Mark Shuttleworth recently declared that Gobuntu was not going so well as he expected because of the lack of community support and conjectured that perhaps it was better if the development team helped the gNewSense team instead.
It seems they are doing exactly that now, since the 8.04 folder of the gobuntu download page it's empty. Thanks for the info, that's very interesting.
Also, nice to see someone not afraid to admit he might have been wrong about something, and to be open to switching strategy accordingly, in this case, to support gNewSense and abandon Gobuntu.
it's difficult to think of the niche where anyone could possibly want a tur[d] like this. Sure, but I think that misses the point.
This is a first-generation product. It's not polished at all. But, if Apple doesn't sue Psystar out of existence - or, better, if Apple tries and fails - then Psystar can put together a good version later on. So, I would look at this as a proof of concept, a testing-the-waters type of thing. I would say it's succeeding in that it's generating lots of noise (both in the press and the fan...), we have to wait and see if it passes the legal test. But if so, Psystar - or some other company - can put together a very compelling product and make a small fortune.
Also worth mentioning that PyPy allows you to run Python as Javascript, inside a browser. Like all of these things, it isn't 100% mature, but pretty cool nonetheless.
First, your approach seems to be utilitarianism, not logical positivism. That is, it appears you care about the usefulness (or lack thereof) of having an answer to the question. Whereas logical positivism is related, in a way, but distinct.
Second, I feel I must point out that logical positivism has essentially been discredited. You are hard-pressed to find anyone who believes in it today, following the work around the middle of the 20th century of Wittgenstein and Quine.
The real question for me is what can be done now? Well, perhaps nothing can be done regarding OOXML. Sometimes you fight the good fight and lose, then you move on.
However, it seems to me that a lot can be done regarding specific events like this one in Norway. This should be investigated, to find out exactly who is responsible and why, and to look for implicating evidence against Microsoft.
Based on such investigations, we should protest and/or file official complaints, if relevant. Assuming TFA is accurate, then something very wrong happened in Norway, and the relevant people should be held accountable.
You can calm down with all the "?"s. Rest assured, if there is a patent, Asus has licensed it. The world won't end.
Anyhow, the most amusing part of the review was the conclusion,
We can't really recommend the Windows version of the Eee PC 900 over its Linux counterpart, primarily because you get nearly twice as much storage space in the Linux version. [...] If you really can't live without XP, then the best course of action is to buy the superior Linux version and install XP yourself. Strange times, when the Windows people are those that are going to have installation hassles...
Also, it is me or does it seem like Cnet is advocating piracy here? I mean, where do they expect you to get XP from; if you buy it yourself, it makes the Linux Eee 900 + off-the-shelf XP quite expensive. Presumably they don't mean that, so what's left...?
Major difference? Well I can't enumerate them, but I can generalize things you'll see in Fedora compared to Ubuntu
[...]
Continued work on PulseAudio
Not sure what you mean by that. Both Fedora and Ubuntu use PulseAudio these days. But of course there might be differences between them in how well they use it.
So, I just booted up the Fedora Preview to see just that, the reason being that in Ubuntu sound stutters if your CPU isn't very powerful (typically when you minimize/maximize a window or some other activity that causes a brief spike in CPU). Here is the bug, which I guess won't be fixed before release.
Sadly I was unable to test PulseAudio on the Fedora 9 Preview. First, I couldn't get my microphone to work, even after fiddling with all the little options for quite a while (note that this is a desktop - the mic hardware is very standard). So my plan failed to record something then play it back and see if it was smooth.
Next I tried to go to one of my existing partitions, to play a music file from there. Fedora wasn't able to mount them, and gave an embarrassing error message, I don't remember the exact words, but something along the lines of "Don't show these error messages".
And sadly the Fedora live cd doesn't come with any sound samples in the Music or Movies folders.
So I have no idea how well PulseAudio works in Fedora, sadly, because I was considering installing it if it did better than Ubuntu Hardy, whose stuttering sound bug is quite annoying. Looks like I'll stick with Ubuntu for now.
Taken from the open letter:
If Microsoft is willing to pay a 62%+ premium, why is this not enough for Yahoo and why are they not making a counter-offer? I am not an expert, but to me, this sounds like extremely personal business. Nah, it isn't personal. The question is, a 62%+ premium over what? The current stock price? Yahoo! leadership might believe that the stock price is not indicative of actual worth. There could be many reasons for this, including the obvious one that the stock price only reflects what the market thinks Yahoo! is worth. The market, of course, is unaware of secret skunkwork projects going on in Yahoo!, of which there are presumably many (nothing special about that, the same is true for Google and Microsoft). Perhaps one of these projects is particularly promising in the eyes of Yahoo! leadership. We've actually seen several new projects come to light in recent months from Yahoo! (not a coincidence).
In addition, much of the transaction is for Microsoft stock. It isn't the most attractive stock to own, and hasn't been for several years. Perhaps Yahoo! leadership believes an exchange of stock from Yahoo! to Microsoft isn't worth it for the stockholders. Again, this isn't a matter of simple math, it's a judgment call, that's how the stock market works.
I don't see how a script kiddy running 0day exploits on a box is in any way related to the total end point security, or security of the OS. Seems all he did was take inventory of the box -- realize flash was vulnerable and exploited it. Could've happened to any OS -- Ubuntu included -- that provides its end users with insecure software. Seems like trivial marketing fluff -- setup to spur stupid religious wars. Hmm, I disagree.
First, this wasn't some script kiddie applying a known exploit. It was a new exploit that the winning team came up with. It isn't trivial to do.
Second, no, this "could have happened to any OS" is wrong. A well-crafted browser (in this case, the browser is part of the OS) can in theory prevent browser plugins from accessing anything of importance. However I don't think any existing browsers do that - but they should.
Second, and perhaps more important, the existence of 3rd party software on different OSes isn't the same. For example, most Windows users use Adobe Acrobat to view PDFs, whereas many Linux users use FOSS PDF viewers (Evince, KPDF). It might be the case - and I am guessing that it is - that Acrobat has far more exploits against it, both because it has far more code (what with all the functionality 99% of users don't need), and that it isn't open source. In general Windows users tend to have lots of 3rd party apps that are closed source and of dubious quality. That isn't the case on Linux.
Furthermore, even if two OSes run the same app - Flash, say - that doesn't mean they are equally vulnerable. Flash isn't identical between the platforms; if I am not mistaken on Linux Flash uses Alsa for sound (or some other Linux sound system). So if Alsa is more secure than Windows' sound system, that would be one difference.
I'm not saying this competition is a great test of OS security. It isn't; it's an anecdote. But it isn't worthless either. In fact the results are pretty much what I would have expected from the beginning: OS X is a great OS but security has never been a top priority (there wasn't as much of a need for it, so why bother). Windows has focused on security recently but is hobbled by having lots of closed-source 3rd party apps. Linux was always security-focused (starting as a server OS), and has the advantage of most of its software being FOSS and arriving from a repo under the control of the distro (in this case Ubuntu).
How's the PulseAudio decision working out so far? I've run into lots of PulseAudio problems in Fedora (which enabled it by default in Fedora 8), so its a little bit surprising that Ubuntu has decided to enable PulseAudio by default. Personally, I don't think PulseAudio is yet ready for mainstream use, so I'm wondering what the justification for this decision was.
Indeed there are problems with PulseAudio, and I agree, this was a risky choice for an LTS release.
Here is one example bug: audible stuttering, pops. It appears to be primarily a PulseAudio matter, in that sound breaks up under CPU load: even alt-tab to another app like Firefox that renders at 100% CPU for a fraction of a second. However it may also be related to the new scheduler (CFS), since desktop responsiveness in Hardy seems poor compared to previous Ubuntu releases, particularly on low-end hardware. But it's a beta, so perhaps it'll be fixed.
Wait, stop right there. There's a discussion of a patent on Slashdot, and the first comment acknowledges that it's interesting, and not that software patents are the spawn of the devil?
If you took this exact same story and s/Google/Microsoft/'ed it, this thread would instantly fill up with "oh noes, Microsoft is patenting commercials in internet video" comments, and "there's no way that that's novel" comments, and "down with software patents!!!" comments.
Actually your knee-jerk reaction is just as bad. Perhaps more so, since presumably you believe you are above such things.
I don't see you saying that the patent isn't novel. To my knowledge it is - I can't think of any system that automatically places ads inside video based on some detection method to find where it would be appropriate. And algorithmically this is indeed an interesting question (in fact, I question how well this would work). So, if we treat the issue on its merits - and not as Google vs. Microsoft, which you are doing - then why should we be surprised there are no comments "this is trivial"? We shouldn't.
As for "software patents are bad" - well, those crop up generally when we discuss really really bad patents. Like say the 1-click patent. Or when patents are used to litigate. Neither appears to be the case here. So perhaps we won't see such comments in this story (or perhaps we will, who knows).
My point is that you blame Slashdotters for being automatically positive when Google gets a patent and automatically negative when Microsoft does. There might be a degree of truth to that, and to that degree it is indeed a shame. However, your reaction is just as bad - you are automatically negative regarding Slashdotter's responses to this topic. Both you and the thing you are arguing against are examples of knee-jerk reactions. When it would be better to instead discuss the specifics of the case.
First, apologies if I misunderstood your tone before.
Well, I am no retailer, but even if stock is sold, it depends how fast it sells and so forth. Online it sold quite briskly we are told. Perhaps it took much much longer to sell out in retail, so much so that it doesn't make sense to continue. That is the gist of TFA as I read it, but I could be wrong.
Despite your hostile tone, I'll answer you in a civil manner: TFA says
Paul Kim, brand manager for Everex, said selling the gPC online was "significantly more effective" than selling it in stores. They indeed sold out nicely online, but offline, they didn't do as well. Note that perhaps they did sell, we don't have figures, but not well enough to justify keeping them on shelves. So Wal-Mart discontinued retail sales.
However online sales were a success, which is nice.
Don't Walmart bring products in and out all the time That is very true. In addition, the point of the article is that on-site sales were poor, but on the other hand online sales were successful enough for Wal-Mart to continue selling Linux PCs, currently the gPC 2 and the CloudBook.
Bottom line, walk-in customers at Wal-Mart weren't into these products, but more tech-savvy people that buy online form a sufficient market for Wal-Mart to serve. What is important about the latter fact is that it means Wal-Mart will be ready to supply demand should desktop Linux become more mainstream.
Only if you have problems reading English. That sentence clearly speaks about development, not deployment.
No, he was right on the mark. You are correct that the sentence clearly says development. But the point is that mentioning development in this context is misleading. It doesn't matter where code is written, it matters where the code is run, if you are talking about the performance of the code. TFA is misleading in that respect. It seems their point has an underlying assumption that development and production should be on the same OS or something like that; under that assumption the quote makes sense. It's a faulty assumption though.
I'm familiar with SWIG; it's a nice tool. But it isn't as immediate as things can be in a language-independent VM. So while SWIG makes things far easier, it doesn't make things trivial.
The only innovation that I credit to Microsoft in all its decades of existence is that of the CLR (.NET) being focused on language-independence, and also on Microsoft pushing hard for projects like IronPython to run well. There is really no reason to have to write language bindings all the time; a library written in one language should be accessible to all others. In the long run, this is going to make whatever platform allows that capability far more competitive. Therefore Sun has no option but to go in this direction, especially given the popularity of dynamic languages in recent years.
Actually FOSS might have done language-interoperation in other ways: given that the source code is available, we might have had automated tools to generate bindings automatically (actually this is happening now, with GObject-introspection, which is relevant so far to C, Vala and Python). But this hasn't happened in an extremely useful way thus far.
Note that this is just one reason for having a single VM for all languages. Security, optimization, etc. are others. In summary, kudos to Sun. Better late than never.
Microsoft can buy SAP and Yahoo I think both Ballmer and TFA miss the natural acquisition target. It isn't Yahoo!, for reasons already discussed to death. But it also isn't SAP, which is not going to generate any obvious synergies for Microsoft. No, the natural target is Adobe.
In one fell swoop, by buying Adobe Microsoft can guarantee the success of several of their products, such as Silverlight, which Microsoft apparently sees as very important for its future. This would be done by somehow 'unifying' Silverlight with Adobe's Flash and AIR. And by 'unifying' I mean killing off Flash, but not immediately; the trick would be to ensure a stable 'upgrade' path to Silverlight. Ditto Microsoft's XPS could defeat PDF. More speculatively, OOXML could be integrated in various ways in Adobe products. As another benefit, Microsoft can silently kill off development of Flash for Linux, or at least make it buggy and out of date. Ditto AIR.
Really, this would be a win-win-win situation for Microsoft. Adobe is the perfect acquisition. The only possible hitch is that this would clearly be carefully looked at by market regulators. I guess that's why this hasn't occurred yet?
Since when is Microsoft selling PC's? Or did they send someone around to go put those stickers on the machines?
I'd have thought the hardware manufacturers would be the ones who didn't want sales to fall. I agree that the hardware vendors should also share part of the blame. However, Microsoft designed the campaign, and in addition is responsible for the capabilities of Vista (for all the hardware manufacturers knew, it might get faster before it was released to the general public). Therefore, on the face of it, the case might have merit.
I remember the same sort of campaign when XP came out. The laptop I bought then had an "XP capable" (or something that sounded similar) sticker on the box, even though it came with ME installed and with a voucher for a cheap XP Home upgrade when it came out. After having upgraded it and having seen the performance under XP, I reformatted it and downgraded. Not to ME, but to Win2000, which it still runs fine. Yes, this isn't entirely new. But that doesn't justify things in any way. In fact Microsoft should have learned from past experience and done things better this time.
As far as I know Codeweavers sell a version of Wine, so is this deal going to mean Photoshop will work better on Wine that I have installed for free, or the version that you sell. The patches are to Wine itself, i.e., upstream. The free version you use benefits from them.
On that note: thank you to Google and to Codeweavers.
Actually, I think they're releasing it now because they were ordered to in a (European?) court settlement, not because they want to. I think you're wrong, or at least I didn't hear of such a court ordering (apologies if I am in error here).
I think the reason for Microsoft publishing the specs is fairly clear: Microsoft is trying to get OOXML passed as an ISO standard. One of the complaints that prevented such standardization thus far is that OOXML relies on older formats like.DOC, and those formats aren't documented, so really OOXML isn't documented. Similarly there may be patent concerns with the old formats. It appears that Microsoft is going to do every thing in its power to get OOXML passed on the next vote, and being able to say, "the old binary formats are now completely open and no patent issues exist" makes that more likely. This is the (completely selfish) reason for releasing the specs at this time, AFAIK.
Whether this will work, time will tell. But what it certainly shows is Microsoft's desperation and how important it sees getting OOXML stamped as a standard.
What I was saying is this. The simple fact is that cultural evolution has not been empirically tested, so far. This is, among other reasons, because it is hard to quantify. Now, very nicely, TFA shows how this can in fact be done and we can get nice results.
You do you realise you can make qualitative predictions, don't you? If I burn calcium, I can predict it will burn red, even if I don't know what wavelength it will be. More relevant, Tiktaalik was a qualitative prediction, as was the appearance of human chromosome 2 - two qualitative predictions very important in the field of evolution. Of course. I was focusing on qualitative vs. quantitative because it seemed most relevant. But if you want to be more accurate, then the issue is that memetics is hard to subject to empirical testing, unlike genetics. And that TFA does manage to empirically test a hypothesis about cultural evolution.
Slashdot Mirror
Also, nice to see someone not afraid to admit he might have been wrong about something, and to be open to switching strategy accordingly, in this case, to support gNewSense and abandon Gobuntu.
This is a first-generation product. It's not polished at all. But, if Apple doesn't sue Psystar out of existence - or, better, if Apple tries and fails - then Psystar can put together a good version later on. So, I would look at this as a proof of concept, a testing-the-waters type of thing. I would say it's succeeding in that it's generating lots of noise (both in the press and the fan...), we have to wait and see if it passes the legal test. But if so, Psystar - or some other company - can put together a very compelling product and make a small fortune.
Also worth mentioning that PyPy allows you to run Python as Javascript, inside a browser. Like all of these things, it isn't 100% mature, but pretty cool nonetheless.
First, your approach seems to be utilitarianism, not logical positivism. That is, it appears you care about the usefulness (or lack thereof) of having an answer to the question. Whereas logical positivism is related, in a way, but distinct.
Second, I feel I must point out that logical positivism has essentially been discredited. You are hard-pressed to find anyone who believes in it today, following the work around the middle of the 20th century of Wittgenstein and Quine.
However, it seems to me that a lot can be done regarding specific events like this one in Norway. This should be investigated, to find out exactly who is responsible and why, and to look for implicating evidence against Microsoft.
Based on such investigations, we should protest and/or file official complaints, if relevant. Assuming TFA is accurate, then something very wrong happened in Norway, and the relevant people should be held accountable.
I was quoting from the conclusion. Your quote is from somewhere else in the article, a different page, even.
Anyhow, the most amusing part of the review was the conclusion, We can't really recommend the Windows version of the Eee PC 900 over its Linux counterpart, primarily because you get nearly twice as much storage space in the Linux version. [...] If you really can't live without XP, then the best course of action is to buy the superior Linux version and install XP yourself. Strange times, when the Windows people are those that are going to have installation hassles...
Also, it is me or does it seem like Cnet is advocating piracy here? I mean, where do they expect you to get XP from; if you buy it yourself, it makes the Linux Eee 900 + off-the-shelf XP quite expensive. Presumably they don't mean that, so what's left...?
Major difference? Well I can't enumerate them, but I can generalize things you'll see in Fedora compared to Ubuntu
[...]
- Continued work on PulseAudio
Not sure what you mean by that. Both Fedora and Ubuntu use PulseAudio these days. But of course there might be differences between them in how well they use it.So, I just booted up the Fedora Preview to see just that, the reason being that in Ubuntu sound stutters if your CPU isn't very powerful (typically when you minimize/maximize a window or some other activity that causes a brief spike in CPU). Here is the bug, which I guess won't be fixed before release.
Sadly I was unable to test PulseAudio on the Fedora 9 Preview. First, I couldn't get my microphone to work, even after fiddling with all the little options for quite a while (note that this is a desktop - the mic hardware is very standard). So my plan failed to record something then play it back and see if it was smooth.
Next I tried to go to one of my existing partitions, to play a music file from there. Fedora wasn't able to mount them, and gave an embarrassing error message, I don't remember the exact words, but something along the lines of "Don't show these error messages".
And sadly the Fedora live cd doesn't come with any sound samples in the Music or Movies folders.
So I have no idea how well PulseAudio works in Fedora, sadly, because I was considering installing it if it did better than Ubuntu Hardy, whose stuttering sound bug is quite annoying. Looks like I'll stick with Ubuntu for now.
In addition, much of the transaction is for Microsoft stock. It isn't the most attractive stock to own, and hasn't been for several years. Perhaps Yahoo! leadership believes an exchange of stock from Yahoo! to Microsoft isn't worth it for the stockholders. Again, this isn't a matter of simple math, it's a judgment call, that's how the stock market works.
First, this wasn't some script kiddie applying a known exploit. It was a new exploit that the winning team came up with. It isn't trivial to do.
Second, no, this "could have happened to any OS" is wrong. A well-crafted browser (in this case, the browser is part of the OS) can in theory prevent browser plugins from accessing anything of importance. However I don't think any existing browsers do that - but they should.
Second, and perhaps more important, the existence of 3rd party software on different OSes isn't the same. For example, most Windows users use Adobe Acrobat to view PDFs, whereas many Linux users use FOSS PDF viewers (Evince, KPDF). It might be the case - and I am guessing that it is - that Acrobat has far more exploits against it, both because it has far more code (what with all the functionality 99% of users don't need), and that it isn't open source. In general Windows users tend to have lots of 3rd party apps that are closed source and of dubious quality. That isn't the case on Linux.
Furthermore, even if two OSes run the same app - Flash, say - that doesn't mean they are equally vulnerable. Flash isn't identical between the platforms; if I am not mistaken on Linux Flash uses Alsa for sound (or some other Linux sound system). So if Alsa is more secure than Windows' sound system, that would be one difference.
I'm not saying this competition is a great test of OS security. It isn't; it's an anecdote. But it isn't worthless either. In fact the results are pretty much what I would have expected from the beginning: OS X is a great OS but security has never been a top priority (there wasn't as much of a need for it, so why bother). Windows has focused on security recently but is hobbled by having lots of closed-source 3rd party apps. Linux was always security-focused (starting as a server OS), and has the advantage of most of its software being FOSS and arriving from a repo under the control of the distro (in this case Ubuntu).
How's the PulseAudio decision working out so far? I've run into lots of PulseAudio problems in Fedora (which enabled it by default in Fedora 8), so its a little bit surprising that Ubuntu has decided to enable PulseAudio by default. Personally, I don't think PulseAudio is yet ready for mainstream use, so I'm wondering what the justification for this decision was.
Indeed there are problems with PulseAudio, and I agree, this was a risky choice for an LTS release.Here is one example bug: audible stuttering, pops. It appears to be primarily a PulseAudio matter, in that sound breaks up under CPU load: even alt-tab to another app like Firefox that renders at 100% CPU for a fraction of a second. However it may also be related to the new scheduler (CFS), since desktop responsiveness in Hardy seems poor compared to previous Ubuntu releases, particularly on low-end hardware. But it's a beta, so perhaps it'll be fixed.
Wait, stop right there. There's a discussion of a patent on Slashdot, and the first comment acknowledges that it's interesting, and not that software patents are the spawn of the devil?
Actually your knee-jerk reaction is just as bad. Perhaps more so, since presumably you believe you are above such things.If you took this exact same story and s/Google/Microsoft/'ed it, this thread would instantly fill up with "oh noes, Microsoft is patenting commercials in internet video" comments, and "there's no way that that's novel" comments, and "down with software patents!!!" comments.
I don't see you saying that the patent isn't novel. To my knowledge it is - I can't think of any system that automatically places ads inside video based on some detection method to find where it would be appropriate. And algorithmically this is indeed an interesting question (in fact, I question how well this would work). So, if we treat the issue on its merits - and not as Google vs. Microsoft, which you are doing - then why should we be surprised there are no comments "this is trivial"? We shouldn't.
As for "software patents are bad" - well, those crop up generally when we discuss really really bad patents. Like say the 1-click patent. Or when patents are used to litigate. Neither appears to be the case here. So perhaps we won't see such comments in this story (or perhaps we will, who knows).
My point is that you blame Slashdotters for being automatically positive when Google gets a patent and automatically negative when Microsoft does. There might be a degree of truth to that, and to that degree it is indeed a shame. However, your reaction is just as bad - you are automatically negative regarding Slashdotter's responses to this topic. Both you and the thing you are arguing against are examples of knee-jerk reactions. When it would be better to instead discuss the specifics of the case.
First, apologies if I misunderstood your tone before.
Well, I am no retailer, but even if stock is sold, it depends how fast it sells and so forth. Online it sold quite briskly we are told. Perhaps it took much much longer to sell out in retail, so much so that it doesn't make sense to continue. That is the gist of TFA as I read it, but I could be wrong.
You make a good point, I didn't think about that. Yeah, that might be the case here.
I wonder if we can find out somehow what Wal-Mart's reasons were (probably not, sadly).
However online sales were a success, which is nice.
Bottom line, walk-in customers at Wal-Mart weren't into these products, but more tech-savvy people that buy online form a sufficient market for Wal-Mart to serve. What is important about the latter fact is that it means Wal-Mart will be ready to supply demand should desktop Linux become more mainstream.
Only if you have problems reading English. That sentence clearly speaks about development, not deployment.
No, he was right on the mark. You are correct that the sentence clearly says development. But the point is that mentioning development in this context is misleading. It doesn't matter where code is written, it matters where the code is run, if you are talking about the performance of the code. TFA is misleading in that respect. It seems their point has an underlying assumption that development and production should be on the same OS or something like that; under that assumption the quote makes sense. It's a faulty assumption though.I'm familiar with SWIG; it's a nice tool. But it isn't as immediate as things can be in a language-independent VM. So while SWIG makes things far easier, it doesn't make things trivial.
The only innovation that I credit to Microsoft in all its decades of existence is that of the CLR (.NET) being focused on language-independence, and also on Microsoft pushing hard for projects like IronPython to run well. There is really no reason to have to write language bindings all the time; a library written in one language should be accessible to all others. In the long run, this is going to make whatever platform allows that capability far more competitive. Therefore Sun has no option but to go in this direction, especially given the popularity of dynamic languages in recent years.
Actually FOSS might have done language-interoperation in other ways: given that the source code is available, we might have had automated tools to generate bindings automatically (actually this is happening now, with GObject-introspection, which is relevant so far to C, Vala and Python). But this hasn't happened in an extremely useful way thus far.
Note that this is just one reason for having a single VM for all languages. Security, optimization, etc. are others. In summary, kudos to Sun. Better late than never.
In one fell swoop, by buying Adobe Microsoft can guarantee the success of several of their products, such as Silverlight, which Microsoft apparently sees as very important for its future. This would be done by somehow 'unifying' Silverlight with Adobe's Flash and AIR. And by 'unifying' I mean killing off Flash, but not immediately; the trick would be to ensure a stable 'upgrade' path to Silverlight. Ditto Microsoft's XPS could defeat PDF. More speculatively, OOXML could be integrated in various ways in Adobe products. As another benefit, Microsoft can silently kill off development of Flash for Linux, or at least make it buggy and out of date. Ditto AIR.
Really, this would be a win-win-win situation for Microsoft. Adobe is the perfect acquisition. The only possible hitch is that this would clearly be carefully looked at by market regulators. I guess that's why this hasn't occurred yet?
I'd have thought the hardware manufacturers would be the ones who didn't want sales to fall.
I agree that the hardware vendors should also share part of the blame. However, Microsoft designed the campaign, and in addition is responsible for the capabilities of Vista (for all the hardware manufacturers knew, it might get faster before it was released to the general public). Therefore, on the face of it, the case might have merit.
I remember the same sort of campaign when XP came out. The laptop I bought then had an "XP capable" (or something that sounded similar) sticker on the box, even though it came with ME installed and with a voucher for a cheap XP Home upgrade when it came out. After having upgraded it and having seen the performance under XP, I reformatted it and downgraded. Not to ME, but to Win2000, which it still runs fine.
Yes, this isn't entirely new. But that doesn't justify things in any way. In fact Microsoft should have learned from past experience and done things better this time.
On that note: thank you to Google and to Codeweavers.
I think the reason for Microsoft publishing the specs is fairly clear: Microsoft is trying to get OOXML passed as an ISO standard. One of the complaints that prevented such standardization thus far is that OOXML relies on older formats like
Whether this will work, time will tell. But what it certainly shows is Microsoft's desperation and how important it sees getting OOXML stamped as a standard.
Perhaps I wasn't clear.
What I was saying is this. The simple fact is that cultural evolution has not been empirically tested, so far. This is, among other reasons, because it is hard to quantify. Now, very nicely, TFA shows how this can in fact be done and we can get nice results.
I hope that is better.
Fair enough?