But this also encourages the use of overly-broad patents that can be interpreted to cover just about anything roughly similar.
It seems to me that this is part of the big problem with some of the patents that I've read about (though I may be misinterpreting things). The patents seem to be for things like including full motion video in video games, for 1-click shopping, or for making plugins automatically load in browsers. That is, they're very close to being a patent about the outcome, i.e. the effect of the "machine" and not how the "machine" works.
It would almost be as if I patented "a machine that washes clothes", and then suddenly other people can't use machines that wash clothes of any design without paying me. I gather the patent system was supposed to be about particular novel designs, and not about the effects of those designs. It was about patenting a particular washing-machine design, and not about patenting the washing machine.
But it seems like the problem with some software patents is that, even when they describe how a process works (and I've read a couple patents) it's kind of overly broad. The comparable process for the washing machine would be something like, "The user loads clothing into the machine, waits for some period of time, and then when the machine has finished running its course, a buzzer sounds. The user can then remove the clothes, which will be clean but wet." It's still not talking about the nuts and bolts of the machine construction. Now I guess if you get down to the nuts and bolts of most software design, you're just talking about source code, which is covered by copyright already. It's not clear to me that patents should apply to most of these things.
But maybe I'm wrong. I'm certainly not a patent law expert.
This demonstrates exactly why the phone network provider has to be decoupled from the cell phone vendor. What is the subtext of this? That the consumers are nothing more than serfs for the phone network providers to buy and sell as they please. That's the point. You have NO choice with Verizon. It's not YOUR phone it's THEIR phone.
Right. It seems noteworthy to me when the article said, "we've changed the [Verizon Wireless]-supplied web menu to make Bing the default search engine." This is one of the reasons right there that I don't like Verizon Wireless. Why is there even a Verizon-supplied web menu at all?
Ultimately how bad this is depends on the terms of the deal. Is the search engine the default option on new devices, or is it the only option forced on existing customers who didn't know something like this could happen when they signed up? That sort of thing makes a big difference.
Either way, I think the real culprit here is Verizon. It's understandable that Microsoft or Google would want some kind of deal for search engine placement. We all know Google pays Mozilla for placement as the default engine. The problem is more about how little regard Verizon has for their own customers-- so little that they think it's perfectly appropriate to go in and screw with a customer's phone remotely.
Right, and that's part of the sad thing-- that it seems that Lucas must have thought he was doing something subtle, sophisticated, and interesting.
But I also bristle at the defense of "Oh, it's not supposed to be good. It's supposed to be for kids!" There's a good chance that if my kids are watching a movie, I'll get stuck watching it too, so please make it good. Besides that, why shouldn't we expect children's entertainment to be good? If you're constantly sitting your kids down in front of stupid movies, I expect you're more likely to end up with stupid kids. No thanks.
As some people have shown (e.g. Pixar) it's perfectly possible to come up with child-appropriate entertainment that's also well made and thoughtful. We shouldn't just let our kids watch whichever movies they're willing to watch. Or more generally, we shouldn't accept that something is sufficiently good for children because the children themselves are willing to accept it. Left to their own devices, your kids might well live on a diet of sugar, hotdogs, and butter.
I thought he was going for a sort of napoleon dynamite sort of thing. Whatever it is, I don't think it really works. I think you could have given the script to the guy who does Zero Punctuation and it would have been much funnier.
Apple, having such a strong design culture, is the only manufacturer who realizes these stickers make your computer look cheap and stupid.
Apple's design culture is often about minimalism, and so they probably wouldn't put extra symbols or stickers on their computers even if it didn't look cheap and stupid.
Apple is just about the only laptop manufacturer who can't be bullied by Microsoft into putting any kind of "Microsoft certified" sticker on it.
Apple customers are less likely to be casual about their attachment to the brand. If you're a Dell customer, you might not think twice about buying an HP. If you're an Apple customer, buying an HP instead is a little more noteworthy. Therefore, they don't have to try to compete by advertising energy star compliance or the latest Intel chip. An awful lot of Apple customers couldn't care less about which Intel chip is in their computers.
There are probably more, but that's off the top of my head.
We need both FOSS and proprietary software. Give both of them what they want like options to achieve their goals and then you will have a truly great product that helps the community and humanity as a whole in utilizing computers.
I could imagine a world with only FOSS... maybe. But it seems to me that there's no problem with a nice healthy ecosystem with both FOSS and proprietary software. There may be some FOSS activists that disagree, but I don't see there being a problem with proprietary software per se. The bigger problems are proprietary/patented formats and protocols which block interoperability and draconian licensing terms.
If you make open file formats and open protocols, then you have the option of creating an open source implementation if you really want to. In that situation, the only reason to use non-free software is if it's genuinely sufficiently better that it's worth some money and a couple sacrifices in your freedom (sacrifices which you may well not care about).
Also, this idea of a "hybrid stack" (i.e. open source underneath, and proprietary on top) isn't new. It isn't now being born. There are loads of commercial applications that run on Linux; it's just that you may not use those applications for normal desktop use. And then there's OSX: it's basically FreeBSD with a proprietary window manager and tons of proprietary applications. OSX hasn't posed a big threat to FOSS, and in fact I'd say it has probably had a beneficial effect. It has helped weaken the Windows monopoly and has made Unix on the desktop much more common. Since it has good interoperability with other Unix/Linux variants, it's arguably easier to drop a Linux machine into a Mac network than it is to drop it into a Windows network.
If it's just staying out of an attempt to signal solidarity, I don't care either way.
You might not, but there are definitely people who get resentful of managers because they think the managers don't do anything. Because of that, I'd just warn someone in this situation to avoid appearing to be slacking off while asking others to work through the night.
Be careful with that; if an engineer has a good flow going, the last thing they need is their manager popping in to share the latest lolcat.
I'm not talking about lolcats. I don't manage developers, but I've had situations where some of us had to work late on something high-priority and important. Often enough, someone gets tired and stressed and starts flipping out and overreacting to things. Sometimes it's good to keep an eye out so you can settle people down, keep things in perspective, encourage someone to take a break, settle any disagreements, etc.
But that does depend on the situation. I'm thinking of situations where you're working late because, if things aren't wrapped up by the morning, the shit will hit the fan.
Though, being a manager and staying late with your developers, your first priority shouldn't be riding them but play a support role. What do they need to get the job done? What can you do to remove obstacles from their way?
That sounds to me like what a manager should be doing anyway, even if no one is staying late. At least, if you assume for the sake of argument that you have a good team made of people who understand their jobs, then riding them to make sure they do their job shouldn't be something you have to do too much of. A manager's job should generally be more about removing obstacles that aren't part of the workers' jobs so that the workers can focus on doing their jobs.
But to the question at hand, I say yes, stay late with your workers. As a manager, I pretty well try to be the first one in and the last one to leave. I figure it's good for morale. I don't like to ask people to do things that I'm not willing to do myself. If someone asked me to put in some hard work late into the night, I wouldn't appreciate that person immediately going home to their own soft bed.
That doesn't mean you're going to do much. It might just mean that you make it clear that you're there in case anyone needs anything, and then you go and sit at your desk and kill time. You're there to help, not to keep them on task. In fact, you may want to work on lightening the mood, keeping people relaxed, and making sure they feel appreciated for their extra work.
I see, so if I go ahead and make Rockoon File Protocol (RFP) for Linux, I get to jump up and down and cry and moan like a fucking girl because Windows and Mac don't have built-in functionality?
What I said:
...and though there's nothing wrong with those decisions themselves, the fact reveals how much latent power Microsoft has over the computing world.
So if I make Rockoon File Protocol and it's meant to be a general file sharing protocol used with desktops, how much it will be used might well hinge on how well the protocol is supported in Windows. If Microsoft chooses to adopt that protocol as their new standard, phasing out SMB, then you can be sure every Linux distro and MacOS will end up supporting it. However, if it's poorly supported in Windows, then there's a good chance it won't be used except in niche markets.
That's not to say that Microsoft should support Rockoon File Protocol, but just that Microsoft has a large degree of control over what technology becomes commonly used even without trying. Even if there's nothing nefarious going on and they simply choose not to implement a certain technology, it will mean often mean that the technology is less well supported by others, too.
The only way that you will be happy seems to be if everyone runs the same operating system, yet you cry and moan because most of the world IS running the same operating system.
I think either I need to be clearer or you need to read more carefully. First, I haven't really been talking about what should happen or shouldn't happen; I've been talking about what is. Microsoft has a lot of power over the computing industry. Apple does not. Apple and Microsoft do not use the exact same business model or the same market positions, so even similar choices made by the two companies have different ramifications. Microsoft isn't considered a monopoly because of the control they have over their own products, but because of the amount of control over the entire computing industry that their products have given them.
But to any extent I would argue that things would be different, I wouldn't argue that everyone should use the same OS, but only that OS makers should use open formats and protocols, thereby allowing interoperability. I can use OSX and you can use Linux, and we'll be in pretty good when we want to talk to each other. I can use Safari and you can use Firefox to browse the same websites. It's only when you throw Windows and IE into the mix, and that's because they want to use their own formats and protocols. Even that has gotten better lately, as Microsoft has opened some of that stuff up, and I believe they've even helped the Samba team in some cases.
I have a firewall where the vendor sells firmware updates and upgrades, some of which include additional features without changing the hardware. The firmware isn't licensed to run on other firewalls. Is that tying?
You made that clear the first time, and its still wrong when you repeat it.
Being on 90% of computers is different than being on control of 90% of computers.
Well I guess I didn't make it clear the first time, and I don't know how to make it clearer.
We are all free to choose a different one and that by definition means there isnt the measure of control that you are so flagrantly suggesting.
True, but if choosing something else means you can't interoperate with 90% of the world, it's not necessarily much of a choice.
Yes they can. Install something which does that.
I can install it on my own machine. Depending on the position I'm in, I may be able to install it on a couple hundred machines. After I do that, there will still be millions of Windows desktops out there that can't connect to my AFP share. There are still millions of PCs out there that, when I plug in my ext3 formatted external drive, it won't be recognized.
Well I didn't say that Microsoft controls 90% of the market; I'm saying Windows controls 90% of desktop computers. Admittedly that number is a little made up. I don't know what the percentage is right now.
But this means something. It means, for example, that 90% of desktop computers can't easily connect to an NFS or AFP share, and can't read ext3 partitions. The reason the can't is because Microsoft decided not to support those things, and though there's nothing wrong with those decisions themselves, the fact reveals how much latent power Microsoft has over the computing world. That's the power they even when they're not trying to wield it. It means everyone else has to reverse engineer SMB and NTFS support just to stay in the game.
Apple refusing to license its software for use on other hardware doesn't have the same kind of ramifications. All they're really doing is defining their own product. Buying a Mac is a hardware/software solution, and you don't really get one without the other. So asking Apple not to do that isn't like asking Microsoft to "stop intentionally breaking other people's software." It's closer to asking Microsoft to offer MS Paint, Wordpad, TCP/IP subsystems, and the Windows kernel all as different products, and complaining that otherwise it's tying.
Well I think the claim of "you can't be anti-competitive in your own market" was intended to be something like "being the only one selling your product doesn't make you a monopoly."
What makes Microsoft a monopoly is not the control they exercise over Windows itself, but the control they exercise over all of computing through Windows. Apple doesn't have that kind of control. There are other hardware vendors, other software vendors, and other operating systems you can use.
So the problem isn't Microsoft having control over Windows, but rather Windows having control over 90% of desktop computers.
Apple is not a software business, it's a hardware business (10% of their revenue is software and that includes all their high-end software packages and OS).
Well they're not exactly a hardware vendor or software vendor. They sell the integrate platform. Hardware and software.
As techies we're not used to thinking of desktops and laptops like that, but it's not that uncommon for other devices. As far as I know, Garmin doesn't license its GPS software to other vendors. Cisco doesn't license its software for use on other routers. Sony doesn't license the PS3 operating system for use on generic hardware, nor does Microsoft license the XBox 360 operating system. Nintendo doesn't license the Wii OS either. I don't know, but I don't believe TiVO licenses their software for use on generic hardware.
I mean it's really only good for doing stuff over the Internet, web applications, etc (hence the name "netbook"). SSH fits into that.
Internet stuff as opposed to playing high-end 3D games, running performance-hungry apps, or storing lots of data. The first netbooks only held a few GB of data.
Yeah, my question is, at 12" does it still make sense to call it a netbook? It seems to me that the "netbook" classification meant that it was very small (max 10"), had a very small amount of storage and no optical drive, so that it was really only good for things like internet browsing, chat, and email. If you take a netbook, make it more bigger, more powerful, and you add a bunch of storage, it becomes a notebook computer.
You want me to solve all your problems with a single post?
Well I stand by my recommendation of reading GTD.
But really, a lot of it getting organized is stuff you probably already know about, like taking notes, making plans ahead of time, keeping a calendar, or not procrastinating. Some of that stuff you just have to cowboy up and do. What I was saying is, don't expect your computer to make you organized. Don't expect a system to get you organized. If the problem is that you're lazy or careless, there's no system that's going to let you stay lazy and carless and get organized because you'll be too lazy and careless to stick to the system anyway.
If you really have no idea and need a place to get started, I'll tell you what: Keep it simple. Keep a notebook in your pocket, and write down everything you think of. Set aside an hour a day to go through your notebook and transcribe it into a computerized todo list (it can be a text file). When that list gets too long, break it into projects. Don't sort by priority, but by chronology of when they should be done. The first thing you need to do goes first. Keep at it, and over time you'll develop your own ways of doing it more efficiently.
I think that's coming. As the creation/distribution tools become cheaper and more available, companies just won't have the leverage to control it anymore. You're seeing it happen, even if it's not happening as fast as you'd like.
But if you're going to have a established movie industry, it's probably smart and appropriate for them to be courting new talent.
I don't see how this sort of thing isn't a positive development. The filmmaker who made this short is obviously talented. It's not just that the special effects are impressive for such a small budget, but the whole thing is shot pretty well.
I mean, this is kind of what should be happening, right? The movie industry finds talented filmmakers and gives them a chance to work on bigger projects?
You've never seen an ad for a movie or TV show and thought, "Huh, well that looks good. I'd like to see that." You've never learned about the existence of a product for the first time through advertising? Never?
No, I think ad content kind of is the problem. I mean yes, all of us find it annoying to have to see ads that we don't like, but certainly ads serve a purpose. Right now, for example, I don't watch broadcast TV or cable TV. For the first time in years, I'm hearing about popular products and movies through word-of-mouth that I had no idea existed. I don't miss having to sit through the same dumb ads every 15 minutes, but I do slightly miss being exposed to the new things that ads have to offer.
But it's not *just* the content. It's also the form. Being forced to look at or sit through an ad for a product that you have absolutely no interest in is stupid. The annoying/dumb/parasitic quality of advertising comes from advertisers thinking it's their job to force you or coerce you to buy their product. There's a funky quality where they seem to think, "Joe Schmoe might not like this product, but if we ram it down his throat frequently enough, he'll eventually give in and become a loyal customer." Not all advertising is like that, though. Sometimes it's just someone informing you that a product exists and letting you know what's good about it.
Unfortunately, in order to have things really work, I think there needs to be something like feedback or negotiation. Like if you can set the levels you're talking about with ad-blocker, there's still this problem where the people paying for the advertisement don't necessarily know what you're blocking it or why you're blocking it, and so they don't necessarily know what they have to do to rectify the situation. I feel like it'd be great if someone could look at a sheet of stats and say, "Ok, well of the people who visit my site, X% will look at any ads I put up, Y% will block the animated images but not static images or text. But there are Z% of our visitors who will not block our ads if we put up text and static images, but will block all of our ads if we use Flash ads at all. Given the amount of money we make from static images vs. Flash, it makes sense to stick with static images."
Basically, until websites and advertisers can make that kind of calculation, it generally makes sense for them to throw up the most attention-grabbing ads and hope for the best.
Well I don't know, but there isn't anything funky about my install. I have no whacky extensions or hacks. I navigated most of the way through their website to a page that said something like, "Click on this button to download". I clicked, no download. Pretty simple. Maybe you have some extra-special plugin or extension that I don't.
And anyway I've had enough problems over the years with Microsoft's websites being designed for IE, not seeming to have been tested on other browsers. For years and years you couldn't even read their knowledge base pages in non-IE browsers, and there wasn't anything special about them. They were just text. Recently it has seemed like every page on any of their sites includes an ad saying that the page would be better with Silverlight. You install Silverlight and the page doesn't do anything that you couldn't do without Silverlight.
Sure, newer versions of Windows don't make you use the Windows Update website, but has Microsoft actually fixed the website so it will work in other browsers? Not the last time I checked. Maybe they're getting better, but to me it seems like too little too late.
Slashdot Mirror
But this also encourages the use of overly-broad patents that can be interpreted to cover just about anything roughly similar.
It seems to me that this is part of the big problem with some of the patents that I've read about (though I may be misinterpreting things). The patents seem to be for things like including full motion video in video games, for 1-click shopping, or for making plugins automatically load in browsers. That is, they're very close to being a patent about the outcome, i.e. the effect of the "machine" and not how the "machine" works.
It would almost be as if I patented "a machine that washes clothes", and then suddenly other people can't use machines that wash clothes of any design without paying me. I gather the patent system was supposed to be about particular novel designs, and not about the effects of those designs. It was about patenting a particular washing-machine design, and not about patenting the washing machine.
But it seems like the problem with some software patents is that, even when they describe how a process works (and I've read a couple patents) it's kind of overly broad. The comparable process for the washing machine would be something like, "The user loads clothing into the machine, waits for some period of time, and then when the machine has finished running its course, a buzzer sounds. The user can then remove the clothes, which will be clean but wet." It's still not talking about the nuts and bolts of the machine construction. Now I guess if you get down to the nuts and bolts of most software design, you're just talking about source code, which is covered by copyright already. It's not clear to me that patents should apply to most of these things.
But maybe I'm wrong. I'm certainly not a patent law expert.
This demonstrates exactly why the phone network provider has to be decoupled from the cell phone vendor. What is the subtext of this? That the consumers are nothing more than serfs for the phone network providers to buy and sell as they please. That's the point. You have NO choice with Verizon. It's not YOUR phone it's THEIR phone.
Right. It seems noteworthy to me when the article said, "we've changed the [Verizon Wireless]-supplied web menu to make Bing the default search engine." This is one of the reasons right there that I don't like Verizon Wireless. Why is there even a Verizon-supplied web menu at all?
Ultimately how bad this is depends on the terms of the deal. Is the search engine the default option on new devices, or is it the only option forced on existing customers who didn't know something like this could happen when they signed up? That sort of thing makes a big difference.
Either way, I think the real culprit here is Verizon. It's understandable that Microsoft or Google would want some kind of deal for search engine placement. We all know Google pays Mozilla for placement as the default engine. The problem is more about how little regard Verizon has for their own customers-- so little that they think it's perfectly appropriate to go in and screw with a customer's phone remotely.
Right, and that's part of the sad thing-- that it seems that Lucas must have thought he was doing something subtle, sophisticated, and interesting.
But I also bristle at the defense of "Oh, it's not supposed to be good. It's supposed to be for kids!" There's a good chance that if my kids are watching a movie, I'll get stuck watching it too, so please make it good. Besides that, why shouldn't we expect children's entertainment to be good? If you're constantly sitting your kids down in front of stupid movies, I expect you're more likely to end up with stupid kids. No thanks.
As some people have shown (e.g. Pixar) it's perfectly possible to come up with child-appropriate entertainment that's also well made and thoughtful. We shouldn't just let our kids watch whichever movies they're willing to watch. Or more generally, we shouldn't accept that something is sufficiently good for children because the children themselves are willing to accept it. Left to their own devices, your kids might well live on a diet of sugar, hotdogs, and butter.
I thought he was going for a sort of napoleon dynamite sort of thing. Whatever it is, I don't think it really works. I think you could have given the script to the guy who does Zero Punctuation and it would have been much funnier.
There are probably more, but that's off the top of my head.
We need both FOSS and proprietary software. Give both of them what they want like options to achieve their goals and then you will have a truly great product that helps the community and humanity as a whole in utilizing computers.
I could imagine a world with only FOSS... maybe. But it seems to me that there's no problem with a nice healthy ecosystem with both FOSS and proprietary software. There may be some FOSS activists that disagree, but I don't see there being a problem with proprietary software per se. The bigger problems are proprietary/patented formats and protocols which block interoperability and draconian licensing terms.
If you make open file formats and open protocols, then you have the option of creating an open source implementation if you really want to. In that situation, the only reason to use non-free software is if it's genuinely sufficiently better that it's worth some money and a couple sacrifices in your freedom (sacrifices which you may well not care about).
Also, this idea of a "hybrid stack" (i.e. open source underneath, and proprietary on top) isn't new. It isn't now being born. There are loads of commercial applications that run on Linux; it's just that you may not use those applications for normal desktop use. And then there's OSX: it's basically FreeBSD with a proprietary window manager and tons of proprietary applications. OSX hasn't posed a big threat to FOSS, and in fact I'd say it has probably had a beneficial effect. It has helped weaken the Windows monopoly and has made Unix on the desktop much more common. Since it has good interoperability with other Unix/Linux variants, it's arguably easier to drop a Linux machine into a Mac network than it is to drop it into a Windows network.
If it's just staying out of an attempt to signal solidarity, I don't care either way.
You might not, but there are definitely people who get resentful of managers because they think the managers don't do anything. Because of that, I'd just warn someone in this situation to avoid appearing to be slacking off while asking others to work through the night.
Be careful with that; if an engineer has a good flow going, the last thing they need is their manager popping in to share the latest lolcat.
I'm not talking about lolcats. I don't manage developers, but I've had situations where some of us had to work late on something high-priority and important. Often enough, someone gets tired and stressed and starts flipping out and overreacting to things. Sometimes it's good to keep an eye out so you can settle people down, keep things in perspective, encourage someone to take a break, settle any disagreements, etc.
But that does depend on the situation. I'm thinking of situations where you're working late because, if things aren't wrapped up by the morning, the shit will hit the fan.
Though, being a manager and staying late with your developers, your first priority shouldn't be riding them but play a support role. What do they need to get the job done? What can you do to remove obstacles from their way?
That sounds to me like what a manager should be doing anyway, even if no one is staying late. At least, if you assume for the sake of argument that you have a good team made of people who understand their jobs, then riding them to make sure they do their job shouldn't be something you have to do too much of. A manager's job should generally be more about removing obstacles that aren't part of the workers' jobs so that the workers can focus on doing their jobs.
But to the question at hand, I say yes, stay late with your workers. As a manager, I pretty well try to be the first one in and the last one to leave. I figure it's good for morale. I don't like to ask people to do things that I'm not willing to do myself. If someone asked me to put in some hard work late into the night, I wouldn't appreciate that person immediately going home to their own soft bed.
That doesn't mean you're going to do much. It might just mean that you make it clear that you're there in case anyone needs anything, and then you go and sit at your desk and kill time. You're there to help, not to keep them on task. In fact, you may want to work on lightening the mood, keeping people relaxed, and making sure they feel appreciated for their extra work.
I see, so if I go ahead and make Rockoon File Protocol (RFP) for Linux, I get to jump up and down and cry and moan like a fucking girl because Windows and Mac don't have built-in functionality?
What I said:
...and though there's nothing wrong with those decisions themselves, the fact reveals how much latent power Microsoft has over the computing world.
So if I make Rockoon File Protocol and it's meant to be a general file sharing protocol used with desktops, how much it will be used might well hinge on how well the protocol is supported in Windows. If Microsoft chooses to adopt that protocol as their new standard, phasing out SMB, then you can be sure every Linux distro and MacOS will end up supporting it. However, if it's poorly supported in Windows, then there's a good chance it won't be used except in niche markets.
That's not to say that Microsoft should support Rockoon File Protocol, but just that Microsoft has a large degree of control over what technology becomes commonly used even without trying. Even if there's nothing nefarious going on and they simply choose not to implement a certain technology, it will mean often mean that the technology is less well supported by others, too.
The only way that you will be happy seems to be if everyone runs the same operating system, yet you cry and moan because most of the world IS running the same operating system.
I think either I need to be clearer or you need to read more carefully. First, I haven't really been talking about what should happen or shouldn't happen; I've been talking about what is. Microsoft has a lot of power over the computing industry. Apple does not. Apple and Microsoft do not use the exact same business model or the same market positions, so even similar choices made by the two companies have different ramifications. Microsoft isn't considered a monopoly because of the control they have over their own products, but because of the amount of control over the entire computing industry that their products have given them.
But to any extent I would argue that things would be different, I wouldn't argue that everyone should use the same OS, but only that OS makers should use open formats and protocols, thereby allowing interoperability. I can use OSX and you can use Linux, and we'll be in pretty good when we want to talk to each other. I can use Safari and you can use Firefox to browse the same websites. It's only when you throw Windows and IE into the mix, and that's because they want to use their own formats and protocols. Even that has gotten better lately, as Microsoft has opened some of that stuff up, and I believe they've even helped the Samba team in some cases.
I have a firewall where the vendor sells firmware updates and upgrades, some of which include additional features without changing the hardware. The firmware isn't licensed to run on other firewalls. Is that tying?
Nope, it's profits ultimately come from selling integrated platforms.
You made that clear the first time, and its still wrong when you repeat it.
Being on 90% of computers is different than being on control of 90% of computers.
Well I guess I didn't make it clear the first time, and I don't know how to make it clearer.
We are all free to choose a different one and that by definition means there isnt the measure of control that you are so flagrantly suggesting.
True, but if choosing something else means you can't interoperate with 90% of the world, it's not necessarily much of a choice.
Yes they can. Install something which does that.
I can install it on my own machine. Depending on the position I'm in, I may be able to install it on a couple hundred machines. After I do that, there will still be millions of Windows desktops out there that can't connect to my AFP share. There are still millions of PCs out there that, when I plug in my ext3 formatted external drive, it won't be recognized.
Well I didn't say that Microsoft controls 90% of the market; I'm saying Windows controls 90% of desktop computers. Admittedly that number is a little made up. I don't know what the percentage is right now.
But this means something. It means, for example, that 90% of desktop computers can't easily connect to an NFS or AFP share, and can't read ext3 partitions. The reason the can't is because Microsoft decided not to support those things, and though there's nothing wrong with those decisions themselves, the fact reveals how much latent power Microsoft has over the computing world. That's the power they even when they're not trying to wield it. It means everyone else has to reverse engineer SMB and NTFS support just to stay in the game.
Apple refusing to license its software for use on other hardware doesn't have the same kind of ramifications. All they're really doing is defining their own product. Buying a Mac is a hardware/software solution, and you don't really get one without the other. So asking Apple not to do that isn't like asking Microsoft to "stop intentionally breaking other people's software." It's closer to asking Microsoft to offer MS Paint, Wordpad, TCP/IP subsystems, and the Windows kernel all as different products, and complaining that otherwise it's tying.
Well I think the claim of "you can't be anti-competitive in your own market" was intended to be something like "being the only one selling your product doesn't make you a monopoly."
What makes Microsoft a monopoly is not the control they exercise over Windows itself, but the control they exercise over all of computing through Windows. Apple doesn't have that kind of control. There are other hardware vendors, other software vendors, and other operating systems you can use.
So the problem isn't Microsoft having control over Windows, but rather Windows having control over 90% of desktop computers.
Apple is not a software business, it's a hardware business (10% of their revenue is software and that includes all their high-end software packages and OS).
Well they're not exactly a hardware vendor or software vendor. They sell the integrate platform. Hardware and software.
As techies we're not used to thinking of desktops and laptops like that, but it's not that uncommon for other devices. As far as I know, Garmin doesn't license its GPS software to other vendors. Cisco doesn't license its software for use on other routers. Sony doesn't license the PS3 operating system for use on generic hardware, nor does Microsoft license the XBox 360 operating system. Nintendo doesn't license the Wii OS either. I don't know, but I don't believe TiVO licenses their software for use on generic hardware.
I mean it's really only good for doing stuff over the Internet, web applications, etc (hence the name "netbook"). SSH fits into that.
Internet stuff as opposed to playing high-end 3D games, running performance-hungry apps, or storing lots of data. The first netbooks only held a few GB of data.
Yeah, my question is, at 12" does it still make sense to call it a netbook? It seems to me that the "netbook" classification meant that it was very small (max 10"), had a very small amount of storage and no optical drive, so that it was really only good for things like internet browsing, chat, and email. If you take a netbook, make it more bigger, more powerful, and you add a bunch of storage, it becomes a notebook computer.
You want me to solve all your problems with a single post?
Well I stand by my recommendation of reading GTD.
But really, a lot of it getting organized is stuff you probably already know about, like taking notes, making plans ahead of time, keeping a calendar, or not procrastinating. Some of that stuff you just have to cowboy up and do. What I was saying is, don't expect your computer to make you organized. Don't expect a system to get you organized. If the problem is that you're lazy or careless, there's no system that's going to let you stay lazy and carless and get organized because you'll be too lazy and careless to stick to the system anyway.
If you really have no idea and need a place to get started, I'll tell you what: Keep it simple. Keep a notebook in your pocket, and write down everything you think of. Set aside an hour a day to go through your notebook and transcribe it into a computerized todo list (it can be a text file). When that list gets too long, break it into projects. Don't sort by priority, but by chronology of when they should be done. The first thing you need to do goes first. Keep at it, and over time you'll develop your own ways of doing it more efficiently.
I think that's coming. As the creation/distribution tools become cheaper and more available, companies just won't have the leverage to control it anymore. You're seeing it happen, even if it's not happening as fast as you'd like.
But if you're going to have a established movie industry, it's probably smart and appropriate for them to be courting new talent.
I don't see how this sort of thing isn't a positive development. The filmmaker who made this short is obviously talented. It's not just that the special effects are impressive for such a small budget, but the whole thing is shot pretty well.
I mean, this is kind of what should be happening, right? The movie industry finds talented filmmakers and gives them a chance to work on bigger projects?
You've never seen an ad for a movie or TV show and thought, "Huh, well that looks good. I'd like to see that." You've never learned about the existence of a product for the first time through advertising? Never?
No, I think ad content kind of is the problem. I mean yes, all of us find it annoying to have to see ads that we don't like, but certainly ads serve a purpose. Right now, for example, I don't watch broadcast TV or cable TV. For the first time in years, I'm hearing about popular products and movies through word-of-mouth that I had no idea existed. I don't miss having to sit through the same dumb ads every 15 minutes, but I do slightly miss being exposed to the new things that ads have to offer.
But it's not *just* the content. It's also the form. Being forced to look at or sit through an ad for a product that you have absolutely no interest in is stupid. The annoying/dumb/parasitic quality of advertising comes from advertisers thinking it's their job to force you or coerce you to buy their product. There's a funky quality where they seem to think, "Joe Schmoe might not like this product, but if we ram it down his throat frequently enough, he'll eventually give in and become a loyal customer." Not all advertising is like that, though. Sometimes it's just someone informing you that a product exists and letting you know what's good about it.
Unfortunately, in order to have things really work, I think there needs to be something like feedback or negotiation. Like if you can set the levels you're talking about with ad-blocker, there's still this problem where the people paying for the advertisement don't necessarily know what you're blocking it or why you're blocking it, and so they don't necessarily know what they have to do to rectify the situation. I feel like it'd be great if someone could look at a sheet of stats and say, "Ok, well of the people who visit my site, X% will look at any ads I put up, Y% will block the animated images but not static images or text. But there are Z% of our visitors who will not block our ads if we put up text and static images, but will block all of our ads if we use Flash ads at all. Given the amount of money we make from static images vs. Flash, it makes sense to stick with static images."
Basically, until websites and advertisers can make that kind of calculation, it generally makes sense for them to throw up the most attention-grabbing ads and hope for the best.
Well I don't know, but there isn't anything funky about my install. I have no whacky extensions or hacks. I navigated most of the way through their website to a page that said something like, "Click on this button to download". I clicked, no download. Pretty simple. Maybe you have some extra-special plugin or extension that I don't.
And anyway I've had enough problems over the years with Microsoft's websites being designed for IE, not seeming to have been tested on other browsers. For years and years you couldn't even read their knowledge base pages in non-IE browsers, and there wasn't anything special about them. They were just text. Recently it has seemed like every page on any of their sites includes an ad saying that the page would be better with Silverlight. You install Silverlight and the page doesn't do anything that you couldn't do without Silverlight.
Sure, newer versions of Windows don't make you use the Windows Update website, but has Microsoft actually fixed the website so it will work in other browsers? Not the last time I checked. Maybe they're getting better, but to me it seems like too little too late.