It says nothing about what FreeBSD branched from, but what Darwin branched from (Apple have no control over, or influence on, FreeBSD). The Apple document you cite is a piece of marketing bumph that does not say which parts of Tiger are derived from BSD 5, so it could be just a couple of userland utilities, or a much larger portion -- there's no way of knowing. This technical document on the other hand _specifically_ claims that the kernel is derived from 4.4, and other technical documents say the same about the networking stack and various other bits of core OS X technologies, so unless Apple have neglected to update their documentation for Tiger (doubtful when one considers that other parts have already been updated for Leopard, which isn't out yet), then it would indeed seem to deny your claim.
NB: most Slashdotters give more weight to technical documentation written by the people who are doing the actual programming than advertising material put together by marketers who know little if anything about the technology they're trying to sell.
"Also, I thought earlier versions of OS X, at some point prior to X.4, they still had a microkernel."
It never had a microkernel. The confusion about the OS X kernel comes from that fact that it incorporates elements from Mach 3, which was a microkernel. Apple did not however ever use it as a true microkernel AFAIK, but linked in a whole bunch of other stuff which operates in the same address space, thereby ending up with a sort of hybrid that combines various aspects of both microkernels and monolithic kernels.
"Having used both, I know OS X is not the same as FreeBSD, I much prefer the FreeBSD system to be honest, but that's just my not-so-humble oppinion."
FreeBSD does have some advantages, but IMO Apple are to be lauded for putting an OS with sound UNIX underpinnings onto millions of desktops in a fairly short period of time.
"What part of FreeBSD did Apple use I wonder? "
This list of kernel differences is lifted from Apple's own developer docs:
"Although the BSD portion of Mac OS X is primarily derived from FreeBSD, some changes have been made:
-The sbrk() system call for memory management is deprecated. Its use is not recommended in Mac OS X. -The Mac OS X runtime model uses a different object file format for executables and shared objects, and a different mechanism for executing some of those executables. -The primary native format is Mach-O. This format is supported by the dynamic link editor (dyld).
The PEF binary file format is supported by the Code Fragment Manager (CFM).
The kernel supports execve() with Mach-O binaries. Mapping and management of Mach-O dynamic shared libraries, as well as launching of PEF-based applications, are performed by user-space code.
- Mac OS X does not support memory-mapped devices through the mmap() function. (Graphic device support and other subsystems provide similar functionality, but using different APIs.) In Mac OS X, this interface should be done through user clients. See the Apple I/O Kit documents for additional information. - The swapon() call is not supported; macx_swapon() is the equivalent call from the Mach pager. - The Unified Buffer Cache implementation in Mac OS X differs from that found in FreeBSD. - Mach provides a number of IPC primitives that are not traditionally found in UNIX. See "Boundary Crossings" for more information on Mach IPC. Some System V primitives are supported, but - their use is discouraged in favor of POSIX equivalents. - Several changes have been made to the BSD security model to support single-user and multiple-administrator configurations, including the ability to disable ownership and permissions on a volume-by-volume basis. - The locking mechanism used throughout the kernel differs substantially from the mechanism used in FreeBSD. - The kernel extension mechanism used by Mac OS X is completely different. The Mac OS X driver layer, the I/O Kit, is an object-oriented driver stack written in C++. The general kernel programming interfaces, or KPIs, are used to write non-driver kernel extensions. These mechanisms are described more in "I/O Kit Overview" and KPI Reference, respectively.
In addition, several new features have been added that are specific to the Mac OS X (Darwin) implementation of BSD. These features are not found in FreeBSD.
- enhancements to file-system buffer cache and file I/O clustering - adaptive and speculative read ahead - user-process controlled read ahead - time aging of the file-system buffer cache - enhancements to file-system support - implementation of Apple extensions for ISO-9660 file systems - multithreaded asynchronous I/O for NFS - addition of system calls to support semantics of Mac OS Extended (HFS+) file systems - additions to naming conventions for pathnames, as required for accessing multiple forks in Mac OS Extended file systems
"I thought userland was still pretty generic across BSD with only minor changes"
The main change that has any impact is the use of MACH-
"AI has by far the largest hype-to-actual-results ratio of any computer science field."
I am aware of this, but It does not change the fact that the GP's claim about computers not being _meant_ to think is arguable. That there is still ongoing research into AI and its related fields proves that the goal of making computers behave more intelligently is a highly desirable one despite decades of failure, and some areas such as speech recognition and associated natural language processing capabilities are receiving significant levels of funding from major corporations such as Microsoft, IBM, and Google. One could thus argue that a major goal of computer science since the 1950s has been to build an intelligent machine, and the fact that one hasn't emerged yet is a bug, and not (as the GP claims) a feature.
This does not seem to apply to the kernel, however. Apple's kernel programmer documentation (which claims to have been updated on 2006-11-07) says:
"Darwin is based on proven technology from many sources. A large portion of this technology is derived from FreeBSD, a version of 4.4BSD that offers advanced networking, performance, security, and compatibility features. Other parts of the system software, such as Mach, are based on technology previously used in Apple's MkLinux project, in Mac OS X Server, and in technology acquired from NeXT. Much of the code is platform-independent. All of the core operating-system code is available in source form."
"in Mac OS X, Mach is linked with other kernel components into a single kernel address space. This is primarily for performance; it is much faster to make a direct call between linked components than it is to send messages or do remote procedure calls (RPC) between separate tasks. This modular structure results in a more robust and extensible system than a monolithic kernel would allow, without the performance penalty of a pure microkernel.
Thus in Mac OS X, Mach is not primarily a communication hub between clients and servers. Instead, its value consists of its abstractions, its extensibility, and its flexibility."
"Additionally, I'm pretty sure MacOS came out before January 2003 When FreeBSD 5.0 was released"
It did indeed. OS X was (and is) based on FreeBSD 4.4, not 5 as the GP claims. Note though that once again, "based on" != "is", because there are a number of differences between Apples XNU kernel and the FreeBSD one.
"It's likely that Apple already pays half a dozen licensing fees for each iPod it sells"
Yes, it does -- for technology covered by patents.
"That THX logo on audio gear?"
Tells customers something that can directly translate into sales.
"that "Made for iPod" logo"
Does the same.
"But, again, it doesn't give you the legal or moral impetus to pirate OSX or steal an iPod."
Here goes the straw man, last refuge of pathetically transparent corporate shills and politicians the world over.
So tell me, O emitter of dried wheat stalk mannequins, where is the equivalence between a logo that informs users about what a device can be used for (irrespective of whether it's licensed or not), and a levy by Universal that conveys no information, provides no access to patented technologies, and according to you, should not give any other benefits to Apple or their customers?
"Thus, it's a really weak stretch to assign moral equivalence to Apple potentially paying a license to Universal, and piracy of an "entire library" of music."
Then what are they getting for that levy besides being able to say "Yippee, I just made Universal richer"?
"Since then, I have not really encountered manufacturers who are willing to replace software on an existing device."
Gear I have which has received updates: my wife's iPod mini; Korg and Novation synthesizers (common for profession electronic instruments); a set-top digital satellite box; and a Panasonic plasma TV.
Italy was the only fascist country on the wrong side of WWII. German Naziism was centred around racial and eugenic ideas that are not part of fascism (fascists are extreme nationalists, but do not equate race with nationality, hence the fact that Mussolini married a Jew), and Japan was a monarchy. Not that any of this has any bearing on why WWII started, or what countries were involved in it:
WWII began officially when Britain declared war on Germany after they'd invaded Poland. Prior to this, everything possible had been done to appease Hitler including handing him other European countries, and would probably have continued to do so if they hadn't signed a mutual defense agreement with Poland which obligated them to act.
The US did not join WWII until the attack on Pearl Harbour. FDR believed that both Germany and Japan were potential threats to the US, and had been secretly assisting Britain and building up the US military because of it (when WWII started, the US was ranked at no. 17 militarily, having less forces and more antiquated weaponry than Greece), but was prevented from acting openly due to the popularity of the isolationist movement among US citizens.
Neither Britain or the US gave two hoots about fascism prior to their entry in the war, as is evidenced by the fact that both had quite large, legal fascist movements with a number of prominent members, and maintained diplomatic relations with Italy, Germany, Japan, and fascist Spain (where they knew Franco was executing large numbers of political opponents, and sending many others to forced labour camps because he made no attempt to hide it). It did however become a useful propaganda tool during that war, when it became synonymous with "bad guy", just like "communist" did in the US during the late 1940s (if anything demonstrates the power of propaganda, it is the fact that communists who had been good guys during WWII suddenly became bad a little after it, while "bad" fascist Franco gets a state visit from Pres. Ike because he doesn't like Stalin, and thus cannot be bad like the bad fascists such as Hitler, because bad fascist Hitler only hated Stalin enough to invade Russia and kill millions of people).
"The story I heard was that Microsoft lied to WordPerfect about its long term Windows strategy. This was supposed to have caused WordPerfect to spend its efforts developing for a version of Windows that never happened."
I doubt that there is any truth in this, because (a) MS made it clear to _everyone_ who was in the least interested that Windows 3.0 (which was the first successful one) would use an enhanced but compatible version of the APIs from Windows 1 and 2, and (b) betas of Windows 3 were available to anyone willing to sign an NDA and fax it to Microsoft for quite a while before the final product appeared. I developed on Windows 2 for a very small company, and had no problem getting info or betas -- MS even paid the international shipping for what was then a _very_ large box of 3.5" floppies.
IMO the more likely scenario is that WordPerfect corp. (like Lotus) thought Windows 3 would be as big a flop as 1, 2, and 386 were, and therefore decided it wasn't worth the considerable expense and effort of supporting (DOS programmers required extensive retraining, and little if any of the existing code base could be reused, so a Windows version of any existing product would actually be an entirely new one, often written by different people than the ones who had crafted the original). They did after all have an extensive base of users who'd invested considerable amounts of time and effort in learning to use their products, so it was logical to assume these customers would continue to prefer something that catered to what they already knew over software with a radically different UI which required a mouse (which few business PC users had shown any interest in) to use effectively.
Well, strictly speaking, both the point I was replying to and my own one together would be expected value rather than my point alone, because people will do illegal things with no measurable value to themselves or anyone else (e.g. littering, which is usually an act of thoughtlessness rather than something the litterer gains anything from) if the probability of getting caught is very low.
"When patents were first conceived, none of that was in place and yet they saw the need to grant a limited monopoly to promote the progress of useful arts and sciences"
Patents were first conceived as a form of royal favour (clue: the US did not invent the concept) to eliminate any possibility of competition. The fact that the US constitution happens to make a different excuse for having them does not mean that said excuse is a valid one; I know Americans tend to attribute their "founding fathers" with having the same level of insight that Muslims attribute to Allah, but for everyone else, there is a big difference between somebody saying patents promote the progress of the useful arts and sciences, and this actually being the case.
"mass production was simply not possible (for the most part) then."
Mass production has existed since the Neanderthals, who used production lines to make stone tools and weapons. It became pretty common in the bronze age as a way of making large numbers of amphorae, weapons and armour to equip armies, ships, and building materials (everything from mud bricks to quarried stone items of sometimes immense size and weight), and the Romans used it to produce glass, ceramics, nails and screws, wire, chain mail, cart / wagon wheels, and a host of other consumer and military items. Various mediaeval societies mass-produced a wide variety of weapons, cloth, glass, and ceramics (not all were produced by the same societies in any particular time frame); British naval shipyards mass-produced masts and sails from the late 17th century onwards; etc., etc., etc. The flying shuttle, an important concept for full industrial production of complex weaves was _patented_ in England in 1733, more than 50 years before the American Constitution was originally drafted, and is held by many to be one of the keystones of the Industrial Revolution.
"How is running 4 VM's on one big machine more risky than running 4 real machines?"
Because the four VM sessions on a single machine can all use the same Vista license, whereas four separate machines would need one license each, so MS would risk losing the revenue from three extra licenses. This is why they say VM technology isn't mature enough for general distribution yet -- once they figure out how to charge people for every virtual session, they'll say it's reached the required level of maturity, and remove the anti-VM clause from the EULA.
"I find it hilarious that people will play Madden, NBA2K and a variety of other sports games, when they can go outside pickup a basketball/football and play the game themselves"
They cannot however participate in major sporting events except as spectators. What these titles offer sports fans is therefore what for many is their ultimate fantasy, i.e. the chance to actually be an active part of things that they can normally only watch and talk about.
"Personally, during the few hours I play games, I only play FPS or fantasy titles things I CAN'T do in real life."
You could go out and take part in one of the many paintball or laser-tag games that are run in many parts of most countries (some even include real tanks), which offer a combination of combat and real-time strategy. Or if ancients and mediaevals is more to your taste, there are groups such as the Society For Creative Anachronism and various other historical recreation outfits that stage battles, jousts, and various other events where you get to wear real armour, ride horses, wield large melee weapons, fire bows, etc. And whilst these aren't anything like blowing monsters to bits with a futuristic arsenal or powerful spells, the same can equally be said of playing football or basketball with some equally lame friends versus using a computer to participate in a top sporting event alongside legendary players.
I should make it clear at this point that I find sports intensely dull and boring, so I'm not in the least interested in games based around them. However, this is a matter of personal taste, just as my choice of books, movies, TV shows, and music is a matter of personal taste, and does not in any way imply that what I like is in any way "better" than somebody else's preferences.
They also tend to get thrown out of small communities that have enough trouble surviving without some loony doing stupid things. Such behaviour is by no means restricted to humans, but can be observed in other cooperative pack hunters such as wolves, wild dogs, orca, etc., none of whom will tolerate a member who flaunts the established rules (which are at least partially learned, and therefore vary from pack to pack). It was this ability to adapt their behaviour to prevailing social conditions that made wolves and their close relatives ideal companions for early humans, hence the fact that they were domesticated long (perhaps as much as 80,000 years) before any other creatures.
"The Christians got the murder out of their systems by the end of the crusades"
Well, the murdering Muslims bit was (mostly) gotten out of their systems, but they still had Jews (lots of them!), Cathars, South and Central Americans, witches, and anyone else some branch of Christianity decided it didn't like to take their frustrations out on.
"the Muslims are still taking part in their crusades"
I thought they'd already had several. There was the one that spread Islam as far as Spain during the 7th and 8th centuries; then the one they had during the 11th century that attempted to spread a stricter, more fundamentalist type of Islam; and another one which started the Ottoman Empire and removed Christian influence from Constantinople in the 15th century (I've probably missed a few).
"Ah the hypocracy of religion"
It seems that this particular brand of hypocrisy is largely an attribute of Christianity and Islam, which both inherited Judaeism's intolerance of a person following more than one religion at a time, but sadly not its "by birth except in certain exceptional circumstances" exclusivity. Most other religions have been and still are a lot more tolerant, so while (for example) people in Roman subject states had to accept and follow the Roman religion, they were quite free to have as many others as they wanted at the same time, hence the popularity of Zoroastrianism, Mithraism, the cult of Isis, and a whole bunch of others at various periods.
" the *millions* of people plaiyng WoW, and the hundreds of thousands each playing Eve Online, City of Heroes/Villains, Asheron's Call"
WOW is by far the biggest, having around 5 million subscribers, while the rest would probably have a million at best between them. But let's be generous and give them ten million users worldwide. Now look at that in context:
There were well over a hundred million Windows PCs sold last year, and estimates of worldwide PC usage seem to hover between 300 and 400 million, so let's split the difference and put it at 350 million. This means that one machine in 35 is used to host an online game, i.e. a little over 3%, and this is using a very generous figure which also ignores the fact that the biggest of them (WOW) is also available for the Mac (as is usual for Blizzard), so not all users will be running Windows.
Meanwhile, more traditional PC games have seen dramatically falling worldwide sales figures for at least a couple of years, while those for consoles have been rising, hence the fact that a growing number of previously PC-only companies are now launching titles for them.
So while gaming is _a_ factor in Windows' continuing success, geeks tend to imagine that it plays a much bigger role than is in fact the case, just as they imagine that adding Ogg-Vorbis to iPods would dramatically increase their sales, or that anybody except them gives two hoots about DRM.
"No, Apple do sell complete full version of OS X. I've got one and it doesn't require any previous installation of the OS to work."
The fact that Apple don't use Microsoft's tactics of actively preventing OEM versions from being used as upgrades, and upgrades from being used on machines without an MS OS doesn't mean they don't _sell_ OS X as an upgrade for existing Macs. Up to and including Tiger, there wasn't even any need for Apple to say it was an upgrade on the box, because all retail versions contain binaries for PPC-based Macs, and cannot therefore be used with white box hardware, so there was no need for the sort of measures (or EULAs) that MS have been using for over a decade. We will thus have to wait and see what Leopard boxes say when they finally appear, as these will be the first retail OS X versions to have binaries capable of running on non-PPC CPUs.
"each new iteration of their software all of a sudden must render their older generation software "not good enough", giving the lie to all earlier claims about previous generations of product. This is the classical Microsoft business model."
It's actually a classical monopoly business model where company's only competition is prior versions of its own products, and customers are told what they can have instead of being sold something they actually want. It tends to work excellently in the long term when one is selling consumables that provide a constant revenue stream, but can be more difficult with other things, because a monopoly is by its nature serving a largely saturated market that offers little if any opportunities for growth. This is why MS are eager to convert software into a consumable that is paid for by constant usage micro-charges instead of a bigger one-off payment, thereby eliminating all those users who see no compelling reason to upgrade Office-97 or Office-2K (there are a surprisingly large number of these).
The evil Bushor and his terrifying army of illegal Mexicans have been buying up XBoxes and Wiis to ensure that Princess Sony will never again be able to possess the magical Hat Of Money. Everyone knows that, just like they know that Princess Sony would still have the money hat if the great Elven warrior Cli'int'n and his Knights Of The Stained Robe were guarding her.
"I'm kind of amussed that people who won't get off their ass to go outside and play tennis with a friend (and get to see those hot girls in short tennis skirts) will sit at home with their little Wii virtual racket and play virtual tennis with cartoon characters. At some point if you really want realism I have to wonder why you don't just go do these things for real."
Perhaps because it's late November, and for a lot of people this means that the few hot girls who set foot on a tennis court are wearing track suits with five thick sweaters underneath them and wooly hats, so they only look hot if you think Cartman is the last word in raw sex appeal.
Slashdot Mirror
It says nothing about what FreeBSD branched from, but what Darwin branched from (Apple have no control over, or influence on, FreeBSD). The Apple document you cite is a piece of marketing bumph that does not say which parts of Tiger are derived from BSD 5, so it could be just a couple of userland utilities, or a much larger portion -- there's no way of knowing. This technical document on the other hand _specifically_ claims that the kernel is derived from 4.4, and other technical documents say the same about the networking stack and various other bits of core OS X technologies, so unless Apple have neglected to update their documentation for Tiger (doubtful when one considers that other parts have already been updated for Leopard, which isn't out yet), then it would indeed seem to deny your claim.
NB: most Slashdotters give more weight to technical documentation written by the people who are doing the actual programming than advertising material put together by marketers who know little if anything about the technology they're trying to sell.
"Also, I thought earlier versions of OS X, at some point prior to X.4, they still had a microkernel."
It never had a microkernel. The confusion about the OS X kernel comes from that fact that it incorporates elements from Mach 3, which was a microkernel. Apple did not however ever use it as a true microkernel AFAIK, but linked in a whole bunch of other stuff which operates in the same address space, thereby ending up with a sort of hybrid that combines various aspects of both microkernels and monolithic kernels.
"Having used both, I know OS X is not the same as FreeBSD, I much prefer the FreeBSD system to be honest, but that's just my not-so-humble oppinion."
FreeBSD does have some advantages, but IMO Apple are to be lauded for putting an OS with sound UNIX underpinnings onto millions of desktops in a fairly short period of time.
"What part of FreeBSD did Apple use I wonder? "
This list of kernel differences is lifted from Apple's own developer docs:
"Although the BSD portion of Mac OS X is primarily derived from FreeBSD, some changes have been made:
-The sbrk() system call for memory management is deprecated. Its use is not recommended in Mac OS X.
-The Mac OS X runtime model uses a different object file format for executables and shared objects, and a different mechanism for executing some of those executables.
-The primary native format is Mach-O. This format is supported by the dynamic link editor (dyld).
The PEF binary file format is supported by the Code Fragment Manager (CFM).
The kernel supports execve() with Mach-O binaries. Mapping and management of Mach-O dynamic shared libraries, as well as launching of PEF-based applications, are performed by user-space code.
- Mac OS X does not support memory-mapped devices through the mmap() function. (Graphic device support and other subsystems provide similar functionality, but using different APIs.) In Mac OS X, this interface should be done through user clients. See the Apple I/O Kit documents for additional information.
- The swapon() call is not supported; macx_swapon() is the equivalent call from the Mach pager.
- The Unified Buffer Cache implementation in Mac OS X differs from that found in FreeBSD.
- Mach provides a number of IPC primitives that are not traditionally found in UNIX. See "Boundary Crossings" for more information on Mach IPC. Some System V primitives are supported, but - their use is discouraged in favor of POSIX equivalents.
- Several changes have been made to the BSD security model to support single-user and multiple-administrator configurations, including the ability to disable ownership and permissions on a volume-by-volume basis.
- The locking mechanism used throughout the kernel differs substantially from the mechanism used in FreeBSD.
- The kernel extension mechanism used by Mac OS X is completely different. The Mac OS X driver layer, the I/O Kit, is an object-oriented driver stack written in C++. The general kernel programming interfaces, or KPIs, are used to write non-driver kernel extensions. These mechanisms are described more in "I/O Kit Overview" and KPI Reference, respectively.
In addition, several new features have been added that are specific to the Mac OS X (Darwin) implementation of BSD. These features are not found in FreeBSD.
- enhancements to file-system buffer cache and file I/O clustering
- adaptive and speculative read ahead
- user-process controlled read ahead
- time aging of the file-system buffer cache
- enhancements to file-system support
- implementation of Apple extensions for ISO-9660 file systems
- multithreaded asynchronous I/O for NFS
- addition of system calls to support semantics of Mac OS Extended (HFS+) file systems
- additions to naming conventions for pathnames, as required for accessing multiple forks in Mac OS Extended file systems
"I thought userland was still pretty generic across BSD with only minor changes"
The main change that has any impact is the use of MACH-
"AI has by far the largest hype-to-actual-results ratio of any computer science field."
I am aware of this, but It does not change the fact that the GP's claim about computers not being _meant_ to think is arguable. That there is still ongoing research into AI and its related fields proves that the goal of making computers behave more intelligently is a highly desirable one despite decades of failure, and some areas such as speech recognition and associated natural language processing capabilities are receiving significant levels of funding from major corporations such as Microsoft, IBM, and Google. One could thus argue that a major goal of computer science since the 1950s has been to build an intelligent machine, and the fact that one hasn't emerged yet is a bug, and not (as the GP claims) a feature.
This does not seem to apply to the kernel, however. Apple's kernel programmer documentation (which claims to have been updated on 2006-11-07) says:
o nceptual/KernelProgramming/index.html
"Darwin is based on proven technology from many sources. A large portion of this technology is derived from FreeBSD, a version of 4.4BSD that offers advanced networking, performance, security, and compatibility features. Other parts of the system software, such as Mach, are based on technology previously used in Apple's MkLinux project, in Mac OS X Server, and in technology acquired from NeXT. Much of the code is platform-independent. All of the core operating-system code is available in source form."
Link here:
http://developer.apple.com/documentation/Darwin/C
If this document is wrong, then Apple are to blame for that, not me.
"OS X is based off of the Mach Microkernel"
o nceptual/KernelProgramming/Mach/chapter_6_section_ 1.html#//apple_ref/doc/uid/TP30000905-CH209-TPXREF 101
"based off" isn't the same as "is", because the OS X kernel (XNU) isn't a Microkernel. This Apple document says as much:
http://developer.apple.com/documentation/Darwin/C
Here's the relevant quote:
"in Mac OS X, Mach is linked with other kernel components into a single kernel address space. This is primarily for performance; it is much faster to make a direct call between linked components than it is to send messages or do remote procedure calls (RPC) between separate tasks. This modular structure results in a more robust and extensible system than a monolithic kernel would allow, without the performance penalty of a pure microkernel.
Thus in Mac OS X, Mach is not primarily a communication hub between clients and servers. Instead, its value consists of its abstractions, its extensibility, and its flexibility."
"Additionally, I'm pretty sure MacOS came out before January 2003 When FreeBSD 5.0 was released"
It did indeed. OS X was (and is) based on FreeBSD 4.4, not 5 as the GP claims. Note though that once again, "based on" != "is", because there are a number of differences between Apples XNU kernel and the FreeBSD one.
"A computer is a tool to let you do things"
It can also be a tool that others use against you.
"it is not supposed to do thinking for you"
Strange then that artificial intelligence research is almost as old as computing itself.
"what's a URL?"
It's short for "Universal Reason for Litigation", and is something big IP owners use to obtain money from people who have very little of it.
"It's likely that Apple already pays half a dozen licensing fees for each iPod it sells"
Yes, it does -- for technology covered by patents.
"That THX logo on audio gear?"
Tells customers something that can directly translate into sales.
"that "Made for iPod" logo"
Does the same.
"But, again, it doesn't give you the legal or moral impetus to pirate OSX or steal an iPod."
Here goes the straw man, last refuge of pathetically transparent corporate shills and politicians the world over.
So tell me, O emitter of dried wheat stalk mannequins, where is the equivalence between a logo that informs users about what a device can be used for (irrespective of whether it's licensed or not), and a levy by Universal that conveys no information, provides no access to patented technologies, and according to you, should not give any other benefits to Apple or their customers?
"Thus, it's a really weak stretch to assign moral equivalence to Apple potentially paying a license to Universal, and piracy of an "entire library" of music."
Then what are they getting for that levy besides being able to say "Yippee, I just made Universal richer"?
"Since then, I have not really encountered manufacturers who are willing to replace software on an existing device."
Gear I have which has received updates: my wife's iPod mini; Korg and Novation synthesizers (common for profession electronic instruments); a set-top digital satellite box; and a Panasonic plasma TV.
He's saying "is all". Please pay attention, 007.
"WW II (fighting fascists)"
Italy was the only fascist country on the wrong side of WWII. German Naziism was centred around racial and eugenic ideas that are not part of fascism (fascists are extreme nationalists, but do not equate race with nationality, hence the fact that Mussolini married a Jew), and Japan was a monarchy. Not that any of this has any bearing on why WWII started, or what countries were involved in it:
WWII began officially when Britain declared war on Germany after they'd invaded Poland. Prior to this, everything possible had been done to appease Hitler including handing him other European countries, and would probably have continued to do so if they hadn't signed a mutual defense agreement with Poland which obligated them to act.
The US did not join WWII until the attack on Pearl Harbour. FDR believed that both Germany and Japan were potential threats to the US, and had been secretly assisting Britain and building up the US military because of it (when WWII started, the US was ranked at no. 17 militarily, having less forces and more antiquated weaponry than Greece), but was prevented from acting openly due to the popularity of the isolationist movement among US citizens.
Neither Britain or the US gave two hoots about fascism prior to their entry in the war, as is evidenced by the fact that both had quite large, legal fascist movements with a number of prominent members, and maintained diplomatic relations with Italy, Germany, Japan, and fascist Spain (where they knew Franco was executing large numbers of political opponents, and sending many others to forced labour camps because he made no attempt to hide it). It did however become a useful propaganda tool during that war, when it became synonymous with "bad guy", just like "communist" did in the US during the late 1940s (if anything demonstrates the power of propaganda, it is the fact that communists who had been good guys during WWII suddenly became bad a little after it, while "bad" fascist Franco gets a state visit from Pres. Ike because he doesn't like Stalin, and thus cannot be bad like the bad fascists such as Hitler, because bad fascist Hitler only hated Stalin enough to invade Russia and kill millions of people).
"The story I heard was that Microsoft lied to WordPerfect about its long term Windows strategy. This was supposed to have caused WordPerfect to spend its efforts developing for a version of Windows that never happened."
I doubt that there is any truth in this, because (a) MS made it clear to _everyone_ who was in the least interested that Windows 3.0 (which was the first successful one) would use an enhanced but compatible version of the APIs from Windows 1 and 2, and (b) betas of Windows 3 were available to anyone willing to sign an NDA and fax it to Microsoft for quite a while before the final product appeared. I developed on Windows 2 for a very small company, and had no problem getting info or betas -- MS even paid the international shipping for what was then a _very_ large box of 3.5" floppies.
IMO the more likely scenario is that WordPerfect corp. (like Lotus) thought Windows 3 would be as big a flop as 1, 2, and 386 were, and therefore decided it wasn't worth the considerable expense and effort of supporting (DOS programmers required extensive retraining, and little if any of the existing code base could be reused, so a Windows version of any existing product would actually be an entirely new one, often written by different people than the ones who had crafted the original). They did after all have an extensive base of users who'd invested considerable amounts of time and effort in learning to use their products, so it was logical to assume these customers would continue to prefer something that catered to what they already knew over software with a radically different UI which required a mouse (which few business PC users had shown any interest in) to use effectively.
Well, strictly speaking, both the point I was replying to and my own one together would be expected value rather than my point alone, because people will do illegal things with no measurable value to themselves or anyone else (e.g. littering, which is usually an act of thoughtlessness rather than something the litterer gains anything from) if the probability of getting caught is very low.
"If the benefit gained by a legal infraction is greater than the potential fines due to being caught, then there is a business case for any crime."
There is also a business case if the probability of being caught is extremely low, irrespective of how severe the punishment is.
"When patents were first conceived, none of that was in place and yet they saw the need to grant a limited monopoly to promote the progress of useful arts and sciences"
Patents were first conceived as a form of royal favour (clue: the US did not invent the concept) to eliminate any possibility of competition. The fact that the US constitution happens to make a different excuse for having them does not mean that said excuse is a valid one; I know Americans tend to attribute their "founding fathers" with having the same level of insight that Muslims attribute to Allah, but for everyone else, there is a big difference between somebody saying patents promote the progress of the useful arts and sciences, and this actually being the case.
"mass production was simply not possible (for the most part) then."
Mass production has existed since the Neanderthals, who used production lines to make stone tools and weapons. It became pretty common in the bronze age as a way of making large numbers of amphorae, weapons and armour to equip armies, ships, and building materials (everything from mud bricks to quarried stone items of sometimes immense size and weight), and the Romans used it to produce glass, ceramics, nails and screws, wire, chain mail, cart / wagon wheels, and a host of other consumer and military items. Various mediaeval societies mass-produced a wide variety of weapons, cloth, glass, and ceramics (not all were produced by the same societies in any particular time frame); British naval shipyards mass-produced masts and sails from the late 17th century onwards; etc., etc., etc. The flying shuttle, an important concept for full industrial production of complex weaves was _patented_ in England in 1733, more than 50 years before the American Constitution was originally drafted, and is held by many to be one of the keystones of the Industrial Revolution.
"How is running 4 VM's on one big machine more risky than running 4 real machines?"
Because the four VM sessions on a single machine can all use the same Vista license, whereas four separate machines would need one license each, so MS would risk losing the revenue from three extra licenses. This is why they say VM technology isn't mature enough for general distribution yet -- once they figure out how to charge people for every virtual session, they'll say it's reached the required level of maturity, and remove the anti-VM clause from the EULA.
"I find it hilarious that people will play Madden, NBA2K and a variety of other sports games, when they can go outside pickup a basketball/football and play the game themselves"
They cannot however participate in major sporting events except as spectators. What these titles offer sports fans is therefore what for many is their ultimate fantasy, i.e. the chance to actually be an active part of things that they can normally only watch and talk about.
"Personally, during the few hours I play games, I only play FPS or fantasy titles things I CAN'T do in real life."
You could go out and take part in one of the many paintball or laser-tag games that are run in many parts of most countries (some even include real tanks), which offer a combination of combat and real-time strategy. Or if ancients and mediaevals is more to your taste, there are groups such as the Society For Creative Anachronism and various other historical recreation outfits that stage battles, jousts, and various other events where you get to wear real armour, ride horses, wield large melee weapons, fire bows, etc. And whilst these aren't anything like blowing monsters to bits with a futuristic arsenal or powerful spells, the same can equally be said of playing football or basketball with some equally lame friends versus using a computer to participate in a top sporting event alongside legendary players.
I should make it clear at this point that I find sports intensely dull and boring, so I'm not in the least interested in games based around them. However, this is a matter of personal taste, just as my choice of books, movies, TV shows, and music is a matter of personal taste, and does not in any way imply that what I like is in any way "better" than somebody else's preferences.
They also tend to get thrown out of small communities that have enough trouble surviving without some loony doing stupid things. Such behaviour is by no means restricted to humans, but can be observed in other cooperative pack hunters such as wolves, wild dogs, orca, etc., none of whom will tolerate a member who flaunts the established rules (which are at least partially learned, and therefore vary from pack to pack). It was this ability to adapt their behaviour to prevailing social conditions that made wolves and their close relatives ideal companions for early humans, hence the fact that they were domesticated long (perhaps as much as 80,000 years) before any other creatures.
"The Christians got the murder out of their systems by the end of the crusades"
Well, the murdering Muslims bit was (mostly) gotten out of their systems, but they still had Jews (lots of them!), Cathars, South and Central Americans, witches, and anyone else some branch of Christianity decided it didn't like to take their frustrations out on.
"the Muslims are still taking part in their crusades"
I thought they'd already had several. There was the one that spread Islam as far as Spain during the 7th and 8th centuries; then the one they had during the 11th century that attempted to spread a stricter, more fundamentalist type of Islam; and another one which started the Ottoman Empire and removed Christian influence from Constantinople in the 15th century (I've probably missed a few).
"Ah the hypocracy of religion"
It seems that this particular brand of hypocrisy is largely an attribute of Christianity and Islam, which both inherited Judaeism's intolerance of a person following more than one religion at a time, but sadly not its "by birth except in certain exceptional circumstances" exclusivity. Most other religions have been and still are a lot more tolerant, so while (for example) people in Roman subject states had to accept and follow the Roman religion, they were quite free to have as many others as they wanted at the same time, hence the popularity of Zoroastrianism, Mithraism, the cult of Isis, and a whole bunch of others at various periods.
" the *millions* of people plaiyng WoW, and the hundreds of thousands each playing Eve Online, City of Heroes/Villains, Asheron's Call"
WOW is by far the biggest, having around 5 million subscribers, while the rest would probably have a million at best between them. But let's be generous and give them ten million users worldwide. Now look at that in context:
There were well over a hundred million Windows PCs sold last year, and estimates of worldwide PC usage seem to hover between 300 and 400 million, so let's split the difference and put it at 350 million. This means that one machine in 35 is used to host an online game, i.e. a little over 3%, and this is using a very generous figure which also ignores the fact that the biggest of them (WOW) is also available for the Mac (as is usual for Blizzard), so not all users will be running Windows.
Meanwhile, more traditional PC games have seen dramatically falling worldwide sales figures for at least a couple of years, while those for consoles have been rising, hence the fact that a growing number of previously PC-only companies are now launching titles for them.
So while gaming is _a_ factor in Windows' continuing success, geeks tend to imagine that it plays a much bigger role than is in fact the case, just as they imagine that adding Ogg-Vorbis to iPods would dramatically increase their sales, or that anybody except them gives two hoots about DRM.
"No, Apple do sell complete full version of OS X. I've got one and it doesn't require any previous installation of the OS to work."
The fact that Apple don't use Microsoft's tactics of actively preventing OEM versions from being used as upgrades, and upgrades from being used on machines without an MS OS doesn't mean they don't _sell_ OS X as an upgrade for existing Macs. Up to and including Tiger, there wasn't even any need for Apple to say it was an upgrade on the box, because all retail versions contain binaries for PPC-based Macs, and cannot therefore be used with white box hardware, so there was no need for the sort of measures (or EULAs) that MS have been using for over a decade. We will thus have to wait and see what Leopard boxes say when they finally appear, as these will be the first retail OS X versions to have binaries capable of running on non-PPC CPUs.
"each new iteration of their software all of a sudden must render their older generation software "not good enough", giving the lie to all earlier claims about previous generations of product. This is the classical Microsoft business model."
It's actually a classical monopoly business model where company's only competition is prior versions of its own products, and customers are told what they can have instead of being sold something they actually want. It tends to work excellently in the long term when one is selling consumables that provide a constant revenue stream, but can be more difficult with other things, because a monopoly is by its nature serving a largely saturated market that offers little if any opportunities for growth. This is why MS are eager to convert software into a consumable that is paid for by constant usage micro-charges instead of a bigger one-off payment, thereby eliminating all those users who see no compelling reason to upgrade Office-97 or Office-2K (there are a surprisingly large number of these).
"What does George Bush have to do with this?"
The evil Bushor and his terrifying army of illegal Mexicans have been buying up XBoxes and Wiis to ensure that Princess Sony will never again be able to possess the magical Hat Of Money. Everyone knows that, just like they know that Princess Sony would still have the money hat if the great Elven warrior Cli'int'n and his Knights Of The Stained Robe were guarding her.
"I'm kind of amussed that people who won't get off their ass to go outside and play tennis with a friend (and get to see those hot girls in short tennis skirts) will sit at home with their little Wii virtual racket and play virtual tennis with cartoon characters. At some point if you really want realism I have to wonder why you don't just go do these things for real."
Perhaps because it's late November, and for a lot of people this means that the few hot girls who set foot on a tennis court are wearing track suits with five thick sweaters underneath them and wooly hats, so they only look hot if you think Cartman is the last word in raw sex appeal.
And a wet one. It rains _really_ hard under the Atlantic.