The bottom line is...people have a choice, and you cannot have a "monopoly" if people can easily choose another equally excellent (or better) product for the same money or for free!
Antitrust legislation deals with the economic market, not with absolutes. The reason for this is because while capitalism provides great advantages in the form of improvements and efficiency due to competition, all those advantages are removed when the market is faced with a monopoly. Take a look at a economic model of capitalism some time. When you have a monopoly, that monopoly tends to extend until it owns all aspects of all markets, and you no longer have a capitalist market. That is why pretty much every capitalist market in the world is managed capitalism, that legally prevents monopolies from abusing their positions.
Keeping that in mind, what company sells desktop OS's and makes a profit doing so? Well, Apple and Sun sell hardware and the OS is mostly incentive to buy that hardware. Redhat, Mandrake, and IBM all sell services and support while giving away the OS. The fact that Linux exists at all is a symptom of a problem. When customers are so fed up with the only viable, commercial option that they are willing to donate hundreds of thousands of hours of free work to create a pseudo-socialist alternative you can be pretty sure the market is broken. If Linux was owned by a commercial company it would be dead by now because of MS's illegal business practices.
...just because some anti-business lawyer/politician/judge calls something a "monopoly" doesn't mean it is.
How about if hundreds of economic experts and dozens of courts around the world find that to be the case? Just because you don't see it doesn't mean you're smarter than all the experts. It means you need to read a few books on economics and then actually investigate some of Microsoft's business practices.
Half the people I know don't even know what their OS is (or what and OS is)...
And you don't find it odd that most people don't know? I mean most people know the difference between Ford and Chevy. Most people know the difference between Gilette and Bic. Maybe they don't know the difference between Linux and Windows because they've never been given the option of buying a Linux machine in a store due to certain illegal business deals made under threat of retaliation from the monopoly that can easily destroy any of the companies to whom it is a necessary supplier.
Believing anti-business propoganda is exactly what a hungry government wants you to believe. Make the government more powerful!
The Sherman antitrust act has been on the books for many, many years. It is the reason you can own a telephone instead of having to rent it from Ma Bell. It is the reason why there is competition in the gas business and much lower prices and for that matter electric lights.
No one wants more antitrust laws passed, we just want the ones on the books enforced even for companies that donate millions to both political parties.
Unlikely, unless VMWare decides to emulate the hardware that is going to restrict OS X to Apple x86 hardware. A move that would certainly get them sued into oblivion both civilly and criminally. The DMCA makes it a crime to emulate a proprietary piece of hardware designed to handle the piracy of the OS.
Heh, unless of course he is running OS X as the primary platform and Linux and Windows in virtualization on it. There is no VMWare solution for OS X today, but a version that will run on OS X for x86 was one of the most requested features on their web forums a few days after Apple announced the intel switch. I fully expect them to come out with just such a product. I too would buy it and run both Windows and Linux in emulation for testing purposes and maybe even for the occasional Windows only game. If VMWare don't make one, you can bet someone else will.
No. The cost to the manufacturer is less. That does not mean they would pass that on to you the consumer.
Desktop computer sales (unlike desktop OS sales) is a highly competitive market. Vendors survive on thin margins and the number one player (Dell) is winning because of their efficient supply structure. At least one vendor would certainly try to undersell the competition by offering the lowest priced machines, pre-loaded with Linux and 25% cheaper than the competition. In fact the one large PC seller who is not afraid of retribution from MS is already doing that. Check out the prices Walmart is offering on cheap PCs loaded with Linux.
Sure it's possible no one would lower their prices, but it is unlikely because of competition from the free market. That is exactly what is lacking in the Desktop OS space due to MS's illegal business practices.
Given that MS can no longer charge them a penalty for shipping an alternate OS (remember the DOJ is watching to make sure this no longer happens) the reason there aren't alternate OS's is that the OEM's don't want to install them.
Please show me one bit of evidence that the DOJ is watching over them in any meaningful way. They have already blatantly violated antitrust laws a dozen times since the trial and we have heard not one single peep from the U.S. Dept. of Justice. At the same time The EU and a number of other foreign courts have brought MS up on charges for their actions. The US politicians have been bought, plain and simple. MS is continuing business as usual after being found guilty and being punished, by the courts doing absolutely nothing. The contracts MS has are considered "trade secrets" and have not been subpoenaed by the courts or by any law enforcement agency that has been reported. How exactly are they watching?
Nope. I really don't. If my box comes with WIndows installed, and it's no cheaper without, no stress. Just install over it.
So you support being forced to pay extra for your boxes, provided you have no choices. What an interesting opinion. The point is, it would be cheaper without Windows, except the computer retailers are forced to charge you for it whether or not you buy it because otherwise MS takes them in the rear with OEM licensing, upon which they are dependent.
Let me make this perfectly clear, You are paying extra money because MS wants to discourage you from using Linux.
Yeah they can choose to go out of business or stay in business. That is exactly their choice as having their prices go up $50 for every machine would make them no longer competitive in the only factor that people buy Dells for, low price. Dells are junk machines, built cheaply, with inconsistent hardware. Dell would lose the number one spot within a year if they started selling Linux desktops at a fair price and were punished by MS for doing so with higher OEM Windows prices. It has happened before and no one at Dell is stupid enough to gamble the whole company on pissing off the only supplier they have for a critical component of nearly every product they sell
I still fail to see how creating exclusivity agreements is a bad thing.
Exclusivity agreements remove choices, and thus harm consumers. In most cases, that is not a big problem as consumers just go with a different competitor. It is a problem when a monopoly is involved. In that case it is not only bad for the consumer, but can be used to keep things bad for the consumer and the free market cannot solve the problem. For this reason it is also illegal.
If you have a problem with the way Dell deals with M$ then don't buy from them. Simple vote with your dollar.
Way to blame the victim. Dell has no choice. Neither does any other major PC vendor. If you want to sell at a competitive price you have to agree to do whatever MS tells you, even if that means not selling a minority of your customers the product they want and that you should be able to provide them. If someone hold a gun to your mother's head and tells her to give them your car, and she complies, do you blame your mother or the person holding the gun to her head? Dell doesn't have a choice, MS is the one calling the shots and responsible. Their gun is their monopoly, which they have multiple times been convicted of abusing. We don't let felons keep their firearms when arrested for armed robbery, why is it we let MS keep their monopoly? Oh yeah, it was the millions they donated to both major political parties. This isn't exactly rocket science. Get a clue.
Bill is the uberlord of an evil empire because he provides a benefit that society wants, and the ultimate proof of it is in his bank account.
Complete and utter bullshit. Bill G has money because he took a half assed OS developed it in a half-assed fashion, and used marketing and illegal business practices to kill any and all competitors. BeOS, OS2, MacOS, Linux, etc. are not any harder to use than Windows, by and large, and in some cases are much, much easier. Windows stays on top due to technological and business measures that prevent consumers from ever seeing or hearing of alternatives, let alone being given the opportunity to buy them.
But go ahead and keep blaming Microsoft's business practices... why stop now? It is easier than trying to actually compete for users.
The article says MS is costing the industry X squandered dollars with their blatantly illegal business practices. The number is probably bunk, but could be in the right ballpark. How does Linux users believing that most people enjoy the experience of using Linux have anything to do with whether or not MS is engaging in illegal business practices?
Ok Linux sucks, whatever. Even assuming I agree with you, what does your statement have to do with anything? Does it make MS's business practices any less unethical, illegal, or despicable? Does it address the article at all?
How can Microsoft's deals with anyone "lock users out" of alternative options? Anyone who wants can download a Linux distro...
How can you say people are locked into a cable TV monopoly. Just because every TV comes with a free lifetime subscription to cable (included in the price of TVs) does not mean you can't buy a satellite subscription or even hook up an antenna and get that free TV people broadcast over the air.
It is called a loss leader.. while illegal in theory it hasn't ever been used to prosecute a business for non-competivite behavior.
Are you drunk, stupid, or joking? A loss leader? You honestly think MS pays all the computer manufacturers to include Windows on their machines and then makes their revenue selling, office or services or something? It is completely untrue. They sell Windows, but have contracts insuring they get paid for every PC sold, not for every PC with Windows. The extra money is for the expense of putting FreeDoS on the machine. They manage to get this ridiculously favorable deal because as a monopoly they have the power to put any PC seller out of business at their whim. Get a clue.
I think *you* need to understand the difference between a government sponsored monopoly and a government regulated industry. Telcoms is the latter in Canada.
monopoly: the exclusive possession or control of the supply or trade in a commodity or service
I don't know about where you live, but everywhere in both the U.S. and Canada that I have lived there is only one set of cable lines, phone lines, and power lines on the roadside poles and they are owned by the respective local monopoly. If there is only one legal provider of that service it is a monopoly. If the government is the one that controls who can offer said service, and they only allow one company to do so, it is a government sponsored monopoly. Where do you live that this is not the case?
The bottom line here is, if a consumer does not like the actions that a corporation is taking, then they can vote with their money by using a competing service.
Great idea, in fact I think I'll string up some cable lines and start a competing service so others can... wait what do you mean I can't? The government has granted them a monopoly on the use of those poles, underground conduits, and publicly owned right of ways to prevent there from being too many lines up? Well now. That's different isn't it? Since they are a government sponsored monopoly I guess the free market can't effectively decide now can it?
Please in future actually to make sure that when you are rabidly espousing unfettered free market economics that situation you are talking about is a free market, not a government sponsored monopoly. They don't have to compete thanks to the government, thus they have to work in the public interest as much as needed. Censoring their competitors or unions is obviously not in the public interest.
Ever tried to share a printer connected to a Mac with Windows machines? Ever had to reboot to make your network shares re-appear? Ever had problems copying files to Windows file share due to unsupported characters and resource forks? Apple has A LOT of work to do there before they can say they've nailed the interop story.
Not really, they are "good enough" right now. I know because I'm in a mixed environment and we haven't had any problems. The only time you run into compatibility problems is when you use Windows servers and trap yourself into the one-vendor mentality. We have mostly Linux servers here. If you use open standards administering macs seems to be pretty easy. As to your compatibility issues, get a linux print server, or a network printer, any reasonable size shop should have one anyway. I've never had any problems copying things to Windows network shares nor had to reboot to see them. Zero, none. I think I remember hearing something about problems if you were running NT 4, or something for your server, but you'd have to be pretty dumb to be doing that.
Also, once Apple starts shipping Intel boxes, a lot more black hats will have opportunity to come up with creative ways to fuck up macs. Right now every security update closes gaping holes that would be totally exploited if more hackers had Macs. Just wait and see now.
I'm sure for some reason the Intel platform will convince Apple to ship with a bunch of exposed and enabled services for some reason, after all you have to to use Intel chips right? Oh no, wait you don't. Macs aren't relatively malware free because of their cpu's dumbass. They just made a reasonable effort at making a secure box from the start. They sure aren't the best, but Windows is exploited over and over again because they have a huge install base and security so bad a twelve year old can get around it. It is a joke, just like your knowledge of macs in a mixed environment and most likely your administrative skills.
It takes a non-trivial amount of futzing to just get the god damn file and printer sharing working. There's no centralized management.
Strange, I just plugged one in, and network printer just showed up. I added the samba server to my shortcuts and haven't had any problems. Mail.app even works fine with the exchange server and meeting requests etc. show up in ical. The Windows only centralized password management does not work, but I don't use it for anything anyway and I've used LDAP other places and it worked just fine for centralized management of Windows/Linux/*BSDs/macs.
I guess the real question is... are you just ignorant or a troll?
For the record, when I started at this company macs were about 10% of the desktops/laptops. Now they are about 60%. We're obviously not indicative of the market as a whole, but macs are certainly taking over certain niches (like network security).
What you are saying is, if I have a door and the lock breaks, it is my fault if I get robbed because I did not change the lock??
The above poster said nothing of the kind. He did not blame the site for getting hacked, he blamed the administrators for not providing enough security. Let me rewrite your analogy.
Yesterday at the local businessman's meeting, security expert Mr. Smith revealed that the cheap, Walmart brand padlocks in use on many stores can be broken into very easily with a ordinary pen. Mr. Smith said that these locks should be replaced and are even in use on the jewelry store down the street where a number of us have our membership rings being resized... and two weeks later the jewelry store is broken into with a pen but someone happened by and the robbers ran away without stealing much.
Would it or would it not be correct to criticize the store owner for not changing the locks, even after they were shown faulty and after the whole group was told that he was using them?
How do we stop people from hacking websites and causing disturbances?
How do we stop people from robbing jewelry stores? Well we make sure the cops enforce the laws and we put in good locks and a security system. Nothing will ever stop all robberies or all cracks, but that does not mean we should not do our best to make any given store or server a hard target. Nor does it mean we should ignore security warnings.
Implemented correctly, IP-TV allows you to only buy the shows you want, watch them when you want, and watch them without commercials. It also allows for niche-market shows aimed at every subset of society. It combines PVR functionality with cable-on-demand functionality. Just because you can't figure out how to plug your TV into a computer, or get a remote to work with a computer does not mean technology will come to a halt.
Every program and movie I watch runs through my computer which acts as a PVR and records the shows I want and lets me watch them when I want, skip commercials, pause, fast forward, rewind, burn compilations to DVD, etc. Some of my shows are downloaded from the internet, some recorded off of my cable TV stream, and some are on external media like DVDs, hard drives, or VCR tapes. All of my house guests have been able to figure it out and it is only going to get easier as time goes on. We'll all be watching shows through a computer soon (although that computer may be built into a set-top box or the TV itself soon).
Is this a DRM'd copy that's being pushed, does it tie us to a Windows Media player, or can an OSX or Linux user also just point their browser at the correct IP, and watch this also.
The article says realplayer, so I assume that means mac/linux/windows.
do they restrict by IP
Most likely since they are handing out the IPs to everyone eligible.
why shouldn't I be able to view what I want to watch, when I want to watch it?
Because AOL/Time Warner dropped the ball and the other content providers have not picked it up yet. Mostly this is because they don't want to innovate and move to a show-by-show subscription service instead of a commercial based one and none of the DRM schemes are trustworthy enough for them.
just saw a study this week reporting that like 80+% of all PVR users forward over commercials alrady[sic]
Yeah, but PVR users are still a tiny minority, and one they are working to stop. There is a big push to move everyone to digital cable with set top boxes and using encrypted remotes, thus making PVRs useless. They are focused on making you watch the commercial, not getting you to pay for the shows instead. This is bad because we just want the shows (which is why DVD sales of TV shows is skyrocketing) but it is also good because it does not create as much incentive for in show advertising. Personally, I'd rather just buy the individual shows I like as a subscription from the producers as a download or on DVD. If they'd allow that I'd probably stop using PVR for anything except making DVD versions of my old VCR tapes.
If I produce content, I should be able to decide what's done with it (for a reasonable time, anyway). If I want it to be one-peek-per-customer, that's my right, it's my content.
Provided you never, ever, ever tell the customer you are selling them video, nor design your marketing to make it seem like you are. That will of course not be the case.
Predominately suicide bombers have been rather unsuccessful, under-achiving young men.
I guess that depends upon how you define "success" and "achievement" now doesn't it? I don't know too much about the suicide bombers, but I do know at least one of them was awarded for his work with underprivileged children. And they certainly achieved their goal and successfully killed a lot of people to make a point.
The media has been doing a good job of promoting the idea that suicide bombers kill themselves because they are stupid and a smart person is manipulating them. Maybe that is so, maybe not. I have seen no evidence. I do know that these people felt so strongly about something that they were willing to die.
After 9/11 I knew that the government would go after someone and make an example of them. They had to in order to appease the people and make everyone feel a little better. The truth of the matter, however, is that the responsible people were the ones who hijacked a couple of planes and killed themselves. They are already dead. They succeeded at that and at grabbing the attention of the world. Arguably, they have succeeded at furthering Al-Quida's goals of widening the rift between the west and the middle east and overthrowing Hussein's successful non-theocratic government.
I've gone off on quite a tangent. Think a bit about what real success and achievement is though. I'll give you a hint, it's not making lots of money or having a fancy car.
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The bottom line is...people have a choice, and you cannot have a "monopoly" if people can easily choose another equally excellent (or better) product for the same money or for free!
Antitrust legislation deals with the economic market, not with absolutes. The reason for this is because while capitalism provides great advantages in the form of improvements and efficiency due to competition, all those advantages are removed when the market is faced with a monopoly. Take a look at a economic model of capitalism some time. When you have a monopoly, that monopoly tends to extend until it owns all aspects of all markets, and you no longer have a capitalist market. That is why pretty much every capitalist market in the world is managed capitalism, that legally prevents monopolies from abusing their positions.
Keeping that in mind, what company sells desktop OS's and makes a profit doing so? Well, Apple and Sun sell hardware and the OS is mostly incentive to buy that hardware. Redhat, Mandrake, and IBM all sell services and support while giving away the OS. The fact that Linux exists at all is a symptom of a problem. When customers are so fed up with the only viable, commercial option that they are willing to donate hundreds of thousands of hours of free work to create a pseudo-socialist alternative you can be pretty sure the market is broken. If Linux was owned by a commercial company it would be dead by now because of MS's illegal business practices.
How about if hundreds of economic experts and dozens of courts around the world find that to be the case? Just because you don't see it doesn't mean you're smarter than all the experts. It means you need to read a few books on economics and then actually investigate some of Microsoft's business practices.
Half the people I know don't even know what their OS is (or what and OS is)...
And you don't find it odd that most people don't know? I mean most people know the difference between Ford and Chevy. Most people know the difference between Gilette and Bic. Maybe they don't know the difference between Linux and Windows because they've never been given the option of buying a Linux machine in a store due to certain illegal business deals made under threat of retaliation from the monopoly that can easily destroy any of the companies to whom it is a necessary supplier.
Believing anti-business propoganda is exactly what a hungry government wants you to believe. Make the government more powerful!
The Sherman antitrust act has been on the books for many, many years. It is the reason you can own a telephone instead of having to rent it from Ma Bell. It is the reason why there is competition in the gas business and much lower prices and for that matter electric lights.
No one wants more antitrust laws passed, we just want the ones on the books enforced even for companies that donate millions to both political parties.
Unlikely, unless VMWare decides to emulate the hardware that is going to restrict OS X to Apple x86 hardware. A move that would certainly get them sued into oblivion both civilly and criminally. The DMCA makes it a crime to emulate a proprietary piece of hardware designed to handle the piracy of the OS.
Heh, unless of course he is running OS X as the primary platform and Linux and Windows in virtualization on it. There is no VMWare solution for OS X today, but a version that will run on OS X for x86 was one of the most requested features on their web forums a few days after Apple announced the intel switch. I fully expect them to come out with just such a product. I too would buy it and run both Windows and Linux in emulation for testing purposes and maybe even for the occasional Windows only game. If VMWare don't make one, you can bet someone else will.
No. The cost to the manufacturer is less. That does not mean they would pass that on to you the consumer.
Desktop computer sales (unlike desktop OS sales) is a highly competitive market. Vendors survive on thin margins and the number one player (Dell) is winning because of their efficient supply structure. At least one vendor would certainly try to undersell the competition by offering the lowest priced machines, pre-loaded with Linux and 25% cheaper than the competition. In fact the one large PC seller who is not afraid of retribution from MS is already doing that. Check out the prices Walmart is offering on cheap PCs loaded with Linux.
Sure it's possible no one would lower their prices, but it is unlikely because of competition from the free market. That is exactly what is lacking in the Desktop OS space due to MS's illegal business practices.
Given that MS can no longer charge them a penalty for shipping an alternate OS (remember the DOJ is watching to make sure this no longer happens) the reason there aren't alternate OS's is that the OEM's don't want to install them.
Please show me one bit of evidence that the DOJ is watching over them in any meaningful way. They have already blatantly violated antitrust laws a dozen times since the trial and we have heard not one single peep from the U.S. Dept. of Justice. At the same time The EU and a number of other foreign courts have brought MS up on charges for their actions. The US politicians have been bought, plain and simple. MS is continuing business as usual after being found guilty and being punished, by the courts doing absolutely nothing. The contracts MS has are considered "trade secrets" and have not been subpoenaed by the courts or by any law enforcement agency that has been reported. How exactly are they watching?
Nope. I really don't. If my box comes with WIndows installed, and it's no cheaper without, no stress. Just install over it.
So you support being forced to pay extra for your boxes, provided you have no choices. What an interesting opinion. The point is, it would be cheaper without Windows, except the computer retailers are forced to charge you for it whether or not you buy it because otherwise MS takes them in the rear with OEM licensing, upon which they are dependent.
Let me make this perfectly clear, You are paying extra money because MS wants to discourage you from using Linux.
Dell absolutely does have 'a choice'
Yeah they can choose to go out of business or stay in business. That is exactly their choice as having their prices go up $50 for every machine would make them no longer competitive in the only factor that people buy Dells for, low price. Dells are junk machines, built cheaply, with inconsistent hardware. Dell would lose the number one spot within a year if they started selling Linux desktops at a fair price and were punished by MS for doing so with higher OEM Windows prices. It has happened before and no one at Dell is stupid enough to gamble the whole company on pissing off the only supplier they have for a critical component of nearly every product they sell
I still fail to see how creating exclusivity agreements is a bad thing.
Exclusivity agreements remove choices, and thus harm consumers. In most cases, that is not a big problem as consumers just go with a different competitor. It is a problem when a monopoly is involved. In that case it is not only bad for the consumer, but can be used to keep things bad for the consumer and the free market cannot solve the problem. For this reason it is also illegal.
If you have a problem with the way Dell deals with M$ then don't buy from them. Simple vote with your dollar.
Way to blame the victim. Dell has no choice. Neither does any other major PC vendor. If you want to sell at a competitive price you have to agree to do whatever MS tells you, even if that means not selling a minority of your customers the product they want and that you should be able to provide them. If someone hold a gun to your mother's head and tells her to give them your car, and she complies, do you blame your mother or the person holding the gun to her head? Dell doesn't have a choice, MS is the one calling the shots and responsible. Their gun is their monopoly, which they have multiple times been convicted of abusing. We don't let felons keep their firearms when arrested for armed robbery, why is it we let MS keep their monopoly? Oh yeah, it was the millions they donated to both major political parties. This isn't exactly rocket science. Get a clue.
Why don't you buy yourself a dictionary and look up the word "monopoly" then come back here and tell us what Apple has a monopoly on? OK, thanks, bye.
Bill is the uberlord of an evil empire because he provides a benefit that society wants, and the ultimate proof of it is in his bank account.
Complete and utter bullshit. Bill G has money because he took a half assed OS developed it in a half-assed fashion, and used marketing and illegal business practices to kill any and all competitors. BeOS, OS2, MacOS, Linux, etc. are not any harder to use than Windows, by and large, and in some cases are much, much easier. Windows stays on top due to technological and business measures that prevent consumers from ever seeing or hearing of alternatives, let alone being given the opportunity to buy them.
But go ahead and keep blaming Microsoft's business practices... why stop now? It is easier than trying to actually compete for users.
The article says MS is costing the industry X squandered dollars with their blatantly illegal business practices. The number is probably bunk, but could be in the right ballpark. How does Linux users believing that most people enjoy the experience of using Linux have anything to do with whether or not MS is engaging in illegal business practices?
Ok Linux sucks, whatever. Even assuming I agree with you, what does your statement have to do with anything? Does it make MS's business practices any less unethical, illegal, or despicable? Does it address the article at all?
How can Microsoft's deals with anyone "lock users out" of alternative options? Anyone who wants can download a Linux distro...
How can you say people are locked into a cable TV monopoly. Just because every TV comes with a free lifetime subscription to cable (included in the price of TVs) does not mean you can't buy a satellite subscription or even hook up an antenna and get that free TV people broadcast over the air.
Still don't see the problem?
It is called a loss leader.. while illegal in theory it hasn't ever been used to prosecute a business for non-competivite behavior.
Are you drunk, stupid, or joking? A loss leader? You honestly think MS pays all the computer manufacturers to include Windows on their machines and then makes their revenue selling, office or services or something? It is completely untrue. They sell Windows, but have contracts insuring they get paid for every PC sold, not for every PC with Windows. The extra money is for the expense of putting FreeDoS on the machine. They manage to get this ridiculously favorable deal because as a monopoly they have the power to put any PC seller out of business at their whim. Get a clue.
If wishes were horses, we'd all be eating steak.
Heck, people these days have a hard time conceiving millions of years, and it's a few thousand years after the Greeks.
Somebody killed all the Greeks? No wonder my friend who moved there hasn't sent me any mail lately.
I think *you* need to understand the difference between a government sponsored monopoly and a government regulated industry. Telcoms is the latter in Canada.
monopoly: the exclusive possession or control of the supply or trade in a commodity or service
I don't know about where you live, but everywhere in both the U.S. and Canada that I have lived there is only one set of cable lines, phone lines, and power lines on the roadside poles and they are owned by the respective local monopoly. If there is only one legal provider of that service it is a monopoly. If the government is the one that controls who can offer said service, and they only allow one company to do so, it is a government sponsored monopoly. Where do you live that this is not the case?
The bottom line here is, if a consumer does not like the actions that a corporation is taking, then they can vote with their money by using a competing service.
Great idea, in fact I think I'll string up some cable lines and start a competing service so others can... wait what do you mean I can't? The government has granted them a monopoly on the use of those poles, underground conduits, and publicly owned right of ways to prevent there from being too many lines up? Well now. That's different isn't it? Since they are a government sponsored monopoly I guess the free market can't effectively decide now can it?
Please in future actually to make sure that when you are rabidly espousing unfettered free market economics that situation you are talking about is a free market, not a government sponsored monopoly. They don't have to compete thanks to the government, thus they have to work in the public interest as much as needed. Censoring their competitors or unions is obviously not in the public interest.
Ever tried to share a printer connected to a Mac with Windows machines? Ever had to reboot to make your network shares re-appear? Ever had problems copying files to Windows file share due to unsupported characters and resource forks? Apple has A LOT of work to do there before they can say they've nailed the interop story.
Not really, they are "good enough" right now. I know because I'm in a mixed environment and we haven't had any problems. The only time you run into compatibility problems is when you use Windows servers and trap yourself into the one-vendor mentality. We have mostly Linux servers here. If you use open standards administering macs seems to be pretty easy. As to your compatibility issues, get a linux print server, or a network printer, any reasonable size shop should have one anyway. I've never had any problems copying things to Windows network shares nor had to reboot to see them. Zero, none. I think I remember hearing something about problems if you were running NT 4, or something for your server, but you'd have to be pretty dumb to be doing that.
Also, once Apple starts shipping Intel boxes, a lot more black hats will have opportunity to come up with creative ways to fuck up macs. Right now every security update closes gaping holes that would be totally exploited if more hackers had Macs. Just wait and see now.
I'm sure for some reason the Intel platform will convince Apple to ship with a bunch of exposed and enabled services for some reason, after all you have to to use Intel chips right? Oh no, wait you don't. Macs aren't relatively malware free because of their cpu's dumbass. They just made a reasonable effort at making a secure box from the start. They sure aren't the best, but Windows is exploited over and over again because they have a huge install base and security so bad a twelve year old can get around it. It is a joke, just like your knowledge of macs in a mixed environment and most likely your administrative skills.
It takes a non-trivial amount of futzing to just get the god damn file and printer sharing working. There's no centralized management.
Strange, I just plugged one in, and network printer just showed up. I added the samba server to my shortcuts and haven't had any problems. Mail.app even works fine with the exchange server and meeting requests etc. show up in ical. The Windows only centralized password management does not work, but I don't use it for anything anyway and I've used LDAP other places and it worked just fine for centralized management of Windows/Linux/*BSDs/macs.
I guess the real question is... are you just ignorant or a troll?
For the record, when I started at this company macs were about 10% of the desktops/laptops. Now they are about 60%. We're obviously not indicative of the market as a whole, but macs are certainly taking over certain niches (like network security).
What you are saying is, if I have a door and the lock breaks, it is my fault if I get robbed because I did not change the lock??
The above poster said nothing of the kind. He did not blame the site for getting hacked, he blamed the administrators for not providing enough security. Let me rewrite your analogy.
Yesterday at the local businessman's meeting, security expert Mr. Smith revealed that the cheap, Walmart brand padlocks in use on many stores can be broken into very easily with a ordinary pen. Mr. Smith said that these locks should be replaced and are even in use on the jewelry store down the street where a number of us have our membership rings being resized... and two weeks later the jewelry store is broken into with a pen but someone happened by and the robbers ran away without stealing much.
Would it or would it not be correct to criticize the store owner for not changing the locks, even after they were shown faulty and after the whole group was told that he was using them?
How do we stop people from hacking websites and causing disturbances?
How do we stop people from robbing jewelry stores? Well we make sure the cops enforce the laws and we put in good locks and a security system. Nothing will ever stop all robberies or all cracks, but that does not mean we should not do our best to make any given store or server a hard target. Nor does it mean we should ignore security warnings.
Why would anyone really want this?
Because implemented correctly you can buy individual shows and watch them whenever you want, two things regular TV lacks.
Why would I want to "watch TV" on my computer?
Implemented correctly, IP-TV allows you to only buy the shows you want, watch them when you want, and watch them without commercials. It also allows for niche-market shows aimed at every subset of society. It combines PVR functionality with cable-on-demand functionality. Just because you can't figure out how to plug your TV into a computer, or get a remote to work with a computer does not mean technology will come to a halt.
Every program and movie I watch runs through my computer which acts as a PVR and records the shows I want and lets me watch them when I want, skip commercials, pause, fast forward, rewind, burn compilations to DVD, etc. Some of my shows are downloaded from the internet, some recorded off of my cable TV stream, and some are on external media like DVDs, hard drives, or VCR tapes. All of my house guests have been able to figure it out and it is only going to get easier as time goes on. We'll all be watching shows through a computer soon (although that computer may be built into a set-top box or the TV itself soon).
Is this a DRM'd copy that's being pushed, does it tie us to a Windows Media player, or can an OSX or Linux user also just point their browser at the correct IP, and watch this also.
The article says realplayer, so I assume that means mac/linux/windows.
do they restrict by IP
Most likely since they are handing out the IPs to everyone eligible.
why shouldn't I be able to view what I want to watch, when I want to watch it?
Because AOL/Time Warner dropped the ball and the other content providers have not picked it up yet. Mostly this is because they don't want to innovate and move to a show-by-show subscription service instead of a commercial based one and none of the DRM schemes are trustworthy enough for them.
just saw a study this week reporting that like 80+% of all PVR users forward over commercials alrady[sic]
Yeah, but PVR users are still a tiny minority, and one they are working to stop. There is a big push to move everyone to digital cable with set top boxes and using encrypted remotes, thus making PVRs useless. They are focused on making you watch the commercial, not getting you to pay for the shows instead. This is bad because we just want the shows (which is why DVD sales of TV shows is skyrocketing) but it is also good because it does not create as much incentive for in show advertising. Personally, I'd rather just buy the individual shows I like as a subscription from the producers as a download or on DVD. If they'd allow that I'd probably stop using PVR for anything except making DVD versions of my old VCR tapes.
If I produce content, I should be able to decide what's done with it (for a reasonable time, anyway). If I want it to be one-peek-per-customer, that's my right, it's my content.
Provided you never, ever, ever tell the customer you are selling them video, nor design your marketing to make it seem like you are. That will of course not be the case.
Predominately suicide bombers have been rather unsuccessful, under-achiving young men.
I guess that depends upon how you define "success" and "achievement" now doesn't it? I don't know too much about the suicide bombers, but I do know at least one of them was awarded for his work with underprivileged children. And they certainly achieved their goal and successfully killed a lot of people to make a point.
The media has been doing a good job of promoting the idea that suicide bombers kill themselves because they are stupid and a smart person is manipulating them. Maybe that is so, maybe not. I have seen no evidence. I do know that these people felt so strongly about something that they were willing to die.
After 9/11 I knew that the government would go after someone and make an example of them. They had to in order to appease the people and make everyone feel a little better. The truth of the matter, however, is that the responsible people were the ones who hijacked a couple of planes and killed themselves. They are already dead. They succeeded at that and at grabbing the attention of the world. Arguably, they have succeeded at furthering Al-Quida's goals of widening the rift between the west and the middle east and overthrowing Hussein's successful non-theocratic government.
I've gone off on quite a tangent. Think a bit about what real success and achievement is though. I'll give you a hint, it's not making lots of money or having a fancy car.