Naturally, I see lots of areas in Charlottesville's IT infrastructure (as well as potential areas of expansion) where Linux and various free software projects would be ideal.
What do you mean by naturally and ideal? Are you saying that you are just emotionally partial to Linux and free software, or do you actually have some factual data to clearly demonstrate that usage of Linux for the city's IT infrastructure would save money, manpower, or other resources while improving the quality of service?
Oddly, if you can't come up with any concrete, plain-english benefits of such a switch to lay out for your "end-users" (voting citizens), then that probably means there aren't any (or at least none that you've thoroughly investigated in any fashion). Even more oddly, voters tend to care about initiatives that actually result in visible improvement in their lives--lower taxes, better quality of service from their elected officials and government, etc.
Your attitude appears to be nothing more than dictatorial. "I like Linux, so what can I do to make everyone else like it too?" You're asking the wrong question. If you aim to be an elected official, you ought to be asking, "How can I best utilize technology to accurately and quickly communicate with the citizens I represent so I may find out what is actually important to them and make them feel like I'm really listening to them?"
Don't knock it unless you've tried it. In my extensive experience, higher quality cables such as Monster Cable yield a very noticeable improvement--much more than just using shorter, lower-quality cables.
Of course a better-quality amp or speaker system will yield improvements--but only if the signal you're sending to it in the first place is clean. Send top-of-the-line systems a crappy signal and guess what happens? You get crappy (albeit very loud) audio.
I used to do a lot of tracker and MIDI music and I learned many helpful tips about eliminating audio noise in electronic systems:
Run every device you can on batteries. The power supplied by batteries is always vastly cleaner than power converted from AC.
Use gold-plated connectors for all audio signal wires.
If an audio-generating device must run off AC, plug it into the same jack/strip that your preamp/amp use to ensure solid AC grounding and eliminate hum.
Purchase a new laptop, and do your homework first. Take along a pair of quality headphones (Sennheisers are recommended) and listen carefully to the integrated audio output for noise that may be generated when other devices in the system (hard drive, CD-ROM drive, processor, video) are doing actual work.
Parallel-port-driven audio solutions are usually the cleanest, lowest-latency solutions. Numerous websites describe the construction of such a device, or you can purchase them pre-made at some places. The next lowest latency solution is the laptop's integrated audio, although the quality of the audio output varies dramatically among brands/models.
Make sure your laptop has LOTS of RAM (at least 256 MB), and kill off all background programs, screen savers, power management, and other automated doodads that can kick off in the middle of a performance. For instance, there's no need to have an AntiVirus program sucking up resources during a gig! This will minimize latency.
Everyone and their dog will recommend using cables that are as short as possible. This is far less important than using high-quality cables. I personally use and recommend Monster Cable brand's highest quality offerings as a bare minimum. It's expensive, but it's truly worth it, and you can still use relatively long cables to allow yourself some slack.
For running components off AC, use either a power-filtering UPS unit, a power-filtering surge-protected AC power strip, or both. By merely plugging all AC-powered components into a Monster Cable clean-power strip I was able to eliminate all audible hiss and hum from my home theater system.
When geeks think something is cool, they foolishly assume everyone else will agree. Building a personal media library is a geek-born idea. Average people just want low-cost media on demand.
Science fiction always depicts instant media on demand for little or no cost; personal media libraries only exist for unique or personal content. There's no need for personal copies of centrally available media.
Smart entrepeneurs realize this fact and are working toward two things: ways to stream media over the wire, and heavy-duty centralized servers. Personal digital video recorders or in-home servers are a temporary and weak solution that really only appeals to an expert minority of consumers.
These devices will quickly become irrelevant once a reasonable media on demand solution is implemented. Building a new business around a dead-end concept is hardly a plan for success.
First off, Microsoft makes fewer and fewer drivers each day.
Actually, the only drivers Microsoft produces are for the devices it manufactures (and for generic/standard devices, such as VESA video BIOS).
Secondly, my own two-cents is that the drivers supplied with Windows are pretty damn good.
This is unfortunately a myth. A nontrivial percentage of device drivers shipped with Win2k and WinXP were incomplete versions restamped with shipping version numbers and Microsoft certification. Microsoft does this to increase the number of "supported hardware devices" on the HCL (hardware compatibility list) for its Windows releases. Unfortunately, the consumer gets screwed. Great example: Aureal Vortex 8830 drivers included with Windows 2000 were the same drivers Aureal touted as being "Alpha--use at your own risk!" shortly before they went bankrupt. Aureal never finished any Windows 2000 drivers for this device, and Microsoft just included the alpha drivers to claim support for the device.
Finally, if Win2k is going down with indication of "the cause" then you probably need to look harder.
I assume you mean "without indication". And yes, you are correct. Windows 2000 and Windows XP both do a good job identifying the real problem.
My own opinion on Win2k is that with MS signed drivers and reasonable quality (no single digit price components) hardware you will have no problem.
It's good advice to follow when shopping for hardware, but it still doesn't guarantee that everything will work as advertised.
I have a handful of Win2k servers with well over 100 days uptime under 30%-40% average loads.
Exactly my point--there is plenty of evidence that with solid devices and drivers, Windows has definitely improved in reliability and usability with each release.
Does this mean that the quality of the drivers has improved for each generation of Microsoft Windows?
No. Re-read the title of my post ("Windows improves, but drivers still suck"). The general quality of device drivers hasn't improved at all.
That wasn't even completely true with read-mode DOS. There is no reason to give that device drivers uncontrolled access to everything within the system. It's even fairly easy to architect an OS where ALL drivers are always run in user mode.
I assume you mean real-mode DOS. Regardless of the mode (kernal/user) in which the driver runs, any bugs it contains are usually unrecoverable. The device being accessed cannot be accessed, and the driver (and any programs depending on it) must be restarted. Why work hard to keep the underlying OS running when it will just have to restart everything the user was doing anyway? From an end user's perspective, they may as well reboot the machine. Of course, if the OS is meant for a server environment it makes sense to make it more robust.
IIRC MTS's paging software was run in user mode.
Paging (virtual memory) isn't a device driver--it's an operating system module.
Windows improves, but drivers still suck.
on
Dave Barry Does Windows
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· Score: 2, Interesting
Someone (Dave Barry) in the popular press has finally, explicitly and with a sense of humour, pointed out that Microsoft Windows doesn't get any more reliable or usable, no matter how many versions you buy.
This is unfounded Microsoft bashing at its worst. Anyone who has used Windows over the years knows that each version has improved reliability and usability over its predecessor. Most people fail to realize that their computer problems are due to faulty hardware and/or buggy device drivers, not the OS.
No matter how you architect an OS, at some point you have to rely upon a device driver (coded by someone else) to do the underlying work. That "someone else" part is the biggest problem, because you never know the quality of the code that comprises the driver.
The only way to assure the quality of a mystery box is to test the hell out of it. Microsoft has a "WHQL" certification program that is supposed to test driver binaries for correctness and completeness, but the label is meaningless in practice. Microsoft grants WHQL certifications to crappy drivers all the time in an effort to please device manufacturers.
Device manufacturers make money off hardware, not software. Drivers are always an afterthought, and their quality is always subject to the shipping schedule of the hardware. Drivers are often stamped WHQL and shipped along with the finished hardware even when the manufacturer and Microsoft know full well that the drivers aren't yet finished.
Computer reliability won't improve until device manufacturers realize drivers and devices are equally important. And that will only happen when consumers behave as if they are equally important. So stop whining about buggy drivers and actually do something about it. If substandard drivers prevent a device from working as advertised then take the manufacturer to court. False advertising is a crime, so why should device manufacturers get away with it? Usually there are thousands or millions of other consumers who would eagerly join a class-action lawsuit, if someone would just start one.
Not until you beat them at their own game! Here's what you do...
First, apply for a patent on the concept of a patent office. This patent will be approved because it is obvious, intangible, and has prior art readily available.
Second, apply for a patent on the concept of specifically patenting obvious and intangible ideas. This patent will be approved by the same logic.
Next, file a lawsuit against the USTPO for violating your two patents.
Finally, remember to re-apply to your own patent office for the two patents you obtained with the USTPO so your patents will still hold after the USTPO has gone bankrupt. Your two patents will of course be approved by your own patent office by virtue of the second patent.
If the consumer does not believe it's right, then they should use a cheaper competing product (they do exist) instead.
In many cases the cheaper alternatives are lacking essential features or quality or simply do not exist. Example: Windows 2000 Server. If I'm a college student who wants to learn Windows server administration skills, there is no cheaper alternative that will work me. I have to get my hands on the real deal, and I'll do so any way possible short of theft.
The fact that piracy is not theft is an important one to understand. Theft involves the removal of a good or service, and piracy involves just the opposite (creation/duplication of a good or service). Piracy is unauthorized duplication, not theft, as can be plainly seen defined in nearly any software EULA or video FBI Warning.
The problem is that around 90% of the money you spend on a retail box of software pays for intellectual development, not manufacturing costs. That's not the fault of pirates--that's the fault of someone attempting to build a business over top of an unworkable model.
It costs the originating entity a lot to create a good, but it costs much less for a subsequent entity to reproduce it. In the case of software there is a particularly sharp difference between those two costs, but the same difference exists for all products and services. Manufacturing is a natural business model. Distribution is a natural business model for tangible products or services. But invention isn't a natural business model at all: it only pays off if someone constructs artificial controls over its manufacturing and distribution.
My argument for piracy is the same argument I have against beggars: it's not my duty to support someone else's bad choices. And to those who fear invention and innovation would dry up without financial incentive, just remember that invention is the natural response to an itch called need. We would be better off in a world where the promise of financial fortune didn't lead to frivolous ideas. After all, we don't really need scissors that can cut through a quarter or a collector's-edition china set featuring David Duke, do we?
People tend to feel that games are "worth it" and they can "afford it", but games are still pirated.
No person I know feels that games are worth the money. Most people I know pirate games by the dozens and wouldn't stop doing it unless games were $5 apiece.
Games are frivolous entertainment; the buyer is primarily purchasing content. An application is necessary to get work done via the computer, and is used repeatedly because it serves a functional purpose. Thus it would make sense to any reasonable person to charge many times more for an application than for a game. But that still doesn't justify the fact that both applications and games are both ridiculously overpriced today.
Pirates tend to exclusively go after the market leader. This is one of the more damning aspects of their conduct -- they are re-enforcing the status quo.
Of course pirates go after market leading products! Who wants to spend hours cracking or downloading a given program when a better one is available? This conduct isn't "damning" at all, and is in fact the strongest incentive software companies have to strive for quality in their products. Pirates only care about one thing: the quality of a given product. Review wins, hype, or relative differences in price do not matter. Since piracy is an enhanced "word-of-mouth" (I don't just tell you it's good, I let you see for yourself) that concerns itself only with quality, software companies realize they can boost sales by building a reputation for quality. I for one am glad piracy exists to help enforce Darwinian natural selection.
Some professors believe that "By the time we get them, they already believe it [piracy]'s right."
Of course that's what students believe! What student--what consumer--believes it's "right" to ask $600.00 for Adobe Photoshop, $400.00 for Office, or $1000.00 for Windows 2000 Server? If Adobe is going to be stupid enough to ask $600.00 for a copy of Photoshop, then they get what they deserve.
If Photoshop were only $20.00, then nearly everyone would purchase a legitimate copy because they would feel it was worth the money and (most importantly) they could actually afford it! What a concept!
There's also an interesting bit on how business software is now 1/3 pirated, down from 1/2 in 1995. In America, it's only 24%. From the way companies like Microsoft whine about piracy, I'd assumed the figures were increasing, not decreasing
It would be more enlightening to see validated statistics regarding the least pirated software. I bet it's those $10-per-CD discs of discount software you find on those display racks at places like Target and Kmart, due mostly to the reasonable pricing.
Are there any other broadband services, other than the ones in Australia, continually degrading their service to customers?
Yes--nearly all ISPs do this.
When will this stop?"
Probably never! Most subscribers will keep paying even if they dislike the restrictions.
This situation is a neat example of SYRiNX's Golden Rule of Business: Only the sales matter. This is a simple restatement of an old adage: Actions speak more loudly than words. Let customers complain profusely as long as they keep paying!
Businesses that play by this rule nearly always succeed. For example: Microsoft and AOL ignore overwhelming animosity and focus exclusively on sales, and this has brought them financial success. Businesses that make other tasks a higher priority nearly always fail or struggle. For example, Apple focuses on product quality; Amiga focuses on popularity; and Sun focuses on developing a friendly image.
Could the biggest problem with Linux usability be that most of the people teaching newbies to use Linux are too smart and know too much?"
Nope. The biggest problem with Linux usability is that it's nearly non-existant. When it does exist, it's just a poor clone of Windows usability principles.
And to those who claim "Linux is easy to use, it just sucks to install!", I have a wake-up call: part of usability IS making it easy to install!
This article says they've created a way to print static glowing pictures to a page. That's a far cry from CRT functionality (i.e. a dynamic display capable of changing states very frequently to produce moving pictures). For all we know they "glow up" and "glow down" times of these OLEDs could be so slow that you couldn't squeeze any useful refresh rates out of them.
No, I don't aim to be a grammar troll. I do, however, like my political arguments and disucssions to be as deobfuscated as possible. Nader's letter is so obfuscated that the message is almost indiscernable.
We note at the outset that the decision to push for a rapid negotiation appears to have placed the Department of Justice at a disadvantage, given Microsoft's apparently willingness to let this matter drag on for years, through different USDOJ antitrust chiefs, Presidents and judges.
Wow. What an awful, complex, and incorrect sentence! Here's how I would have said it:
The preference for rapid negotiation has disadvantaged the Department of Justice. Microsoft is willing to let this matter drag on for years through different antitrust chiefs, Presidents, and judges.
Another gem from the "open letter":
Moreover, where Microsoft appears be given broad discretion to deploy intellectual property claims to avoid opening up its monopoly operating system where it will be needed the most, in terms of new interfaces and technologies.
Subject? Verb? Sentence? I'm lost. Here's my attempt:
Microsoft has been granted broad discretion to keep its operating systems' interfaces and technologies secret under the pretense of intellectual property protection.
If you want to make an argument, make it clearly and succinctly. This "open letter" is so poorly written that I can only conclude Mr. Nader is too technically unskilled to run a simple grammar checker or is too uncaring to give his own writing one last visual inspection before publishing it. Judge Kollar-Kotelly will likely come to the same conclusions, invalidating any good and valid arguments Mr. Nader might have made.
...and the fastest way to catch up is to duplicate until we're pretty much eye to eye with the competitors and can be called a viable alternative, which gets us users and market share...
I agree with the theory, but in practice OSS/FS tends to be a less-usable / poorer-quality mimic of commercial counterparts. That's why even the latest OSS/FS stuff still isn't a viable alternative to commercial stuff for most people.
When we're done playing catch-up, I'm quite confident the Open Source community will pump out more innovation in this field that M$ could ever hope to.
Why are you quite confident of this? Microsoft has three decades of experience with usability and design, carefully refining it and integrating it into the software development process. Microsoft is very good at innovating in the areas of usability and design and has a proven track record, whereas the OSS/FS communitiy has merely demonstrated their ability to somewhat poorly clone those innovations. If I were you, I wouldn't be so cocky.
Look at the technical fields where we have been stronger for longer... tell me that any commercial company has bested Linux or *BSD kernel technology innovations (including a kernel that scales from embedded to large scale clusters).
Don't you know that GNU/Linux and BSD don't scale nearly as well as most commercial Unixes? And don't you know that Windows 2000 and Windows XP Professional are just as reliable as GNU/Linux? The OSS/FS crowd still likes to beam proudly about its heritage of technical superiority, all while resting on its laurels. Meanwhile, commercial software has not only matched but outpaced the technical advantages in an easier-to-use form.
Show me a commercial *nix C compiler that has all the stuff of gcc 3.x.
Nearly all commercial C/C++ compilers produce tighter, leaner, more efficient binaries in less processing time than does gcc; numerous studies have proven this. The only great things about gcc are (1) strict ANSI/standards compliance, and (2) it's free.
Open Source Software enthusiasts are always accusing Microsoft of not innovating: "Microsoft is a monopoly with no incentive to innovate! OSS has TRUE innovation while MS just talks about it!"
Evolution is yet another piece of evidence to the contrary. Its UI and usability are a near-exact duplication of Microsoft Outlook.
While real innovations usually build upon existing ideas, the fact that nearly all OSS/FS applications are poorer (less usable) mimics of commercial software proves where the innovation most important to the average Joe is really occuring.
I don't think it is clear that "most people" think it is ethically acceptable; most people, even in the United States, have never even been to sites like Napster and MusicCity.
Please see my reply to this issue on a previous branch of this thread.
Record companies are not "denying musicians fair compensation"; the musicians voluntarily agreed to the compensation they are getting when they signed a contract. If they didn't like the terms of the contract, they weren't required to sign it.
Your argument would be true if there were other record companies with better compensation terms, but the fact is that all the record companies across the board fail to offer adequate or fair compensation. Musicians are left with two choices: (1) Tolerate the unfair terms in order to have some kind of career in music, or (2) don't sign the contract and forget about having any kind of career in music. There are no other choices, which is why your argument doesn't hold.
Record companies are also not "price gouging"; you aren't obligated to pay for any album in the first place, so you can't claim that you were obligated to pay too much. If you think an album is too expensive, don't buy it. Ergo, not price gouging.
And then how do I obtain the music I want? If the music I want is $16/album, am I supposed to just stop wanting that music because the price is too high? No one out there is selling the kind of music I want at cheaper prices. There is a lack of consumer alternatives--we are slaves to whatever the music industry chooses. The problem here is that the rules of supply and demand don't hold and thus the price point is swayed out of its natural balance; people are still going to demand the music even if the price is ludicrously high. Why do you think people pirate music or software, anyway? Hint: it's not because they think they deserve to have it for free. It's because the retail price is unfairly high. If CDs were $5 apiece instead of $16, piracy would drop dramatically.
And no record company is denying you your "fair use rights"; since those are protected by law to the extent that they exist, you can sue them if they are denying you those rights. Ergo, no "denial of rights".
If I could afford a lawyer, a lengthy legal battle, and court fees, then I really could sue them for breaking the laws to which they should proactively adhere anyway. Too bad I'm not that rich. Anyone who claims the U.S. judicial system is fair or just has never been taught the true nature of the system: He with the most money, not the ethical or legal right, always wins in the end (even when they lose).
you have the same rights to try and convince your legislator to advocate changes in the laws relating to fair use that they do. And you can vote, while the corporation can only lobby; that gives you the real power, not them.
If I had tons of money to effectively lobby against the music industry, then I really would have the same rights. And no, I can't vote on the issues--I can only vote on my representatives, and no matter who I vote for, those representative are still legally bribed through lobbying to vote in certain ways. Anyone who claims that I as a United States citizen wield any kind of real power over legislative decisions in this country is living in a dream world of happy lollipops, fairies, and yellow submarines.
Unless over half the world's population is using services like Napster and MusicCity, you have no way of knowing if most people do not believe it is ethically wrong.
I should have clarified: I wasn't talking about the world population. I was talking about the population of people who use P2P services to illegally trade music. Most of those people don't have an ethical problem with it; that's why they do it. Very few people with an ethical conflict will just continue to do it.
Despite what everybody here wants to say or how people want to spin it, the common way that software such as morpheus is used is ethically and legally wrong.
Everyone knows it's legally wrong, but most people do not believe it is ethically wrong (as proven by the sheer usage volume of services like Napster and MusicCity). Record companies commit original sins by denying musicians fair compensation, price gouging, and denying consumers fair use rights. In committing these wrongs they are forfeiting their ethical rights.
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It's not fair use to give near-perfect recordings of copyrighted material to everyone on the planet.
I've never seen anyone argue that as the definition of 'fair use'. Fair use is defined as a consumer's right to infinitely manipulate and copy purchased content as long as it all stays within their own personal possession (i.e. giving copies to others who have not purchased the content is disallowed).
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That being said, the software is not at fault. The RIAA may argue that it's enabling the behaviour, but this bad behaviour can and does occur through other means. There are entire mailing lists devoted to the trading of copyrighted materials via the USPS. This does not mean that the USPS should be outlawed.
Absolutely correct, and this is the entire reason the DMCA should be abolished. Guns and bullets don't kill people; people kill people! Computers and P2P software don't commit piracy; people commit piracy! Attempting to outlaw or blame a specific technological capability will prove ineffective in the long run because the people who want to pirate will just find other means.
I have to say that the Metallica-vs-Napster case was the first and only correctly-handled scenario I've seen. Metallica identified actual users of the Napster service who were pirating material and demanded that Napster take steps to assist enforcement of the law by blocking those users. The RIAA needs to go after individual consumers who pirate music, not the companies or people who create enabling technologies.
Product support does not generate revenue for most companies, so why should they invest in making it good?
Federal law needs to require a company to fully support any product that it still sells through retail.
Example: nVidia should be required by law to fully support the Voodoo3 since you can still purchase new ones at various retail stores. If they aren't willing to fully support the product, then they should immediately have any outstanding inventory pulled from retail, and any retailer who sells the product anyway should be punished.
Companies don't support their products well because support doesn't bring in revenue or increase profits.
Because of that problem, it should be a federal law that as long as a company still exists, it must provide complete support for any product it ever made that is still being sold as new, factory-sealed units at retail, even if the company has stopped manufacturing that product.
In other words, under this federal law, I (as an unwitting consumer) wouldn't be screwed if I bought a shrink-wrapped Voodoo3 card at CompUSA, because nVidia would be required to be writing drivers and providing complete support for that card. Only when all the retail inventory was gone would they be relieved of those responsibilities. And hell, that's the way it ought to be--when you purchase a product, you're not just purchasing a shrink-wrapped material object; you're purchasing the support that goes with it.
How far will spammers go to get their word out? When's it going to stop?
It will only stop when 0.00% of spam recipients reply to the spam. Spammers know that some small percentage (ballpark estimate: 0.01%) of spam recipients turn into customers, and thus it is cost-effective (for them) and in their interest to keep spamming.
Education is the only answer. That 0.01% needs to be edcuated about the fraudulent nature and globally negative impact of spam so that they will stop replying to such mailings.
Along this line of thought, I still believe that the only way to improve the Internet experience is to require every Internet user to have a license, and to require comptency tests before granting such licenses. If people knew about spam before ever being permitted online, spam would quickly become a dead end for marketers and it would stop happening.
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Naturally, I see lots of areas in Charlottesville's IT infrastructure (as well as potential areas of expansion) where Linux and various free software projects would be ideal.
What do you mean by naturally and ideal? Are you saying that you are just emotionally partial to Linux and free software, or do you actually have some factual data to clearly demonstrate that usage of Linux for the city's IT infrastructure would save money, manpower, or other resources while improving the quality of service?
Oddly, if you can't come up with any concrete, plain-english benefits of such a switch to lay out for your "end-users" (voting citizens), then that probably means there aren't any (or at least none that you've thoroughly investigated in any fashion). Even more oddly, voters tend to care about initiatives that actually result in visible improvement in their lives--lower taxes, better quality of service from their elected officials and government, etc.
Your attitude appears to be nothing more than dictatorial. "I like Linux, so what can I do to make everyone else like it too?" You're asking the wrong question. If you aim to be an elected official, you ought to be asking, "How can I best utilize technology to accurately and quickly communicate with the citizens I represent so I may find out what is actually important to them and make them feel like I'm really listening to them?"
Don't knock it unless you've tried it. In my extensive experience, higher quality cables such as Monster Cable yield a very noticeable improvement--much more than just using shorter, lower-quality cables.
Of course a better-quality amp or speaker system will yield improvements--but only if the signal you're sending to it in the first place is clean. Send top-of-the-line systems a crappy signal and guess what happens? You get crappy (albeit very loud) audio.
I used to do a lot of tracker and MIDI music and I learned many helpful tips about eliminating audio noise in electronic systems:
When geeks think something is cool, they foolishly assume everyone else will agree. Building a personal media library is a geek-born idea. Average people just want low-cost media on demand.
Science fiction always depicts instant media on demand for little or no cost; personal media libraries only exist for unique or personal content. There's no need for personal copies of centrally available media.
Smart entrepeneurs realize this fact and are working toward two things: ways to stream media over the wire, and heavy-duty centralized servers. Personal digital video recorders or in-home servers are a temporary and weak solution that really only appeals to an expert minority of consumers.
These devices will quickly become irrelevant once a reasonable media on demand solution is implemented. Building a new business around a dead-end concept is hardly a plan for success.
First off, Microsoft makes fewer and fewer drivers each day.
Actually, the only drivers Microsoft produces are for the devices it manufactures (and for generic/standard devices, such as VESA video BIOS).
Secondly, my own two-cents is that the drivers supplied with Windows are pretty damn good.
This is unfortunately a myth. A nontrivial percentage of device drivers shipped with Win2k and WinXP were incomplete versions restamped with shipping version numbers and Microsoft certification. Microsoft does this to increase the number of "supported hardware devices" on the HCL (hardware compatibility list) for its Windows releases. Unfortunately, the consumer gets screwed. Great example: Aureal Vortex 8830 drivers included with Windows 2000 were the same drivers Aureal touted as being "Alpha--use at your own risk!" shortly before they went bankrupt. Aureal never finished any Windows 2000 drivers for this device, and Microsoft just included the alpha drivers to claim support for the device.
Finally, if Win2k is going down with indication of "the cause" then you probably need to look harder.
I assume you mean "without indication". And yes, you are correct. Windows 2000 and Windows XP both do a good job identifying the real problem.
My own opinion on Win2k is that with MS signed drivers and reasonable quality (no single digit price components) hardware you will have no problem.
It's good advice to follow when shopping for hardware, but it still doesn't guarantee that everything will work as advertised.
I have a handful of Win2k servers with well over 100 days uptime under 30%-40% average loads.
Exactly my point--there is plenty of evidence that with solid devices and drivers, Windows has definitely improved in reliability and usability with each release.
Does this mean that the quality of the drivers has improved for each generation of Microsoft Windows?
No. Re-read the title of my post ("Windows improves, but drivers still suck"). The general quality of device drivers hasn't improved at all.
That wasn't even completely true with read-mode DOS. There is no reason to give that device drivers uncontrolled access to everything within the system. It's even fairly easy to architect an OS where ALL drivers are always run in user mode.
I assume you mean real-mode DOS. Regardless of the mode (kernal/user) in which the driver runs, any bugs it contains are usually unrecoverable. The device being accessed cannot be accessed, and the driver (and any programs depending on it) must be restarted. Why work hard to keep the underlying OS running when it will just have to restart everything the user was doing anyway? From an end user's perspective, they may as well reboot the machine. Of course, if the OS is meant for a server environment it makes sense to make it more robust.
IIRC MTS's paging software was run in user mode.
Paging (virtual memory) isn't a device driver--it's an operating system module.
Someone (Dave Barry) in the popular press has finally, explicitly and with a sense of humour, pointed out that Microsoft Windows doesn't get any more reliable or usable, no matter how many versions you buy.
This is unfounded Microsoft bashing at its worst. Anyone who has used Windows over the years knows that each version has improved reliability and usability over its predecessor. Most people fail to realize that their computer problems are due to faulty hardware and/or buggy device drivers, not the OS.
No matter how you architect an OS, at some point you have to rely upon a device driver (coded by someone else) to do the underlying work. That "someone else" part is the biggest problem, because you never know the quality of the code that comprises the driver.
The only way to assure the quality of a mystery box is to test the hell out of it. Microsoft has a "WHQL" certification program that is supposed to test driver binaries for correctness and completeness, but the label is meaningless in practice. Microsoft grants WHQL certifications to crappy drivers all the time in an effort to please device manufacturers.
Device manufacturers make money off hardware, not software. Drivers are always an afterthought, and their quality is always subject to the shipping schedule of the hardware. Drivers are often stamped WHQL and shipped along with the finished hardware even when the manufacturer and Microsoft know full well that the drivers aren't yet finished.
Computer reliability won't improve until device manufacturers realize drivers and devices are equally important. And that will only happen when consumers behave as if they are equally important. So stop whining about buggy drivers and actually do something about it. If substandard drivers prevent a device from working as advertised then take the manufacturer to court. False advertising is a crime, so why should device manufacturers get away with it? Usually there are thousands or millions of other consumers who would eagerly join a class-action lawsuit, if someone would just start one.
Will the idiots at the patent office never stop?
Not until you beat them at their own game! Here's what you do...
First, apply for a patent on the concept of a patent office. This patent will be approved because it is obvious, intangible, and has prior art readily available.
Second, apply for a patent on the concept of specifically patenting obvious and intangible ideas. This patent will be approved by the same logic.
Next, file a lawsuit against the USTPO for violating your two patents.
Finally, remember to re-apply to your own patent office for the two patents you obtained with the USTPO so your patents will still hold after the USTPO has gone bankrupt. Your two patents will of course be approved by your own patent office by virtue of the second patent.
If the consumer does not believe it's right, then they should use a cheaper competing product (they do exist) instead.
In many cases the cheaper alternatives are lacking essential features or quality or simply do not exist. Example: Windows 2000 Server. If I'm a college student who wants to learn Windows server administration skills, there is no cheaper alternative that will work me. I have to get my hands on the real deal, and I'll do so any way possible short of theft.
The fact that piracy is not theft is an important one to understand. Theft involves the removal of a good or service, and piracy involves just the opposite (creation/duplication of a good or service). Piracy is unauthorized duplication, not theft, as can be plainly seen defined in nearly any software EULA or video FBI Warning.
The problem is that around 90% of the money you spend on a retail box of software pays for intellectual development, not manufacturing costs. That's not the fault of pirates--that's the fault of someone attempting to build a business over top of an unworkable model.
It costs the originating entity a lot to create a good, but it costs much less for a subsequent entity to reproduce it. In the case of software there is a particularly sharp difference between those two costs, but the same difference exists for all products and services. Manufacturing is a natural business model. Distribution is a natural business model for tangible products or services. But invention isn't a natural business model at all: it only pays off if someone constructs artificial controls over its manufacturing and distribution.
My argument for piracy is the same argument I have against beggars: it's not my duty to support someone else's bad choices. And to those who fear invention and innovation would dry up without financial incentive, just remember that invention is the natural response to an itch called need. We would be better off in a world where the promise of financial fortune didn't lead to frivolous ideas. After all, we don't really need scissors that can cut through a quarter or a collector's-edition china set featuring David Duke, do we?
People tend to feel that games are "worth it" and they can "afford it", but games are still pirated.
No person I know feels that games are worth the money. Most people I know pirate games by the dozens and wouldn't stop doing it unless games were $5 apiece.
Games are frivolous entertainment; the buyer is primarily purchasing content. An application is necessary to get work done via the computer, and is used repeatedly because it serves a functional purpose. Thus it would make sense to any reasonable person to charge many times more for an application than for a game. But that still doesn't justify the fact that both applications and games are both ridiculously overpriced today.
Pirates tend to exclusively go after the market leader. This is one of the more damning aspects of their conduct -- they are re-enforcing the status quo.
Of course pirates go after market leading products! Who wants to spend hours cracking or downloading a given program when a better one is available? This conduct isn't "damning" at all, and is in fact the strongest incentive software companies have to strive for quality in their products. Pirates only care about one thing: the quality of a given product. Review wins, hype, or relative differences in price do not matter. Since piracy is an enhanced "word-of-mouth" (I don't just tell you it's good, I let you see for yourself) that concerns itself only with quality, software companies realize they can boost sales by building a reputation for quality. I for one am glad piracy exists to help enforce Darwinian natural selection.
Some professors believe that "By the time we get them, they already believe it [piracy]'s right."
Of course that's what students believe! What student--what consumer--believes it's "right" to ask $600.00 for Adobe Photoshop, $400.00 for Office, or $1000.00 for Windows 2000 Server? If Adobe is going to be stupid enough to ask $600.00 for a copy of Photoshop, then they get what they deserve.
If Photoshop were only $20.00, then nearly everyone would purchase a legitimate copy because they would feel it was worth the money and (most importantly) they could actually afford it! What a concept!
There's also an interesting bit on how business software is now 1/3 pirated, down from 1/2 in 1995. In America, it's only 24%. From the way companies like Microsoft whine about piracy, I'd assumed the figures were increasing, not decreasing
It would be more enlightening to see validated statistics regarding the least pirated software. I bet it's those $10-per-CD discs of discount software you find on those display racks at places like Target and Kmart, due mostly to the reasonable pricing.
MS Oversight Committee Hopeful Stephen Satchell Answers
Why does the MS Oversight Committee still hope he answers? He already answered!
Aside from bandwidth, what other amenities would make an apartment complex ideal for the high tech worker in the 21st Century?
An upstairs brothel that's open 24/7 and accepts payment via PayPal would certainly be a hit :-)
Are there any other broadband services, other than the ones in Australia, continually degrading their service to customers?
Yes--nearly all ISPs do this.
When will this stop?"
Probably never! Most subscribers will keep paying even if they dislike the restrictions.
This situation is a neat example of SYRiNX's Golden Rule of Business: Only the sales matter. This is a simple restatement of an old adage: Actions speak more loudly than words. Let customers complain profusely as long as they keep paying!
Businesses that play by this rule nearly always succeed. For example: Microsoft and AOL ignore overwhelming animosity and focus exclusively on sales, and this has brought them financial success. Businesses that make other tasks a higher priority nearly always fail or struggle. For example, Apple focuses on product quality; Amiga focuses on popularity; and Sun focuses on developing a friendly image.
Could the biggest problem with Linux usability be that most of the people teaching newbies to use Linux are too smart and know too much?"
Nope. The biggest problem with Linux usability is that it's nearly non-existant. When it does exist, it's just a poor clone of Windows usability principles.
And to those who claim "Linux is easy to use, it just sucks to install!", I have a wake-up call: part of usability IS making it easy to install!
This article says they've created a way to print static glowing pictures to a page. That's a far cry from CRT functionality (i.e. a dynamic display capable of changing states very frequently to produce moving pictures). For all we know they "glow up" and "glow down" times of these OLEDs could be so slow that you couldn't squeeze any useful refresh rates out of them.
No, I don't aim to be a grammar troll. I do, however, like my political arguments and disucssions to be as deobfuscated as possible. Nader's letter is so obfuscated that the message is almost indiscernable.
From his "open letter":
We note at the outset that the decision to push for a rapid negotiation appears to have placed the Department of Justice at a disadvantage, given Microsoft's apparently willingness to let this matter drag on for years, through different USDOJ antitrust chiefs, Presidents and judges.
Wow. What an awful, complex, and incorrect sentence! Here's how I would have said it:
The preference for rapid negotiation has disadvantaged the Department of Justice. Microsoft is willing to let this matter drag on for years through different antitrust chiefs, Presidents, and judges.
Another gem from the "open letter":
Moreover, where Microsoft appears be given broad discretion to deploy intellectual property claims to avoid opening up its monopoly operating system where it will be needed the most, in terms of new interfaces and technologies.
Subject? Verb? Sentence? I'm lost. Here's my attempt:
Microsoft has been granted broad discretion to keep its operating systems' interfaces and technologies secret under the pretense of intellectual property protection.
If you want to make an argument, make it clearly and succinctly. This "open letter" is so poorly written that I can only conclude Mr. Nader is too technically unskilled to run a simple grammar checker or is too uncaring to give his own writing one last visual inspection before publishing it. Judge Kollar-Kotelly will likely come to the same conclusions, invalidating any good and valid arguments Mr. Nader might have made.
I agree with the theory, but in practice OSS/FS tends to be a less-usable / poorer-quality mimic of commercial counterparts. That's why even the latest OSS/FS stuff still isn't a viable alternative to commercial stuff for most people.
When we're done playing catch-up, I'm quite confident the Open Source community will pump out more innovation in this field that M$ could ever hope to.
Why are you quite confident of this? Microsoft has three decades of experience with usability and design, carefully refining it and integrating it into the software development process. Microsoft is very good at innovating in the areas of usability and design and has a proven track record, whereas the OSS/FS communitiy has merely demonstrated their ability to somewhat poorly clone those innovations. If I were you, I wouldn't be so cocky.
Look at the technical fields where we have been stronger for longer... tell me that any commercial company has bested Linux or *BSD kernel technology innovations (including a kernel that scales from embedded to large scale clusters).
Don't you know that GNU/Linux and BSD don't scale nearly as well as most commercial Unixes? And don't you know that Windows 2000 and Windows XP Professional are just as reliable as GNU/Linux? The OSS/FS crowd still likes to beam proudly about its heritage of technical superiority, all while resting on its laurels. Meanwhile, commercial software has not only matched but outpaced the technical advantages in an easier-to-use form.
Show me a commercial *nix C compiler that has all the stuff of gcc 3.x.
Nearly all commercial C/C++ compilers produce tighter, leaner, more efficient binaries in less processing time than does gcc; numerous studies have proven this. The only great things about gcc are (1) strict ANSI/standards compliance, and (2) it's free.
Open Source Software enthusiasts are always accusing Microsoft of not innovating: "Microsoft is a monopoly with no incentive to innovate! OSS has TRUE innovation while MS just talks about it!"
Evolution is yet another piece of evidence to the contrary. Its UI and usability are a near-exact duplication of Microsoft Outlook.
While real innovations usually build upon existing ideas, the fact that nearly all OSS/FS applications are poorer (less usable) mimics of commercial software proves where the innovation most important to the average Joe is really occuring.
I don't think it is clear that "most people" think it is ethically acceptable; most people, even in the United States, have never even been to sites like Napster and MusicCity.
Please see my reply to this issue on a previous branch of this thread.
Record companies are not "denying musicians fair compensation"; the musicians voluntarily agreed to the compensation they are getting when they signed a contract. If they didn't like the terms of the contract, they weren't required to sign it.
Your argument would be true if there were other record companies with better compensation terms, but the fact is that all the record companies across the board fail to offer adequate or fair compensation. Musicians are left with two choices: (1) Tolerate the unfair terms in order to have some kind of career in music, or (2) don't sign the contract and forget about having any kind of career in music. There are no other choices, which is why your argument doesn't hold.
Record companies are also not "price gouging"; you aren't obligated to pay for any album in the first place, so you can't claim that you were obligated to pay too much. If you think an album is too expensive, don't buy it. Ergo, not price gouging.
And then how do I obtain the music I want? If the music I want is $16/album, am I supposed to just stop wanting that music because the price is too high? No one out there is selling the kind of music I want at cheaper prices. There is a lack of consumer alternatives--we are slaves to whatever the music industry chooses. The problem here is that the rules of supply and demand don't hold and thus the price point is swayed out of its natural balance; people are still going to demand the music even if the price is ludicrously high. Why do you think people pirate music or software, anyway? Hint: it's not because they think they deserve to have it for free. It's because the retail price is unfairly high. If CDs were $5 apiece instead of $16, piracy would drop dramatically.
And no record company is denying you your "fair use rights"; since those are protected by law to the extent that they exist, you can sue them if they are denying you those rights. Ergo, no "denial of rights".
If I could afford a lawyer, a lengthy legal battle, and court fees, then I really could sue them for breaking the laws to which they should proactively adhere anyway. Too bad I'm not that rich. Anyone who claims the U.S. judicial system is fair or just has never been taught the true nature of the system: He with the most money, not the ethical or legal right, always wins in the end (even when they lose).
you have the same rights to try and convince your legislator to advocate changes in the laws relating to fair use that they do. And you can vote, while the corporation can only lobby; that gives you the real power, not them.
If I had tons of money to effectively lobby against the music industry, then I really would have the same rights. And no, I can't vote on the issues--I can only vote on my representatives, and no matter who I vote for, those representative are still legally bribed through lobbying to vote in certain ways. Anyone who claims that I as a United States citizen wield any kind of real power over legislative decisions in this country is living in a dream world of happy lollipops, fairies, and yellow submarines.
Unless over half the world's population is using services like Napster and MusicCity, you have no way of knowing if most people do not believe it is ethically wrong.
I should have clarified: I wasn't talking about the world population. I was talking about the population of people who use P2P services to illegally trade music. Most of those people don't have an ethical problem with it; that's why they do it. Very few people with an ethical conflict will just continue to do it.
Despite what everybody here wants to say or how people want to spin it, the common way that software such as morpheus is used is ethically and legally wrong.
Everyone knows it's legally wrong, but most people do not believe it is ethically wrong (as proven by the sheer usage volume of services like Napster and MusicCity). Record companies commit original sins by denying musicians fair compensation, price gouging, and denying consumers fair use rights. In committing these wrongs they are forfeiting their ethical rights.
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It's not fair use to give near-perfect recordings of copyrighted material to everyone on the planet.
I've never seen anyone argue that as the definition of 'fair use'. Fair use is defined as a consumer's right to infinitely manipulate and copy purchased content as long as it all stays within their own personal possession (i.e. giving copies to others who have not purchased the content is disallowed).
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That being said, the software is not at fault. The RIAA may argue that it's enabling the behaviour, but this bad behaviour can and does occur through other means. There are entire mailing lists devoted to the trading of copyrighted materials via the USPS. This does not mean that the USPS should be outlawed.
Absolutely correct, and this is the entire reason the DMCA should be abolished. Guns and bullets don't kill people; people kill people! Computers and P2P software don't commit piracy; people commit piracy! Attempting to outlaw or blame a specific technological capability will prove ineffective in the long run because the people who want to pirate will just find other means.
I have to say that the Metallica-vs-Napster case was the first and only correctly-handled scenario I've seen. Metallica identified actual users of the Napster service who were pirating material and demanded that Napster take steps to assist enforcement of the law by blocking those users. The RIAA needs to go after individual consumers who pirate music, not the companies or people who create enabling technologies.
Product support does not generate revenue for most companies, so why should they invest in making it good?
Federal law needs to require a company to fully support any product that it still sells through retail.
Example: nVidia should be required by law to fully support the Voodoo3 since you can still purchase new ones at various retail stores. If they aren't willing to fully support the product, then they should immediately have any outstanding inventory pulled from retail, and any retailer who sells the product anyway should be punished.
Companies don't support their products well because support doesn't bring in revenue or increase profits.
Because of that problem, it should be a federal law that as long as a company still exists, it must provide complete support for any product it ever made that is still being sold as new, factory-sealed units at retail, even if the company has stopped manufacturing that product.
In other words, under this federal law, I (as an unwitting consumer) wouldn't be screwed if I bought a shrink-wrapped Voodoo3 card at CompUSA, because nVidia would be required to be writing drivers and providing complete support for that card. Only when all the retail inventory was gone would they be relieved of those responsibilities. And hell, that's the way it ought to be--when you purchase a product, you're not just purchasing a shrink-wrapped material object; you're purchasing the support that goes with it.
How far will spammers go to get their word out? When's it going to stop?
It will only stop when 0.00% of spam recipients reply to the spam. Spammers know that some small percentage (ballpark estimate: 0.01%) of spam recipients turn into customers, and thus it is cost-effective (for them) and in their interest to keep spamming.
Education is the only answer. That 0.01% needs to be edcuated about the fraudulent nature and globally negative impact of spam so that they will stop replying to such mailings.
Along this line of thought, I still believe that the only way to improve the Internet experience is to require every Internet user to have a license, and to require comptency tests before granting such licenses. If people knew about spam before ever being permitted online, spam would quickly become a dead end for marketers and it would stop happening.