A good protocol is useless if the people you are trying to keep in touch with aren't using it. I use AIM solely because that's what all of my friends use. Chat_Client_X might be better but if the people I need to keep in contact with aren't using it, what's the point?
By your logic the only way to switch protocols would be if all your friends did so simultaneously or if you got new friends. Thus you are locked in forever. Here's an out. Set up your own Jabber server for you and your friends and configure it to have a bridge to the protocol you are currently using. Then you can still chat with the same people over the same protocol, but you can also chat with people over Jabber and if both you and the other person are using Jabber you can have end-to-end encryption and a secure server. If enough people switch over via this method, we can all ditch these proprietary walled gardens and everyone will be able to chat with everyone using the client of their choice.
Also, I don't think that any of the major players will ever fully support end to end encryption.
Apple's iChat client does end-to-end encryption over the AIM and Jabber protocols, and they are a pretty major player. It is not the responsibility of the network operator or tool creator to unencrypt communications. The police can legally require end users to hand them over in many jurisdictions, but the service providers have no such responsibility. I imagine this will be a feature of all chat clients soon.
Aside from the encryption, the ability to create group chats is nice on several protocols. The ability to host your own servers (ala Jabber) is vital to small businesses. An easy tie in to VOIP, and video conferencing is very convenient, ala iChat's extensions to AIM and Jabber. Having an open standard so that custom clients and specialized devices can be easily and legally created (again Jabber) is useful. The ability to bridge to other protocols (yup another Jabber feature) using your server is convenient. The big one, however, and the one I imagine the original poster might have had in mind, is the ability to speak ubiquitously with anyone, regardless of their OS, service provider, etc. would be the killer feature but it is only going to happen if all the various players can agree to use a standard and that is something all of them have avoided in the hopes of dominating the market and becoming another exploitive little monopoly. Some days I think the government should just mandate open communication standards and save the citizens a lot of money and grief. In the mean time we make to with multilingual clients and a half dozen accounts each.
I can watch MORE TV with it since I can skip the commercials. If you know the right things to push on the remote, you don't have to watch the ads.
Last time I tested a Tivo there was no 30 second skip ahead, or 20 second skip back function available without a hack. Is this still the case? My mother isn't going to hack anything. I'm still looking for an out of the box component that she can us that will let her easily skip commercials.
Codecs really aren't a problem for my TiVO. If there's a show or movie coming on, I can TiVO and watch it at my leisure any time later. I even have the option to burn it to DVD, complete with the ever-so-user friendly TiVO interface.
I know some Tivo now allow burning to DVD. Do they allow you to edit the show first to eliminate recorded material before and after and eliminate commercials? It is also my understanding that Tivo honors the broadcast flag and will auto delete shows and refuse to burn shows that have that flag set. While that is not a big deal these days, I certainly don't want to invest in technology that obeys someone else before me in the future. My current PVR ignores the broadcast flag and allows easy editing and burning of shows, but is not one easy box, such as I could install for a relative or friend in 5 minutes.
would like to be able to take the things I TiVO and load them on to my laptop. TiVO says that the hold up on this is not them, not technology, but the MPAA.
My current PVR is commercially sold and exports to six or seven different formats with no DRM and files play just fine on my laptop. The MPAA hasn't said "boo" about it and has no legal grounds to do so. Tivo has not implemented it because they have cushy partnerships with the cable and satellite companies and don't want to jeopardize them, not because of the MPAA.
I used to hope Tivo would champion the end user and make a great, easy to use PVR, without any of the DRM or other crap the content producers/distributors were pushing for. In my opinion, however, they have sold out and intentionally crippled their products in exchange for being automatically distributed by the cable and satellite companies. That is a good, safe business move, but does not serve the end user and hopefully will result in Tivo being marginalized by a new player who does serve my best interests.
Most of these are addressed with the Tivo Desktop software and a PC.
Gee, great, but that does not help. If I want to set up a solution using a PC and external box, there are easier solutions than a Tivo. No, what I'd buy (for others and maybe for myself) is one box that just does everything needed. Tivo could have been that box, but they sold out their customers to the cable/satellite companies, and I don't blame them. It was good business, but it does not give me, the customer, what I want. I want 30 second skip, CD/DVD/VCD ripping and playback, archive to DVD, and transfer to other devices like laptops, desktops, and handhelds. I want a choice of programming guides, or at least a free programming guide, and I want to be able to download and play audio and video from the internet or my local network. I want to be able to buy that and hand the box, gift wrapped, to by mother, brother, or girlfriend and expect them to be able to plug it in and make it work. I can obtain all the functionality today, but not with a Tivo or any other self contained box. Sorry Tivo just does not cut it.
My solution: so many people are retiring younger and healthier than ever before. These people should teach.
You are not alone in your idea. I know two different engineers who I have worked with at start-ups that have planned their lives around just such an idea. One even acquired an advanced education degree that he does not currently use. It gives me some hope for the future.
And as the web grows bigger, I see more people ignoring their communities of people dissimilar to them and gain respect for their web communities of people similar to themselves. More geeks on/. know others here than they do their own real life neighbors.
While this is true to some degree, most people are willing to participate in multiple communities and groups of interest. I might be interested in civil war re-enactment forum, punk rock forum, and a forum for people with diabetes. Online forums for these groups are great because they can easily gather together those with similar interests. A lot of people are also interested in their local area, and local news can capitalize on that interest by creating a forum for that interest with the added benefit of being controlled by someone with more knowledge of the local area that a generic forum can provide. A town with a large portion of Korean emigrants, for example, might choose to provide a forum in both English and Korean with automated or user driven translation.
Great idea. Advertise to 500 readers for free, or sell it on ebay to 5M readers for $1. Hmm, I think I'll take option 2.
It is a great idea for advertisers and consumers dealing in specific products or services. What good does it do to advertise a local massage parlor to readers who live nowhere near the parlor? If you're looking to buy a used couch in the "under $25" price range there is no point in looking in places that would cost more money in gas to get to than the cost of the couch. If you're looking for a good pub that you can walk to for lunches, you are better off looking in a local publication and if you want to adopt a pet, do you really want to drive somewhere or would you rather get one nearby? Localization is a feature that most large forums have yet to manage.
Does anyone know why Safari passes, but no other browsers?
Someone got annoyed that Safari did not pass and wrote patches to fix it. The KHTML team ported those patches so they also now pass the Acid2 test. Other developers have worked on fixing Gecko so that Firefox passes, but the changes required are fairly radical so they have thus far refrained from implementing them since they are afraid of breaking things. The IE team does not give a rat's ass about old standards, let alone newer ones or edge cases and will likely never pass. So to answer your question, because the Safari/KHTML codebase is neat and because someone felt like fixing it.
Government-run programs are generally maintained by unionized public workers. These programs have little competition and often cost more than a private competitive market (note municipal water reclamation costs).
In many cases you are correct. In a normal market, it is usually a poor idea to have the government run any service or provide any product with three major exceptions. The first exception is when the free market has failed, or when the service is in the best interests of the public as a whole but is too expensive for a need market segment. For example, a new medication that completely eliminates the HIV virus is invented, but costs a considerable amount of money to provide. Because the majority of people who have HIV cannot afford this medication, HIV continues to spread throughout the population and the overall medical and social costs of the disease far outweigh the initial cost if the government just distributed the medication to anyone who needed it.
The second instance is when there is an overriding concern for the continuation of the government. Services that fall into this category include the police, military, legal system, etc.
The final instance is when the service in question is a monopoly due to natural or government imposed restrictions. Public street lights are on example of this. Electric companies also fall into this category. Due to government restrictions only one set of power lines are allowed on the government owned right of ways to and from houses. As a result, only one company, the one who owns these lines, can offer the service of power distribution. With no competition a for profit company is not subject to the normal market pressures that would motivate good prices and quality and the end result is disastrous for end users. As a result the government ends up stepping in and creating a "regulated" monopoly where they try to balance the benefits to the people and to the companies which results in corruption on a huge scale as companies lobby and offer other incentives to individuals within the government and occasionally use legal maneuverings to get around the regulation (see California). This results in not only substandard service, but also to corrupt government, two major problems.
The wi-fi service New Orleans is planning to offer probably does not fit into either of the first two categories, but it does, somewhat, fit into the third. That is because it is using certain frequencies of the RF spectrum that are regulated by the government as a scarce resource. So long as nothing restricts multiple vendors from offering wi-fi in this spectrum then I think it is probably best that New Orleans leaves it to the free market. Still wi-fi is close to being a utility so there is certainly room for debate on the subject.
Apple will have to give folks like me a compelling reason to "switch", since it's hard to imagine them significantly improving on the Tivo experience.
There is plenty of room for improvement over an non-hacked Tivo, and lets face it, most people will not hack their entertainment center components. Reasons I did not buy a Tivo include lack of DVD burning, lack of the ability to transfer shows to other devices, DRM restrictions, no 30 second skip, and being limited to one provider of scheduling information that charges a monthly fee. Also I prefer an integrated media player that includes ripping of CDs, downloading music and video, DVD and CD playback, VCD playback, etc. The Tivo is a well made PVR, but has a restricted feature set and is no "digital hub." If all my audio and video can reside in one place with easy searching and playback I'll be much happier. As it is I get all the functionality I need from a home made solution but it is not all in one box, took some work to set up properly, and is not one smoothly integrated solution. If Apple can do it right (or anyone else for that matter) they will not only win me as a customer, but also many of my friends and family.
Is there a related security bug for Safari? I tried the demo code on it and it does not crash Safari, nor does it run any executables, but ti does put Safari into a pretty unusable state after opening a javascript window full of Chinese characters, I could not find any way to kill just that window and had to quit and restart the application. It looks better than the response of IE or Firefox, but still not the proper way to handle the code.
I can guarantee that it will not sync with the video ipod in a useful way (ie transcode TV shows to ipod's low res format)
My current PVR is running on a an old dual 533Mhz G4 tower that doubles as a general media player, Web Server, File Server, and a few other misc. tasks. It has no problem recording video from firewire, encoding it to other formats, or burning DVDs of said content, all simultaneously. It takes about two minutes to re-encode a 21 minute show (after I remove the the commercials) into a portable format even while recording a new stream and burning a DVD. I don't see why a mac mini would have any problems with this.
Revenue sources (why would anyone buy what they can set their shiny new Apple PVR to record?)
Why does anyone buy music from the iTunes store when they can just grab it online or from the radio? The answer is ease of use, selection, and instant gratification. Also, you overestimate Apple's concern about sales via the online store. They are close to break even on it. They make money from hardware sales, the store is an incentive and a strategic move.
Fear of getting sued.
Apple gets sued all the time. You think they are worried about lawsuits for replicating the functionality of the VCR? That lawsuit was fought and won long ago. Unless new laws are passed, that is a non-issue. There is some concern about the partnerships Apple has with media producers, but lawsuits are not likely to be a problem.
But now that I think about it, this would cannibalize iTunes TV show sales... Maybe this is all rumor?
Sort of the way the ability to rip CDs and import downloaded songs cannibalizes iTunes music sales? Apple has been using the same model for years, they break even on consumer software and services in order to sell hardware and professional grade software. I don't think they care if users use the iTunes store except in that it leads to iPod and Mac sales and counters an MS file format lock-in on media. That said, I have no idea if this rumor is true or not. I'd welcome it and might even consider it as a replacement or complement to my current PVR solution. More importantly I might very well recommend it as a solution for less technical friends and family who have been looking for a good, easy to use PVR, but don't want to pay a monthly subscription and want all the features I have (DVD archiving, DRM-free files for transfer to other devices, etc.).
Without the PVR ability such a device simply does not provide the necessary amount of programming, nor is it price competitive.
If he were to be resistant to this kind of thing then it would come off as supportive of piracy and whether or not he really condoned it he would probably get shut down in court. One of the 'joys' of getting big is you have to worry about things like due diligence.
Actually, my understanding is that just the opposite is true. Napster lost in court not because they were not trying to remove copyrighted works, or because they never looked for copyrighted works on their network, but because they did look, and found them, and demonstrated that they had the ability to remove them, but did not. So long as a network/website operator does not look for copyrighted works or try to control the content, they are pretty much in the clear. They still have to take down any copyrighted works when notified, but are not guilty of contributory copyright infringement themselves. In doing this Mr. Cohen may actually be opening himself up to lawsuits.
So basically they moved from the whims of closed-source suppliers, to the itches of open-source suppliers.
Are you dim or something? Are you paid by MS to spread this FUD? How many suppliers are their for Windows? Answer: 1. How many suppliers are there for Linux. Answer: hundreds. How many suppliers are there for MS Office? Answer: 1 How many suppliers are there for Open Office? Answer: hundreds. With closed source software you are limited to a single supplier. With open source you can buy service and support from anyone, since anyone can view and modify the code. This means with open source if someone stops selling a particular word processor version and moves to only selling a new, incompatible version you don't have to upgrade, since the old one is still available. This means if you need a new feature or a customization you can take bids from all sorts of developers (including those that speak the same language as you so) or even task a person within your organization to make the desired change. It frees you from being locked into one vendor, especially compared to vendors that only implement closed formats and protocols as a way to make it hard to move to other solutions.
Umm... I don't see linux or osx powering any cars other then some freak project by college students.
Then you aren't looking very closely. Embedded linux is very much used in cars.
BMW is a major premium brand using XP. But hey, that's not your kind of innovation.
How is being used by a particular company innovative? Do you actually pick products based not upon what they can do, but who else is using them?
I have lots to say, but I fear its lost on a zealot like yourself. I'll try to be brief. You are just so blinded with hatred you have started to believe you own rhetoric.
Ad hominem attack = lost credibility.
OSX has had 4 paid upgrades to Windows XP. Annual OS upgrades are a nightmare for IT departments, bad for a company's balance sheet, and an irritation for end-users. Each version costs about $150 x 4 = $600. MS XP is $300. If you kept up with Apple, you spent double then going with XP. Never mind all the programs that break with the upgrades.
Except that upgrades aren't mandatory so there is no reason you have to run the most current version all the time. What kind of brain fart does it take to try and spin the availability of more features in a more granular fashion as a drawback? Lets see, you can buy Windows and pay for the OS and then be stuck with no upgrades for half a decade, or you can buy OS X and upgrade up to four times, if you so desire, with new features at each point and no financial incentive to have the "latest" version if it is unneeded? Gee sure sounds like Windows is the better option there, huh? Apple has an option similar to the Windows model, you jsut buy the current OS and don't upgrade for seven years. You'll still have more features.
Xbox Live... no innovation? They have taken online game play to a whole new level.
A whole new level? Do you really talk like that, or are you copying that from a press release? Yeah, online play sure is innovate and all, that is why no one has done it until the Xbox was released. Maybe you should look up what the word 'innovation' means.
Their IPTV stuff is amazing, and that is why Verizon and SBC were so willing to lock themselves into using it for years... its just light years ahead of all the other platforms.
They have a great new feature which I won't mention any of the great qualities of, which is why their customer are willing to put up with the huge anti-feature they put in. Ummm... gee that sounds great?
They don't abuse anyone to be ranked almost double Google in web traffic, only behind AOL and Yahoo.
How much of that traffic is generated by either people downloading patches for their OS, or people using MSN who signed up because MS leveraged Windows to push it with all sorts of advertising and settings that encourage users to sign up? That is exactly the abuse that MS is infamous for.
Why don't you check out the ground breaking work they do in speech recognition.
Gee, actually i happen to know quite a bit about ongoing speech recognition technology. Calling MS innovative in the field is weak. They are way behind a number of other companies and don't even have reasonable speech recognition built into the OS (it's been in MacOS since version 7 I think).
See the thing is, is that you are so busy saying they suck and are evil they have just passed you by. You are still living in the 90s.
Funny, that is how I feel using Windows and MS software. No virtual desktops, no Expose, no GUI scripting, no system-wide services, no functional CLI, tabbed browsing, no fast searching, no indexed content searching, no usable non-admin accounts, crappy multitasking under heavy loads, etc., etc.
In fact they spend more money on R&D then Google grosses in a year, more then double actually! They hire some of the greatest minds in the world, and you are stupid enough to think that because they are under the MS name they don't innovate.
If every comparison between, "an open development process and one with a closed development process is critically flawed", then how can you ever compare them.
You're misunderstanding what I said. This study imposed arbitrary tasks to determine which OS could do those tasks, but the tasks themselves don't make sense for both platforms and are not the same on both platforms. It makes sense to run a test where both OS's have to perform some task like running a web server with certain functionality without being hacked, for a certain amount of traffic. It does not make sense comparing two OS's "upgrading to the latest version of all software" because that software offers different functionality, most of which is not needed for a given task and because different OS's come out with updates at different times and this study was over a very short duration, much shorter than OS release cycles.
It seems as if Thompson is picking something that can be measured by the average sysadmin -- maintenance to the system, however it's done -- and showing the differences.
But that is not what he seems to be showing. It is not normal maintenance to build the latest bleeding edge versions of multiple databases on a production server and it is not normal maintenance to upgrade, by hand, any packages that you do not specifically need to upgrade until a new version of the OS is released that encompasses all those mostly unneeded upgrades. The fact that Linux distro allow you to grab the latest of some particular software is an advantage over Windows, the equivalent would be getting the option to cherry pick features from Longhorn in their current state and compile them right now if it was some functionality you needed. Doing so is not always a good idea, and doing it for everything would be a really bad idea. Now this "test" was constructed in such a way so as to make that advantage, that additional choice, act as a disadvantage. Do you see why that is a problem?
I haven't had time to read through this study in its entirety, but from what I have seen it looks like there are several things that could lead it to improper conclusions. First, some of the procedures used to define the benchmarks seem completely arbitrary. For example, security fixes are applied on a monthly basis, rather than as they become available and can be tested, or based upon their severity. In my experience some security patches are tested and applied immediately and others are applied later. Also, no mention is made of mitigating the effects of security vulnerabilities/exploits before a patch is available which, while uncommon does happen. Coincidentally, Microsoft has moved Windows to a monthly patch release cycle. Don't you think defining the operating procedures to be exactly those used by one OS, and not the other biases the test?
Another concern I have is that while your study simulates the installation and upgrade of two different systems based upon two OS's, it does not seem to simulate the real-world work needed to keep those systems running on a daily basis. In the real world systems break, worms clog the network, and regular maintenance must be done. Your study seems to completely disregard all that work and focus only on install/upgrade. Why did you not base your study on the behaviors of a real working system with a simulated network attached? It seems like the shortcut method you used to quickly evaluate only certain tasks makes the study wholly academic and loses any value as a predictor for the operation of a real network, over time, with real traffic.
Finally, I've seen it suggested that this study requires that all software be updated to the latest versions, but While Linux based servers constantly release the latest patches to each component as they become available, Windows only releases them en masse, How then can you compare the two? To be perfectly fair one would have to know what development has happened on the various components of Windows and rate all of those components as failing to be updated (since MS has not yet released that version). Barring such inside information, any comparison between a system with an open development process and one with a closed development process is critically flawed. Do you not see this as a problem with your study?
The OS matters and MS is making big headway in that front...
After that you go on to mention a dozen ways MS is "winning" all but one of which are business deals, marketing, and attempts to move into new markets. The one technological advantage you ascribe to them is in being able to push data to phones. During your little spiel did you even consider the fact that you don't seem to have anything to say about how MS is going to win the OS market by having the best desktop OS for consumers? I mean surely a company whose business is founded on that one product has done something to advance the state of the art and can provide a superior OS for my home computer, right?
The truth of the matter is that MS is "innovative" mostly in its ruthless business practices and willingness to constantly break the law and make a profit despite constantly paying out settlements because of said practices. As far as technological innovation is concerned they have done more to retard the state of the art than advance it....And it really shows. Windows is so far behind the competition in so many areas that is no longer a viable platform for some professions and very few persons who try the major alternatives ever switch back. MS is all about anti-features that lock users in, force users to upgrade, or prevent interoperability. Other vendors, in the meantime, have come up with some great features.
Maybe you are right. Maybe MS will continue to dominate the industry because of their practices, but in doing so all they will accomplish is making more money and holding back the progress of computing. MS lickspittle like yourself who applaud such a thing because all they want is to be on the "winning" side are pointless noise. "Yay! stifling innovation! Yay! partially implemented five year old internet standards! Yay! slow, buggy, insecure crap!" Maybe soon every home will come with an MS OS installed to control the lights and entertainment center, it will still suck and cause more frustration and problems and basically make the world a worse place to live in and it will partially be because of people like you.
In explaining this case to a friend I came up with an analogy that I think does a good job of expressing the issues. Imagine, if you will, that you purchased a new coffee mug that came with a warmer that could be plugged into either a wall socket or a USB port and would keep your coffee warm while you worked. Now imagine the company that sold the coffee mag+warmers was run by a very paranoid person who feared that people might copy his patented coffee mug warmer and illegally sell knock offs. So, in addition to drawing power from the USB, if it was plugged into a computer the coffee mug warmer would silently install a back door on your computer, search your hard drive for schematics that looked similar to those of the coffee mug, and connected to the internet an uploaded your personal information to a server run by the coffee mug company. Further imagine that the software used techniques to hide from the user and the OS and conceal this fact. Now, just to add some spice, image that the software was found to both have a serious security vulnerability and to contain code that was infringing upon someone else's copyright.
Sony is selling discs intentionally designed to trick users into thinking they are CDs, when in fact they are not CDs, they are devices that act like CDs enough so that the user does not notice that they are something else, while silently trying to hack that user's computer. Hopefully, the individuals involved will face criminal charges for their actions.
Nowhere in the original story did it say that there was any reason why they couldn't continue to use the licenses for Office that they already have.
No they didn't, but they did say that upgrading them all to a single standard would cost $65K and they were putting together a plan for rolling out OpenOffice and would like some specific help. No mention was made as to whether the decision to switch had been made, nor of what the budget for the projects is. Not having the vast majority of the information needed to make a decision makes the whole line of inquiry above pointless. It does nothing to answer the question asked.
Please, get counseling. You've obvious have some emotional issues. Its only/.
Please proceed immediately to ebay and buy a sense of humor.
I imagine many of "us" have different opinions on the PDF format. Personally, I like PDF quite a bit, although the combination of Windows+IE+Adobe Acrobat, which is a very common way to view PDFs, is a pretty awful way to view them. If, however you use a fast PDF reader, with or without a browser that can actually do other tasks while a PDF is downloading, on an OS that can do more than one thing at a time without becoming as slow as molasses, then PDFs work quite well.
This is a valid question that shouldn't have been modded as flamebait. Sure, its an unpopular question considering the/. crowd but, still valid.
Anyone who read the summary saw the stated reason. The licensing for Windows for the machines in question will cost $65,000 which is an expense they don't want to pay. Presumably that is because their corporate licensing is running out or they need to purchase new systems or some other reason. It does not really matter though as it is not pertinent to the question at hand.
I think it is just fine to mod as flamebait someone who asks a question whose answer figures prominently in the summary if you believe they are willfully ignoring that information. The alternative is that they did not even bother to read it and don't have any idea what everyone is talking about. Or perhaps you just discount that information as invalid since $65K is nothing to you. I'll tell you what, why don't you just mail the money to the poster of this question and we can all move on. Thanks.
Because calling law enforcement would lead to a court case: YOU vs SONY. Guess who wins every time?
What are you talking about? Making a report to law enforcement is not going to get you into a civil suit. It will be the state vs. Sony in a criminal case should they pursue it. The trouble is getting them to do so. Try calling the FBI sometime. If it isn't easily demonstrable as several grand worth of damage they will just ignore you.
Why complain ? It is their stuff, and they can price it at any level they want.
First, I'm glad they are moving to a more flexible pricing scheme and I hope that indy artists take advantage of the pricing to undercut the big labels. Realistically, however, the market is dominated by a cartel and what they will end up doing is twofold. First, they will price songs higher to reduce the popularity of iTunes and increase the popularity of other services because they are scared of Apple's potential influence. Second, they will collude and fix prices beyond what the market would normally determine, just as they have repeatedly been convicted of doing with CD sales.
In future the argument, "It is their stuff" would have a lot more weight if they actually made any of the music, instead of just monopolizing the distribution routes and using that as a way to become a gatekeeper between musicians and their audience. Most musicians actually have to pay the RIAA for the privilege of letting the RIAA sell it at a profit while the artists hope to break even or make money on the concerts and merchandise via the fame that comes with being widely published. If we had reasonable enforcement of antitrust laws or reasonable protections for artists none of this would be an issue. Music should not belong to distributors. It should belong to artists. Also, it should belong to artists for a short time only before it becomes the property of the people. Middle men are still making a fortune off of long dead musicians who will never make another song and their is no benefit to the people of the US in this.
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A good protocol is useless if the people you are trying to keep in touch with aren't using it. I use AIM solely because that's what all of my friends use. Chat_Client_X might be better but if the people I need to keep in contact with aren't using it, what's the point?
By your logic the only way to switch protocols would be if all your friends did so simultaneously or if you got new friends. Thus you are locked in forever. Here's an out. Set up your own Jabber server for you and your friends and configure it to have a bridge to the protocol you are currently using. Then you can still chat with the same people over the same protocol, but you can also chat with people over Jabber and if both you and the other person are using Jabber you can have end-to-end encryption and a secure server. If enough people switch over via this method, we can all ditch these proprietary walled gardens and everyone will be able to chat with everyone using the client of their choice.
Also, I don't think that any of the major players will ever fully support end to end encryption.
Apple's iChat client does end-to-end encryption over the AIM and Jabber protocols, and they are a pretty major player. It is not the responsibility of the network operator or tool creator to unencrypt communications. The police can legally require end users to hand them over in many jurisdictions, but the service providers have no such responsibility. I imagine this will be a feature of all chat clients soon.
Aside from the encryption, the ability to create group chats is nice on several protocols. The ability to host your own servers (ala Jabber) is vital to small businesses. An easy tie in to VOIP, and video conferencing is very convenient, ala iChat's extensions to AIM and Jabber. Having an open standard so that custom clients and specialized devices can be easily and legally created (again Jabber) is useful. The ability to bridge to other protocols (yup another Jabber feature) using your server is convenient. The big one, however, and the one I imagine the original poster might have had in mind, is the ability to speak ubiquitously with anyone, regardless of their OS, service provider, etc. would be the killer feature but it is only going to happen if all the various players can agree to use a standard and that is something all of them have avoided in the hopes of dominating the market and becoming another exploitive little monopoly. Some days I think the government should just mandate open communication standards and save the citizens a lot of money and grief. In the mean time we make to with multilingual clients and a half dozen accounts each.
I can watch MORE TV with it since I can skip the commercials. If you know the right things to push on the remote, you don't have to watch the ads.
Last time I tested a Tivo there was no 30 second skip ahead, or 20 second skip back function available without a hack. Is this still the case? My mother isn't going to hack anything. I'm still looking for an out of the box component that she can us that will let her easily skip commercials.
Codecs really aren't a problem for my TiVO. If there's a show or movie coming on, I can TiVO and watch it at my leisure any time later. I even have the option to burn it to DVD, complete with the ever-so-user friendly TiVO interface.
I know some Tivo now allow burning to DVD. Do they allow you to edit the show first to eliminate recorded material before and after and eliminate commercials? It is also my understanding that Tivo honors the broadcast flag and will auto delete shows and refuse to burn shows that have that flag set. While that is not a big deal these days, I certainly don't want to invest in technology that obeys someone else before me in the future. My current PVR ignores the broadcast flag and allows easy editing and burning of shows, but is not one easy box, such as I could install for a relative or friend in 5 minutes.
would like to be able to take the things I TiVO and load them on to my laptop. TiVO says that the hold up on this is not them, not technology, but the MPAA.
My current PVR is commercially sold and exports to six or seven different formats with no DRM and files play just fine on my laptop. The MPAA hasn't said "boo" about it and has no legal grounds to do so. Tivo has not implemented it because they have cushy partnerships with the cable and satellite companies and don't want to jeopardize them, not because of the MPAA.
I used to hope Tivo would champion the end user and make a great, easy to use PVR, without any of the DRM or other crap the content producers/distributors were pushing for. In my opinion, however, they have sold out and intentionally crippled their products in exchange for being automatically distributed by the cable and satellite companies. That is a good, safe business move, but does not serve the end user and hopefully will result in Tivo being marginalized by a new player who does serve my best interests.
Most of these are addressed with the Tivo Desktop software and a PC.
Gee, great, but that does not help. If I want to set up a solution using a PC and external box, there are easier solutions than a Tivo. No, what I'd buy (for others and maybe for myself) is one box that just does everything needed. Tivo could have been that box, but they sold out their customers to the cable/satellite companies, and I don't blame them. It was good business, but it does not give me, the customer, what I want. I want 30 second skip, CD/DVD/VCD ripping and playback, archive to DVD, and transfer to other devices like laptops, desktops, and handhelds. I want a choice of programming guides, or at least a free programming guide, and I want to be able to download and play audio and video from the internet or my local network. I want to be able to buy that and hand the box, gift wrapped, to by mother, brother, or girlfriend and expect them to be able to plug it in and make it work. I can obtain all the functionality today, but not with a Tivo or any other self contained box. Sorry Tivo just does not cut it.
My solution: so many people are retiring younger and healthier than ever before. These people should teach.
You are not alone in your idea. I know two different engineers who I have worked with at start-ups that have planned their lives around just such an idea. One even acquired an advanced education degree that he does not currently use. It gives me some hope for the future.
And as the web grows bigger, I see more people ignoring their communities of people dissimilar to them and gain respect for their web communities of people similar to themselves. More geeks on /. know others here than they do their own real life neighbors.
While this is true to some degree, most people are willing to participate in multiple communities and groups of interest. I might be interested in civil war re-enactment forum, punk rock forum, and a forum for people with diabetes. Online forums for these groups are great because they can easily gather together those with similar interests. A lot of people are also interested in their local area, and local news can capitalize on that interest by creating a forum for that interest with the added benefit of being controlled by someone with more knowledge of the local area that a generic forum can provide. A town with a large portion of Korean emigrants, for example, might choose to provide a forum in both English and Korean with automated or user driven translation.
Great idea. Advertise to 500 readers for free, or sell it on ebay to 5M readers for $1. Hmm, I think I'll take option 2.
It is a great idea for advertisers and consumers dealing in specific products or services. What good does it do to advertise a local massage parlor to readers who live nowhere near the parlor? If you're looking to buy a used couch in the "under $25" price range there is no point in looking in places that would cost more money in gas to get to than the cost of the couch. If you're looking for a good pub that you can walk to for lunches, you are better off looking in a local publication and if you want to adopt a pet, do you really want to drive somewhere or would you rather get one nearby? Localization is a feature that most large forums have yet to manage.
Does anyone know why Safari passes, but no other browsers?
Someone got annoyed that Safari did not pass and wrote patches to fix it. The KHTML team ported those patches so they also now pass the Acid2 test. Other developers have worked on fixing Gecko so that Firefox passes, but the changes required are fairly radical so they have thus far refrained from implementing them since they are afraid of breaking things. The IE team does not give a rat's ass about old standards, let alone newer ones or edge cases and will likely never pass. So to answer your question, because the Safari/KHTML codebase is neat and because someone felt like fixing it.
Government-run programs are generally maintained by unionized public workers. These programs have little competition and often cost more than a private competitive market (note municipal water reclamation costs).
In many cases you are correct. In a normal market, it is usually a poor idea to have the government run any service or provide any product with three major exceptions. The first exception is when the free market has failed, or when the service is in the best interests of the public as a whole but is too expensive for a need market segment. For example, a new medication that completely eliminates the HIV virus is invented, but costs a considerable amount of money to provide. Because the majority of people who have HIV cannot afford this medication, HIV continues to spread throughout the population and the overall medical and social costs of the disease far outweigh the initial cost if the government just distributed the medication to anyone who needed it.
The second instance is when there is an overriding concern for the continuation of the government. Services that fall into this category include the police, military, legal system, etc.
The final instance is when the service in question is a monopoly due to natural or government imposed restrictions. Public street lights are on example of this. Electric companies also fall into this category. Due to government restrictions only one set of power lines are allowed on the government owned right of ways to and from houses. As a result, only one company, the one who owns these lines, can offer the service of power distribution. With no competition a for profit company is not subject to the normal market pressures that would motivate good prices and quality and the end result is disastrous for end users. As a result the government ends up stepping in and creating a "regulated" monopoly where they try to balance the benefits to the people and to the companies which results in corruption on a huge scale as companies lobby and offer other incentives to individuals within the government and occasionally use legal maneuverings to get around the regulation (see California). This results in not only substandard service, but also to corrupt government, two major problems.
The wi-fi service New Orleans is planning to offer probably does not fit into either of the first two categories, but it does, somewhat, fit into the third. That is because it is using certain frequencies of the RF spectrum that are regulated by the government as a scarce resource. So long as nothing restricts multiple vendors from offering wi-fi in this spectrum then I think it is probably best that New Orleans leaves it to the free market. Still wi-fi is close to being a utility so there is certainly room for debate on the subject.
Apple will have to give folks like me a compelling reason to "switch", since it's hard to imagine them significantly improving on the Tivo experience.
There is plenty of room for improvement over an non-hacked Tivo, and lets face it, most people will not hack their entertainment center components. Reasons I did not buy a Tivo include lack of DVD burning, lack of the ability to transfer shows to other devices, DRM restrictions, no 30 second skip, and being limited to one provider of scheduling information that charges a monthly fee. Also I prefer an integrated media player that includes ripping of CDs, downloading music and video, DVD and CD playback, VCD playback, etc. The Tivo is a well made PVR, but has a restricted feature set and is no "digital hub." If all my audio and video can reside in one place with easy searching and playback I'll be much happier. As it is I get all the functionality I need from a home made solution but it is not all in one box, took some work to set up properly, and is not one smoothly integrated solution. If Apple can do it right (or anyone else for that matter) they will not only win me as a customer, but also many of my friends and family.
Is there a related security bug for Safari? I tried the demo code on it and it does not crash Safari, nor does it run any executables, but ti does put Safari into a pretty unusable state after opening a javascript window full of Chinese characters, I could not find any way to kill just that window and had to quit and restart the application. It looks better than the response of IE or Firefox, but still not the proper way to handle the code.
I can guarantee that it will not sync with the video ipod in a useful way (ie transcode TV shows to ipod's low res format)
My current PVR is running on a an old dual 533Mhz G4 tower that doubles as a general media player, Web Server, File Server, and a few other misc. tasks. It has no problem recording video from firewire, encoding it to other formats, or burning DVDs of said content, all simultaneously. It takes about two minutes to re-encode a 21 minute show (after I remove the the commercials) into a portable format even while recording a new stream and burning a DVD. I don't see why a mac mini would have any problems with this.
Revenue sources (why would anyone buy what they can set their shiny new Apple PVR to record?)
Why does anyone buy music from the iTunes store when they can just grab it online or from the radio? The answer is ease of use, selection, and instant gratification. Also, you overestimate Apple's concern about sales via the online store. They are close to break even on it. They make money from hardware sales, the store is an incentive and a strategic move.
Fear of getting sued.
Apple gets sued all the time. You think they are worried about lawsuits for replicating the functionality of the VCR? That lawsuit was fought and won long ago. Unless new laws are passed, that is a non-issue. There is some concern about the partnerships Apple has with media producers, but lawsuits are not likely to be a problem.
But now that I think about it, this would cannibalize iTunes TV show sales... Maybe this is all rumor?
Sort of the way the ability to rip CDs and import downloaded songs cannibalizes iTunes music sales? Apple has been using the same model for years, they break even on consumer software and services in order to sell hardware and professional grade software. I don't think they care if users use the iTunes store except in that it leads to iPod and Mac sales and counters an MS file format lock-in on media. That said, I have no idea if this rumor is true or not. I'd welcome it and might even consider it as a replacement or complement to my current PVR solution. More importantly I might very well recommend it as a solution for less technical friends and family who have been looking for a good, easy to use PVR, but don't want to pay a monthly subscription and want all the features I have (DVD archiving, DRM-free files for transfer to other devices, etc.).
Without the PVR ability such a device simply does not provide the necessary amount of programming, nor is it price competitive.
If he were to be resistant to this kind of thing then it would come off as supportive of piracy and whether or not he really condoned it he would probably get shut down in court. One of the 'joys' of getting big is you have to worry about things like due diligence.
Actually, my understanding is that just the opposite is true. Napster lost in court not because they were not trying to remove copyrighted works, or because they never looked for copyrighted works on their network, but because they did look, and found them, and demonstrated that they had the ability to remove them, but did not. So long as a network/website operator does not look for copyrighted works or try to control the content, they are pretty much in the clear. They still have to take down any copyrighted works when notified, but are not guilty of contributory copyright infringement themselves. In doing this Mr. Cohen may actually be opening himself up to lawsuits.
So basically they moved from the whims of closed-source suppliers, to the itches of open-source suppliers.
Are you dim or something? Are you paid by MS to spread this FUD? How many suppliers are their for Windows? Answer: 1. How many suppliers are there for Linux. Answer: hundreds. How many suppliers are there for MS Office? Answer: 1 How many suppliers are there for Open Office? Answer: hundreds. With closed source software you are limited to a single supplier. With open source you can buy service and support from anyone, since anyone can view and modify the code. This means with open source if someone stops selling a particular word processor version and moves to only selling a new, incompatible version you don't have to upgrade, since the old one is still available. This means if you need a new feature or a customization you can take bids from all sorts of developers (including those that speak the same language as you so) or even task a person within your organization to make the desired change. It frees you from being locked into one vendor, especially compared to vendors that only implement closed formats and protocols as a way to make it hard to move to other solutions.
Umm... I don't see linux or osx powering any cars other then some freak project by college students.
Then you aren't looking very closely. Embedded linux is very much used in cars.
BMW is a major premium brand using XP. But hey, that's not your kind of innovation.
How is being used by a particular company innovative? Do you actually pick products based not upon what they can do, but who else is using them?
I have lots to say, but I fear its lost on a zealot like yourself. I'll try to be brief. You are just so blinded with hatred you have started to believe you own rhetoric.
Ad hominem attack = lost credibility.
OSX has had 4 paid upgrades to Windows XP. Annual OS upgrades are a nightmare for IT departments, bad for a company's balance sheet, and an irritation for end-users. Each version costs about $150 x 4 = $600. MS XP is $300. If you kept up with Apple, you spent double then going with XP. Never mind all the programs that break with the upgrades.
Except that upgrades aren't mandatory so there is no reason you have to run the most current version all the time. What kind of brain fart does it take to try and spin the availability of more features in a more granular fashion as a drawback? Lets see, you can buy Windows and pay for the OS and then be stuck with no upgrades for half a decade, or you can buy OS X and upgrade up to four times, if you so desire, with new features at each point and no financial incentive to have the "latest" version if it is unneeded? Gee sure sounds like Windows is the better option there, huh? Apple has an option similar to the Windows model, you jsut buy the current OS and don't upgrade for seven years. You'll still have more features.
Xbox Live... no innovation? They have taken online game play to a whole new level.
A whole new level? Do you really talk like that, or are you copying that from a press release? Yeah, online play sure is innovate and all, that is why no one has done it until the Xbox was released. Maybe you should look up what the word 'innovation' means.
Their IPTV stuff is amazing, and that is why Verizon and SBC were so willing to lock themselves into using it for years... its just light years ahead of all the other platforms.
They have a great new feature which I won't mention any of the great qualities of, which is why their customer are willing to put up with the huge anti-feature they put in. Ummm... gee that sounds great?
They don't abuse anyone to be ranked almost double Google in web traffic, only behind AOL and Yahoo.
How much of that traffic is generated by either people downloading patches for their OS, or people using MSN who signed up because MS leveraged Windows to push it with all sorts of advertising and settings that encourage users to sign up? That is exactly the abuse that MS is infamous for.
Why don't you check out the ground breaking work they do in speech recognition.
Gee, actually i happen to know quite a bit about ongoing speech recognition technology. Calling MS innovative in the field is weak. They are way behind a number of other companies and don't even have reasonable speech recognition built into the OS (it's been in MacOS since version 7 I think).
See the thing is, is that you are so busy saying they suck and are evil they have just passed you by. You are still living in the 90s.
Funny, that is how I feel using Windows and MS software. No virtual desktops, no Expose, no GUI scripting, no system-wide services, no functional CLI, tabbed browsing, no fast searching, no indexed content searching, no usable non-admin accounts, crappy multitasking under heavy loads, etc., etc.
In fact they spend more money on R&D then Google grosses in a year, more then double actually! They hire some of the greatest minds in the world, and you are stupid enough to think that because they are under the MS name they don't innovate.
If every comparison between, "an open development process and one with a closed development process is critically flawed", then how can you ever compare them.
You're misunderstanding what I said. This study imposed arbitrary tasks to determine which OS could do those tasks, but the tasks themselves don't make sense for both platforms and are not the same on both platforms. It makes sense to run a test where both OS's have to perform some task like running a web server with certain functionality without being hacked, for a certain amount of traffic. It does not make sense comparing two OS's "upgrading to the latest version of all software" because that software offers different functionality, most of which is not needed for a given task and because different OS's come out with updates at different times and this study was over a very short duration, much shorter than OS release cycles.
It seems as if Thompson is picking something that can be measured by the average sysadmin -- maintenance to the system, however it's done -- and showing the differences.
But that is not what he seems to be showing. It is not normal maintenance to build the latest bleeding edge versions of multiple databases on a production server and it is not normal maintenance to upgrade, by hand, any packages that you do not specifically need to upgrade until a new version of the OS is released that encompasses all those mostly unneeded upgrades. The fact that Linux distro allow you to grab the latest of some particular software is an advantage over Windows, the equivalent would be getting the option to cherry pick features from Longhorn in their current state and compile them right now if it was some functionality you needed. Doing so is not always a good idea, and doing it for everything would be a really bad idea. Now this "test" was constructed in such a way so as to make that advantage, that additional choice, act as a disadvantage. Do you see why that is a problem?
Another concern I have is that while your study simulates the installation and upgrade of two different systems based upon two OS's, it does not seem to simulate the real-world work needed to keep those systems running on a daily basis. In the real world systems break, worms clog the network, and regular maintenance must be done. Your study seems to completely disregard all that work and focus only on install/upgrade. Why did you not base your study on the behaviors of a real working system with a simulated network attached? It seems like the shortcut method you used to quickly evaluate only certain tasks makes the study wholly academic and loses any value as a predictor for the operation of a real network, over time, with real traffic.
Finally, I've seen it suggested that this study requires that all software be updated to the latest versions, but While Linux based servers constantly release the latest patches to each component as they become available, Windows only releases them en masse, How then can you compare the two? To be perfectly fair one would have to know what development has happened on the various components of Windows and rate all of those components as failing to be updated (since MS has not yet released that version). Barring such inside information, any comparison between a system with an open development process and one with a closed development process is critically flawed. Do you not see this as a problem with your study?
The OS matters and MS is making big headway in that front...
After that you go on to mention a dozen ways MS is "winning" all but one of which are business deals, marketing, and attempts to move into new markets. The one technological advantage you ascribe to them is in being able to push data to phones. During your little spiel did you even consider the fact that you don't seem to have anything to say about how MS is going to win the OS market by having the best desktop OS for consumers? I mean surely a company whose business is founded on that one product has done something to advance the state of the art and can provide a superior OS for my home computer, right?
The truth of the matter is that MS is "innovative" mostly in its ruthless business practices and willingness to constantly break the law and make a profit despite constantly paying out settlements because of said practices. As far as technological innovation is concerned they have done more to retard the state of the art than advance it. ...And it really shows. Windows is so far behind the competition in so many areas that is no longer a viable platform for some professions and very few persons who try the major alternatives ever switch back. MS is all about anti-features that lock users in, force users to upgrade, or prevent interoperability. Other vendors, in the meantime, have come up with some great features.
Maybe you are right. Maybe MS will continue to dominate the industry because of their practices, but in doing so all they will accomplish is making more money and holding back the progress of computing. MS lickspittle like yourself who applaud such a thing because all they want is to be on the "winning" side are pointless noise. "Yay! stifling innovation! Yay! partially implemented five year old internet standards! Yay! slow, buggy, insecure crap!" Maybe soon every home will come with an MS OS installed to control the lights and entertainment center, it will still suck and cause more frustration and problems and basically make the world a worse place to live in and it will partially be because of people like you.
In explaining this case to a friend I came up with an analogy that I think does a good job of expressing the issues. Imagine, if you will, that you purchased a new coffee mug that came with a warmer that could be plugged into either a wall socket or a USB port and would keep your coffee warm while you worked. Now imagine the company that sold the coffee mag+warmers was run by a very paranoid person who feared that people might copy his patented coffee mug warmer and illegally sell knock offs. So, in addition to drawing power from the USB, if it was plugged into a computer the coffee mug warmer would silently install a back door on your computer, search your hard drive for schematics that looked similar to those of the coffee mug, and connected to the internet an uploaded your personal information to a server run by the coffee mug company. Further imagine that the software used techniques to hide from the user and the OS and conceal this fact. Now, just to add some spice, image that the software was found to both have a serious security vulnerability and to contain code that was infringing upon someone else's copyright.
Sony is selling discs intentionally designed to trick users into thinking they are CDs, when in fact they are not CDs, they are devices that act like CDs enough so that the user does not notice that they are something else, while silently trying to hack that user's computer. Hopefully, the individuals involved will face criminal charges for their actions.
Nowhere in the original story did it say that there was any reason why they couldn't continue to use the licenses for Office that they already have.
No they didn't, but they did say that upgrading them all to a single standard would cost $65K and they were putting together a plan for rolling out OpenOffice and would like some specific help. No mention was made as to whether the decision to switch had been made, nor of what the budget for the projects is. Not having the vast majority of the information needed to make a decision makes the whole line of inquiry above pointless. It does nothing to answer the question asked.
Please, get counseling. You've obvious have some emotional issues. Its only /.
Please proceed immediately to ebay and buy a sense of humor.
Uh... don't we hate pdf too?
I imagine many of "us" have different opinions on the PDF format. Personally, I like PDF quite a bit, although the combination of Windows+IE+Adobe Acrobat, which is a very common way to view PDFs, is a pretty awful way to view them. If, however you use a fast PDF reader, with or without a browser that can actually do other tasks while a PDF is downloading, on an OS that can do more than one thing at a time without becoming as slow as molasses, then PDFs work quite well.
This is a valid question that shouldn't have been modded as flamebait. Sure, its an unpopular question considering the /. crowd but, still valid.
Anyone who read the summary saw the stated reason. The licensing for Windows for the machines in question will cost $65,000 which is an expense they don't want to pay. Presumably that is because their corporate licensing is running out or they need to purchase new systems or some other reason. It does not really matter though as it is not pertinent to the question at hand.
I think it is just fine to mod as flamebait someone who asks a question whose answer figures prominently in the summary if you believe they are willfully ignoring that information. The alternative is that they did not even bother to read it and don't have any idea what everyone is talking about. Or perhaps you just discount that information as invalid since $65K is nothing to you. I'll tell you what, why don't you just mail the money to the poster of this question and we can all move on. Thanks.
Because calling law enforcement would lead to a court case: YOU vs SONY. Guess who wins every time?
What are you talking about? Making a report to law enforcement is not going to get you into a civil suit. It will be the state vs. Sony in a criminal case should they pursue it. The trouble is getting them to do so. Try calling the FBI sometime. If it isn't easily demonstrable as several grand worth of damage they will just ignore you.
Why complain ? It is their stuff, and they can price it at any level they want.
First, I'm glad they are moving to a more flexible pricing scheme and I hope that indy artists take advantage of the pricing to undercut the big labels. Realistically, however, the market is dominated by a cartel and what they will end up doing is twofold. First, they will price songs higher to reduce the popularity of iTunes and increase the popularity of other services because they are scared of Apple's potential influence. Second, they will collude and fix prices beyond what the market would normally determine, just as they have repeatedly been convicted of doing with CD sales.
In future the argument, "It is their stuff" would have a lot more weight if they actually made any of the music, instead of just monopolizing the distribution routes and using that as a way to become a gatekeeper between musicians and their audience. Most musicians actually have to pay the RIAA for the privilege of letting the RIAA sell it at a profit while the artists hope to break even or make money on the concerts and merchandise via the fame that comes with being widely published. If we had reasonable enforcement of antitrust laws or reasonable protections for artists none of this would be an issue. Music should not belong to distributors. It should belong to artists. Also, it should belong to artists for a short time only before it becomes the property of the people. Middle men are still making a fortune off of long dead musicians who will never make another song and their is no benefit to the people of the US in this.