Plain text ALREADY has enormous sets of tools available to modify it, including every text editor, parser, etc. There is not one tool that is critical (and in this case you can note the tool is the Windows library to access the Registry).
Sort of a least common denominator. You can spill the text file into a console with cat, view it and edit it with Notepad, or vi, or Word, or whatever you like to use to edit text. You can do this all remotely with ease.
Certainly all of this can be done with a binary registry IF the OS provides you the tools. But you still lose a lot of common function by migrating away from plain text, and it remans to be seen what gain, if any, comes from not having a plain text registry. I think the only real change is that the OS provider CONTROLS EXACTLY how you can interact with the Registry, which may or may not be a good thing, depending on your opinion.
The concept of a system registry is fantastic in theory; in practice, on Microsoft's operating systems, it is a trainwreck. Why must Apple's attempt immediately be classified as such, as well? Do you honestly think managing 100 different little config files in/etc, each with its own syntax and gotchas, is somehow more elegant than a registry-based solution?
Plain text files are good. You can view them with just about any utility (cat, less, more), you can grep from them easily, you can echo >> them, etc. Plain text is sort of a universal interface that is easy to manipulate, and easy to write your own tools to manipulate (using PERL, for example).
Now, taking that away in order to have a binary registry that has exactly one painful tool to manipulate is like highway robbery. No remote admin, not easy write your own utils, etc. Just crap.
Plain text configs are just plain easy to learn and to admin. Putting them all in the same file doesn't change much - making them binary and forcing you to use the RegEdit program of your OS provider is crippling to an admin.
In either case, why are they looking to buy RedHat? They could very easily hire 1/2 dozen talented admins and programmers to put together their own distribution in 6 months or less. I'd personally be more than happy to be collecting a nice steady paycheck from a company I know is going to be doing well no matter what.
Brand name. RedHat has the best brand name in linux.
Nevermind that RedHat is nothing special compared to SuSE or Mandrake, and they all suck compared to Debian (which can not be bought anyway). Redhat is turning a profit in a sense, and people know its name- even non linux people.
Steve Case bought Mozilla for leverage. AOL was using IE as the basis for its browser despite Microsoft being its strongest competitor in the ISP market. If Microsoft pulled the rug out from under them, AOL would be hurt substantially.
So, buy Mozilla, and fund its development. You do not need to USE it, it just exists so that Microsoft continues to play fair.
Steve Case will now buy a linux company for leverage. Microsoft is doing everything possible to leverage Windows for MSN. So, Steve Case will combat them directly in the PC market. First, buy a linux company. Then, buy a PC company (or negotiate a contract with them). Then, offer linux PCs that hide linux, have an AOL browser interface through mozilla, and offer StarOffice. Offer it cheap. Undercut Windows and give people all the functional tools they need at home. Attack Microsoft in the OS market - not to win profits in the OS market, but to support the ISP business.
Will you remember that the next time somebody installs a Linux workstation with every daemon in the world running?
Remember it - I've had to live it. On two separate occasions I had to reinstall RH on machines with BIND. These were not nameservers. Since then I do regular audits of machines on which I might be asked to work.
"netstat -al | grep LISTEN" and nmap -sT
Secure by default should be the motto for default server installations. Redhat has learned from its mistakes. So have all other linux vendors. Debian and the BSDs never had such problems to begin with.
But there are still several million Windows machines displaying the default IIS home page.
Normal slashdot staff overreacting again. You can turn that ID off.
The defaults are everything, Why do you think Microsoft has negotiated so hard for its icons to be on the Mac desktop(IE), and no other browser is allowed to be there ? Why do you think Microsoft has spent so much effort controlling system defaults for media players, and IE home pages, and startup icons ?
This is standard user behavior - they do not change the defaults. Somehow it is the fault of the guy who installed NT server and NEVER WANTED IIS that he got broken into, and not Microsoft's fault for globally enabling IIS and asking the admins to turn it off.
Giving the end user a chance to change a system default is a good way to ensure that 95% will use the default, and the company (Microsoft in this case) can blow blame aside by saying the user can change it.
Now, you can argue users need to be more savvy, or you can accept that Microsoft KNOWS end user behavior and uses it to their advantage. Or both...
Come ON. Microsoft will not start artificially limiting what hardware it's product will run on. Why would they? That would be like throwing away customers!
Right. Like they didn't cut off Alpha at its knees.
Step back a few generations and think about your statement. And you will realize Microsoft actually controls what hardware can sell.
Back in the day of the 286 and the MACII, both Windows/Intel and Mac made upgrades. Mac chose to take the best processors and Buses they could, and upgrade the machine. Old instruction sets were handled, somewhat poorly, in software. Newer software had the performance edge. Until a few years ago, Macs had the best CPUs.
Intel, on the other hand, had to support X86 instruction sets. The evolution of CPUs for Windows machines is a long history of people designing workarounds for Microsoft not coding more modern instruction sets. Why should Microsoft rewrite their OS for new instruction sets ? People buy machines for Windows, not for instruction sets. If Intel won't build it, AMD will. Or Cyrix. Etc. And you can be damn sure Microsoft is not about to write software to re-code old instruction sets for newer CPUs.
And when it comes to third party drivers, Microsoft makes the third parties write their own. Which is why they often SUCK ROCKS.
And why would hardware manufacturers start doing this otherwise? Customer pressure? If anything, limiting their BIOS in this way would dramatically LOWER the value of their BIOS! Think about it, if 75% of motherboards had this restriction, would you pay extra for one of the 25% that didn't?
Hardware manufacturers have a simple reason to do this. The reason is sales. Microsoft has patented the use of a trusted OS and trusted RAM for digital rights management. They will get hardware manufacturers to build crypto into the speakers and monitors of the newer computers. They will do this because they are about to take over streaming digital media with patented WMFII. The operating system will decode the patented compression schemes, and send encrypted data to the monitors and speakers. And you can forget about copying anything, even in analog format.
This is the dream of the MPAA and RIAA, and Microsoft can make it happen. And the hardware manufacturers will all go along because it means another upgrade cycle. Think I am kidding or paranoid - check out what is happening right now and read the writing on the wall. This is the future. Hardware manufacturers will do anything to get another upgrade cycle. Microsoft will do anything to control EVERY STREAMING MEDIA event - and get their cut. The RIAA and MPAA will go along because it gives them their dream - selling streamed media on demand without copying capabilities. Everyone wins except the consumer.
If this thinly veiled lawsuit wins, I'm chucking my computer into the nearest river and going total Luddite. I'd much rather face a daily stuggle for survival than a daily struggle for my basic freedoms.
The point is not to win. The MPAA would probably like to win because it would send a stronger message, but the real point is making Johansen's life a living hell so that no sane person wants to be the next Jon Johansen. The MPAA feels threatened in its ability to use IP laws to protect its copyrights - its crown jewels. It has billions of dollars at stake, and the payment to its lawyers to make JJ suffer will easily be worth it if the next hacker thinks long and hard before making decryption software publicly available.
This is also why this criminal case is not the end. The civil cases come next, because no amount of suffering is enough for the goals of the MPAA.
After decryption is broken, get in bed with Microsoft. Have Microsoft patent the use of trusted RAM and trusted operating systems (already done) so that only Microsoft and its licensees (MacOS) will be able to play encrypted movies. The next generation of encryption will include decryption devices in the playback hardware - the monitors, and the speakers. These will become industry defaults, and will apply not only to movies by the MPAA, but also to streamed media delivered via the Internet (which is then rendered uncopyable, principally because it cannot even be played on an open source OS). Hardware makers go along because all computer users have to upgrade again, and unless you can force another upgrade cycle, everyone already has a computer powerful enough to do what they use it for.
Microsoft and MacOS thus become the only viable operating systems for playing movies, music, and streamed media via the internet (which can then be sold viably because it cannot be copied). Think I am kidding - come back in two years when this is happening.
As for Johansen, the MPAA is simply making him suffer a little. They want nothing more than to prevent anyone else from becoming a Jon Johansen. So, they dug for months to find any law that could be used to even indict him. This will not be the end, either, I suspect civil charges will be next. The MPAA is protecting the crown jewels, the IP law it bought from Congress, and it has a LOT of value at stake.
Windows 95 possessed a clock rollover bug that locked the machine every 47 days.
It took 3 years to find this bug.
Why, you might ask ? Was it because Windows 95 machines never stayed booted for 47 days, or because no one payed much attention when it locked, b/c that was expected behavior ?
Win2k and XP are only stable until you start installing 3rd party software. Then the fun begins.
There should be two methods of determining whether or not the university can make money off their product.
So now you are going to re-define the rules ? Well, let me take a stab at presenting the likely reply from the Intellectual Property Office.
Rule #1) If Students worked on the project, and were not compensated by things such as free tuition, comparable salary with public sector, or royalties of the distributed project they can not sell it.
Legally, exclusive copyright licensing from code written by students for class projects belongs to the school. This copyright licensing will help to maintain the very education that the student was receiving, and future students will receive better education at less cost because of this licensing.
Rule #2) If the project was funded by the US Government, State or Local Government, it can not be sold.
Money alone does not buy you intellectual property. If you fund a research project, that money assures that the project gets done, nothing else. If you want to fund a project and maintain the intellectual property, you might think about maintaining in infrastructure that can support researchers careers, instead of just donating a few hundred thousand dollars.
Rule #3) If the finances come from money that is considered 'tax deductable' by the person(s) giving the money, they can no sell it.
Again, this is a gross misunderstanding of what you get for your buck. At a corporation, you pay for the project, you pay for the researcher's overhead, you ensure he has a retirement plan, you give him benefits, you give him resources to ensure he can do the work, and part of his job description is creating intellectual property for the corporation.
At a university, the researcher gets grants from a variety of sources. The University provides job stability, the University provides overhead, the University provides benefits for the researcher, and the University has exclusive licensing to all intellectual property (although the holder maintains some rights for royalties). But it is not part of the job description that faculty create intellectual property. Promotions do not consider it. It is just a bonus. And it is the decision of the University as to what happens to it. The University is still much more responsible for the actions of its faculty than the grant sources.
It's not that Universites have suddenly gotten greedy, it's that they've suddenly gotten desperate.
Would you deny that such IP laws have had benefits ? For example. the Cohen-Boyer patent between UCSF and Stanford created Genentech, and has funnelled a BILLION dollars back to those universities, which are now boosting research. Cohen and Boyer did not have to make this patent to keep their jobs, but the careers of hundreds of investigators that followed them are much easier as a result, and more basic science research will get done.
On the other side, if Berkeley has licensed BSD originally, there would probably be no FreeBSD today, and much of our Internet software would perform much worse. Somehow there is a time to sell licensing rights, and a time to give them away, and a morass of ethical issues in between.
Well-phrased. Yes, older engineers (and scientists) are better versed in FORTRAN. Of course, by "FORTRAN" we really mean that these folks know FORTRAN 77, and you have to ask yourself--do you really want to begin any new coding project in a language as primitive as F77? It's a bit like saying: "we're going to code in BASIC, because that's what the staff knows."
Most engineers keep up reasonably well with the changes in ForTran. It has come a long way since f77, which is often used as an excuse NOT to change to a C based platform, along with lack of adequately optimized compilers.
Another funny thing is, most truly senior engineers and scientists aren't the ones writing code anymore. So it becomes even more absurd to suggest that new code should be developed in a language they understand.
I am guessing right now - no - scratch that. I am almost positive right now you've never worked for a senior engineer. They are tweakers, coders, hackers, etc. My boss once disappeared for days into his office, and we thought he was working on something important for the team. He came out happy as a clam that he had rewritten an enormous chunk of ForTran code, and he was sure it was now free of bugs (it was free of bugs before, too - he just rewrote it so he could read it more easily later). Engineering teams are different in that way from coding groups - the senior engineers LOVE nothing better than digging into code and looking for another optimization. It drives you nuts if it is your code.
I think the safest thing to say is that whatever your programming needs, whether you're doing pure matrix/BLAS number crunching or writing complex simulations/models, you should think twice before using FORTRAN. Well-written code in, say, C++ will be more maintainable and accessible to other people you work with (and who have to touch your code in future).
Provided you are not working with other engineers, that is. ForTran is really deeply embedded in lots of engineering locales, and there is an enormous codebase available.
Let's just say you'll have a hard time finding a senior engineer who knows C++, and an equally hard time finding one who doesn't know ForTran. And, often, the senior engineers are among your better resources. C++ was not even stable when they trained, and ForTran has consistently maintained its edge in optimized compilers, which is all the senior engineers really care about.
Leave C++ programming for writing GUI programs, where its benefits are tangible and obvious.
So how much gain in performance (or apparent performance) should one expect after applying this combined patch? Are the performance gains only applicable under special circumstances? Are they focused more on desktop apps than server?
I doubt you will see ANY performance enhancements with this patch - in fact, under most circumstances, performance will be worse.
The patch MOSTLY addresses a need to have shorter latency responses under linux. So the real benefit will be seen if you, say, run xmms, browse the web on a java intensive site, and do a make -j10 bzImage at the same time. On most machines this will cause xmms to stutter a little - either an audio skip or the text in the scrolling windows will stop and start. With the patch you can expect perfect xmms performance under broader circumstances.
This has the most significant implications for audio and video under linux - things that require short latencies to perform properly. This is questionably the most needed area of improvement for the linux kernel for desktop use.
However, if you time kernel compiles or run lmbench, you'll probably see slightly (but not hugely) worse results. You can expect that changes to address these issues will be incorporated in mainline kernels eventually, although not necessarily in the form that these patches take. Maybe - it will be interesting to see it sort out.
The server does not impact the desktop market. Apple would not deny that linux is a part of that. They want to make streaming video widely available, so the server is free, and the source is available under the Mac Darwin source license. Whether this is open source is subject to interpretation.
This does not impact what I said, though. There are no media PLAYERS available for linux that play WMF 2.0 or Quicktime with the Sorenson codec. These are patented algorithms used in media players that are freely available on Windows and Mac platforms. Windows makes a MacOS player for WMF available. Mac makes a Windows QT player available. But neither will even ALLOW the algorithms to be coded in linux. Why is that ? It doesn't impact the market (they are not making any money), and it makes freely available media streams more widely available.
The only rational explanation is that Apple and Microsoft are colluding to block free Unices from the desktop marktet. No Office, no streaming media. They will each hurt their own streaming server markets in order to hurt the linux desktop market - almost textbook collusion.
Apple and MS would like nothing less than making ANY viable desktop tool available for free Unices. They both use patented streaming media protocols to block the development of streaming media viewers for free Unices. And Office is not going to be available anytime soon.
Right now free Unices have a tiny fraction of the desktop market. And Apple and Microsoft have NO interest in making it easier for anyone to switch. If it were not for the browser war, Office for Mac would be already gone, and its viability as a desktop platform would be gone as well.
These decisions have little to do with how easy it would be to port Office. Let's face it, Microsoft probably already has Office for Linux ready to ship. They BANK a billion dollars a month, so they can certainly afford the development effort required, and it would be good conservative strategy to have it ready should it be needed someday. But unless the trial settlement changes dramatically, that day is no time soon. Right now, anyone who deals with other people who use Word (which is to say almost everyone) needs to have access to a copy of Word. Until that changes, Microsoft will not port Office anywhere else. That it exists for Mac is a result of the 'kill netscape' deal made between Mac and Microsoft.
For those of us who are not complete console monks Nedit really is the perfect solution. While it is fatter than vi etc, the absolute difference is small enough to ignore even on older machines.
The difference is about a meg. Until you turn syntax highlighting on.
The real bummer with nedit is it cannot be plugged into terminal utilities like mutt and slrn easily. You already have a terminal loaded in ram, so you can add vi (a few hundred K RAM) and edit your email, or add nedit and add 3 Megs, which will not load quite so fast.
The difference on my 486 while C programming 1000 line files and using syntax highlighting was enough to make me change to jed. The LOAD time difference. I've never quite been a vi fan but it is certainly usable too.
The huge benefit of nedit is its
1) power and extensibility
2) consistency with Mac/Windows editor interfaces
If he is really looking lo-fat, he is kinda screwed.
Nedit is not bad, but a terminal based editor will KILL it for RAM usage. Like vi, or Microemacs, or joe, or even jed.
IceWM is OK, but blackbox is the screamer lightweight favorite Window Manager.
For a file manager use the command line. Or MC - another terminal based utility (GUI utilities chunk out 8-10 MB RAM just for playing).
For graphics viewing, skip ee. Raster is cool and all, but his imlib1.0 sucked for RAM usage. Try imlib2 and ee2, or eog. Either minimzes RAM usage while viewing images. GQview is pretty good, too.
All browsers blow chunks for using RAM, especially konqueror and mozilla. Opera is the clear lo-fat winna. Or lynx, or w3m.
And work on X - hard. Make a beautiful image your desktop background, and give up 20-30 Megs of RAM. Change it to a flat color (xsetroot -solid black) and you gain a lot back. Change X to 16 bit, and/or lose some resolution and you will gain more. I guess it all depends on what compromises you are willing to make. You can always hit Ctrl-Alt-F2 and save even more.
Blackbox is VERY lightweight. It looks fast, is somewhat customizable. GREAT on a box with limited RAM (but not as good as dropping 24 bit color for 16 bit color).
The DOC format has not changed dramatically since Office 97.
Really. So you've never had a problem trying to open a doc file created in Office2000 with Office 97. If so, you haven't tried it very hard.
Doc is not really a format in the standard sense. It can include any object that is defined by DCOM. As DCOM changes with each revision of Windows, you can create things in Office97 under Windows2000 that are unreadable in Windows95 with Office97 !
This is in some senses a strength in that you can use anything defined by your object manager in your Word documents. The downside is the guy trying to read it needs to have the same set of objects defined on his side. This makes it a practical impossibility for anyone to make a "perfect" doc import filter. The DCOM objects keep changing, so the import filter keeps breaking. As do older versions of Office.
I really don't think that Microsoft discontinuing support for old versions of Windows will make anyone switch to Linux.When was the last time you called up MS for tech support for Windows?
I think you misunderstand what it means when M$ discontinues support for old versions of Windows. It means there will be no new drivers. It means all new software will be certified to run on XP, and will probably fail in interesting ways on older OSs. It means that if you depend on new applications or new hardware, you will be coerced heavily into upgrading to XP.
Then you are in a tough place. You need to accept the new licensing plans. Or consider switching. Personally, I don't hink many people will switch to linux.
This is a classic Microsoft tactic to coerce people into upgrading. The basic policy is
1) Coerce OEMs into preloading.
2) Stop support for old operating systems
3) Make subtle compatibility changes in Office file formats. DOC format is extensible, so this is easy to do.
If you combine the effect of all of these, and take into account interdependence of Windows users, Microsoft can coerce EVERYONE into upgrading. Most people will not have a choice - they have to be able to exchange documents with others who use Windows.
Then, why exactly is QSS (QuickTime Streaming Server) free? It also runs in Darwin, which is and Open Source OS.
It is all about market control and blocking alternatives other than Windows and MacOS. The server even exists for linux. Just no player.
This is not about the amount of effort it would take to port the Sorenson codec to linux. Quicktime players already exist, and their authors are willing to code it at no cost to Apple.
Apple, however, will not allow this to occur. Patented codecs like WMF 2.0 and the Sorenson codec are not ALLOWED in linux simply because that is one more thing keeping Unices from becoming viable desktop alternatives of the future. And these streaming media patents have a LONG LONG time to go before they expire.
Real, however, actually provides support for other OSs (by supporting a player coded by the linux community).
How can anyone have a web standard that is not open and provided with cross-platform support ? These moves by Apple and Microsoft have two aims - to control the streaming server market and to block free operating systems from the desktop market. Period.
The Sorenson codec is owned by Sorenson and Apple pays for it. If you want to get a legal player for a non-Win/Mac platform someone will either have to
reverse engineer the codec(legally questionable and hard)
Try ILLEGAL. You can reverse engineer things protected by copyright, but you cannot reverse engineer patented algorithms.
2. write a wrapper that uses another OSs Code (crossover does this)
Of questionable legality.
3. legally licence the code and release a player (anyone?)
This ignores the real issue. Apple has exclusive licensing to the Sorenson codec. Steve Jobs will NEVER allow a linux player, and this patent has over a decade before it expires. Both Apple and Microsoft want to keep other OSs out of the home/desktop market. Banning streaming media from them is part of the plan. You can expect the next moves from Microsoft will be changing to WMF 2.0 (also patented), and then lease the servers dirt cheap to take over the market from Real and Quicktime.
None of this helps open source users, because the battlefield requires patented protection just to play. And Media Players will only exist for viable desktop market, and linux doesn't matter enough yet. At least Real is backed by AOL, so there is a chance Real will become the de facto standard. But I doubt it. Microsoft can give away WMF servers with the amount of profit they make, and flood the server market with WMF. At that point it is all over.
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That doesn't take away from my point.
Plain text ALREADY has enormous sets of tools available to modify it, including every text editor, parser, etc. There is not one tool that is critical (and in this case you can note the tool is the Windows library to access the Registry).
Sort of a least common denominator. You can spill the text file into a console with cat, view it and edit it with Notepad, or vi, or Word, or whatever you like to use to edit text. You can do this all remotely with ease.
Certainly all of this can be done with a binary registry IF the OS provides you the tools. But you still lose a lot of common function by migrating away from plain text, and it remans to be seen what gain, if any, comes from not having a plain text registry. I think the only real change is that the OS provider CONTROLS EXACTLY how you can interact with the Registry, which may or may not be a good thing, depending on your opinion.
The concept of a system registry is fantastic in theory; in practice, on Microsoft's operating systems, it is a trainwreck. Why must Apple's attempt immediately be classified as such, as well? Do you honestly think managing 100 different little config files in /etc, each with its own syntax and gotchas, is somehow more elegant than a registry-based solution?
Plain text files are good. You can view them with just about any utility (cat, less, more), you can grep from them easily, you can echo >> them, etc. Plain text is sort of a universal interface that is easy to manipulate, and easy to write your own tools to manipulate (using PERL, for example).
Now, taking that away in order to have a binary registry that has exactly one painful tool to manipulate is like highway robbery. No remote admin, not easy write your own utils, etc. Just crap.
Plain text configs are just plain easy to learn and to admin. Putting them all in the same file doesn't change much - making them binary and forcing you to use the RegEdit program of your OS provider is crippling to an admin.
In either case, why are they looking to buy RedHat? They could very easily hire 1/2 dozen talented admins and programmers to put together their own distribution in 6 months or less. I'd personally be more than happy to be collecting a nice steady paycheck from a company I know is going to be doing well no matter what.
Brand name. RedHat has the best brand name in linux.
Nevermind that RedHat is nothing special compared to SuSE or Mandrake, and they all suck compared to Debian (which can not be bought anyway). Redhat is turning a profit in a sense, and people know its name- even non linux people.
Steve Case bought Mozilla for leverage. AOL was using IE as the basis for its browser despite Microsoft being its strongest competitor in the ISP market. If Microsoft pulled the rug out from under them, AOL would be hurt substantially.
So, buy Mozilla, and fund its development. You do not need to USE it, it just exists so that Microsoft continues to play fair.
Steve Case will now buy a linux company for leverage. Microsoft is doing everything possible to leverage Windows for MSN. So, Steve Case will combat them directly in the PC market. First, buy a linux company. Then, buy a PC company (or negotiate a contract with them). Then, offer linux PCs that hide linux, have an AOL browser interface through mozilla, and offer StarOffice. Offer it cheap. Undercut Windows and give people all the functional tools they need at home. Attack Microsoft in the OS market - not to win profits in the OS market, but to support the ISP business.
Will you remember that the next time somebody installs a Linux workstation with every daemon in the world running?
Remember it - I've had to live it. On two separate occasions I had to reinstall RH on machines with BIND. These were not nameservers. Since then I do regular audits of machines on which I might be asked to work.
"netstat -al | grep LISTEN" and nmap -sT
Secure by default should be the motto for default server installations. Redhat has learned from its mistakes. So have all other linux vendors. Debian and the BSDs never had such problems to begin with.
But there are still several million Windows machines displaying the default IIS home page.
Right.
It is installed by default on NT Server.
I still get pinged by dozens of locals machines that are rooted through that one.
Normal slashdot staff overreacting again. You can turn that ID off.
The defaults are everything, Why do you think Microsoft has negotiated so hard for its icons to be on the Mac desktop(IE), and no other browser is allowed to be there ? Why do you think Microsoft has spent so much effort controlling system defaults for media players, and IE home pages, and startup icons ?
This is standard user behavior - they do not change the defaults. Somehow it is the fault of the guy who installed NT server and NEVER WANTED IIS that he got broken into, and not Microsoft's fault for globally enabling IIS and asking the admins to turn it off.
Giving the end user a chance to change a system default is a good way to ensure that 95% will use the default, and the company (Microsoft in this case) can blow blame aside by saying the user can change it.
Now, you can argue users need to be more savvy, or you can accept that Microsoft KNOWS end user behavior and uses it to their advantage. Or both...
Come ON. Microsoft will not start artificially limiting what hardware it's product will run on. Why would they? That would be like throwing away customers!
Right. Like they didn't cut off Alpha at its knees.
Step back a few generations and think about your statement. And you will realize Microsoft actually controls what hardware can sell.
Back in the day of the 286 and the MACII, both Windows/Intel and Mac made upgrades. Mac chose to take the best processors and Buses they could, and upgrade the machine. Old instruction sets were handled, somewhat poorly, in software. Newer software had the performance edge. Until a few years ago, Macs had the best CPUs.
Intel, on the other hand, had to support X86 instruction sets. The evolution of CPUs for Windows machines is a long history of people designing workarounds for Microsoft not coding more modern instruction sets. Why should Microsoft rewrite their OS for new instruction sets ? People buy machines for Windows, not for instruction sets. If Intel won't build it, AMD will. Or Cyrix. Etc. And you can be damn sure Microsoft is not about to write software to re-code old instruction sets for newer CPUs.
And when it comes to third party drivers, Microsoft makes the third parties write their own. Which is why they often SUCK ROCKS.
And why would hardware manufacturers start doing this otherwise? Customer pressure? If anything, limiting their BIOS in this way would dramatically LOWER the value of their BIOS! Think about it, if 75% of motherboards had this restriction, would you pay extra for one of the 25% that didn't?
Hardware manufacturers have a simple reason to do this. The reason is sales. Microsoft has patented the use of a trusted OS and trusted RAM for digital rights management. They will get hardware manufacturers to build crypto into the speakers and monitors of the newer computers. They will do this because they are about to take over streaming digital media with patented WMFII. The operating system will decode the patented compression schemes, and send encrypted data to the monitors and speakers. And you can forget about copying anything, even in analog format.
This is the dream of the MPAA and RIAA, and Microsoft can make it happen. And the hardware manufacturers will all go along because it means another upgrade cycle. Think I am kidding or paranoid - check out what is happening right now and read the writing on the wall. This is the future. Hardware manufacturers will do anything to get another upgrade cycle. Microsoft will do anything to control EVERY STREAMING MEDIA event - and get their cut. The RIAA and MPAA will go along because it gives them their dream - selling streamed media on demand without copying capabilities. Everyone wins except the consumer.
If this thinly veiled lawsuit wins, I'm chucking my computer into the nearest river and going total Luddite. I'd much rather face a daily stuggle for survival than a daily struggle for my basic freedoms.
The point is not to win. The MPAA would probably like to win because it would send a stronger message, but the real point is making Johansen's life a living hell so that no sane person wants to be the next Jon Johansen. The MPAA feels threatened in its ability to use IP laws to protect its copyrights - its crown jewels. It has billions of dollars at stake, and the payment to its lawyers to make JJ suffer will easily be worth it if the next hacker thinks long and hard before making decryption software publicly available.
This is also why this criminal case is not the end. The civil cases come next, because no amount of suffering is enough for the goals of the MPAA.
You missed step three.
After decryption is broken, get in bed with Microsoft. Have Microsoft patent the use of trusted RAM and trusted operating systems (already done) so that only Microsoft and its licensees (MacOS) will be able to play encrypted movies. The next generation of encryption will include decryption devices in the playback hardware - the monitors, and the speakers. These will become industry defaults, and will apply not only to movies by the MPAA, but also to streamed media delivered via the Internet (which is then rendered uncopyable, principally because it cannot even be played on an open source OS). Hardware makers go along because all computer users have to upgrade again, and unless you can force another upgrade cycle, everyone already has a computer powerful enough to do what they use it for.
Microsoft and MacOS thus become the only viable operating systems for playing movies, music, and streamed media via the internet (which can then be sold viably because it cannot be copied). Think I am kidding - come back in two years when this is happening.
As for Johansen, the MPAA is simply making him suffer a little. They want nothing more than to prevent anyone else from becoming a Jon Johansen. So, they dug for months to find any law that could be used to even indict him. This will not be the end, either, I suspect civil charges will be next. The MPAA is protecting the crown jewels, the IP law it bought from Congress, and it has a LOT of value at stake.
How would we know ?
Windows 95 possessed a clock rollover bug that locked the machine every 47 days.
It took 3 years to find this bug.
Why, you might ask ? Was it because Windows 95 machines never stayed booted for 47 days, or because no one payed much attention when it locked, b/c that was expected behavior ?
Win2k and XP are only stable until you start installing 3rd party software. Then the fun begins.
There should be two methods of determining whether or not the university can make money off their product.
So now you are going to re-define the rules ? Well, let me take a stab at presenting the likely reply from the Intellectual Property Office.
Rule #1) If Students worked on the project, and were not compensated by things such as free tuition, comparable salary with public sector, or royalties of the distributed project they can not sell it.
Legally, exclusive copyright licensing from code written by students for class projects belongs to the school. This copyright licensing will help to maintain the very education that the student was receiving, and future students will receive better education at less cost because of this licensing.
Rule #2) If the project was funded by the US Government, State or Local Government, it can not be sold.
Money alone does not buy you intellectual property. If you fund a research project, that money assures that the project gets done, nothing else. If you want to fund a project and maintain the intellectual property, you might think about maintaining in infrastructure that can support researchers careers, instead of just donating a few hundred thousand dollars.
Rule #3) If the finances come from money that is considered 'tax deductable' by the person(s) giving the money, they can no sell it.
Again, this is a gross misunderstanding of what you get for your buck. At a corporation, you pay for the project, you pay for the researcher's overhead, you ensure he has a retirement plan, you give him benefits, you give him resources to ensure he can do the work, and part of his job description is creating intellectual property for the corporation.
At a university, the researcher gets grants from a variety of sources. The University provides job stability, the University provides overhead, the University provides benefits for the researcher, and the University has exclusive licensing to all intellectual property (although the holder maintains some rights for royalties). But it is not part of the job description that faculty create intellectual property. Promotions do not consider it. It is just a bonus. And it is the decision of the University as to what happens to it. The University is still much more responsible for the actions of its faculty than the grant sources.
It's not that Universites have suddenly gotten greedy, it's that they've suddenly gotten desperate.
Would you deny that such IP laws have had benefits ? For example. the Cohen-Boyer patent between UCSF and Stanford created Genentech, and has funnelled a BILLION dollars back to those universities, which are now boosting research. Cohen and Boyer did not have to make this patent to keep their jobs, but the careers of hundreds of investigators that followed them are much easier as a result, and more basic science research will get done.
On the other side, if Berkeley has licensed BSD originally, there would probably be no FreeBSD today, and much of our Internet software would perform much worse. Somehow there is a time to sell licensing rights, and a time to give them away, and a morass of ethical issues in between.
Well-phrased. Yes, older engineers (and scientists) are better versed in FORTRAN. Of course, by "FORTRAN" we really mean that these folks know FORTRAN 77, and you have to ask yourself--do you really want to begin any new coding project in a language as primitive as F77? It's a bit like saying: "we're going to code in BASIC, because that's what the staff knows."
Most engineers keep up reasonably well with the changes in ForTran. It has come a long way since f77, which is often used as an excuse NOT to change to a C based platform, along with lack of adequately optimized compilers.
Another funny thing is, most truly senior engineers and scientists aren't the ones writing code anymore. So it becomes even more absurd to suggest that new code should be developed in a language they understand.
I am guessing right now - no - scratch that. I am almost positive right now you've never worked for a senior engineer. They are tweakers, coders, hackers, etc. My boss once disappeared for days into his office, and we thought he was working on something important for the team. He came out happy as a clam that he had rewritten an enormous chunk of ForTran code, and he was sure it was now free of bugs (it was free of bugs before, too - he just rewrote it so he could read it more easily later). Engineering teams are different in that way from coding groups - the senior engineers LOVE nothing better than digging into code and looking for another optimization. It drives you nuts if it is your code.
I think the safest thing to say is that whatever your programming needs, whether you're doing pure matrix/BLAS number crunching or writing complex simulations/models, you should think twice before using FORTRAN. Well-written code in, say, C++ will be more maintainable and accessible to other people you work with (and who have to touch your code in future).
Provided you are not working with other engineers, that is. ForTran is really deeply embedded in lots of engineering locales, and there is an enormous codebase available.
Let's just say you'll have a hard time finding a senior engineer who knows C++, and an equally hard time finding one who doesn't know ForTran. And, often, the senior engineers are among your better resources. C++ was not even stable when they trained, and ForTran has consistently maintained its edge in optimized compilers, which is all the senior engineers really care about.
Leave C++ programming for writing GUI programs, where its benefits are tangible and obvious.
So how much gain in performance (or apparent performance) should one expect after applying this combined patch? Are the performance gains only applicable under special circumstances? Are they focused more on desktop apps than server?
I doubt you will see ANY performance enhancements with this patch - in fact, under most circumstances, performance will be worse.
The patch MOSTLY addresses a need to have shorter latency responses under linux. So the real benefit will be seen if you, say, run xmms, browse the web on a java intensive site, and do a make -j10 bzImage at the same time. On most machines this will cause xmms to stutter a little - either an audio skip or the text in the scrolling windows will stop and start. With the patch you can expect perfect xmms performance under broader circumstances.
This has the most significant implications for audio and video under linux - things that require short latencies to perform properly. This is questionably the most needed area of improvement for the linux kernel for desktop use.
However, if you time kernel compiles or run lmbench, you'll probably see slightly (but not hugely) worse results. You can expect that changes to address these issues will be incorporated in mainline kernels eventually, although not necessarily in the form that these patches take. Maybe - it will be interesting to see it sort out.
The server does not impact the desktop market. Apple would not deny that linux is a part of that. They want to make streaming video widely available, so the server is free, and the source is available under the Mac Darwin source license. Whether this is open source is subject to interpretation.
This does not impact what I said, though. There are no media PLAYERS available for linux that play WMF 2.0 or Quicktime with the Sorenson codec. These are patented algorithms used in media players that are freely available on Windows and Mac platforms. Windows makes a MacOS player for WMF available. Mac makes a Windows QT player available. But neither will even ALLOW the algorithms to be coded in linux. Why is that ? It doesn't impact the market (they are not making any money), and it makes freely available media streams more widely available.
The only rational explanation is that Apple and Microsoft are colluding to block free Unices from the desktop marktet. No Office, no streaming media. They will each hurt their own streaming server markets in order to hurt the linux desktop market - almost textbook collusion.
Apple and MS would like nothing less than making ANY viable desktop tool available for free Unices. They both use patented streaming media protocols to block the development of streaming media viewers for free Unices. And Office is not going to be available anytime soon.
Right now free Unices have a tiny fraction of the desktop market. And Apple and Microsoft have NO interest in making it easier for anyone to switch. If it were not for the browser war, Office for Mac would be already gone, and its viability as a desktop platform would be gone as well.
These decisions have little to do with how easy it would be to port Office. Let's face it, Microsoft probably already has Office for Linux ready to ship. They BANK a billion dollars a month, so they can certainly afford the development effort required, and it would be good conservative strategy to have it ready should it be needed someday. But unless the trial settlement changes dramatically, that day is no time soon. Right now, anyone who deals with other people who use Word (which is to say almost everyone) needs to have access to a copy of Word. Until that changes, Microsoft will not port Office anywhere else. That it exists for Mac is a result of the 'kill netscape' deal made between Mac and Microsoft.
For those of us who are not complete console monks Nedit really is the perfect solution. While it is fatter than vi etc, the absolute difference is small enough to ignore even on older machines.
The difference is about a meg. Until you turn syntax highlighting on.
The real bummer with nedit is it cannot be plugged into terminal utilities like mutt and slrn easily. You already have a terminal loaded in ram, so you can add vi (a few hundred K RAM) and edit your email, or add nedit and add 3 Megs, which will not load quite so fast.
The difference on my 486 while C programming 1000 line files and using syntax highlighting was enough to make me change to jed. The LOAD time difference. I've never quite been a vi fan but it is certainly usable too.
The huge benefit of nedit is its
1) power and extensibility
2) consistency with Mac/Windows editor interfaces
For that combination it RULEZ.
If he is really looking lo-fat, he is kinda screwed.
Nedit is not bad, but a terminal based editor will KILL it for RAM usage. Like vi, or Microemacs, or joe, or even jed.
IceWM is OK, but blackbox is the screamer lightweight favorite Window Manager.
For a file manager use the command line. Or MC - another terminal based utility (GUI utilities chunk out 8-10 MB RAM just for playing).
For graphics viewing, skip ee. Raster is cool and all, but his imlib1.0 sucked for RAM usage. Try imlib2 and ee2, or eog. Either minimzes RAM usage while viewing images. GQview is pretty good, too.
All browsers blow chunks for using RAM, especially konqueror and mozilla. Opera is the clear lo-fat winna. Or lynx, or w3m.
And work on X - hard. Make a beautiful image your desktop background, and give up 20-30 Megs of RAM. Change it to a flat color (xsetroot -solid black) and you gain a lot back. Change X to 16 bit, and/or lose some resolution and you will gain more. I guess it all depends on what compromises you are willing to make. You can always hit Ctrl-Alt-F2 and save even more.
Blackbox is VERY lightweight. It looks fast, is somewhat customizable. GREAT on a box with limited RAM (but not as good as dropping 24 bit color for 16 bit color).
The DOC format has not changed dramatically since Office 97.
Really. So you've never had a problem trying to open a doc file created in Office2000 with Office 97. If so, you haven't tried it very hard.
Doc is not really a format in the standard sense. It can include any object that is defined by DCOM. As DCOM changes with each revision of Windows, you can create things in Office97 under Windows2000 that are unreadable in Windows95 with Office97 !
This is in some senses a strength in that you can use anything defined by your object manager in your Word documents. The downside is the guy trying to read it needs to have the same set of objects defined on his side. This makes it a practical impossibility for anyone to make a "perfect" doc import filter. The DCOM objects keep changing, so the import filter keeps breaking. As do older versions of Office.
I really don't think that Microsoft discontinuing support for old versions of Windows will make anyone switch to Linux.When was the last time you called up MS for tech support for Windows?
I think you misunderstand what it means when M$ discontinues support for old versions of Windows. It means there will be no new drivers. It means all new software will be certified to run on XP, and will probably fail in interesting ways on older OSs. It means that if you depend on new applications or new hardware, you will be coerced heavily into upgrading to XP.
Then you are in a tough place. You need to accept the new licensing plans. Or consider switching. Personally, I don't hink many people will switch to linux.
This is a classic Microsoft tactic to coerce people into upgrading. The basic policy is
1) Coerce OEMs into preloading.
2) Stop support for old operating systems
3) Make subtle compatibility changes in Office file formats. DOC format is extensible, so this is easy to do.
If you combine the effect of all of these, and take into account interdependence of Windows users, Microsoft can coerce EVERYONE into upgrading. Most people will not have a choice - they have to be able to exchange documents with others who use Windows.
You are a strange man if you WANT Real and their bloated spyware to win the war.
I'd really liked an unencumbered codec to win.
Barring that (and that seems unlikely), I'd like a codec supported cross-platforms to win.
And if that fails, the market has failed me. I do not use Windows or MacOS, and anything else will simply not be seen by me.
If it were patented, we could just look up the specs eh?
There should certainly be enough there to get started. And, in countries that do not support algorithm patents, this would be legal.
It is non-trivial to reverse engineer such a codec, though. It would be a massive effort.
Then, why exactly is QSS (QuickTime Streaming Server) free? It also runs in Darwin, which is and Open Source OS.
It is all about market control and blocking alternatives other than Windows and MacOS. The server even exists for linux. Just no player.
This is not about the amount of effort it would take to port the Sorenson codec to linux. Quicktime players already exist, and their authors are willing to code it at no cost to Apple.
Apple, however, will not allow this to occur. Patented codecs like WMF 2.0 and the Sorenson codec are not ALLOWED in linux simply because that is one more thing keeping Unices from becoming viable desktop alternatives of the future. And these streaming media patents have a LONG LONG time to go before they expire.
Real, however, actually provides support for other OSs (by supporting a player coded by the linux community).
How can anyone have a web standard that is not open and provided with cross-platform support ? These moves by Apple and Microsoft have two aims - to control the streaming server market and to block free operating systems from the desktop market. Period.
The Sorenson codec is owned by Sorenson and Apple pays for it. If you want to get a legal player for a non-Win/Mac platform someone will either have to
reverse engineer the codec(legally questionable and hard)
Try ILLEGAL. You can reverse engineer things protected by copyright, but you cannot reverse engineer patented algorithms.
2. write a wrapper that uses another OSs Code (crossover does this)
Of questionable legality.
3. legally licence the code and release a player (anyone?)
This ignores the real issue. Apple has exclusive licensing to the Sorenson codec. Steve Jobs will NEVER allow a linux player, and this patent has over a decade before it expires. Both Apple and Microsoft want to keep other OSs out of the home/desktop market. Banning streaming media from them is part of the plan. You can expect the next moves from Microsoft will be changing to WMF 2.0 (also patented), and then lease the servers dirt cheap to take over the market from Real and Quicktime.
None of this helps open source users, because the battlefield requires patented protection just to play. And Media Players will only exist for viable desktop market, and linux doesn't matter enough yet. At least Real is backed by AOL, so there is a chance Real will become the de facto standard. But I doubt it. Microsoft can give away WMF servers with the amount of profit they make, and flood the server market with WMF. At that point it is all over.