The outcome of Microsoft's desperate attempts to retain driver compatibility between major versions has been a sliding scale of driver quality. The class drivers are pretty good, because Microsoft wrote them for your specific OS version and updates them when necessary. QA approved vendor drivers for major hardware (e.g. disk controllers) tend to be OK, although they sometimes have a few glitches. The rest of the drivers are touch and go unless your hardware strongly resembles their test equipment (e.g. lots of drivers don't work for > 2GB RAM, many don't work for SMP, a considerable number have trouble sharing interrupts, some can't restore from suspend because they never tried a laptop,...)
But we get exactly the same thing on linux - my webcam driver can't restore from suspend - with the added fun of them breaking completely when the kernel devs feel like it. Which is even worse.
Also the kernel developers are not always willing to merge 3rd party code into the kernel if it isn't to their standards or is perhaps not 100% complete. I completely understand this process
What's not understandable is the way the kernel devs do this, and yet still refuse to provide a stable API (yet alone an ABI) for drivers which want or need to stay outside the kernel, like these webcams. Until that changes you can look forward to much happy random breaking of support for your hardware
It's not unfairly leveraging your monopoly. If someone made a better console with better games, people would buy it. Not simply allowing everyone else to piggyback on Nintendo's R&D investment would continue to drive innovation.
Nintendo can charge a reasonable licensing fee for their R&D. Allowing others to make consoles for the same game makes it a lot more possible for other companies to make successful game consoles - remember we're talking the hypothetical situation where nintendo have a monopoly. Getting into a business like that from scratch takes a lot - just look at the various efforts to make a handheld gaming system. It's taken a company with the massive coffers of sony to get into a competitive position after many failed attempts.
Whoopie doo. The public don't want to buy DRM'd music. They want to buy music.
That's like saying people don't want to rent houses, they want to buy them. Sure, people would prefer it without, but the DRM'd music can be sold more cheaply.
So because some US companies can't be bothered to deal with Norway, the one that does should be punished?
Because a company is in a monopoly position, for whatever reason, it should have certain restrictions.
Why? If everyone decided that the Wii was the only games console to buy, why should they be punished?
They can still sell their Wii just as before, and they can charge a reasonable licensing fee for the effort they put into the technology, it's just they shouldn't be stopping anyone else trying to compete on consoles for the same games. As to why, the answer is, as for any good law, because it's in society's best interests.
They wouldn't be preventing anyone else from creating a different console.
Sure, but unfairly leeveraging your monopoly position in one area to gain an advantage in another is unfair.
Anyway, Apple is far from having a monopoly on music sales.
Not on all music, but they do on DRMed music downloads. Just like the windows monopoly, they don't have to be the only people offering it for sale, they just have to be in a monopoly position. And remember many US online music stores don't exist in Norway.
That doesn't prevent Real from setting up a music store, putting other DRM on it, and even selling it to iPod users though.
They tried that too, if you remember, and Apple quickly issued a "security update" which did nothing but disable playing the Real files.
Conversely you don't have to buy fairplay music to play it on your ipod. You can buy or load MP3s.
DRMed music is a distinct product. You may be able to buy and load non-drm music from other stores, but you can't buy drmed music from anyone but apple. And not just because no-one wants to sell it, Real tried to license the ipod drm.
But nintendo will license you to make wii games at a reasonable and non-discriminatory fee, and presumably to make a console that plays them too, and if not they're not currently in a monopoly position anyway. Wheras real tried to license Apple's DRM and was told no amount of money was enough.
Serious question: how do I increase the process quota on a vms machine? I have one for playing with, but no-one I know knows what to do with it, and the internet has been less than helpful.
If it's a decent 15" monitor you're not going to be downrezing it. Ah, DEC, how we miss you *pats 2048x1536 capable crt that's likely older than he is*
It's a bit like the NVidea Linux drivers: the free software purists see it as something awful to load a binary driver on Linux, but I for one am very grateful to have proper 3D accelerated drivers at all. Same goes for video playback... There will always be proprietary video codecs, just get over it. I don't see the problem anyway, if I'm want to run commercial software on Linux it is usually binary as well. Does that mean the software is useless or bad?
But what's the advantage over the current approach? The free software people won't prefer it because it's still just a binary blob. The whatever works people won't care because the current approach works and is cheaper. So I really don't think there's a market (if they release it in binary form, I'll bet we won't even get non-x86/amd64 architecture support).
I probably enabled that USE flag; I don't remember it. I've got gentoo on the console background and IIRC if one installs gnome it's there on the gnome splash screen; it's there on the openoffice splash on my sistem. It has more branding than slackware, which I came from (no branding at all that I ever saw); I know it has a lot less than, say, SUSE.
The linux distributors have their own name on the product - my system has a lot more "gentoo" branding than any other word, and this is from a distro that's relatively light on such things. Sony's windows-with-20-bits-of-junk only has MS's image to worry about.
I have to disagree with your package assesment; your typical linux install set has much more software than windows, and probably more than OSX as well.
You can have that now on linux, if you stick to KDE. (I imagine you can also have it if you stick to gnome) I have my mail client, web browser, IM program, word processor etc. with working spellcheck using the same dictionaries and, internally, the same component.
Because you trust the FSF to only make changes that are needed, and think the chances of there being a critical hole in the GPLv2 are enough to be worth trying to avoid.
Windows was ported to different architectures; there was windows NT on Alpha. Which was quite possibly the fastest per-clock architecture around at the time.
As someone who was recently sent to a Catholic school: bullshit. The number of times "It's only a theory" and "if you believe it" were said was astonishing. And it wasn't well taught at all.
It looks like all it's doing is trying to allocate its uploads more efficiently. Which, assuming it works, should improve things overall, and (if it works) may even get adopted into the official protocol.
Open Source releases free "content" all the time but pursues those who abuse the system. And yet when I and other content creators go against those who do the same we're bad guys.*
The bad guys are those who are stopping people getting content. That's the correct angle to look at it from; whether they are enforcing or violating copyright law is irrelevant.
Unfortunately we're not quite there with video yet. If we'd had a couple more years DRM would be a lost cause, like it is with audio - CDDA is perfect as far as humans are concerned. DVD video isn't, and it's already got some (very weak) DRM on it. Unlike new audio formats, HD-DVD et al do offer a genuine improvement in quality. And this could be enough for them to succeed.
Slashdot Mirror
I'd say at least 80% of the AJAX I see is being used not because it's the best thing but because it has the best marketing.
There was a 112-floppy release of slackware at one point. I put it on my 386, carting the same floppy back and forth from the internet machine.
But we get exactly the same thing on linux - my webcam driver can't restore from suspend - with the added fun of them breaking completely when the kernel devs feel like it. Which is even worse.
What's not understandable is the way the kernel devs do this, and yet still refuse to provide a stable API (yet alone an ABI) for drivers which want or need to stay outside the kernel, like these webcams. Until that changes you can look forward to much happy random breaking of support for your hardware
Nintendo can charge a reasonable licensing fee for their R&D. Allowing others to make consoles for the same game makes it a lot more possible for other companies to make successful game consoles - remember we're talking the hypothetical situation where nintendo have a monopoly. Getting into a business like that from scratch takes a lot - just look at the various efforts to make a handheld gaming system. It's taken a company with the massive coffers of sony to get into a competitive position after many failed attempts.
Whoopie doo. The public don't want to buy DRM'd music. They want to buy music.
That's like saying people don't want to rent houses, they want to buy them. Sure, people would prefer it without, but the DRM'd music can be sold more cheaply.
So because some US companies can't be bothered to deal with Norway, the one that does should be punished?
Because a company is in a monopoly position, for whatever reason, it should have certain restrictions.
They can still sell their Wii just as before, and they can charge a reasonable licensing fee for the effort they put into the technology, it's just they shouldn't be stopping anyone else trying to compete on consoles for the same games. As to why, the answer is, as for any good law, because it's in society's best interests.
They wouldn't be preventing anyone else from creating a different console.
Sure, but unfairly leeveraging your monopoly position in one area to gain an advantage in another is unfair.
Anyway, Apple is far from having a monopoly on music sales.
Not on all music, but they do on DRMed music downloads. Just like the windows monopoly, they don't have to be the only people offering it for sale, they just have to be in a monopoly position. And remember many US online music stores don't exist in Norway.
That doesn't prevent Real from setting up a music store, putting other DRM on it, and even selling it to iPod users though.
They tried that too, if you remember, and Apple quickly issued a "security update" which did nothing but disable playing the Real files.
Honestly, I don't know. But they should certainly be forced to if they ever reached a monopoly on game sales.
Apple will already lets plenty of companies sell their music (the equivalent of the games) through iTunes.
But not from their own stores - real tried to license the drm to do that, remember?
DRMed music is a distinct product. You may be able to buy and load non-drm music from other stores, but you can't buy drmed music from anyone but apple. And not just because no-one wants to sell it, Real tried to license the ipod drm.
But nintendo will license you to make wii games at a reasonable and non-discriminatory fee, and presumably to make a console that plays them too, and if not they're not currently in a monopoly position anyway. Wheras real tried to license Apple's DRM and was told no amount of money was enough.
Serious question: how do I increase the process quota on a vms machine? I have one for playing with, but no-one I know knows what to do with it, and the internet has been less than helpful.
If it's a decent 15" monitor you're not going to be downrezing it. Ah, DEC, how we miss you *pats 2048x1536 capable crt that's likely older than he is*
But what's the advantage over the current approach? The free software people won't prefer it because it's still just a binary blob. The whatever works people won't care because the current approach works and is cheaper. So I really don't think there's a market (if they release it in binary form, I'll bet we won't even get non-x86/amd64 architecture support).
I probably enabled that USE flag; I don't remember it. I've got gentoo on the console background and IIRC if one installs gnome it's there on the gnome splash screen; it's there on the openoffice splash on my sistem. It has more branding than slackware, which I came from (no branding at all that I ever saw); I know it has a lot less than, say, SUSE.
I have to disagree with your package assesment; your typical linux install set has much more software than windows, and probably more than OSX as well.
You still gain the advantages of the USE flags, which are what makes it (arguably) worth compiling your own software, not the 2% performance increase.
You can have that now on linux, if you stick to KDE. (I imagine you can also have it if you stick to gnome) I have my mail client, web browser, IM program, word processor etc. with working spellcheck using the same dictionaries and, internally, the same component.
With ftp.exe.
It's possible. I've done it when fixing really horribly spyware-infested systems.
That's only for emulating a bios (and is usable by linux if you're a real masochist); once it's booted it's using the alpha's processor natively.
Because you trust the FSF to only make changes that are needed, and think the chances of there being a critical hole in the GPLv2 are enough to be worth trying to avoid.
Windows was ported to different architectures; there was windows NT on Alpha. Which was quite possibly the fastest per-clock architecture around at the time.
As someone who was recently sent to a Catholic school: bullshit. The number of times "It's only a theory" and "if you believe it" were said was astonishing. And it wasn't well taught at all.
It looks like all it's doing is trying to allocate its uploads more efficiently. Which, assuming it works, should improve things overall, and (if it works) may even get adopted into the official protocol.
Maybe he hot-replaced it with a new one bit by bit
The bad guys are those who are stopping people getting content. That's the correct angle to look at it from; whether they are enforcing or violating copyright law is irrelevant.
Unfortunately we're not quite there with video yet. If we'd had a couple more years DRM would be a lost cause, like it is with audio - CDDA is perfect as far as humans are concerned. DVD video isn't, and it's already got some (very weak) DRM on it. Unlike new audio formats, HD-DVD et al do offer a genuine improvement in quality. And this could be enough for them to succeed.