The trend towards RIA's/webapps has traditionally been restricted to those in a database centric role, but with the increasing use of AJAX and the like, the webapp is pushing further into the desktop application space. Obviously the centralization and server-side nature of the applications helps deployment and maintainance, but developers are basically trading the platform of an operating system for the platform of a web browser, with all the intricacies and compatibility issues that follow both.
Webapps are a good direction to take for data access apps, but where the line becomes less clear cut and extreme amounts of javascript/dhtml are needed to achieve behaviours, the apps can become somewhat clunky and difficult to use. To me, it's essential that the designers of today's webapps realise the limitations of what they're working with and when to use traditional desktop apps.
This being true, I really don't see why SCO suddenly went on the offensive against Linux. Surely they would have known scrutiny would have come their way, and these violations of their own would have been brought to light.
Unless, of course, the knowledge wasn't available at the time SCO decided to start going after Linux because they hadn't properly audited their own code base to ensure they were on the clearest possible ground internal ground before starting to attack the legitimacy of others code bases.
This is clearly something that those out to criticise Microsoft's attempts at reducing software piracy will jump on and crow about. However, the fact that a windows application checking for the characteristics of a pirated copy of Windows cannot find them on WINE shouldn't be a surprise to anyone rational. At the end of the day, its important to remember that Microsoft are just trying to raise the bar. They aren't trying to stop Joe Cracker and his friends from reverse engineering the activation process and hex editing the checks out of the binaries (at least with this measure), they're trying to stop small computer shops loading systems with pirated 'free' copies of Windows by making the piracy visible and clear to the end user.
I don't agree with Microsoft's policy of restricting updates (such as the essential SP2) from unlicenced products, but cheap headlines like this help noone
The device itself is good looking, and the feature set is awesome, but at $899 its a pretty pricey piece of kit. It seems to be able to connect to music shares though, and from the look of the screenshots there's a possibility it works with iTunes (although I can't find this stated anywhere). That would be extremely cool, as I've been looking for something that would allow me to play music from the iTunes shares around my network over my hi-fi.
I think its extremely important that we remember these events, to ensure that the situations and attitudes that led to them can be remembered and the contribution of people who died on both sides to bringing the world to the way it is today. We can't change the past, but we can try to avoid the same situations and circumstances. A generation now are being raised where full scale war between first world countries is a thing of the past, and its important that they can come to respect the happenings of the past.
These crimes have the potential to seriously affect the service provided to genuine customers through store's return policies. Many people will use retailers who are known to be return friendly when buying goods they are unsure of so as to gain from that store's returns policy and be able to return the product if it does not meet their requirements. If returns policies are widely shaken up, it could be the end for easy customer returns, and the ability to legitimately return goods that do not fit your needs.
Its interesting that this comes quite soon after Bill Gates himself announced that the first next-gen Xboxes would ship with non-HD DVD drives, effectively limiting the launch software to dvd media, and perhaps even limiting all games throughout the lifetime of the platform. If Sony do choose to take extra time in ensuring the launch titles make the absolute most out of the additional storage capacity and performance available on the PS3, it could be enough to provide a killer blow even to a successful xbox 360. If the PS3 manages to blow the xbox away in terms of game visuals/depth, then they'll almost have skipped a generation and taken the fight right back to microsoft.
A lot of people saying this is ludicrous, and as much as I agree, the game ratings boards, PEGI - BBFO etc all rate PK games above 15 years of age usually, unless its non graphic and isn't violent
It seems from this, and other articles, that NASA are rightly taking a conservative line on issues with the shuttle's heat shielding. After the high profile Columbia disaster, it can only be a good thing that the additional information gathered and attention paid to the heat shielding has found these kinds of problems early and given opportunities for them to be repaired whilst there is an opportunity. After the mistakes made previously, I'm sure the entire organization are pulling on all the resources possible to ensure the safe return of the crew.
This method of using intrusions to force 'full disclosure' by scientists is interesting, and begs why this information can be kept out of the public eye, where it would benefit the scientific community at large, and is instead held back to bolster the reputations of those who make the initial discovery. Should they really have the right to keep the information secret until they've had the opportunity to make time-critical observations and gain all the information they require to make impressive enough announcements. Who knows what else could be kept back from the scientific community until its observer deems it 'impressive' enough to release..
Gamers aren't likely to spend time they could be gaming with installing, configuring and maintaining a router setup. It's far more sensible, in today's age of commodity broadband routers, to pick up a Linksys WRT54G or similar from a local supplier and use that instead, a simple and out-of-the box solution that should require fairly little maintainance after installation and won't require an entire machine sitting humming away in the corner just to route packets. The WRT54G specifically makes a great case for this, because it can be flashed with different open source firmware to improve its flexibility and stability.
In other situations, the dedicated machine would probably have a numerous array of other uses, making it a more useful overall package, but since this article focuses on gaming the box running FreeBSD is unlikely to be able to be used for gameplay, so its pretty much relegated to packet routing and other miscellaneous duties. That, to me, seems like a complete waste in this instance
Its good to see these people being recognized for contributing such a useful concept to object oriented programmers, and its wholly appropriate they should recieve such an award from a group focused on exploring "implementation and efficient use" of programming languages. Although they have their critics, Design patterns have surely helped many programmers greatly in this manner, especially in languages such as java.
Releasing anything resembling the source code to windows would be laden with problems for Microsoft. Opening their customers to a whole range of security holes created by decades of patch-fixes and arcane support layers for retired API's would possibly leave them with a public relations disaster on their hands, not to mention the financial repercussions.
However, it is interesting to imagine a truly level playing field between Windows & Unix based operating systems, in freedom and price terms. Would end users choose unix based systems over windows based systems given the full freedom of choice and knowledge that applications could run on either? Also the possibilities for code and standards interaction between two entirely open systems and the continued improvement of both in competetive and meaningful ways is something that could potentially be extremely beneficial to the computing ecosystem at large
Obviously the final result, a dubiously functional installation is not really groundbreaking for end-users, but there's much to be said for turning off the many services that ship enabled as default with Windows XP to gain both the performance and security benefits. Knowing whats running, what it's doing, and whether its really neccessary is a good step towards maintaining a system which has a low attack profile and is reasonably secure.
The document published by the VSDA appears to set out a large number of criteria, all of which they seem to rate as essential for the end product. However, the fact that they've released this now, instead of when the new standards were under development would lead me to believe it is biased in the direction of one of the established formats and is more of a party piece to try and rally retailer support behind a particular format (HD-DVD springs to mind). Not to mention the talk of two competing formats being unworkable, and the need for a single format..
A product with the market penetration as big as Windows is always going to be cracked, as soon as possible after it comes out. No matter what they do to try and prevent it, which is why some companies don't spend that much on anti-piracy for the product on release now, something microsoft can't do... so they have to try their best.
Of course when touting a 'forthcoming' product, the pitch is going to be focused on the improvements its going to bring. Due to the length of time it's taking to get Vista out the door, the improvements and new features Microsoft are publicising now had better be impressive, otherwise they're going to be old news by the time the product actually ships. A new release of Windows is always going to be a 'big deal' to the computer-using masses sheerly because of its market penetration, but competitors like OS X have stolen the thunder on GPU-accelerated interfaces and improved filesystem metadata. At the end of the day, it wont be that these features are cutting edge, it'll be that they're available to the masses in something with high market penetration.
As for the new deployment features, I can't help but wonder how many organizations by the launch date will be considering deploying alternate operating systems instead, as Windows new foundations are compared directly with the latest and greatest Linux distrubutions have to offer...
I use a Powerbook, and I'd pretty much suggest the same thing myself.. that most people looking for a quiet pc would be far better served with a laptop of some kind instead (not to mention the numerous benefits of laptops combined with wifi etc). However moving well-thought out, power conserving chips from the laptop to the desktop can only be a step forward for desktops in general, and a crucial change of direction from the bigger-is-better P4 Extreme Edition style upgrades that have been delivered in the last few years.
I've always wondered about the potential of today's mobile cpu's as quiet/silent & power efficient replacements for the current crop of desktop processors. It'll be interesting to see how Intel react to this, and if enough people make use of these adapters to noticably affect P-M sales. After reading articles about silent PC's, and the various steps/careful hardware choice required to create them, its only logical to move to components where the cooling & noise issues have already been considered in the component design.
Obviously as developer platforms, these boxes bear no real similarity to the Intel based macs that will eventually go into production, but I'm hopeful that the ability to boot Windows on Intel macs may remain even through to production hardware. Obviously there may be issues regarding whatever bios-replacement Apple chooses to use on their hardware, but I'm sure they're also aware of the potential for dual booting macs between Windows and OS X. Whether this is something they want to embrace with their new platform (and I seem to recall Phil Schiller stating that there was no reason Windows couldn't run on an x86 mac) or whether it's something that they consider would 'taint' the Macintosh user experience remains to be seen.
This boot setup must be a dream for some people out there with a gaming rush who would love to be able to get the best of both worlds (although the mac mini has its logical place here) . I only hope this flexibility doesn't get wiped out in production hardware..
There's more information from Team Banzai on 'Dora' the self-driving touareg at their official website, including pictures of the three mini macs & networking hardware that drive the car. Considering some of the other competitors are entering in Hummer H1's, their choice of a relatively sane offroader (VW Touareg) could be very interesting. There are also interesting technical discussions over on the Club Touareg forums.
This isn't good news for the web in general. One of the better things to come from XP was IE 6.0, which brought an improved CSS model to both XP and 2000 at the time. If the improvements in IE 7.0 are restricted to Longhorn only, it could be a very long time before reliance on older methods can begin to fade out. I'd like to believe a lot of the users will move to Firefox, but due to its already high levels of publicity, I'm unsure as to just how much of an unaware market remains for a 'better browser'
He's right, as most peoples PC's are being continuously upgraded and replaced, the market for PC games continues to stay steady, whereas with consoles only being replaced every 7-8 years, they gradually loose their selling power in the couple of years before they are replaced
PC gaming might not be as strong as it once was, but it will be stable for a long time to come
I think its unfair to compare these kind of rollouts to the US on a general scale. The US is practically the size of europe, and due to the state demarkations has almost the scaling problems that deploying across europe would incur (although the same core infrastructure providers would help somewhat). This isn't to say some providers aren't trying, there's definitely been a push towards fiber services as the next generation by some US providers. As for me, I'm just hoping that the UK gets its act together and starts rolling 8mb+ services out around the country, instead of the current spotty availablity in metro areas.
My point was more that this would be a move away from the notion of licenced releases as value-added products and tend tend to lead to more direct comparisons with otherwise available fansubs. Obviously the two operate in completely different legal and business areas, but the end products and their distribution methods would end up the same, and those are the things that are consumer facing.
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The trend towards RIA's/webapps has traditionally been restricted to those in a database centric role, but with the increasing use of AJAX and the like, the webapp is pushing further into the desktop application space. Obviously the centralization and server-side nature of the applications helps deployment and maintainance, but developers are basically trading the platform of an operating system for the platform of a web browser, with all the intricacies and compatibility issues that follow both.
Webapps are a good direction to take for data access apps, but where the line becomes less clear cut and extreme amounts of javascript/dhtml are needed to achieve behaviours, the apps can become somewhat clunky and difficult to use. To me, it's essential that the designers of today's webapps realise the limitations of what they're working with and when to use traditional desktop apps.
This being true, I really don't see why SCO suddenly went on the offensive against Linux. Surely they would have known scrutiny would have come their way, and these violations of their own would have been brought to light.
Unless, of course, the knowledge wasn't available at the time SCO decided to start going after Linux because they hadn't properly audited their own code base to ensure they were on the clearest possible ground internal ground before starting to attack the legitimacy of others code bases.
This is clearly something that those out to criticise Microsoft's attempts at reducing software piracy will jump on and crow about. However, the fact that a windows application checking for the characteristics of a pirated copy of Windows cannot find them on WINE shouldn't be a surprise to anyone rational. At the end of the day, its important to remember that Microsoft are just trying to raise the bar. They aren't trying to stop Joe Cracker and his friends from reverse engineering the activation process and hex editing the checks out of the binaries (at least with this measure), they're trying to stop small computer shops loading systems with pirated 'free' copies of Windows by making the piracy visible and clear to the end user.
I don't agree with Microsoft's policy of restricting updates (such as the essential SP2) from unlicenced products, but cheap headlines like this help noone
The device itself is good looking, and the feature set is awesome, but at $899 its a pretty pricey piece of kit. It seems to be able to connect to music shares though, and from the look of the screenshots there's a possibility it works with iTunes (although I can't find this stated anywhere). That would be extremely cool, as I've been looking for something that would allow me to play music from the iTunes shares around my network over my hi-fi.
I think its extremely important that we remember these events, to ensure that the situations and attitudes that led to them can be remembered and the contribution of people who died on both sides to bringing the world to the way it is today. We can't change the past, but we can try to avoid the same situations and circumstances. A generation now are being raised where full scale war between first world countries is a thing of the past, and its important that they can come to respect the happenings of the past.
These crimes have the potential to seriously affect the service provided to genuine customers through store's return policies. Many people will use retailers who are known to be return friendly when buying goods they are unsure of so as to gain from that store's returns policy and be able to return the product if it does not meet their requirements. If returns policies are widely shaken up, it could be the end for easy customer returns, and the ability to legitimately return goods that do not fit your needs.
Its interesting that this comes quite soon after Bill Gates himself announced that the first next-gen Xboxes would ship with non-HD DVD drives, effectively limiting the launch software to dvd media, and perhaps even limiting all games throughout the lifetime of the platform. If Sony do choose to take extra time in ensuring the launch titles make the absolute most out of the additional storage capacity and performance available on the PS3, it could be enough to provide a killer blow even to a successful xbox 360. If the PS3 manages to blow the xbox away in terms of game visuals/depth, then they'll almost have skipped a generation and taken the fight right back to microsoft.
A lot of people saying this is ludicrous, and as much as I agree, the game ratings boards, PEGI - BBFO etc all rate PK games above 15 years of age usually, unless its non graphic and isn't violent
It seems from this, and other articles, that NASA are rightly taking a conservative line on issues with the shuttle's heat shielding. After the high profile Columbia disaster, it can only be a good thing that the additional information gathered and attention paid to the heat shielding has found these kinds of problems early and given opportunities for them to be repaired whilst there is an opportunity. After the mistakes made previously, I'm sure the entire organization are pulling on all the resources possible to ensure the safe return of the crew.
This method of using intrusions to force 'full disclosure' by scientists is interesting, and begs why this information can be kept out of the public eye, where it would benefit the scientific community at large, and is instead held back to bolster the reputations of those who make the initial discovery. Should they really have the right to keep the information secret until they've had the opportunity to make time-critical observations and gain all the information they require to make impressive enough announcements. Who knows what else could be kept back from the scientific community until its observer deems it 'impressive' enough to release..
Gamers aren't likely to spend time they could be gaming with installing, configuring and maintaining a router setup. It's far more sensible, in today's age of commodity broadband routers, to pick up a Linksys WRT54G or similar from a local supplier and use that instead, a simple and out-of-the box solution that should require fairly little maintainance after installation and won't require an entire machine sitting humming away in the corner just to route packets. The WRT54G specifically makes a great case for this, because it can be flashed with different open source firmware to improve its flexibility and stability.
In other situations, the dedicated machine would probably have a numerous array of other uses, making it a more useful overall package, but since this article focuses on gaming the box running FreeBSD is unlikely to be able to be used for gameplay, so its pretty much relegated to packet routing and other miscellaneous duties. That, to me, seems like a complete waste in this instance
Its good to see these people being recognized for contributing such a useful concept to object oriented programmers, and its wholly appropriate they should recieve such an award from a group focused on exploring "implementation and efficient use" of programming languages. Although they have their critics, Design patterns have surely helped many programmers greatly in this manner, especially in languages such as java.
Releasing anything resembling the source code to windows would be laden with problems for Microsoft. Opening their customers to a whole range of security holes created by decades of patch-fixes and arcane support layers for retired API's would possibly leave them with a public relations disaster on their hands, not to mention the financial repercussions.
However, it is interesting to imagine a truly level playing field between Windows & Unix based operating systems, in freedom and price terms. Would end users choose unix based systems over windows based systems given the full freedom of choice and knowledge that applications could run on either? Also the possibilities for code and standards interaction between two entirely open systems and the continued improvement of both in competetive and meaningful ways is something that could potentially be extremely beneficial to the computing ecosystem at large
Obviously the final result, a dubiously functional installation is not really groundbreaking for end-users, but there's much to be said for turning off the many services that ship enabled as default with Windows XP to gain both the performance and security benefits. Knowing whats running, what it's doing, and whether its really neccessary is a good step towards maintaining a system which has a low attack profile and is reasonably secure.
The document published by the VSDA appears to set out a large number of criteria, all of which they seem to rate as essential for the end product. However, the fact that they've released this now, instead of when the new standards were under development would lead me to believe it is biased in the direction of one of the established formats and is more of a party piece to try and rally retailer support behind a particular format (HD-DVD springs to mind). Not to mention the talk of two competing formats being unworkable, and the need for a single format..
A product with the market penetration as big as Windows is always going to be cracked, as soon as possible after it comes out. No matter what they do to try and prevent it, which is why some companies don't spend that much on anti-piracy for the product on release now, something microsoft can't do... so they have to try their best.
Of course when touting a 'forthcoming' product, the pitch is going to be focused on the improvements its going to bring. Due to the length of time it's taking to get Vista out the door, the improvements and new features Microsoft are publicising now had better be impressive, otherwise they're going to be old news by the time the product actually ships. A new release of Windows is always going to be a 'big deal' to the computer-using masses sheerly because of its market penetration, but competitors like OS X have stolen the thunder on GPU-accelerated interfaces and improved filesystem metadata. At the end of the day, it wont be that these features are cutting edge, it'll be that they're available to the masses in something with high market penetration.
As for the new deployment features, I can't help but wonder how many organizations by the launch date will be considering deploying alternate operating systems instead, as Windows new foundations are compared directly with the latest and greatest Linux distrubutions have to offer...
I use a Powerbook, and I'd pretty much suggest the same thing myself.. that most people looking for a quiet pc would be far better served with a laptop of some kind instead (not to mention the numerous benefits of laptops combined with wifi etc). However moving well-thought out, power conserving chips from the laptop to the desktop can only be a step forward for desktops in general, and a crucial change of direction from the bigger-is-better P4 Extreme Edition style upgrades that have been delivered in the last few years.
I've always wondered about the potential of today's mobile cpu's as quiet/silent & power efficient replacements for the current crop of desktop processors. It'll be interesting to see how Intel react to this, and if enough people make use of these adapters to noticably affect P-M sales. After reading articles about silent PC's, and the various steps/careful hardware choice required to create them, its only logical to move to components where the cooling & noise issues have already been considered in the component design.
Obviously as developer platforms, these boxes bear no real similarity to the Intel based macs that will eventually go into production, but I'm hopeful that the ability to boot Windows on Intel macs may remain even through to production hardware. Obviously there may be issues regarding whatever bios-replacement Apple chooses to use on their hardware, but I'm sure they're also aware of the potential for dual booting macs between Windows and OS X. Whether this is something they want to embrace with their new platform (and I seem to recall Phil Schiller stating that there was no reason Windows couldn't run on an x86 mac) or whether it's something that they consider would 'taint' the Macintosh user experience remains to be seen.
This boot setup must be a dream for some people out there with a gaming rush who would love to be able to get the best of both worlds (although the mac mini has its logical place here) . I only hope this flexibility doesn't get wiped out in production hardware..
There's more information from Team Banzai on 'Dora' the self-driving touareg at their official website, including pictures of the three mini macs & networking hardware that drive the car. Considering some of the other competitors are entering in Hummer H1's, their choice of a relatively sane offroader (VW Touareg) could be very interesting. There are also interesting technical discussions over on the Club Touareg forums.
This isn't good news for the web in general. One of the better things to come from XP was IE 6.0, which brought an improved CSS model to both XP and 2000 at the time. If the improvements in IE 7.0 are restricted to Longhorn only, it could be a very long time before reliance on older methods can begin to fade out. I'd like to believe a lot of the users will move to Firefox, but due to its already high levels of publicity, I'm unsure as to just how much of an unaware market remains for a 'better browser'
He's right, as most peoples PC's are being continuously upgraded and replaced, the market for PC games continues to stay steady, whereas with consoles only being replaced every 7-8 years, they gradually loose their selling power in the couple of years before they are replaced
PC gaming might not be as strong as it once was, but it will be stable for a long time to come
I think its unfair to compare these kind of rollouts to the US on a general scale. The US is practically the size of europe, and due to the state demarkations has almost the scaling problems that deploying across europe would incur (although the same core infrastructure providers would help somewhat). This isn't to say some providers aren't trying, there's definitely been a push towards fiber services as the next generation by some US providers. As for me, I'm just hoping that the UK gets its act together and starts rolling 8mb+ services out around the country, instead of the current spotty availablity in metro areas.
My point was more that this would be a move away from the notion of licenced releases as value-added products and tend tend to lead to more direct comparisons with otherwise available fansubs. Obviously the two operate in completely different legal and business areas, but the end products and their distribution methods would end up the same, and those are the things that are consumer facing.