Star Trek is from the 1960s, not the 1950s, and the computer UI in the original series consisted of a female actor's voice with the sound of a clacking teletype terminal in the background, which is hardly beyond the capabilities of current technology.
"And what happens when MS voids all user licenses, and disables all copies of windows for users in EU countries?"
They would effectively commit commercial suicide. MS software is used in a lot of government, big business, and military projects all over the world, so proving that they have a "kill switch" that can be used to cripple any number of computers at a whim would cause a rapid mass migration to something else in a very short time indeed. And if you think the US would be an exception, then consider for a moment how the NSA would react to this news, especially after the inevitable questions get asked in the press (and subsequently, Congress) about what would happen if Bin Laden's boys managed to find that mechanism, and use it to completely paralyze the entire US economy, plus a whole bunch of military systems. It's pretty likely that the government would preemptively seize the entire Windows code base and everything relating to it using wartime eminent domain laws, and that in its turn would have a domino effect on all those foreigners who'd trust Bush with said kill switch even less than MS.
"Also, what happens when the US starts seizing assests of companies based in the EU as a retaliation?"
They'd start a massive tit-for-tat trade war that would have international spill-over resulting in all US assets abroad being seized, in many cases by governments who have been waiting for any excuse to do so. China, who already own vast swathes of US debt, would then panic and try to call that debt in before the US economy totally imploded, thereby accelerating the implosion. The US has benefitted enormously from globalization, and would therefore lose far more if its foreign assets were seized than the EC would from being denied its far more limited number of US assets, so this would be a trade war the US could not win, and Bush's economic advisors would tell him that.
I thus doubt that a US which can't find Bin Laden, has been and continues to be overrun by illegal immigrants who appear to have more rights than US citizens, is hopelessly bogged down in Iraq, and hasn't got the balls to effectively deal with North Korea and Iran, would risk getting into an economic pissing contest with the entire planet just to massage Bill Gates' ego. Bush has done some pretty stupid things, but this would be a definite candidate for "Most Stupid Act By A President In The history Of The Republic".
"I can see your plan was well thought out."
Whereas yours obviously wasn't thought out at all.
"don't tell them they can't include applications which most people would consider to be basic functionality. You end up lookign like a crackpot when you do."
Perhaps that's why the EC didn't say that, although Microsoft's spin machine pretends otherwise. What the EC asked for is an _additional_ version of Windows without their media player, not its removal from all versions. MS can go on selling the same Windows packages as they do now alongside those without a media player, thereby leaving it to OEMs and consumers to decide which of the two they want.
"The problem is that Apple is likely NEVER going to open up and let third parties make Apple-compatible motherboards and processors."
Lots of people already make Apple-compatible processors and motherboards, because Apple now use the same components as everyone else. The only thing unique about today's Macs is the Apple logo, the case design, and the fact that they are permitted (not capable of, but permitted) to run MacOS, Internally, they're effectively identical to a whole bunch of other stuff out there, much of which would be quite capable of running it without even needing any special drivers. This is why Apple are trying to use DRM to tie various bits to their own hardware, because without it, most similarly specified computers would run MacOS quite happily. This was not of course the case with their pre-Intel systems, which had no need for OS-level DRM to ensure that MacOS wouldn't run on arbitrary IBM PC descendants.
NB: no criticism of Apple intended here. MacOS is theirs, and they can do whatever they like with it, including using DRM to ensure that it runs only on "authorised" machines.
Perhaps it's time for the geek community to act proactively by writing a piece of benign "malware" that does nothing more than pop up system modal dialog every ten minutes that says "ALERT! Total Fuck-up In Charge Of A Computer! ALERT!. I am a piece of malware that got on to your computer because you are a complete and utter piece of smegma who shouldn't be allowed to wipe your own backside, let alone operate a complex piece of technology. And the fact that I arrived because you clicked on an EMAIL attachment whose name had the word "tits" in it probably means you are also infected with countless other horrid little programs. These not only make your computer run nearly as badly as the shitty collection of ganglia between your ears, but also waste internet bandwidth and countless other peoples' time and money by continuously sending spam, including the spam that contains this program, which all the people in your EMAIL and instant messaging contact lists have received by now. These are also likely to be accomplished players of the pink oboe, because nobody with an IQ above that of expanded polystyrene would associate with an arsehole like you, so they will obediently click on any EMAIL attachment with the word "tits" in its name, thereby ensuring that I eventually infect lots and lots and lots of other idiots.
Oh, and by the way, I can be removed by deleting C:\fuckup-alert.exe. but you won't know how to do that, so you're stuck with me. And if by some accident of fate you have access to someone with the sort of advanced computer knowledge necessary for deleting a file, you'll probably just get infected again when one of your cretin friends sends you the same EMAIL with the same attachment that put me here in the first place. Which you will of course click on, because it has the word "tits" in it, and idiots like you never learn."
I was about to say the same thing. Furthermore, Linux doesn't receive anything like the level of driver support from manufacturers that Windows does, so a lot of drivers have to be written by the community. And while there are a fair few flakey ones, there are also a _lot_ that work pretty well, and even the not-so-good ones don't (usually) make the entire system unstable.
Apple could IMO release OS X on to the general market with support for a limited range of hardware, and a simple downloadable Windows proggy that tests the host machine for compliance, i..e exactly the same thing MS does when launching a new Windows version, when driver support is always pretty spotty because many manufacturers haven't released new ones yet. The fact that they don't is therefore a simple matter of choice: one of the first things Jobs did after taking the helm of Apple as "interim CEO" was canceling agreements that allowed Mac clone makers to license MacOS, thereby indicating that Jobs sees other hardware manufacturers as competitors, not opportunities for earning money from software licenses.
Thus, despite protestations to the contrary by the Mac faithful (who, as the old saw says, doth protest too much), the decision not to release MacOS X for an albeit limited range of beige boxes is due entirely to the same reasons they won't license their DRM system to anyone else: the current Apple leadership believes that their main profit base is hardware, period. Apple are after all a corporation with a fiduciary duty to maximise shareholder value, not a magic bunny land filled with gamboling Jobkins who add a big old bucketful of love to every box.
"He's worried that the proprietary database formats will become corrupted and that he'll lose that information. And he's worried that the formats that the files are saved in aren't open enough and thus can't be migrated to a more useful modern format twenty or fifty years down the road. Apple doesn't provide him with enough assurance of future-proof-ness."
I presume you're referring to Mail.app here, as neither iTunes nor iPhoto store their contents in proprietary database formats. And quite honestly, I cannot for the life of me see that not liking the way a bundled EMAIL app has evolved as being a justification for ditching an entire system.
"Beyond that, as a programmer, when you create a program that is designed to run on a single platform, especially one that's proprietary, that's kind of like building your life's work on a quicksand foundation."
Then don't write software that requires a specific platform. Nothing forced Mark or anyone else to write for Macs just because they were developing on them, just as developing _on_ Windows doesn't mean one is automatically coerced into developing _for_ Windows. Conversely, developing on Linux doesn't automatically turn everything into magic platform-neutral wonder-code, hence those cussed projects that have dependencies on things that haven't been updated since 1998, and do not therefore work with the libraries of any distro less than five years old.
"databases like Apple's are a real pain to restore when you have the files intact but not the metadata, because the files and metadata typically are out-of-sync after the restore unless you use the app infrequently. I don't know how well Apple's apps deal with that situation, but I'd be willing to bet it's not a fun recovery from backups by any means."
Any database will be a pain to restore even if you do have the metadata twenty years down the line, irrespective of whether it's closed source or open source. Take for example the stupid Mork format that Thunderbird uses to store contact lists, which I'm willing to bet that nothing will be able to read in a decade, let alone several of them, because it will be one of those awful memories that we automatically suppress because remembering is too painful. Ah, you say, but we have the source code! And indeed we do, tens of thousands of lines of it, just to handle Mork files. And as we all know, those tens of thousands of lines will compile happily with the compilers of twenty years in the future, which will of course have all the same libraries. This will be the case because, as everyone knows, we can just grab thousands of lines of code from 20 years ago and compile it for any and all of today's systems without any problems whatsoever!
"I think suggesting someone's reasons are poor because they didn't seem to consider the same things issues fifteen years ago is stretching it somewhat."
Except that I didn't suggest any such thing. My point was that Apple are behaving in every way like the extremely proprietary company that they've always been, but these so-called "Alpha Geeks" are now using that established and extremely well-documented pattern as a reason to dislike them. If it's a reason to dislike them now, then it was equally a reason to dislike them last year, five years ago, a decade ago, twenty years ago, or at any other point since the Mac first appeared (and perhaps even before), because _nothing has changed_. And conversely, advocates who excused their behaviour last year, five years ago, etc., can equally well excuse it today, because it is the same behaviour, so the same excuses can be used to justify it.
"Apple has moments of positiveness and moments of negativity"
The same can be said of anyone, person or corporation.
"Frequently, it's easy to miss instances of the latter"
Only if one is living in self-imposed denial. I've been involved with computers at least as long as Mark, Corey, etc., and have been very aware indeed of Apple's shenannigans, just like I was aware of the nasty things IBM did, and Atari, and Computer Associates, and Lotus, etc., etc., etc.
"Right now, they're suing bloggers"
The only new thing about this is that it concerns bloggers, who are a relatively new phenomenon. Apple have always been one of the most litigious (if not _the_ most litigious) computer-related companies. They've sued people for crafting GUIs, sued people for putting computers in coloured boxes, and sued people for publishing _anything_ Apple don't want published. Again, a long-established pattern of behaviour that only those living in denial could have failed to notice.
"refusing to release source for a project they've touted for years as their open source jewel in the crown"
Which is suddenly troublesome despite the fact that nobody had any problems with the fact that there are massive portions of MacOS X that are not, and never have been, open source. And to be honest, the fact that Apple selected a core which is under a BSD license rather than (for example) the GPL should have served as a warning that they were under no obligation whatsoever to put any of Darwin's source code out there, and the fact that they did at one point was no guarantee that they would continue to in the future. Windows XP for example contains code from the BSD network stack, but Microsoft don't publish the source code for their modified versions, and are not required to.
"and their software is over-proprietary as usual"
The "as usual" bit says it all. It's simply the same well-established, long-term Apple behaviour that these same Mac fanatics have been defending and justifying for years.
"Anyone who's spent 20-25 years using proprietary software with an emotional, rather than logical, attachment to their primary supplier is, at some point, going to realise that they're being screwed over, repeatedly."
Anyone stupid enough to get emotionally attached to a corporation _deserves_ to get screwed over repeatedly. A corporation is an entity whose entire reason for existence is increasing its value to investors, and like every other corporation, Apple and its CEO are legally bound to do everything in their power to maximise that value. The fault does not therefore lie with Apple, but with those who were silly enough to believe that it was somehow different from all the other corporations out there, and therefore became emotionally attached to what is by its nature an entirely sociopathic organism.
"since 1997, most Apple fans expected "the perfect system" to be just around the corner, that with the Steve in charge, making changes, the real problems users had with Apple's products would be fixed with new, better, products."
And Steve did indeed launch new, and (in some cases) b
If that was what Mark intended to write, then why didn't he do so instead of trying to make out that he was forced into the position by Apple's behaviour, when said behaviour isn't any worse (and in some ways is better) than was the case when he was still telling everyone they were the bee's knees? I don't see this article as an advocacy piece for Linux from a Mac user who has switched because Ubuntu is as good as or better than OS X -- instead, it reads like a missive from a jilted lover who is justifying an affair with an uglier one by listing all the things that were wrong with the the other.
NB: I am not for one moment asserting the Ubuntu (or any other distro) is in any way inferior to MacOS X. My point is merely that Mark's article (to me) reads like _he_ doesn't think Ubuntu is as good as OS X, and is only using it because, after publicly burning his bridges with Apple, the only other realistic alternative would be Windows, which has all the same things he's been criticising Apple for, plus a whole slew of other issues.
I remember installing Slackware on a then current 80486 box some time in 1994. It was a salutary experience, and I was surprised to find that X had a driver for a my Weitek P9000 accelerator, which was quite a high-end item at that time (it worked well, too). I've had a love for Linux since that time, although nothing has ever equalled the buzz of installing that early Slackware distro, and ending up with something that looked and felt like a UNIX workstation which was mine to do whatever I wanted with.
It's also interesting that the Mark Pilgrim blog article linked to from the main one can be summarized thus:
I don't like Apple anymore because:
1) There are some open source apps that I like better than the ones that come with OS X. I am going to mention how great they are without noting that Apple also think they're great enough to list them on their web-site together with links via which they may be downloaded.
2) I have been writing open source apps for Macs since 1993, when MacOS was entirely proprietary and closed source. They are much more open now, so I am abandoning them because they aren't open enough.
3) After over 20 years advocating Macs, I have discovered that Apple are more expensive than some other PC manufacturers, especially as they refuse to give me an IBM employee discount. Of course, they used to be massively more expensive rather than merely a bit more expensive, but I supported them then even though it sometimes meant paying thousands of dollars more instead of a couple of hundred.
4) Having bought a laptop from Lenovo, I am pissed off to discover that nasty old Apple won't let me run MacOS X on it. Of course, I've been happily supporting Apple since 1983, despite the fact that they did everything possible to stop people from running MacOS on Atari STs and Amigas which had compatible hardware but lacked Apple ROMs, sued anyone that dared to attach a mouse to something vaguely graphical, and generally behaved like arseholes. I used to justify it on the grounds that Apple weren't obliged to support people whose computers weren't made by them; this time however it's me that's affected, so I'm going to condemn Apple for it.
5) I don't like iTunes and iPhoto, and have said so for years (well, one and-a-bit years actually, but longer in reality, as my wife will tell you if you could ask her, which you can't). My main reasons for this are that they lost some of my settings, but not my songs or photos. Of course, I completely neglected to make any backups because alpha geeks don't do that sort of crap, but now put all my photos in other directories _on the same machine_ as well, despite the fact that iPhoto didn't lose any photos, only some metadata that my cleverly constructed directory system also completely lacks. These directories are organized by date because despite my alpha-geek status and all the amazing software I've written, I cannot write a small program to read the date information in each photo's EXIF header and automatically display them in that order despite the fact that there are libraries in a variety of languages that do most of the work for me.
Meanwhile, the Doctorow blog in the link says he's _going to switch_, but so far has only ordered a machine (again from Lenovo!). He has not yet actually tried installing or using Ubuntu, but intends to do so on his Lenovo, apparently because Mark Pilgrim's done it on _his_ Lenovo.
So the sequence goes thus: Mark Pilgrim gets pissed off at Apple for behaving just like they always have during the many years that he defended and justified their actions. He buys a Lenovo, and after discovering that he can't run MacOS X on it, decides to use Ubuntu instead. Cory Doctorow reads Mark's blog, and buys a Lenovo because that's what Mark has. He already knows he can't use OS X on it because Mark's told him, and therefore decides to use Ubuntu because that's what Mark is using. He's never actually tried it out for himself, and has no idea if there are any better distros out there for his purposes -- Ubuntu is for him because Ubuntu is what Mark's using, and Mark is so clever that he never needs to back stuff up at all.
If these are what pass for influential Alpha geeks in the Mac world, then their versions of Gamma and Phi geeks must have trouble pulling their knuckles of the floor to wipe away the drool that constantly run down their chests.
Open standards and open formats are not the same. OpenDoc or XML are open standards, while the Mork file format used by many Mozilla projects is an open format that nobody else uses because it's both poorly documented and extremely badly designed in just about every imaginable way. Google for "Mork file format" (without the quotes), and you'll see that this is not a case of me having some sort of axe to grind -- indeed, what I've written is downright charitable compared with most other opinions out there.
It couldn't have been demolition charges, because anybody who watches TV or moves knows that demolition charges are black boxes with digital read-outs that bleep every second until they explode. Somebody would have been pretty sure to have noticed a bunch of those and mentioned it, especially when the beeps started to get really loud just prior to detonation.
Ah, but you're forgetting that they have _computers_ to help them sift all that information. These aren't the sort of silly so-called computers that _we_ get to see, but the kind on TV shows and movies that can effortlessly enhance a blurry low-res piece of video into pristine 72mm quality and then tell you the make of bullets each perp has is his gun in real-time, take over a ring of secret US or Russian death satellites and use them to threaten the free world, or craft a virus that can cripple the computers controlling an entire alien invasion fleet. And remember, this is just the stuff that the TV and movie industry was allowed to show, not what the government and law enforcement actually has, which is obviously even more awesome.
SCO thought they'd get away with shaking IBM down using similar tactics. The large and obvious hole in this theory is that company execs know giving in to one troll results in hundreds of others appearing from under their bridges, and no company can pay all of them off and survive. It's better therefore to fight the first one even if you lose (assuming of course that you have the resources to do so, and Red Hat does) than be seen as a soft target by all of them.
"An OS is only obselete IF it seizes to be able to do what you want it to."
Note the topic we're dealing with, i.e. DirectX 10 not running on anything except Vista. This means that for gamers (who are the only ones affected), Windows XP will indeed be obsolete despite the fact that Microsoft will still be charging them for it with new machines.
" If you bought a machine from a vendor with an old OS that doesn't do what you want after the new OS has come out, then thats on your head - dont't buy, go to someone else"
I said nothing about machines bought _after_ Vista ships. My post was entirely concerned with those bought a few days or weeks _before_ it ships, so most of the rest of what you have written is irrelevant. Perhaps you should read what people actually write before answering.
"MS isn't abandoning XP anytime soon - heck it still supports older version for years after."
What is the topic again ? Oh yes, it's all about DirectX 10 not being available for Windows-XP! Thus, in the context of this discussion, Windows XP has already been abandoned, because there will not be any new versions of DirectX for it, and based on Microsoft's past behaviour, precious few if any bug fixes for the existing version.
You seem to be forgetting the fact that new computers are still shipping with XP, and will continue to do so until Vista comes out (whenever that is). If it launches on the projected date (yes, I know this is unlikely), this will mean that a lot of machines bought over the XMas 2006 season will have an OS that MS will start treating as obsolete a month later. IMO the way they handle this could affect how a _lot_ of customers relate to them in the future: if for example they offer free upgrades for all PCs bought within 90 days of the product launch, and a heavily discounted one to six month-old installations, most people will be reasonably happy; trying to milk such users for a full upgrade would however piss many of them off.
"the original theory was that MS wouldn't sell products in Europe, not use them. Besides, just because a European business can't go down the street to pick up a copy of XP doesn't mean they can't get it - this is the Internet, dude."
Companies don't "go down the street to pick up a copy of XP" -- they volume license from MS directly, and receive extensive corporate support packages as part of the deal. All of this would cease, as would most of the patches thanks to the "Genuine Advantage" system that would eventually label all European installations as illegal.
"The cost of researching alternatives that work for your business, tearing down existing infrastructure, replacing it with new infrastructure, and testing it extensively until it works is exponentially exorbitant the larger your company is."
Indeed. And the EC will spin this as "a move that will stimulate the domestic European IT industry, thereby generating hundreds of thousands of new jobs". Not of course that they have to spin it, because they aren't a democratic institution; they've done wildly unpopular things in the past, and will do them in the future, because most of the institutions that matter aren't answerable to the public.
"The cost of doing business would go up, but if the cause was MS pulling out of Europe as a direct result of the EU imposing a fine, who are they really going to resent?"
The EC has consistently shown that public opinion plays no part whatsoever in its decision-making process. It is in most respects a Nietzsche super-state where a thin patina of democracy exists solely to give people the illusion of actually having some say about what happens, but things are actually run by professional functionaries who are not subject to the whims of the pseudo-democratic layer. A few years of turmoil for IT-dependent companies won't make these people hesitate for a microsecond -- indeed, the more wailing and gnashing of teeth that arises from such a prospect, the more likely it is that the commission will act precipitately (spin) "to prevent further dependency on a foreign company that obviously wants the benefits of trading within the EC without being subject to the same laws that everyone else has to obey".
Spanish VAT is 16%, which is lower than that of the UK (17.5%), France (19.6%), or Belgium (21%) -- only Luxembourg has a lower rate (15%), and all other EU countries are higher. When you add shipping charges and the fact that many EU countries apply similar blank media levies, the domestic product is still probably going to be cheaper than importing.
They initially opposed it with everything they had, resulting in a levy on blank cassettes which is still there in some countries today. Then they caught on to the idea that they could sell tapes so people could play them in cars, and cassettes were suddenly a spiffo wonder product. Oppose cassettes? Us? No, we weren't the ones behind that "home taping is killing music" campaign, which never actually happened anyway, because we always thought tapes were a great idea, and the blank media levy is a tax which we fully oppose, and do not benefit from in any way. At all. Not even a bit. It's all the government's fault, who keep all the money for themselves, and give none of it to us, at all, ever. So there.
"Music industry promoted the CD"
While it was a read-only format. When that changed, they squalled blue murder and (you guessed it) got levies placed on blank media. Nowadays of course, most of them aren't even pretending that their offerings conform to the Audio CD standard, because home taping, err, internet piracy is killing music, so we in the industry would be perfectly justified if we had to do something like put a root-kit on your computer. Not that I'm saying we have, you understand, merely that we'd be perfectly justified in doing so, if the situation demanded it. Which may or may not be the case, at some time, not now, or in the past, or necessarily in the future. Unless it is, or was, or will be, found necessary to do so.
"Video/Movie industry promoted VHS/Beta"
Again, this only happened quite a while after they squalled, kicked, and tried to use courts to get the machines banned, and (fanfare on massed Eb high trumpets) got levies placed on blank media. Because, as we all know, home taping is killing movies, so there has to be some way of compensating media companies for all that money they undoubtedly have a right to, but aren't getting. Of course, this is only a weapon of last resort, and the media companies don't in any way or form support the use of taxation in this way, hence the fact that this is the first time they've used it. Ever. No, really it is. Those other blank media levies that look a lot like this one are different because they were forced on reluctant media companies by governments. As in fact was the case with this one, which they opposed with all their strength, but were forced into by authoritarian government bastards who said "I don't care what you say, you will take this money and keep it, or suffer the consequences". And nobody wants to do that, do they? I mean, would you want to suffer consequences? Well, they wouldn't either.
"Video/Movie industry promoted DVD"
While it was a read-only format. Not so keen on it nowadays though, are they? And note the way they once again used the courts to try and get their way when a kid broke CSS, and (massed choirs, harps, and crescendoing strings) got levies placed on blank media for the first time. Ever. Never before in the long pageant of human history have levies been placed on blank media, but now they have. Not of course due to any desire for them from the media industries, who, as they have repeatedly stated, completely oppose taxes being used for this purpose, but they don't want to suffer the consequences of refusing a government-mandated levy. If you think not receiving money from levies is some sort of picnic, then try running across the White House lawn in a turban and a thick coat with a Playstation remote in one hand and the wire going up your sleeve, shouting "Death to Bush and all American scum" in a phony Arab accent. Not so much of a picnic, is it?
I agree that Macs aren't generally used by engineers, but they have been extremely popular with scientists in labs for many years. Don't ask me why, because I don't know!
"Actually, your explanation is a special case of the parent theory. After all,"Gene Fairy" is just one of the 2 million names of God."
My post did not either imply or state that the Gene Fairy is a god. Not all magical explanations for observed phenomena require gods, merely an animistic universe where every occurrence is a manifestation of someone or something's conscious intervention. Many mythologies refer to a wide variety of powerful supernatural beings who can influence the world in profound ways, but are not gods, e.g. elementals, sprites, demons, spirits, faeries, Chinese dragons, etc., etc.
"The Gene Fairy's Loom theory could conceivably be falsified by finding evidence of DNA that couldn't be produced by a "loom" sort of mechanism,"
It cannot, because this is a magic celestial loom, and it cannot therefore be compared in any way with human looms, which weave threads, not organic molecules. Note also that this loom weaves the basics of life itself, not merely DNA, which is not present in all life forms. And of course, because it is magic, I can merely move the goal posts every time you come close to falsifying it.
Does it ever occur to you that living things share genetic code because the Gene Fairy weaves them on a celestial loom which is only capable of certain variations on a base pattern?
Now show that my explanation is less likely than yours.
"Seems to me that a lot of people get hung up confusing what Evolution describes (how life changes over time) with how life originated. Those are two very different questions."
Because the Creationists do everything in their power to ensure people confuse the two. This is why they try to hide the fact that abiogenesis is not only completely irrelevant to the theory of evolution, but also far from being the sole theory for the origin of life on Earth. Panspermia for example has a number of notable proponents whose ideas are becoming reinforced as astronomers discover increasing numbers of of extra-planetary organic molecules that often exist in vast quantities.
Slashdot Mirror
Star Trek is from the 1960s, not the 1950s, and the computer UI in the original series consisted of a female actor's voice with the sound of a clacking teletype terminal in the background, which is hardly beyond the capabilities of current technology.
"And what happens when MS voids all user licenses, and disables all copies of windows for users in EU countries?"
They would effectively commit commercial suicide. MS software is used in a lot of government, big business, and military projects all over the world, so proving that they have a "kill switch" that can be used to cripple any number of computers at a whim would cause a rapid mass migration to something else in a very short time indeed. And if you think the US would be an exception, then consider for a moment how the NSA would react to this news, especially after the inevitable questions get asked in the press (and subsequently, Congress) about what would happen if Bin Laden's boys managed to find that mechanism, and use it to completely paralyze the entire US economy, plus a whole bunch of military systems. It's pretty likely that the government would preemptively seize the entire Windows code base and everything relating to it using wartime eminent domain laws, and that in its turn would have a domino effect on all those foreigners who'd trust Bush with said kill switch even less than MS.
"Also, what happens when the US starts seizing assests of companies based in the EU as a retaliation?"
They'd start a massive tit-for-tat trade war that would have international spill-over resulting in all US assets abroad being seized, in many cases by governments who have been waiting for any excuse to do so. China, who already own vast swathes of US debt, would then panic and try to call that debt in before the US economy totally imploded, thereby accelerating the implosion. The US has benefitted enormously from globalization, and would therefore lose far more if its foreign assets were seized than the EC would from being denied its far more limited number of US assets, so this would be a trade war the US could not win, and Bush's economic advisors would tell him that.
I thus doubt that a US which can't find Bin Laden, has been and continues to be overrun by illegal immigrants who appear to have more rights than US citizens, is hopelessly bogged down in Iraq, and hasn't got the balls to effectively deal with North Korea and Iran, would risk getting into an economic pissing contest with the entire planet just to massage Bill Gates' ego. Bush has done some pretty stupid things, but this would be a definite candidate for "Most Stupid Act By A President In The history Of The Republic".
"I can see your plan was well thought out."
Whereas yours obviously wasn't thought out at all.
"don't tell them they can't include applications which most people would consider to be basic functionality. You end up lookign like a crackpot when you do."
Perhaps that's why the EC didn't say that, although Microsoft's spin machine pretends otherwise. What the EC asked for is an _additional_ version of Windows without their media player, not its removal from all versions. MS can go on selling the same Windows packages as they do now alongside those without a media player, thereby leaving it to OEMs and consumers to decide which of the two they want.
"The problem is that Apple is likely NEVER going to open up and let third parties make Apple-compatible motherboards and processors."
Lots of people already make Apple-compatible processors and motherboards, because Apple now use the same components as everyone else. The only thing unique about today's Macs is the Apple logo, the case design, and the fact that they are permitted (not capable of, but permitted) to run MacOS, Internally, they're effectively identical to a whole bunch of other stuff out there, much of which would be quite capable of running it without even needing any special drivers. This is why Apple are trying to use DRM to tie various bits to their own hardware, because without it, most similarly specified computers would run MacOS quite happily. This was not of course the case with their pre-Intel systems, which had no need for OS-level DRM to ensure that MacOS wouldn't run on arbitrary IBM PC descendants.
NB: no criticism of Apple intended here. MacOS is theirs, and they can do whatever they like with it, including using DRM to ensure that it runs only on "authorised" machines.
Perhaps it's time for the geek community to act proactively by writing a piece of benign "malware" that does nothing more than pop up system modal dialog every ten minutes that says "ALERT! Total Fuck-up In Charge Of A Computer! ALERT!. I am a piece of malware that got on to your computer because you are a complete and utter piece of smegma who shouldn't be allowed to wipe your own backside, let alone operate a complex piece of technology. And the fact that I arrived because you clicked on an EMAIL attachment whose name had the word "tits" in it probably means you are also infected with countless other horrid little programs. These not only make your computer run nearly as badly as the shitty collection of ganglia between your ears, but also waste internet bandwidth and countless other peoples' time and money by continuously sending spam, including the spam that contains this program, which all the people in your EMAIL and instant messaging contact lists have received by now. These are also likely to be accomplished players of the pink oboe, because nobody with an IQ above that of expanded polystyrene would associate with an arsehole like you, so they will obediently click on any EMAIL attachment with the word "tits" in its name, thereby ensuring that I eventually infect lots and lots and lots of other idiots.
Oh, and by the way, I can be removed by deleting C:\fuckup-alert.exe. but you won't know how to do that, so you're stuck with me. And if by some accident of fate you have access to someone with the sort of advanced computer knowledge necessary for deleting a file, you'll probably just get infected again when one of your cretin friends sends you the same EMAIL with the same attachment that put me here in the first place. Which you will of course click on, because it has the word "tits" in it, and idiots like you never learn."
I was about to say the same thing. Furthermore, Linux doesn't receive anything like the level of driver support from manufacturers that Windows does, so a lot of drivers have to be written by the community. And while there are a fair few flakey ones, there are also a _lot_ that work pretty well, and even the not-so-good ones don't (usually) make the entire system unstable.
Apple could IMO release OS X on to the general market with support for a limited range of hardware, and a simple downloadable Windows proggy that tests the host machine for compliance, i..e exactly the same thing MS does when launching a new Windows version, when driver support is always pretty spotty because many manufacturers haven't released new ones yet. The fact that they don't is therefore a simple matter of choice: one of the first things Jobs did after taking the helm of Apple as "interim CEO" was canceling agreements that allowed Mac clone makers to license MacOS, thereby indicating that Jobs sees other hardware manufacturers as competitors, not opportunities for earning money from software licenses.
Thus, despite protestations to the contrary by the Mac faithful (who, as the old saw says, doth protest too much), the decision not to release MacOS X for an albeit limited range of beige boxes is due entirely to the same reasons they won't license their DRM system to anyone else: the current Apple leadership believes that their main profit base is hardware, period. Apple are after all a corporation with a fiduciary duty to maximise shareholder value, not a magic bunny land filled with gamboling Jobkins who add a big old bucketful of love to every box.
"He's worried that the proprietary database formats will become corrupted and that he'll lose that information. And he's worried that the formats that the files are saved in aren't open enough and thus can't be migrated to a more useful modern format twenty or fifty years down the road. Apple doesn't provide him with enough assurance of future-proof-ness."
I presume you're referring to Mail.app here, as neither iTunes nor iPhoto store their contents in proprietary database formats. And quite honestly, I cannot for the life of me see that not liking the way a bundled EMAIL app has evolved as being a justification for ditching an entire system.
"Beyond that, as a programmer, when you create a program that is designed to run on a single platform, especially one that's proprietary, that's kind of like building your life's work on a quicksand foundation."
Then don't write software that requires a specific platform. Nothing forced Mark or anyone else to write for Macs just because they were developing on them, just as developing _on_ Windows doesn't mean one is automatically coerced into developing _for_ Windows. Conversely, developing on Linux doesn't automatically turn everything into magic platform-neutral wonder-code, hence those cussed projects that have dependencies on things that haven't been updated since 1998, and do not therefore work with the libraries of any distro less than five years old.
"databases like Apple's are a real pain to restore when you have the files intact but not the metadata, because the files and metadata typically are out-of-sync after the restore unless you use the app infrequently. I don't know how well Apple's apps deal with that situation, but I'd be willing to bet it's not a fun recovery from backups by any means."
Any database will be a pain to restore even if you do have the metadata twenty years down the line, irrespective of whether it's closed source or open source. Take for example the stupid Mork format that Thunderbird uses to store contact lists, which I'm willing to bet that nothing will be able to read in a decade, let alone several of them, because it will be one of those awful memories that we automatically suppress because remembering is too painful. Ah, you say, but we have the source code! And indeed we do, tens of thousands of lines of it, just to handle Mork files. And as we all know, those tens of thousands of lines will compile happily with the compilers of twenty years in the future, which will of course have all the same libraries. This will be the case because, as everyone knows, we can just grab thousands of lines of code from 20 years ago and compile it for any and all of today's systems without any problems whatsoever!
"I think suggesting someone's reasons are poor because they didn't seem to consider the same things issues fifteen years ago is stretching it somewhat."
Except that I didn't suggest any such thing. My point was that Apple are behaving in every way like the extremely proprietary company that they've always been, but these so-called "Alpha Geeks" are now using that established and extremely well-documented pattern as a reason to dislike them. If it's a reason to dislike them now, then it was equally a reason to dislike them last year, five years ago, a decade ago, twenty years ago, or at any other point since the Mac first appeared (and perhaps even before), because _nothing has changed_. And conversely, advocates who excused their behaviour last year, five years ago, etc., can equally well excuse it today, because it is the same behaviour, so the same excuses can be used to justify it.
"Apple has moments of positiveness and moments of negativity"
The same can be said of anyone, person or corporation.
"Frequently, it's easy to miss instances of the latter"
Only if one is living in self-imposed denial. I've been involved with computers at least as long as Mark, Corey, etc., and have been very aware indeed of Apple's shenannigans, just like I was aware of the nasty things IBM did, and Atari, and Computer Associates, and Lotus, etc., etc., etc.
"Right now, they're suing bloggers"
The only new thing about this is that it concerns bloggers, who are a relatively new phenomenon. Apple have always been one of the most litigious (if not _the_ most litigious) computer-related companies. They've sued people for crafting GUIs, sued people for putting computers in coloured boxes, and sued people for publishing _anything_ Apple don't want published. Again, a long-established pattern of behaviour that only those living in denial could have failed to notice.
"refusing to release source for a project they've touted for years as their open source jewel in the crown"
Which is suddenly troublesome despite the fact that nobody had any problems with the fact that there are massive portions of MacOS X that are not, and never have been, open source. And to be honest, the fact that Apple selected a core which is under a BSD license rather than (for example) the GPL should have served as a warning that they were under no obligation whatsoever to put any of Darwin's source code out there, and the fact that they did at one point was no guarantee that they would continue to in the future. Windows XP for example contains code from the BSD network stack, but Microsoft don't publish the source code for their modified versions, and are not required to.
"and their software is over-proprietary as usual"
The "as usual" bit says it all. It's simply the same well-established, long-term Apple behaviour that these same Mac fanatics have been defending and justifying for years.
"Anyone who's spent 20-25 years using proprietary software with an emotional, rather than logical, attachment to their primary supplier is, at some point, going to realise that they're being screwed over, repeatedly."
Anyone stupid enough to get emotionally attached to a corporation _deserves_ to get screwed over repeatedly. A corporation is an entity whose entire reason for existence is increasing its value to investors, and like every other corporation, Apple and its CEO are legally bound to do everything in their power to maximise that value. The fault does not therefore lie with Apple, but with those who were silly enough to believe that it was somehow different from all the other corporations out there, and therefore became emotionally attached to what is by its nature an entirely sociopathic organism.
"since 1997, most Apple fans expected "the perfect system" to be just around the corner, that with the Steve in charge, making changes, the real problems users had with Apple's products would be fixed with new, better, products."
And Steve did indeed launch new, and (in some cases) b
If that was what Mark intended to write, then why didn't he do so instead of trying to make out that he was forced into the position by Apple's behaviour, when said behaviour isn't any worse (and in some ways is better) than was the case when he was still telling everyone they were the bee's knees? I don't see this article as an advocacy piece for Linux from a Mac user who has switched because Ubuntu is as good as or better than OS X -- instead, it reads like a missive from a jilted lover who is justifying an affair with an uglier one by listing all the things that were wrong with the the other.
NB: I am not for one moment asserting the Ubuntu (or any other distro) is in any way inferior to MacOS X. My point is merely that Mark's article (to me) reads like _he_ doesn't think Ubuntu is as good as OS X, and is only using it because, after publicly burning his bridges with Apple, the only other realistic alternative would be Windows, which has all the same things he's been criticising Apple for, plus a whole slew of other issues.
I remember installing Slackware on a then current 80486 box some time in 1994. It was a salutary experience, and I was surprised to find that X had a driver for a my Weitek P9000 accelerator, which was quite a high-end item at that time (it worked well, too). I've had a love for Linux since that time, although nothing has ever equalled the buzz of installing that early Slackware distro, and ending up with something that looked and felt like a UNIX workstation which was mine to do whatever I wanted with.
It's also interesting that the Mark Pilgrim blog article linked to from the main one can be summarized thus:
I don't like Apple anymore because:
1) There are some open source apps that I like better than the ones that come with OS X. I am going to mention how great they are without noting that Apple also think they're great enough to list them on their web-site together with links via which they may be downloaded.
2) I have been writing open source apps for Macs since 1993, when MacOS was entirely proprietary and closed source. They are much more open now, so I am abandoning them because they aren't open enough.
3) After over 20 years advocating Macs, I have discovered that Apple are more expensive than some other PC manufacturers, especially as they refuse to give me an IBM employee discount. Of course, they used to be massively more expensive rather than merely a bit more expensive, but I supported them then even though it sometimes meant paying thousands of dollars more instead of a couple of hundred.
4) Having bought a laptop from Lenovo, I am pissed off to discover that nasty old Apple won't let me run MacOS X on it. Of course, I've been happily supporting Apple since 1983, despite the fact that they did everything possible to stop people from running MacOS on Atari STs and Amigas which had compatible hardware but lacked Apple ROMs, sued anyone that dared to attach a mouse to something vaguely graphical, and generally behaved like arseholes. I used to justify it on the grounds that Apple weren't obliged to support people whose computers weren't made by them; this time however it's me that's affected, so I'm going to condemn Apple for it.
5) I don't like iTunes and iPhoto, and have said so for years (well, one and-a-bit years actually, but longer in reality, as my wife will tell you if you could ask her, which you can't). My main reasons for this are that they lost some of my settings, but not my songs or photos. Of course, I completely neglected to make any backups because alpha geeks don't do that sort of crap, but now put all my photos in other directories _on the same machine_ as well, despite the fact that iPhoto didn't lose any photos, only some metadata that my cleverly constructed directory system also completely lacks. These directories are organized by date because despite my alpha-geek status and all the amazing software I've written, I cannot write a small program to read the date information in each photo's EXIF header and automatically display them in that order despite the fact that there are libraries in a variety of languages that do most of the work for me.
Meanwhile, the Doctorow blog in the link says he's _going to switch_, but so far has only ordered a machine (again from Lenovo!). He has not yet actually tried installing or using Ubuntu, but intends to do so on his Lenovo, apparently because Mark Pilgrim's done it on _his_ Lenovo.
So the sequence goes thus: Mark Pilgrim gets pissed off at Apple for behaving just like they always have during the many years that he defended and justified their actions. He buys a Lenovo, and after discovering that he can't run MacOS X on it, decides to use Ubuntu instead. Cory Doctorow reads Mark's blog, and buys a Lenovo because that's what Mark has. He already knows he can't use OS X on it because Mark's told him, and therefore decides to use Ubuntu because that's what Mark is using. He's never actually tried it out for himself, and has no idea if there are any better distros out there for his purposes -- Ubuntu is for him because Ubuntu is what Mark's using, and Mark is so clever that he never needs to back stuff up at all.
If these are what pass for influential Alpha geeks in the Mac world, then their versions of Gamma and Phi geeks must have trouble pulling their knuckles of the floor to wipe away the drool that constantly run down their chests.
Open standards and open formats are not the same. OpenDoc or XML are open standards, while the Mork file format used by many Mozilla projects is an open format that nobody else uses because it's both poorly documented and extremely badly designed in just about every imaginable way. Google for "Mork file format" (without the quotes), and you'll see that this is not a case of me having some sort of axe to grind -- indeed, what I've written is downright charitable compared with most other opinions out there.
It couldn't have been demolition charges, because anybody who watches TV or moves knows that demolition charges are black boxes with digital read-outs that bleep every second until they explode. Somebody would have been pretty sure to have noticed a bunch of those and mentioned it, especially when the beeps started to get really loud just prior to detonation.
Ah, but you're forgetting that they have _computers_ to help them sift all that information. These aren't the sort of silly so-called computers that _we_ get to see, but the kind on TV shows and movies that can effortlessly enhance a blurry low-res piece of video into pristine 72mm quality and then tell you the make of bullets each perp has is his gun in real-time, take over a ring of secret US or Russian death satellites and use them to threaten the free world, or craft a virus that can cripple the computers controlling an entire alien invasion fleet. And remember, this is just the stuff that the TV and movie industry was allowed to show, not what the government and law enforcement actually has, which is obviously even more awesome.
SCO thought they'd get away with shaking IBM down using similar tactics. The large and obvious hole in this theory is that company execs know giving in to one troll results in hundreds of others appearing from under their bridges, and no company can pay all of them off and survive. It's better therefore to fight the first one even if you lose (assuming of course that you have the resources to do so, and Red Hat does) than be seen as a soft target by all of them.
"An OS is only obselete IF it seizes to be able to do what you want it to."
Note the topic we're dealing with, i.e. DirectX 10 not running on anything except Vista. This means that for gamers (who are the only ones affected), Windows XP will indeed be obsolete despite the fact that Microsoft will still be charging them for it with new machines.
" If you bought a machine from a vendor with an old OS that doesn't do what you want after the new OS has come out, then thats on your head - dont't buy, go to someone else"
I said nothing about machines bought _after_ Vista ships. My post was entirely concerned with those bought a few days or weeks _before_ it ships, so most of the rest of what you have written is irrelevant. Perhaps you should read what people actually write before answering.
"MS isn't abandoning XP anytime soon - heck it still supports older version for years after."
What is the topic again ? Oh yes, it's all about DirectX 10 not being available for Windows-XP! Thus, in the context of this discussion, Windows XP has already been abandoned, because there will not be any new versions of DirectX for it, and based on Microsoft's past behaviour, precious few if any bug fixes for the existing version.
You seem to be forgetting the fact that new computers are still shipping with XP, and will continue to do so until Vista comes out (whenever that is). If it launches on the projected date (yes, I know this is unlikely), this will mean that a lot of machines bought over the XMas 2006 season will have an OS that MS will start treating as obsolete a month later. IMO the way they handle this could affect how a _lot_ of customers relate to them in the future: if for example they offer free upgrades for all PCs bought within 90 days of the product launch, and a heavily discounted one to six month-old installations, most people will be reasonably happy; trying to milk such users for a full upgrade would however piss many of them off.
"the original theory was that MS wouldn't sell products in Europe, not use them. Besides, just because a European business can't go down the street to pick up a copy of XP doesn't mean they can't get it - this is the Internet, dude."
Companies don't "go down the street to pick up a copy of XP" -- they volume license from MS directly, and receive extensive corporate support packages as part of the deal. All of this would cease, as would most of the patches thanks to the "Genuine Advantage" system that would eventually label all European installations as illegal.
"The cost of researching alternatives that work for your business, tearing down existing infrastructure, replacing it with new infrastructure, and testing it extensively until it works is exponentially exorbitant the larger your company is."
Indeed. And the EC will spin this as "a move that will stimulate the domestic European IT industry, thereby generating hundreds of thousands of new jobs". Not of course that they have to spin it, because they aren't a democratic institution; they've done wildly unpopular things in the past, and will do them in the future, because most of the institutions that matter aren't answerable to the public.
"The cost of doing business would go up, but if the cause was MS pulling out of Europe as a direct result of the EU imposing a fine, who are they really going to resent?"
The EC has consistently shown that public opinion plays no part whatsoever in its decision-making process. It is in most respects a Nietzsche super-state where a thin patina of democracy exists solely to give people the illusion of actually having some say about what happens, but things are actually run by professional functionaries who are not subject to the whims of the pseudo-democratic layer. A few years of turmoil for IT-dependent companies won't make these people hesitate for a microsecond -- indeed, the more wailing and gnashing of teeth that arises from such a prospect, the more likely it is that the commission will act precipitately (spin) "to prevent further dependency on a foreign company that obviously wants the benefits of trading within the EC without being subject to the same laws that everyone else has to obey".
Spanish VAT is 16%, which is lower than that of the UK (17.5%), France (19.6%), or Belgium (21%) -- only Luxembourg has a lower rate (15%), and all other EU countries are higher. When you add shipping charges and the fact that many EU countries apply similar blank media levies, the domestic product is still probably going to be cheaper than importing.
"Music industry promoted the classic black disc"
Yes, because they love playback-only media.
"Music industry promoted the tape"
They initially opposed it with everything they had, resulting in a levy on blank cassettes which is still there in some countries today. Then they caught on to the idea that they could sell tapes so people could play them in cars, and cassettes were suddenly a spiffo wonder product. Oppose cassettes? Us? No, we weren't the ones behind that "home taping is killing music" campaign, which never actually happened anyway, because we always thought tapes were a great idea, and the blank media levy is a tax which we fully oppose, and do not benefit from in any way. At all. Not even a bit. It's all the government's fault, who keep all the money for themselves, and give none of it to us, at all, ever. So there.
"Music industry promoted the CD"
While it was a read-only format. When that changed, they squalled blue murder and (you guessed it) got levies placed on blank media. Nowadays of course, most of them aren't even pretending that their offerings conform to the Audio CD standard, because home taping, err, internet piracy is killing music, so we in the industry would be perfectly justified if we had to do something like put a root-kit on your computer. Not that I'm saying we have, you understand, merely that we'd be perfectly justified in doing so, if the situation demanded it. Which may or may not be the case, at some time, not now, or in the past, or necessarily in the future. Unless it is, or was, or will be, found necessary to do so.
"Video/Movie industry promoted VHS/Beta"
Again, this only happened quite a while after they squalled, kicked, and tried to use courts to get the machines banned, and (fanfare on massed Eb high trumpets) got levies placed on blank media. Because, as we all know, home taping is killing movies, so there has to be some way of compensating media companies for all that money they undoubtedly have a right to, but aren't getting. Of course, this is only a weapon of last resort, and the media companies don't in any way or form support the use of taxation in this way, hence the fact that this is the first time they've used it. Ever. No, really it is. Those other blank media levies that look a lot like this one are different because they were forced on reluctant media companies by governments. As in fact was the case with this one, which they opposed with all their strength, but were forced into by authoritarian government bastards who said "I don't care what you say, you will take this money and keep it, or suffer the consequences". And nobody wants to do that, do they? I mean, would you want to suffer consequences? Well, they wouldn't either.
"Video/Movie industry promoted DVD"
While it was a read-only format. Not so keen on it nowadays though, are they? And note the way they once again used the courts to try and get their way when a kid broke CSS, and (massed choirs, harps, and crescendoing strings) got levies placed on blank media for the first time. Ever. Never before in the long pageant of human history have levies been placed on blank media, but now they have. Not of course due to any desire for them from the media industries, who, as they have repeatedly stated, completely oppose taxes being used for this purpose, but they don't want to suffer the consequences of refusing a government-mandated levy. If you think not receiving money from levies is some sort of picnic, then try running across the White House lawn in a turban and a thick coat with a Playstation remote in one hand and the wire going up your sleeve, shouting "Death to Bush and all American scum" in a phony Arab accent. Not so much of a picnic, is it?
I agree that Macs aren't generally used by engineers, but they have been extremely popular with scientists in labs for many years. Don't ask me why, because I don't know!
I've seen Dell displayed prominently on on one (or more) of the CSI series', usually on large black flat-panel monitors.
"Actually, your explanation is a special case of the parent theory. After all,"Gene Fairy" is just one of the 2 million names of God."
My post did not either imply or state that the Gene Fairy is a god. Not all magical explanations for observed phenomena require gods, merely an animistic universe where every occurrence is a manifestation of someone or something's conscious intervention. Many mythologies refer to a wide variety of powerful supernatural beings who can influence the world in profound ways, but are not gods, e.g. elementals, sprites, demons, spirits, faeries, Chinese dragons, etc., etc.
"The Gene Fairy's Loom theory could conceivably be falsified by finding evidence of DNA that couldn't be produced by a "loom" sort of mechanism,"
It cannot, because this is a magic celestial loom, and it cannot therefore be compared in any way with human looms, which weave threads, not organic molecules. Note also that this loom weaves the basics of life itself, not merely DNA, which is not present in all life forms. And of course, because it is magic, I can merely move the goal posts every time you come close to falsifying it.
Does it ever occur to you that living things share genetic code because the Gene Fairy weaves them on a celestial loom which is only capable of certain variations on a base pattern?
Now show that my explanation is less likely than yours.
"Seems to me that a lot of people get hung up confusing what Evolution describes (how life changes over time) with how life originated. Those are two very different questions."
Because the Creationists do everything in their power to ensure people confuse the two. This is why they try to hide the fact that abiogenesis is not only completely irrelevant to the theory of evolution, but also far from being the sole theory for the origin of life on Earth. Panspermia for example has a number of notable proponents whose ideas are becoming reinforced as astronomers discover increasing numbers of of extra-planetary organic molecules that often exist in vast quantities.