I agree on that. Based on the methods used to test a general index size, I think it leaves a lot of holes. When you're talking about millions of items, a generalization can be woefully innacurate.
Rather than talking about indexed content, it seems like this test is actually more appropriate to use as some sort of analysis on the overall usefullness of the search engines. Even then, though, the results could be skewed to say that it's better to provide a wealth of pages (Google) or to have fine tuned and narrowed results that you're looking for (Yahoo!). Numbers matter to a program, results matter to people. This test only portrays the former, yet the latter is what we're really trying to get at.
Either way, I don't think radom tests can really do justice to Google or Yahoo!. Rather than perfomring a radomized test upon each, I think the better gauge of each's usefullness would be something more like a practical application study. In other words, evaluate real everyday kind of searches on each site instead of an unlikely combination of two random english words like politics and truth;)
In other words, while I commend the effort to debunk any misinformation about which search engine is better endowed, so to speak; the numbers given don't provide useful information to anyone but a spin doctor.
(As a side note, I'm actually more of a Google fan for search and applications, but I love Yahoo! as a lifestyle portal for things like movie listings and such)
With all the hype about what you can do with a PSP, maybe I'll just wait for some souped up PDA that's meant to do all the things you have to hack a PSP to accomplish ;)
I think it is possible that Yahoo! has more items indexed than Google. It may not be true after all, but one has to give thought to the fact that Yahoo can search subscription based content. That has got to boost their numbers considerably beyond the range of queries that typically return less than one thousand results. It's possible that Yahoo! could have simply been fudging the numbers to get some press now that they're actually starting to get noticed again. I can't make a certain conjecture in either direction, but don't totally discredit Yahoo! without looking into everything.
Actually, what you can add into a game and Hot Coffee were two completely different things. The reason for that is because Hot Coffee was already completely assembled: models, responses, sounds and everything. The only part of the game that was actually hacked was a few lined of code in the PC version to allow that part of the game to be accessed. In case anybody needs clarification, think of it like this:
In SSB:Melee, you have to meet certain requirments to 'unlock' features in the game. Hot Coffee was a feature that was already built into GTA:SA, but the requirment to get it was never set, so you could never unlock it. All the 'hackers' did, was fill in that line of code. (It's over simplified, I know)
The reason you can't change the rating for a game that somebody added content to is because the distributor never lisenced that content and never created it to begin with. Users had to have built it and found a way to plug it into the game. GTA:SA's Hot Coffee was already good to go if you changed a few lines of code.
I think it will become too stupid to enforce things like this, though, when hackers could possibly remove a model from the character to leave them exposed, when that would normally violate the terms of use to begin with. Games are always trying to look more realistic and enforcing something like this could only hold them back.
Running out of hiding places
on
Spammers on the Run
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
I liked the mention of the domain registrar taking up a zero-tolerance policy after the spammer shut down their domain. I'm starting to think that with more people around the world getting online, more people around the world are getting sick of spam. This could help us eliminate some of those off-shore servers that spammers love to hide behind.
Give everyone in the world email for a week and then see all the government action we desperately crave;)
I understand your point, but at some point, people will have to realize how stupid it is. With computer generated characters becoming more 'life like', we will soon be seeing characters that are assembled from skeleton, to muscle and tissue with clothing on top. If that stage of polygon count ever arives, the entire Hot Coffee verdict will be overturned because any game that can be hacked against regulations to remove layers to expose nude characters in a game will have to raise the ratings.
After a while, on my Win2K machine, I started to have problems similar to the ones described by the parent post actually. Besides, I could conceive that it could have been a bug consisting of a series of software conflicts after a Windows Update screwed up one small detail.
I have had that happen several times. Not enough to consider it the norm, but I think the originating post serves a purpose to explain that there are plenty of users that hit one small point that requires effort to change something, and so they give up. Not everyone is like this and I've heard all too many tales of people teaching someone in their 80's to use Linux for everyday tasks, but that isn't the normal situation. The majority of users want something that works the way they are used to (the way it's been/IE) and when they have to think to change something, they just give up. Why bother when you can just ask your friend to clean out your spyware each month or so? I don't mean to Troll, but this is a growing trend that I see in many places.
I think a lot of analysis over this loss of market share forgets where a good amount of internet browsers (the people part) are.
Security and stability? B'ah! Honestly, nearly any issue that Firefox could run into seems rather paltry compared to what domintes the market share of web browsers (IE). What issues that do arise are usually fixed in relatively short order as well. If nothing else, Mozilla developers move at light speed when compared to Microsoft in the browser world.
I really honestly don't want to sound like a Troll, but I think bringing up topics like security and stability bugs to explain a loss of market share seems like a way out of pointing out the obvious: The majority of internet users are too lazy to install something when there's an alternative that's 'good enough' already.
Heck, I think it's pretty antiquated that most of the laymen internet users still use the term 'surf' when describing actions performed on the internet;)
Parents don't want to be required to exert that kind of effort in raising their ill-begotten loin spawn though. Imagine if the minimum ages for tobaco and alchohol were just suggestions with no penalties: truth.com wouldn't stop parents from being fast-talked by their own children into buying something that's harmful for them.
I think it's pathetic and quite sad, but just like like parental locks on television and internet, they aren't trying to "do" something about their problem. They want something done for them. On a relatively general level (i.e. not always the case but usually), those that propose bans/restrictions on games are personally offended, and those that support the former don't want to change things, they just want it removed completely so they don't have to worry about it at all.
I'll bet anything that Apple was given a 10 year development roadmap, minimum. They even knew that IBM was actually making a G5 chip that would allow new laptops before the switch because of the same kind of agreement.
I think this is one of the major reasons that Apple switched to Intel, if you ask me. They know what IBM is capable of (and that's a hell of a lot for *NIX systems, which OSX falls under). I kept reading about hypothetical price drops in macs, and that just seemed ludicrous, and they knew IBM was making a G5 for laptops in the near future. If you've ever compared perfomance of *NIX systems on x86 to POWER chips, you'd think Apple was on crack for choosing the former.
I think this new chip is going to be the hardware support for the publicity that the switch has generated for them. If it's not in the first model mactels, expect in the Gen2 editions.</tinfoilhattery>
You also have to consider the possible applications of this patent (and the people they can collect from) if Microsoft happens to be granted this in loose enough terms. I'm not blindly casting stones at The Man here, but this is the same company that has filed patent claims for the technology of pressing the 'Tab' key to navigate hyperlinks on a web page.
Microsoft isn't the only one guilty of this though. In the past few years, a lot of large (semi) monopolistic companies have gone on Intellectual Property acquisition sprees in attempt to collect royalties/settlements for patents and copyrights in a field that the USPTO had been far too unknowledgable of, previously. The courts are starting to get the USPTO and friends to play catch up after such debacles as some of the recent outlandish URL trademark rights lawsuits (i.e. Microsoft, Dell, etc.).
I think the point behind Sega and their great list of failures making it to the charts is because they made great systems. Even if some of them weren't the best they could have been at the time, they seemed to always push the boundaries on what could be done with a console. The reason that these failures hit No.4 (in my opinion) is that they could create an awesome platform, but there were never enough developers that signed to make games for it. Then we would watch the Sega $foo would quickly whither and die with its paltry host of mostly mediocre games. It's like a record label spending loads of money to put on an awesome concert, but nobody showed up.
You should have payed more attention to my post. I said that as if it were coming from Apple's marketing department. Apple always touts themselves as a vendor of superior quality systems. I was simply reflecting their views, not my own.
I, also, have heard countless claims that Apple is a hardware company, and it seems quite reasonable still (in my perspective anyway. If you wish to enlighten me, please do so politely). However, here's where I see the basics behind the idea of an OSx86 project and its effects on Apple:
Apple still has the 'trendy computer' kind of image to them in the eyes of many. Whether you see mac users as different or completely zealotous is another issue. However, if Apple can make their system just hackable enough to get it 'mostly' working on non-Apple hardware, they hope that those users will be so amazed as to become legit consumers of Apples. That's just my thoughts.
Also, Apple says that their new mactels will be able to dual-boot OSX and Windows (as well as BSDs and Linux distros retooled for the new macs). From their view, 'why make OSX hobble along on a regular x86 with broken features when you can buy a mac that runs OSX perfectly, and dual-boot Windows for games or anything else that strikes your fancy that OSX doesn't offer? You'd be paying 'a little' more for a high quality system that gives you the best of everything.' This is how I see ideas floating around in the Apple marketing department.
Now go run a hacked OSX so you can convert like Apple wants you to;)
Precursor: I'm not defending talentless garbage, and I'm not about to bolster the labels either, but...
As the industry stands, there is no such 'right' to go with any ol' online distributor that you please and otherwise do anything you want. As it has already been pointed out enough to wear out the pointer: that's called Breach of Contract. You can, and most likely, will be sued for it.
However, if an artist (I'll use this term quite loosely for safety precautions) finds the benefit of actions that would breach the contract to outweigh that those of their current overlords; so be it. Stick it to The Man.
On the level of Intellectual Property and distribution, though, I think it's about time that artists get a little more savvy about the contracts they sign and labels should gain some flexability in those that they offer. I'm not a business expert, but if enough artists under the Sony label wish to distribute under iTunes (because that's where the fans are), then it would be in Sony's best interest to attempt some sort of deal with Apple on sales and such. I understand that Sony may have it's own service, but if the majority of Japan is using iTunes, then Sony will only suffer if they choose to ignore it instead of cooperate with Apple, thus gaining a larger audience and more sales for both parties.
I could be wrong (I'm not an expert on this), but it's an idea that I think record labels would be wise to consider.
But of course my dear Monkey, and that's the beauty behind something like this. Usually, moves to makes schools more technologically advanced end up being cracked and, in a way 'modded' by the students that are now more apt then the administrators. Colleges are more likely to have far more savvy grad-student-type admins for the computer side of things, but even still, there is always a great challenge in moderating it all.
God-forbid, look at how high-school computer networks have gone. In it's infancy, students quickly learned how to bypass firewalls and play networked FPS games (or even that wonderful tank-sim of old). When schools started proividing network storage for class-related files, people stored mp3s, and when those were deleted, we zipped them up or found better solutions. There's only so much an admin staff can do against a horde of constantly evolving opposition. Just look forward to e-books, school provided broadband and certain school related newsgroups...
Frankly, I think the fine for spamming should include the data-transfer fees for the mail servers as well. Besides, Microsoft may get 7mil and we get nothing, but in theory, our reward is less crap to send to our junk box. They get money for wasted resources and we get a few extra minutes to actually 'read' email. At least in theory.
Besides, with jokers like this, who else but Microsoft has the technical background and resources to fry spammers? Hate Microsoft all you want, but they can fight for us too.
While I'm not entirely hip to all the possible wireless standards we're dealing with now (and will be next week), you bring up an interesting point.
If there are going to be too many wireless possiblities set before us, I think this could (keyword: could, so don't flame me for this) boil down to an issue of speed. Not a technical data transfer type of speed, but the rapidness of one technology's adoption into the open wilds. A good number of less viable tech could fall by the wayside early on, but I think that we may end up having to go with who happens to get all the providers to join their side. If one wireless standard can be marketed to the correct people and deployed quickly enough, the competitors would be fighting an uphill struggle because 'so many people are already using Wi-$foo'.
Think Starcraft for business and technology. It's just a thought.
While I don't have a ready barrage of links to articles (not being at home while I write this), literally EVERYTHING I've ever seen Steve talk 'tech' about against open source has been pure malarky.
He compared Windows Server 2003 to Red Hat 6 on security issues: RH6 was released 4 years prior (correct me if I'm mistaken).
He compared the costs of running a windows server with WS'03 and SQL Server 2000 as being cheaper than the Linux solution: not pointing out that their analysis showed the Linux box to be running an Oracle database instead of the more popular OS alternative MySQL.
and the list goes on like that for miles.
So far, Steve has shown himself to know only the script given to him and find a way to make numbers say what he wants them to say. I'm not completely jaded against Microsoft, mind you. I actually prefer it for half of what I do at home, but Ballmer earned a permanent position in my eyes as nothing more than a spin doctor. To me, he doesn't actually know the facts, he just knows how to pervert them to say what he wants you to hear. But that's his job.
"Of course we are innovating and we absolutely want to defeat Linux, just as we want to defeat any other competitor. We work and live in a competitive environment, as do most companies. The competitive battle between Pepsi and Coke is legendary, as is the battle between GM and Ford, Boeing and Airbus, and the Red Sox and Yankees."
Notice the word 'defeat'. Any business wants to better their competitor, but defeat is a word, that I feel is better left on the battlefield.
Take all of his above rivalries, and think about where one would be without the other. I understand how nasty the corporate world can be, but competition is different the acrimonious, legal equivalent of corporate bloodshed.
All blame issues aside concerning who asked, there's another piece of the UI puzzle to be considered:
You seem to enjoy using KDE (so do I, actually) and while it has come very far in a relatively short period of time (if my information is correct), it's more than just the look that makes a UI. For example, Joe Sixpack likes no-strings-attached binaries, not tar.bz2 files or.rpms that could have some insane dependancy problems. I think the majority of debates about User Interface that compare Linux/Mac/Windows/Whatever is not just how it looks or it's features, but a matter of out-of-the-box usability. In the current state of Linux, the average Joe Sixpack doesn't think it's all that usable yet. Not that it can't be, but there is still work to be done. Just my opinion.
Personally, if I were in control of Microsoft, I'd want Hilf to be talking to the public instead of Ballmer. Ballmer gives talks about how much more secure Windows Server 2003 is compared to Red Hat 6 as a definative blow to all things Linux. On the other hand, I actually like this guy's position. While it's possible that it could just be PR to make us watch the left hand while the right is up to no, good, it is also quite possible that Hilf is genuine in his approach to technology. In either case, he comes off as a personality that is far more trustworthy than Steve. And trust seems to be a key ingredient in building customer/provider relations.
Slashdot Mirror
I agree on that. Based on the methods used to test a general index size, I think it leaves a lot of holes. When you're talking about millions of items, a generalization can be woefully innacurate.
;)
Rather than talking about indexed content, it seems like this test is actually more appropriate to use as some sort of analysis on the overall usefullness of the search engines. Even then, though, the results could be skewed to say that it's better to provide a wealth of pages (Google) or to have fine tuned and narrowed results that you're looking for (Yahoo!). Numbers matter to a program, results matter to people. This test only portrays the former, yet the latter is what we're really trying to get at.
Either way, I don't think radom tests can really do justice to Google or Yahoo!. Rather than perfomring a radomized test upon each, I think the better gauge of each's usefullness would be something more like a practical application study. In other words, evaluate real everyday kind of searches on each site instead of an unlikely combination of two random english words like politics and truth
In other words, while I commend the effort to debunk any misinformation about which search engine is better endowed, so to speak; the numbers given don't provide useful information to anyone but a spin doctor.
(As a side note, I'm actually more of a Google fan for search and applications, but I love Yahoo! as a lifestyle portal for things like movie listings and such)
With all the hype about what you can do with a PSP, maybe I'll just wait for some souped up PDA that's meant to do all the things you have to hack a PSP to accomplish ;)
I think it is possible that Yahoo! has more items indexed than Google. It may not be true after all, but one has to give thought to the fact that Yahoo can search subscription based content. That has got to boost their numbers considerably beyond the range of queries that typically return less than one thousand results. It's possible that Yahoo! could have simply been fudging the numbers to get some press now that they're actually starting to get noticed again. I can't make a certain conjecture in either direction, but don't totally discredit Yahoo! without looking into everything.
Actually, what you can add into a game and Hot Coffee were two completely different things. The reason for that is because Hot Coffee was already completely assembled: models, responses, sounds and everything. The only part of the game that was actually hacked was a few lined of code in the PC version to allow that part of the game to be accessed. In case anybody needs clarification, think of it like this:
In SSB:Melee, you have to meet certain requirments to 'unlock' features in the game. Hot Coffee was a feature that was already built into GTA:SA, but the requirment to get it was never set, so you could never unlock it. All the 'hackers' did, was fill in that line of code. (It's over simplified, I know)
The reason you can't change the rating for a game that somebody added content to is because the distributor never lisenced that content and never created it to begin with. Users had to have built it and found a way to plug it into the game. GTA:SA's Hot Coffee was already good to go if you changed a few lines of code.
I think it will become too stupid to enforce things like this, though, when hackers could possibly remove a model from the character to leave them exposed, when that would normally violate the terms of use to begin with. Games are always trying to look more realistic and enforcing something like this could only hold them back.
I liked the mention of the domain registrar taking up a zero-tolerance policy after the spammer shut down their domain. I'm starting to think that with more people around the world getting online, more people around the world are getting sick of spam. This could help us eliminate some of those off-shore servers that spammers love to hide behind.
;)
Give everyone in the world email for a week and then see all the government action we desperately crave
I understand your point, but at some point, people will have to realize how stupid it is. With computer generated characters becoming more 'life like', we will soon be seeing characters that are assembled from skeleton, to muscle and tissue with clothing on top. If that stage of polygon count ever arives, the entire Hot Coffee verdict will be overturned because any game that can be hacked against regulations to remove layers to expose nude characters in a game will have to raise the ratings.
After a while, on my Win2K machine, I started to have problems similar to the ones described by the parent post actually. Besides, I could conceive that it could have been a bug consisting of a series of software conflicts after a Windows Update screwed up one small detail.
I have had that happen several times. Not enough to consider it the norm, but I think the originating post serves a purpose to explain that there are plenty of users that hit one small point that requires effort to change something, and so they give up. Not everyone is like this and I've heard all too many tales of people teaching someone in their 80's to use Linux for everyday tasks, but that isn't the normal situation. The majority of users want something that works the way they are used to (the way it's been/IE) and when they have to think to change something, they just give up. Why bother when you can just ask your friend to clean out your spyware each month or so? I don't mean to Troll, but this is a growing trend that I see in many places.
I think a lot of analysis over this loss of market share forgets where a good amount of internet browsers (the people part) are.
;)
Security and stability? B'ah! Honestly, nearly any issue that Firefox could run into seems rather paltry compared to what domintes the market share of web browsers (IE). What issues that do arise are usually fixed in relatively short order as well. If nothing else, Mozilla developers move at light speed when compared to Microsoft in the browser world.
I really honestly don't want to sound like a Troll, but I think bringing up topics like security and stability bugs to explain a loss of market share seems like a way out of pointing out the obvious: The majority of internet users are too lazy to install something when there's an alternative that's 'good enough' already.
Heck, I think it's pretty antiquated that most of the laymen internet users still use the term 'surf' when describing actions performed on the internet
Parents don't want to be required to exert that kind of effort in raising their ill-begotten loin spawn though. Imagine if the minimum ages for tobaco and alchohol were just suggestions with no penalties: truth.com wouldn't stop parents from being fast-talked by their own children into buying something that's harmful for them.
I think it's pathetic and quite sad, but just like like parental locks on television and internet, they aren't trying to "do" something about their problem. They want something done for them. On a relatively general level (i.e. not always the case but usually), those that propose bans/restrictions on games are personally offended, and those that support the former don't want to change things, they just want it removed completely so they don't have to worry about it at all.
I'll bet anything that Apple was given a 10 year development roadmap, minimum. They even knew that IBM was actually making a G5 chip that would allow new laptops before the switch because of the same kind of agreement.
I think this is one of the major reasons that Apple switched to Intel, if you ask me. They know what IBM is capable of (and that's a hell of a lot for *NIX systems, which OSX falls under). I kept reading about hypothetical price drops in macs, and that just seemed ludicrous, and they knew IBM was making a G5 for laptops in the near future. If you've ever compared perfomance of *NIX systems on x86 to POWER chips, you'd think Apple was on crack for choosing the former.
I think this new chip is going to be the hardware support for the publicity that the switch has generated for them. If it's not in the first model mactels, expect in the Gen2 editions.</tinfoilhattery>
One has to wonder if Apple had any 'insight' to these plans when they signed the deal.
You also have to consider the possible applications of this patent (and the people they can collect from) if Microsoft happens to be granted this in loose enough terms. I'm not blindly casting stones at The Man here, but this is the same company that has filed patent claims for the technology of pressing the 'Tab' key to navigate hyperlinks on a web page.
Microsoft isn't the only one guilty of this though. In the past few years, a lot of large (semi) monopolistic companies have gone on Intellectual Property acquisition sprees in attempt to collect royalties/settlements for patents and copyrights in a field that the USPTO had been far too unknowledgable of, previously. The courts are starting to get the USPTO and friends to play catch up after such debacles as some of the recent outlandish URL trademark rights lawsuits (i.e. Microsoft, Dell, etc.).
I just hope this blows over without any fuss.
This means three things for me:
;)
1. I'll be getting the keyboard, at least.
2. I'll probably have to sacrifice a goat to get all the keys to work through my KVM switch.
3. My Linux script to make all the keys functional is going to take a good deal of tweaking from the Logitech Elite I'm using right now.
I can't wait...for the first one anyway.
I think the point behind Sega and their great list of failures making it to the charts is because they made great systems. Even if some of them weren't the best they could have been at the time, they seemed to always push the boundaries on what could be done with a console. The reason that these failures hit No.4 (in my opinion) is that they could create an awesome platform, but there were never enough developers that signed to make games for it. Then we would watch the Sega $foo would quickly whither and die with its paltry host of mostly mediocre games. It's like a record label spending loads of money to put on an awesome concert, but nobody showed up.
You should have payed more attention to my post. I said that as if it were coming from Apple's marketing department. Apple always touts themselves as a vendor of superior quality systems. I was simply reflecting their views, not my own.
I, also, have heard countless claims that Apple is a hardware company, and it seems quite reasonable still (in my perspective anyway. If you wish to enlighten me, please do so politely). However, here's where I see the basics behind the idea of an OSx86 project and its effects on Apple:
;)
Apple still has the 'trendy computer' kind of image to them in the eyes of many. Whether you see mac users as different or completely zealotous is another issue. However, if Apple can make their system just hackable enough to get it 'mostly' working on non-Apple hardware, they hope that those users will be so amazed as to become legit consumers of Apples. That's just my thoughts.
Also, Apple says that their new mactels will be able to dual-boot OSX and Windows (as well as BSDs and Linux distros retooled for the new macs). From their view, 'why make OSX hobble along on a regular x86 with broken features when you can buy a mac that runs OSX perfectly, and dual-boot Windows for games or anything else that strikes your fancy that OSX doesn't offer? You'd be paying 'a little' more for a high quality system that gives you the best of everything.' This is how I see ideas floating around in the Apple marketing department.
Now go run a hacked OSX so you can convert like Apple wants you to
Precursor: I'm not defending talentless garbage, and I'm not about to bolster the labels either, but...
As the industry stands, there is no such 'right' to go with any ol' online distributor that you please and otherwise do anything you want. As it has already been pointed out enough to wear out the pointer: that's called Breach of Contract. You can, and most likely, will be sued for it.
However, if an artist (I'll use this term quite loosely for safety precautions) finds the benefit of actions that would breach the contract to outweigh that those of their current overlords; so be it. Stick it to The Man.
On the level of Intellectual Property and distribution, though, I think it's about time that artists get a little more savvy about the contracts they sign and labels should gain some flexability in those that they offer. I'm not a business expert, but if enough artists under the Sony label wish to distribute under iTunes (because that's where the fans are), then it would be in Sony's best interest to attempt some sort of deal with Apple on sales and such. I understand that Sony may have it's own service, but if the majority of Japan is using iTunes, then Sony will only suffer if they choose to ignore it instead of cooperate with Apple, thus gaining a larger audience and more sales for both parties.
I could be wrong (I'm not an expert on this), but it's an idea that I think record labels would be wise to consider.
But of course my dear Monkey, and that's the beauty behind something like this. Usually, moves to makes schools more technologically advanced end up being cracked and, in a way 'modded' by the students that are now more apt then the administrators. Colleges are more likely to have far more savvy grad-student-type admins for the computer side of things, but even still, there is always a great challenge in moderating it all.
God-forbid, look at how high-school computer networks have gone. In it's infancy, students quickly learned how to bypass firewalls and play networked FPS games (or even that wonderful tank-sim of old). When schools started proividing network storage for class-related files, people stored mp3s, and when those were deleted, we zipped them up or found better solutions. There's only so much an admin staff can do against a horde of constantly evolving opposition. Just look forward to e-books, school provided broadband and certain school related newsgroups...
Frankly, I think the fine for spamming should include the data-transfer fees for the mail servers as well. Besides, Microsoft may get 7mil and we get nothing, but in theory, our reward is less crap to send to our junk box. They get money for wasted resources and we get a few extra minutes to actually 'read' email. At least in theory.
Besides, with jokers like this, who else but Microsoft has the technical background and resources to fry spammers? Hate Microsoft all you want, but they can fight for us too.
While I'm not entirely hip to all the possible wireless standards we're dealing with now (and will be next week), you bring up an interesting point.
If there are going to be too many wireless possiblities set before us, I think this could (keyword: could, so don't flame me for this) boil down to an issue of speed. Not a technical data transfer type of speed, but the rapidness of one technology's adoption into the open wilds. A good number of less viable tech could fall by the wayside early on, but I think that we may end up having to go with who happens to get all the providers to join their side. If one wireless standard can be marketed to the correct people and deployed quickly enough, the competitors would be fighting an uphill struggle because 'so many people are already using Wi-$foo'.
Think Starcraft for business and technology. It's just a thought.
While I don't have a ready barrage of links to articles (not being at home while I write this), literally EVERYTHING I've ever seen Steve talk 'tech' about against open source has been pure malarky.
He compared Windows Server 2003 to Red Hat 6 on security issues: RH6 was released 4 years prior (correct me if I'm mistaken).
He compared the costs of running a windows server with WS'03 and SQL Server 2000 as being cheaper than the Linux solution: not pointing out that their analysis showed the Linux box to be running an Oracle database instead of the more popular OS alternative MySQL.
and the list goes on like that for miles.
So far, Steve has shown himself to know only the script given to him and find a way to make numbers say what he wants them to say. I'm not completely jaded against Microsoft, mind you. I actually prefer it for half of what I do at home, but Ballmer earned a permanent position in my eyes as nothing more than a spin doctor. To me, he doesn't actually know the facts, he just knows how to pervert them to say what he wants you to hear. But that's his job.
"Of course we are innovating and we absolutely want to defeat Linux, just as we want to defeat any other competitor. We work and live in a competitive environment, as do most companies. The competitive battle between Pepsi and Coke is legendary, as is the battle between GM and Ford, Boeing and Airbus, and the Red Sox and Yankees."
Notice the word 'defeat'. Any business wants to better their competitor, but defeat is a word, that I feel is better left on the battlefield.
Take all of his above rivalries, and think about where one would be without the other. I understand how nasty the corporate world can be, but competition is different the acrimonious, legal equivalent of corporate bloodshed.
All blame issues aside concerning who asked, there's another piece of the UI puzzle to be considered:
.rpms that could have some insane dependancy problems. I think the majority of debates about User Interface that compare Linux/Mac/Windows/Whatever is not just how it looks or it's features, but a matter of out-of-the-box usability. In the current state of Linux, the average Joe Sixpack doesn't think it's all that usable yet. Not that it can't be, but there is still work to be done. Just my opinion.
You seem to enjoy using KDE (so do I, actually) and while it has come very far in a relatively short period of time (if my information is correct), it's more than just the look that makes a UI. For example, Joe Sixpack likes no-strings-attached binaries, not tar.bz2 files or
Quite true, I've already read about the reports on Longhorn Server 2007.
Personally, if I were in control of Microsoft, I'd want Hilf to be talking to the public instead of Ballmer. Ballmer gives talks about how much more secure Windows Server 2003 is compared to Red Hat 6 as a definative blow to all things Linux. On the other hand, I actually like this guy's position. While it's possible that it could just be PR to make us watch the left hand while the right is up to no, good, it is also quite possible that Hilf is genuine in his approach to technology. In either case, he comes off as a personality that is far more trustworthy than Steve. And trust seems to be a key ingredient in building customer/provider relations.
Just my two cents