at the moment...
Ironically, given this so-called Cyber War (read:load of hysterical media crap)launched yesterday, Indonesian government sources are today indicating that they may simply give up on East Timor, possibly giving it complete independence.
My analysis: With the society teetering on the verge of complete economic collapse, and the government's legitimacy called into question by student massacres and show trials, and fundamentalist/nationalist tendencies on the rise, a fractious colony like E. Timor might just be too much of a headache.
This so-called "Cyber War" was obviously the work of a bunch of kids, not Indonesian security services.
A real electronic war would involve, say, disconnecting a country's central bank from the financial network, or disabling the power grid, not crashing some stupid Web server in Ireland.