I don't understand Microsoft. The Windows Genuine Advantage (WGA) is actually very easy to defeat, and I'm sure this new OGA will be just as easy.
WGA is currently easy to defeat. But WGA and now OGA are part of a long-term strategy. It will get harder and harder to circumvent them. Some things they can (and probably will, eventually) do: validate Windows and Office every time you go online; use 'Trusted Computing' hardware to ensure that validation checks are not tampered with; have some of the code/content only available server-side, so only if you are validated by the server can you get all the functionality; and so forth.
I would be more than satisfied if they come with an easy solution for installing Oracle flawlessly on most linux flavors!
That would be nice, but how about if instead of a full-fledged distro, they put out a barebones Linux+Oracle, all set up and configured, that is then run in a virtual machine. Sort of an "Oracle Appliance". Saves the hassles of supporting various distros, and even saves the hassle of supporting an entire single distro (since people will install other things than Oracle on their "Unbreakable Linux"es).
I haven't used Oracle products in several years. Anyone know why they aren't doing this (or are they, and I am just ignorant)?
I ask this seriously: what OSes have you been using that makes you think a clean install is the only "safe" upgrade? I've never done a reinstall-upgrade on a Debian or FreeBSD box, for example. Not once.
Well, you often hear people talking about odd problems after upgrading, on the ubuntu forums for example. A clean install fixes things. It's very hard to pin down the relevant issue in such cases, and they seem rare. But still, I prefer to clean-install Ubuntu (as I will do later today for Edgy).
Agreed: not the same thing. But for different reasons.
As far as antivirus software goes, Microsoft are charging for OneCare, just like Symantec and McAfee, whereas in the web browser market, IE and Netscape were given away for free. That is a significant difference. When people pay for something, they need to make a choice; just using the free web browser already installed on their computer isn't a choice, it's a default that people barely notice. Now, when people must make a conscious choice, it is harder to win them over. So, in this respect Symantec and McAfee seem safe. However, they will, at the minimum, need to share the market with Microsoft. And there is always the chance of Office repeating itself - a paying product in which Microsoft won a monopoly. Really, Wordperfect is the example we should have before our eyes, not Netscape, as far as antivirus software goes.
As for antispyware, Defender is given away for free. This is exactly like Netscape, and I expect the antispyware market to die out, except for antispyware that lives as part of a bundle with an antivirus, which is not free.
"nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws."
Good point. But until this is 'noticed' by the courts, there are some further worrying questions. One is that there is nothing specific about patenting 'business methods' related to tax law, as opposed to other branches of law, as far as I can see. So, why not patent a type of defense in criminal law? Not that this topic is funny, but imagine for humor's sake "Plan B" from The Practice or "the Chewbacca Defense" from South Park being patented.
Splitting isn't a necessity, but it is likely when (and only when) a population is isolated. In the absence of isolation, no speciation occurs since any viable mutations are folded back into the common gene pool. That's one of the many wonders of sexual reproduction. I believe you'll agree that if anything, isolation among human populations has nearly vanished in the past hundred years, and this trend looks (quite) likely to continue as we move into the future.
I see your point, but I don't completely agree. It might seem that isolation has vanished, but the accessibility that we have today may have the opposite effect. What I mean, is that if you lived 500 years ago in a village of 100 people, then your reproductive opportunities were limited. Isolation within that group would indeed be unlikely, as you say; there would indeed be a single gene pool in such a town. But in a city of 1 million, there are so many opportunities that any reproductive advantage may be intensified. It may well turn out the the taller, thinner, blonder (or whatever the more attractive traits are) part of the population have, say, 10% more children on average.
Now, given several generation of this, and you may well see two 'subpopulations' arise. As time goes on, they would be less and less likely to reproduce among each other. If, say, the 'attractive' subpopulation was also wealthy, and the other one not, this would be intensified (even today, how many people marry far outside of their 'class'?).
So, geographical proximity does not imply a common gene pool, and may in fact cause the opposite. Of course, this is very speculative. But who knows.
In any case, the crucial issue is sexual selection, which TFA doesn't consider, at least at the beginning ("Ignoring the fact that you cannot predict long-term evolutionary trends without knowing long-term environmental trends" - but sexual selection isn't necessarily environmentally driven). Some people think things like 'evolution doesn't apply to the human race; we have conquered disease, and we all have children', but this is again to ignore sexual selection. Current research shows that perhaps as many as 10% of children are raised by men who do not know that they are not biologically theirs. Other research shows that women are more attracted to high-testosterone men when they are most fertile. So there seems to be plenty of room for sexual selection to work, even today. And as I said before, living in a city of millions just gives the highly-attractive more opportunities to reproduce.
What measures are in place to keep my highly-portable data center from wandering off?
Hopefully your corporation has a few underutilized interns lying around. Place one of them near the Blackbox, with a sleeping bag, a bottle of water and a cellphone (to call for help), and you are good to go.
Aero is not required on corporate PCs so scratch the video upgrade.
Yes, but if you don't use Aero, much of the advantage of Vista is gone. And, I presume as a business you would buy at least the "Vista Business" version, which costs more than the Aero-less "Home Basic". So, you are paying for Aero, but not using it.
if you think the Chinese military waits for patches released directly by MS for vital equipment, then you are watching too many bad movies
Yes, I agree. But even if all the frontline and otherwise critical systems are MS-free, the economy and industry supporting the Chinese war machine is based (IT-wise) on Microsoft. So, the effects might not be immediate, but would eventually be tremendous.
Technological Independence. It is almost like there is going to be a Bretagne Tea Party, complete with euro-geeks dumping crates of Microsoft software into the Atlantic
Amazing that this hasn't happened yet, though, isn't it? Europe's entire IT economy dependent on a single corporation somewhere in the US, and they don't seem to mind.
What if tomorrow US law causes Microsoft to make changes to Windows (say, to enforce the DMCA somehow), and Microsoft decide to keep a single code base in the rest of the world (less effort, since the changes are deep in the kernel)? If asking Microsoft politely for a 'clean' version fails, how would you prevent this scenario - legislation? Might work, but only partially (witness the fines from recent history against Microsoft in the EU). This is only one example, admittably highly speculative; but nations need to consider worst-case scenarios.
And this is to say nothing about nations which have a less-friendly relationship with the US. What if the US and China find themselves at war tomorrow, and Microsoft immediately stop releasing patches for Chinese IP addresses? Will the Chinese IT war effort be contingent upon successful hacking of WGA and so forth? Yes, this is a possible fix, but again - how can they not consider the worst-case scenario where this does not work very well?
This wouldn't have been a problem now if the DoJ had broken MS up into smaller units back when it had the chance. MS/OS division would have no incentive to favor MS/AV over any other.
You are missing the issue that makes this a real problem. Where is the dividing line between OS and AV?
Some example questions: should a firewall be part of the OS, or a separate 'security suite'? If MS finds a way to prevent certain attacks on their kernel, is that an 'antivirus' component? Perhaps they can call it an 'antirootkit' component, and ship it with the OS?
There is no clear boundary between OS and AV. The same problem goes for OS and office suite, by the way - if MS beef up Write, til it has a similar featureset to Word - at what point did they cross the line?
Yes, an antitrust action against MS was justified, and would have helped - to some degree. But it wouldn't have solved the underlying issue, which is that once you have a monopoly on the OS - the basic purchase that every computer owner makes (so you have guaranteed income, as well as control of the foundation on which other software runs) - then you can dominate all the rest of the software market for that OS, by gradually expanding the boundary of what an 'OS' is.
Splitting the OS from the AV, or the OS from the office suite, is therefore not enough. The solution, or at least part of the way towards a solution, is to prevent a monopoly of the OS market. This can be attempted by requiring that certain standards be adhered to, so competition in the OS market has some chance. This wouldn't be easy, though; witness the difficulty of the WINE project - MS don't even implement their own standards correctly. Still, if OS standards were published and strongly enforced (by e.g. fines), this might do some good.
Of course there's always the theory that the administration thought that a terrorist attack would be a great way to rally the American populace and take their minds off much larger problems at home...
Problems at home? What problems at home? You totally lost me.
What went wrong... with TFA? Perhaps they can't afford an editor? Some examples (emphasis mine in all):
"Despite everything AM2 had going for it, this includes a dedicated enthusiast base and a tremendous amount of pro-AMD spirit at the time, the new platform has largely been dismissed by consumers."
"Where did things go wrong for AMD, a company that was on a legendary upswing, during which it could seemingly do no wrong."
"They were clearly unable to do so (or did not intend to) so most 939 owners were never inclined to upgrade"
"This is just simple economics, as in it does not make sense to invest the money in going with AM2 when consumers can get a 939 computer for less."
And many others; I just ran out of patience. I apologize for my grammar nazism, and I am prone to making lots of mistakes myself, I admit; also, many of these aren't actual mistakes but just bad style. However, if you want your articles to be taken seriously, make sure they are polished beyond that of a high-school student's blog. Regardless of content, the writing here is so poor that I am surprised/disappointed that this was posted on Slashdot.
Winning in court proves things about the GPL, the open development of software, the honesty of IBM as a corporation, and a few other things that a buyout or a settlement never could.
Also, winning in court shows that IBM kicks SCO's a**.
Or, at the least, doesn't reward SCO. Being bought by IBM would be a great ending for SCO, whereas losing in court, filing for bankruptcy and then watching people carry your computer equipment out to pay the debt-holders is... less so.
However, I'm not sure I can trust anything this 'review' says. For example, by the numbers btjunkie.org seems incredibly more successful than any of its competition, which seems a bit odd given that it doesn't seem that well-known (53,000 hits on Google; compare to mininova, which has 3,000,000). TFA says:
"At first I thought BTJunkie's numbers must be fake, but I assure you it is real! I tested the number posted with the number in the actual directory for the day and they matched for a week straight!"
Yes, I am sure that you did, and I am also sure that you don't own btjunkie.org. 100% sure.
Would you like your waiter to try and convince you to change your order because they don't think it's right to eat lamb?
No, this would be more like the chef telling you a certain food combination won't work well, and recommending another.
(1. Waiters aren't experts. Chefs are. So are computer technicians. 2. Telling you not to eat lamb is a political action. Recommending a different complement of dishes for dinner isn't political, the chef probably knows what he's doing. Likewise, computer technicians know that certain open-source software packages are good to use because they have tangible benefits.)
I have to agree with the Linux guys: the value of this new license does not justify the damage it will do by splitting the community.
Please explain why this would split the community, in your opinion. I don't understand the claim in TFA that "distro builders will have a tough time."
As I see it, we already have a lot of licenses (GPL, LGPL, BSD, Apache, Python, MPL) inside almost every distro. Things seem to work fine. Even single projects can have more than one license; GNOME has portions which are GPL, and others which LGPL. This is a good example, as the two licenses are carefully chosen to work very well (prevent proprietization of GNOME, but allow commercial apps to use the GNOME libs, i.e. for commercial apps to be developed for GNOME).
So, in addition to all existing licenses, we'll have GPL2 and GPL3 apps. The kernel will be GPL2; GNOME will be GPL3 and LGPL3; and so forth. Where is the balkanization?
Microsoft is going to have to learn that it needs to try to work with the companies that make software for their systems.
No. This is a basic fallacy, the "Windows ecosystem", of various ISPs making money off of stuff that runs on Windows. This is not how things actually work.
What actually goes on, is that Microsoft treats the ISPs as unpaid employees working on 'market-testing' projects. Adobe make money off of PDF stuff? Then Microsoft will add PDF tools to their OS next time around. Somebody has a business model around a web browser? Enter IE. And so forth. Basically, if an app becomes popular, Microsoft create a similar app and bundle it into the OS; if it doesn't become popular, Microsoft never lost any money on development. A perfect win-win for Microsoft.
ISPs may have a 'window' (apologies) of time to make some money off of proprietary software for Windows before being ousted by Microsoft. But this is a big gamble to make; I'm amazed that people still try this.
The only sustainable way to make money off of Windows-related software is one of the following: (1) rely on the law to prevent Microsoft from bundling a replacement into the OS (but who can rely on that?), or (2) make a product that Microsoft would NOT want to bundle, but would like to make money off of, separately from Windows (e.g. a database). Yet even in this case, it is clear that your odds are not favorable (witness Wordperfect).
There is a reason that most popular apps for Windows are either Microsoft-written or OSS (IE and Firefox, IIS and Apache, etc.). If the app can be bundled into the OS, you won't make money off of it. So you can only exist if you don't expect to make any money.
Adobe, prepare to have to change your business model.
I doubt the networks would go for it, because it would cut into DVD sales. (Never mind that it would increase overall sales and end up making them lots and lots more money in the end. Remember, they're stupid.)
Hmm, I hate the **AA as much as most Slashdotters do, but this seems a bit much. It might increase overall sales, but it might not; it's too soon to tell.
I agree that they are stupid, but not for this reason. I think they are stupid for not realizing that they need to move to this type of distribution even if it causes a decrease in sales. The alternative - sticking to an outdated business model in the face of reality - may be far more costly in the long run.
"According to Techweb, data gathered by Net Applications shows that the Mac OS had 4.35 per cent of the world's operating system share last December. Now it only has 4.33 per cent.""
Yet, at the link to the actual data, it says, for August 2006:
So, 3.71%, not 4.33%. Looks like The Inquirer is reading the line for April 2006, and not September 2006. Actually, Mac share drops continually during the period December 2005 (4.35%) to August 2006 (3.71%). This is more than half a percentage point... which you can trust as much as you can trust their methodology, I guess.
Btw, "Other" rises from 1.33% to over 2% during the same period. That's us Linux people, right?
Slashdot Mirror
I don't understand Microsoft. The Windows Genuine Advantage (WGA) is actually very easy to defeat, and I'm sure this new OGA will be just as easy.
WGA is currently easy to defeat. But WGA and now OGA are part of a long-term strategy. It will get harder and harder to circumvent them. Some things they can (and probably will, eventually) do: validate Windows and Office every time you go online; use 'Trusted Computing' hardware to ensure that validation checks are not tampered with; have some of the code/content only available server-side, so only if you are validated by the server can you get all the functionality; and so forth.
I would be more than satisfied if they come with an easy solution for installing Oracle flawlessly on most linux flavors!
That would be nice, but how about if instead of a full-fledged distro, they put out a barebones Linux+Oracle, all set up and configured, that is then run in a virtual machine. Sort of an "Oracle Appliance". Saves the hassles of supporting various distros, and even saves the hassle of supporting an entire single distro (since people will install other things than Oracle on their "Unbreakable Linux"es).
I haven't used Oracle products in several years. Anyone know why they aren't doing this (or are they, and I am just ignorant)?
I ask this seriously: what OSes have you been using that makes you think a clean install is the only "safe" upgrade? I've never done a reinstall-upgrade on a Debian or FreeBSD box, for example. Not once.
Well, you often hear people talking about odd problems after upgrading, on the ubuntu forums for example. A clean install fixes things. It's very hard to pin down the relevant issue in such cases, and they seem rare. But still, I prefer to clean-install Ubuntu (as I will do later today for Edgy).
Can I now dist-upgrade my Ubuntu Dapper to Edgy?
Yes, but just like with any operating system, the safest thing to do is a clean install.
Agreed: not the same thing. But for different reasons.
As far as antivirus software goes, Microsoft are charging for OneCare, just like Symantec and McAfee, whereas in the web browser market, IE and Netscape were given away for free. That is a significant difference. When people pay for something, they need to make a choice; just using the free web browser already installed on their computer isn't a choice, it's a default that people barely notice. Now, when people must make a conscious choice, it is harder to win them over. So, in this respect Symantec and McAfee seem safe. However, they will, at the minimum, need to share the market with Microsoft. And there is always the chance of Office repeating itself - a paying product in which Microsoft won a monopoly. Really, Wordperfect is the example we should have before our eyes, not Netscape, as far as antivirus software goes.
As for antispyware, Defender is given away for free. This is exactly like Netscape, and I expect the antispyware market to die out, except for antispyware that lives as part of a bundle with an antivirus, which is not free.
"nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws."
Good point. But until this is 'noticed' by the courts, there are some further worrying questions. One is that there is nothing specific about patenting 'business methods' related to tax law, as opposed to other branches of law, as far as I can see. So, why not patent a type of defense in criminal law? Not that this topic is funny, but imagine for humor's sake "Plan B" from The Practice or "the Chewbacca Defense" from South Park being patented.
Splitting isn't a necessity, but it is likely when (and only when) a population is isolated. In the absence of isolation, no speciation occurs since any viable mutations are folded back into the common gene pool. That's one of the many wonders of sexual reproduction. I believe you'll agree that if anything, isolation among human populations has nearly vanished in the past hundred years, and this trend looks (quite) likely to continue as we move into the future.
I see your point, but I don't completely agree. It might seem that isolation has vanished, but the accessibility that we have today may have the opposite effect. What I mean, is that if you lived 500 years ago in a village of 100 people, then your reproductive opportunities were limited. Isolation within that group would indeed be unlikely, as you say; there would indeed be a single gene pool in such a town. But in a city of 1 million, there are so many opportunities that any reproductive advantage may be intensified. It may well turn out the the taller, thinner, blonder (or whatever the more attractive traits are) part of the population have, say, 10% more children on average.
Now, given several generation of this, and you may well see two 'subpopulations' arise. As time goes on, they would be less and less likely to reproduce among each other. If, say, the 'attractive' subpopulation was also wealthy, and the other one not, this would be intensified (even today, how many people marry far outside of their 'class'?).
So, geographical proximity does not imply a common gene pool, and may in fact cause the opposite. Of course, this is very speculative. But who knows.
In any case, the crucial issue is sexual selection, which TFA doesn't consider, at least at the beginning ("Ignoring the fact that you cannot predict long-term evolutionary trends without knowing long-term environmental trends" - but sexual selection isn't necessarily environmentally driven). Some people think things like 'evolution doesn't apply to the human race; we have conquered disease, and we all have children', but this is again to ignore sexual selection. Current research shows that perhaps as many as 10% of children are raised by men who do not know that they are not biologically theirs. Other research shows that women are more attracted to high-testosterone men when they are most fertile. So there seems to be plenty of room for sexual selection to work, even today. And as I said before, living in a city of millions just gives the highly-attractive more opportunities to reproduce.
What measures are in place to keep my highly-portable data center from wandering off?
Hopefully your corporation has a few underutilized interns lying around. Place one of them near the Blackbox, with a sleeping bag, a bottle of water and a cellphone (to call for help), and you are good to go.
Call somebody with Internet access and ask them.
But to do that I'd probably need to have friends first. Hmm, seems easier to download 6GB onto my mobile device.
Aero is not required on corporate PCs so scratch the video upgrade.
Yes, but if you don't use Aero, much of the advantage of Vista is gone. And, I presume as a business you would buy at least the "Vista Business" version, which costs more than the Aero-less "Home Basic". So, you are paying for Aero, but not using it.
Instead of that, why not just keep using XP?
A search for "bill gates" turned up these tidbits:
/* eat this, Billy-boy */
/* Ask Bill Gates what this is all about. */
if (gates == NULL)
gates = (HINF **) Hmalloc (sizeof (HINF *) * 10);
int_fast16_t reserved1;
if you think the Chinese military waits for patches released directly by MS for vital equipment, then you are watching too many bad movies
Yes, I agree. But even if all the frontline and otherwise critical systems are MS-free, the economy and industry supporting the Chinese war machine is based (IT-wise) on Microsoft. So, the effects might not be immediate, but would eventually be tremendous.
Technological Independence. It is almost like there is going to be a Bretagne Tea Party, complete with euro-geeks dumping crates of Microsoft software into the Atlantic
Amazing that this hasn't happened yet, though, isn't it? Europe's entire IT economy dependent on a single corporation somewhere in the US, and they don't seem to mind.
What if tomorrow US law causes Microsoft to make changes to Windows (say, to enforce the DMCA somehow), and Microsoft decide to keep a single code base in the rest of the world (less effort, since the changes are deep in the kernel)? If asking Microsoft politely for a 'clean' version fails, how would you prevent this scenario - legislation? Might work, but only partially (witness the fines from recent history against Microsoft in the EU). This is only one example, admittably highly speculative; but nations need to consider worst-case scenarios.
And this is to say nothing about nations which have a less-friendly relationship with the US. What if the US and China find themselves at war tomorrow, and Microsoft immediately stop releasing patches for Chinese IP addresses? Will the Chinese IT war effort be contingent upon successful hacking of WGA and so forth? Yes, this is a possible fix, but again - how can they not consider the worst-case scenario where this does not work very well?
This wouldn't have been a problem now if the DoJ had broken MS up into smaller units back when it had the chance. MS/OS division would have no incentive to favor MS/AV over any other.
You are missing the issue that makes this a real problem. Where is the dividing line between OS and AV?
Some example questions: should a firewall be part of the OS, or a separate 'security suite'? If MS finds a way to prevent certain attacks on their kernel, is that an 'antivirus' component? Perhaps they can call it an 'antirootkit' component, and ship it with the OS?
There is no clear boundary between OS and AV. The same problem goes for OS and office suite, by the way - if MS beef up Write, til it has a similar featureset to Word - at what point did they cross the line?
Yes, an antitrust action against MS was justified, and would have helped - to some degree. But it wouldn't have solved the underlying issue, which is that once you have a monopoly on the OS - the basic purchase that every computer owner makes (so you have guaranteed income, as well as control of the foundation on which other software runs) - then you can dominate all the rest of the software market for that OS, by gradually expanding the boundary of what an 'OS' is.
Splitting the OS from the AV, or the OS from the office suite, is therefore not enough. The solution, or at least part of the way towards a solution, is to prevent a monopoly of the OS market. This can be attempted by requiring that certain standards be adhered to, so competition in the OS market has some chance. This wouldn't be easy, though; witness the difficulty of the WINE project - MS don't even implement their own standards correctly. Still, if OS standards were published and strongly enforced (by e.g. fines), this might do some good.
Are there any linux implementation of XMPP + Jingle? Google seem to say otherwise...
You can use Tapioca on Linux. Get your Windows friends to use Google Talk instead of Skype, and you are good to go with VoIP.
Of course there's always the theory that the administration thought that a terrorist attack would be a great way to rally the American populace and take their minds off much larger problems at home...
Problems at home? What problems at home? You totally lost me.
I couldn't agree more with the goal here, but the approach seems a bit unproductive. I refer to the parts like this:
James is a big fat liar
(It's in TFA, believe it or not.)
This is no way to get the other side to play nicely with you.
What went wrong... with TFA? Perhaps they can't afford an editor? Some examples (emphasis mine in all):
"Despite everything AM2 had going for it, this includes a dedicated enthusiast base and a tremendous amount of pro-AMD spirit at the time, the new platform has largely been dismissed by consumers."
"Where did things go wrong for AMD, a company that was on a legendary upswing, during which it could seemingly do no wrong."
"They were clearly unable to do so (or did not intend to) so most 939 owners were never inclined to upgrade"
"This is just simple economics, as in it does not make sense to invest the money in going with AM2 when consumers can get a 939 computer for less."
And many others; I just ran out of patience. I apologize for my grammar nazism, and I am prone to making lots of mistakes myself, I admit; also, many of these aren't actual mistakes but just bad style. However, if you want your articles to be taken seriously, make sure they are polished beyond that of a high-school student's blog. Regardless of content, the writing here is so poor that I am surprised/disappointed that this was posted on Slashdot.
Winning in court proves things about the GPL, the open development of software, the honesty of IBM as a corporation, and a few other things that a buyout or a settlement never could.
Also, winning in court shows that IBM kicks SCO's a**.
Or, at the least, doesn't reward SCO. Being bought by IBM would be a great ending for SCO, whereas losing in court, filing for bankruptcy and then watching people carry your computer equipment out to pay the debt-holders is... less so.
... btjunkie.org
However, I'm not sure I can trust anything this 'review' says. For example, by the numbers btjunkie.org seems incredibly more successful than any of its competition, which seems a bit odd given that it doesn't seem that well-known (53,000 hits on Google; compare to mininova, which has 3,000,000). TFA says:
"At first I thought BTJunkie's numbers must be fake, but I assure you it is real! I tested the number posted with the number in the actual directory for the day and they matched for a week straight!"
Yes, I am sure that you did, and I am also sure that you don't own btjunkie.org. 100% sure.
Would you like your waiter to try and convince you to change your order because they don't think it's right to eat lamb?
No, this would be more like the chef telling you a certain food combination won't work well, and recommending another.
(1. Waiters aren't experts. Chefs are. So are computer technicians. 2. Telling you not to eat lamb is a political action. Recommending a different complement of dishes for dinner isn't political, the chef probably knows what he's doing. Likewise, computer technicians know that certain open-source software packages are good to use because they have tangible benefits.)
I have to agree with the Linux guys: the value of this new license does not justify the damage it will do by splitting the community.
Please explain why this would split the community, in your opinion. I don't understand the claim in TFA that "distro builders will have a tough time."
As I see it, we already have a lot of licenses (GPL, LGPL, BSD, Apache, Python, MPL) inside almost every distro. Things seem to work fine. Even single projects can have more than one license; GNOME has portions which are GPL, and others which LGPL. This is a good example, as the two licenses are carefully chosen to work very well (prevent proprietization of GNOME, but allow commercial apps to use the GNOME libs, i.e. for commercial apps to be developed for GNOME).
So, in addition to all existing licenses, we'll have GPL2 and GPL3 apps. The kernel will be GPL2; GNOME will be GPL3 and LGPL3; and so forth. Where is the balkanization?
Microsoft is going to have to learn that it needs to try to work with the companies that make software for their systems.
No. This is a basic fallacy, the "Windows ecosystem", of various ISPs making money off of stuff that runs on Windows. This is not how things actually work.
What actually goes on, is that Microsoft treats the ISPs as unpaid employees working on 'market-testing' projects. Adobe make money off of PDF stuff? Then Microsoft will add PDF tools to their OS next time around. Somebody has a business model around a web browser? Enter IE. And so forth. Basically, if an app becomes popular, Microsoft create a similar app and bundle it into the OS; if it doesn't become popular, Microsoft never lost any money on development. A perfect win-win for Microsoft.
ISPs may have a 'window' (apologies) of time to make some money off of proprietary software for Windows before being ousted by Microsoft. But this is a big gamble to make; I'm amazed that people still try this.
The only sustainable way to make money off of Windows-related software is one of the following: (1) rely on the law to prevent Microsoft from bundling a replacement into the OS (but who can rely on that?), or (2) make a product that Microsoft would NOT want to bundle, but would like to make money off of, separately from Windows (e.g. a database). Yet even in this case, it is clear that your odds are not favorable (witness Wordperfect).
There is a reason that most popular apps for Windows are either Microsoft-written or OSS (IE and Firefox, IIS and Apache, etc.). If the app can be bundled into the OS, you won't make money off of it. So you can only exist if you don't expect to make any money.
Adobe, prepare to have to change your business model.
I doubt the networks would go for it, because it would cut into DVD sales. (Never mind that it would increase overall sales and end up making them lots and lots more money in the end. Remember, they're stupid.)
Hmm, I hate the **AA as much as most Slashdotters do, but this seems a bit much. It might increase overall sales, but it might not; it's too soon to tell.
I agree that they are stupid, but not for this reason. I think they are stupid for not realizing that they need to move to this type of distribution even if it causes a decrease in sales. The alternative - sticking to an outdated business model in the face of reality - may be far more costly in the long run.
"According to Techweb, data gathered by Net Applications shows that the Mac OS had 4.35 per cent of the world's operating system share last December. Now it only has 4.33 per cent.""
Yet, at the link to the actual data, it says, for August 2006:
winXP: 84.18%, win2000: 6.54%, Mac: 3.71%, win98: 2.40%, winME: 1.10%, Other: 2.07%
So, 3.71%, not 4.33%. Looks like The Inquirer is reading the line for April 2006, and not September 2006. Actually, Mac share drops continually during the period December 2005 (4.35%) to August 2006 (3.71%). This is more than half a percentage point... which you can trust as much as you can trust their methodology, I guess.
Btw, "Other" rises from 1.33% to over 2% during the same period. That's us Linux people, right?