[Mozilla] have no obligation whatsoever of giving a dime to bsd any more than you do.
I guess it depends on how you view things. If you view software as an ecosystem, your statement here is like saying humans shouldn't take care of the environment, even if they're only doing it to further their own needs.
I wonder how, as time goes on, many of these open source projects will age. Mozilla code is more than 10 years old, I think. In the commercial sector you reach a point where you chuck must of the existing stuff and start from scratch. How many of these open source projects have the resources to rebuild from the ground up?
It's important to keep in mind that the Mozilla project scapped a lot of code to begin with when they started Gecko. Then, Firefox came along and scrapped a lot of code from the Mozilla suite. I'm not familiar with the codebase, but it would seem a major overhaul of Gecko would be in order to clean up the cruft that's starting to show.
It's definitely a good test case. But it's also a good indicator of how ODF will function in a worst-case scenario. This scenario being a bunch of documents in a bunch of different formats all being converted to the target platform (the target being ODF).
Yeah, just like in Nescape vs. IE. Oh wait, that paved the way for IE's near-total monopoly on browsers, the prevalence of ActiveX (which helps malware writers), and a severe decline in web standards (which continues to this day).
Microsoft's continued domination of the software industry has been because of many reasons, but one of the major ones comes into play here: the fact that they're the biggest. The biggest vendors are a lot of times seen as "authorities", even if the products they offer are utter crap. Inertia also ties in here, as businesses hate spending money to train people to work with new software.
I think it's important to note that VMWare played with some pretty dangerous fire: they created a product that could damage the Windows/Office monopoly. Microsoft most likely looks at VMWare's products and sees that they allow Windows to be relegated to a secondary role in an environment, whether it's home or business, desktop or server. MS realizes that as soon as Windows/Office becomes a secondary product (rather than the end-all be-all), their business is gone, since their entire business is built upon being the ONLY vendor.
It's almost like Microsoft is a snotty tourist trying to keep a straight face when forced to eat a local delicacy. Ballmer can't go on a chair-slinging rampage about it (at least not publicly). But yeah, giggles is a pretty accurate description of what the headline "MS supports Linux" gave me as well.
Five years sounds pretty short. If this were implemented, I would think there are a lot of people that would simply give up on buying copyrighted things, as it's pretty easy to wait a few years. Of course, most people have no idea how copyright works, so it might not affect sales very much.
Yes, yes I can imagine it as an MMO. It would consist entirely of griefers running around slopping paint over other peoples' work and yelling "OMFG NUB!"
There are several reasons this article is complete crap. The first is that its assumptions are incorrect. Others include (but are probably not limited to) misjudging the portable media player market in several different aspects, as well as a general failure to understand the current status of the computer industry.
I knew something was wrong when I read this line in the second paragraph: "Never before have we seen global domination by one retailer in a product category.". Um, hello? Without even reaching outside the computing/electronics industry, we can already come up with examples like Microsoft and IBM.
The second instance of shaky logic comes just two paragraphs later: "Here is what we know: music and video are going entirely digital. It won't be long before CDs and DVDs are obsolete as storage.". This is not only incorrect on a technical level, but on a functional level as well. This is wrong technically because CDs and DVDs are digital. Secondly, there will always be a need for cheap, mobile data storage. We've used punch cards, tape, and floppies. Now we use CDs and DVDs. We will likely use Blu-Ray in a few years. iPods will not supplant cheap media, because they lack a quality these formats provide: cheap media.
Secondly, the article misjudges the market in regards to portable media players, and the media industry in general. It accepts the FUD that the recording and movie cartels put forth, uncritically accepting the (incorrect) assertion that the Internet will somehow bring down the house. But wait, audio tapes and the VCR didn't kill off the media industry. Once again, bullshit.
The other misjudging is on the consumer side of the portable media market. iPod is a status symbol. The iPod has the best built-in UI of nearly any DAP (cf. clickwheel). I could go on nearly ad infinitum, but we all know why the iPod has the market share it does.
Then we come to the computing industry in general. Claims that phone makers or Microsoft will somehow supplant Apple don't add up, at least not at this point in time. The biggest offensive waged here is the one by MS with Playsforsure and various hardware makers who are strangling each other for a piece of the market that Apple doesn't have. But I really don't see this as a serious threat to Apple. There is no player that matches the iPod, nor are there players that offer something you can't get from Apple. Of course, there are some fringe areas, such as some formats of flash player and more multimedia-centered devices, but these don't make up the vast bulk of the market.
And I really don't see phone services taking off any time soon. Phone companies (especially in the US, land of unstandard cell service) are most definitely going to be as protective of their services as Apple is. This means no copying to your computer, and no copying to a competitors' phone. In addition, most phones don't have much storage capacity, and listening to MP3s is going to put a big drain on battery life, reducing the usefulness of both the audio component and the, um, phone component of the phone.
Basically, there are of course always cracks in the armor of something. The writer of this article thinks the cracks in the iPod monolith add up to doom for Apple. Unfortunately, his assumptions are wrong. Even if they were correct, there's a pretty hard case to be made here, given the facts of the current situation. Obviously, the iPod will fall someday, but I don't see it happening right now.
The PC games market is quite clearly slowing down as games producers focus more on consoles and it's not going to be for around 2 years after Vista is released that we'll see "Vista only" games.
My feeling is that we'll never see "Vista-only" games by anyone other than MS (cf. Halo 2). Game developers have still not fully exploited DirectX 9, and nearly all games that are out today still list "Windows 98/2000/XP" as compatible OS versions.
But the real reason here is that game makers want the biggest audience possible. Let's say that 4 years from now, Vista holds 75% of the Windows "home desktop" marketshare (this is probably reasonable). Games still won't be Vista-only, because losing 15 or 20 percent of your potential market right off the bat is suicide.
I prefer CD's only as I want quality and freedom. I like to have the right to rip them to FLAC and put them on my iAudio X5. DRM and compressed downloaded music just does not make sense. Quality over Quantity I always say.
It's true that he didn't say anything about patents, but it's rather obvious when you look at the language used.
Let's exaggerate this a bit. Say some guy is responsible for the deaths of thousands of people, but through doing this he aquires great amounts of money. If he gives half of the money away, does that make him a good guy? I dunno.
I guess it depends on what you consider "success" to be. If success means becoming a huge monopolistic company that seeks to hold onto its power no matter what (even going so far as to break laws), then yeah, MS has been successful.
And talking about the online music underground isn't complete without mentioning the much older scene of chiptune artists (and the demoscene in general).
AAC, MP3, and nearly every aspect of every MPEG standard is patented. Because of this, you cannot (legally) create software or hardware that conforms to these standards without paying royalties. Even worse, paying royalties to MPEG patent holders implicitly supports software patents.
So just go and change your argument again, and then make baseless assertions about what I said. Just go ahead and do that. Oh wait, looks like you already did.
Slashdot Mirror
I guess it depends on how you view things. If you view software as an ecosystem, your statement here is like saying humans shouldn't take care of the environment, even if they're only doing it to further their own needs.
I wonder how, as time goes on, many of these open source projects will age. Mozilla code is more than 10 years old, I think. In the commercial sector you reach a point where you chuck must of the existing stuff and start from scratch. How many of these open source projects have the resources to rebuild from the ground up?
It's important to keep in mind that the Mozilla project scapped a lot of code to begin with when they started Gecko. Then, Firefox came along and scrapped a lot of code from the Mozilla suite. I'm not familiar with the codebase, but it would seem a major overhaul of Gecko would be in order to clean up the cruft that's starting to show.
Which post? Provide a link.
There's already one model of Intel iMac up. But saving is saving $200 worth it? ($1299 -> $1099)
Fixed.
It's definitely a good test case. But it's also a good indicator of how ODF will function in a worst-case scenario. This scenario being a bunch of documents in a bunch of different formats all being converted to the target platform (the target being ODF).
Yeah, just like in Nescape vs. IE. Oh wait, that paved the way for IE's near-total monopoly on browsers, the prevalence of ActiveX (which helps malware writers), and a severe decline in web standards (which continues to this day).
Microsoft's continued domination of the software industry has been because of many reasons, but one of the major ones comes into play here: the fact that they're the biggest. The biggest vendors are a lot of times seen as "authorities", even if the products they offer are utter crap. Inertia also ties in here, as businesses hate spending money to train people to work with new software.
I think it's important to note that VMWare played with some pretty dangerous fire: they created a product that could damage the Windows/Office monopoly. Microsoft most likely looks at VMWare's products and sees that they allow Windows to be relegated to a secondary role in an environment, whether it's home or business, desktop or server. MS realizes that as soon as Windows/Office becomes a secondary product (rather than the end-all be-all), their business is gone, since their entire business is built upon being the ONLY vendor.
It's almost like Microsoft is a snotty tourist trying to keep a straight face when forced to eat a local delicacy. Ballmer can't go on a chair-slinging rampage about it (at least not publicly). But yeah, giggles is a pretty accurate description of what the headline "MS supports Linux" gave me as well.
Five years sounds pretty short. If this were implemented, I would think there are a lot of people that would simply give up on buying copyrighted things, as it's pretty easy to wait a few years. Of course, most people have no idea how copyright works, so it might not affect sales very much.
I think Nintendo is watching Sony and Microsoft, but mostly so they (Nintendo) don't do something extremely stupid.
Yes, yes I can imagine it as an MMO. It would consist entirely of griefers running around slopping paint over other peoples' work and yelling "OMFG NUB!"
There are several reasons this article is complete crap. The first is that its assumptions are incorrect. Others include (but are probably not limited to) misjudging the portable media player market in several different aspects, as well as a general failure to understand the current status of the computer industry.
I knew something was wrong when I read this line in the second paragraph: "Never before have we seen global domination by one retailer in a product category.". Um, hello? Without even reaching outside the computing/electronics industry, we can already come up with examples like Microsoft and IBM.
The second instance of shaky logic comes just two paragraphs later: "Here is what we know: music and video are going entirely digital. It won't be long before CDs and DVDs are obsolete as storage.". This is not only incorrect on a technical level, but on a functional level as well. This is wrong technically because CDs and DVDs are digital. Secondly, there will always be a need for cheap, mobile data storage. We've used punch cards, tape, and floppies. Now we use CDs and DVDs. We will likely use Blu-Ray in a few years. iPods will not supplant cheap media, because they lack a quality these formats provide: cheap media.
Secondly, the article misjudges the market in regards to portable media players, and the media industry in general. It accepts the FUD that the recording and movie cartels put forth, uncritically accepting the (incorrect) assertion that the Internet will somehow bring down the house. But wait, audio tapes and the VCR didn't kill off the media industry. Once again, bullshit.
The other misjudging is on the consumer side of the portable media market. iPod is a status symbol. The iPod has the best built-in UI of nearly any DAP (cf. clickwheel). I could go on nearly ad infinitum, but we all know why the iPod has the market share it does.
Then we come to the computing industry in general. Claims that phone makers or Microsoft will somehow supplant Apple don't add up, at least not at this point in time. The biggest offensive waged here is the one by MS with Playsforsure and various hardware makers who are strangling each other for a piece of the market that Apple doesn't have. But I really don't see this as a serious threat to Apple. There is no player that matches the iPod, nor are there players that offer something you can't get from Apple. Of course, there are some fringe areas, such as some formats of flash player and more multimedia-centered devices, but these don't make up the vast bulk of the market.
And I really don't see phone services taking off any time soon. Phone companies (especially in the US, land of unstandard cell service) are most definitely going to be as protective of their services as Apple is. This means no copying to your computer, and no copying to a competitors' phone. In addition, most phones don't have much storage capacity, and listening to MP3s is going to put a big drain on battery life, reducing the usefulness of both the audio component and the, um, phone component of the phone.
Basically, there are of course always cracks in the armor of something. The writer of this article thinks the cracks in the iPod monolith add up to doom for Apple. Unfortunately, his assumptions are wrong. Even if they were correct, there's a pretty hard case to be made here, given the facts of the current situation. Obviously, the iPod will fall someday, but I don't see it happening right now.
Wow, I didn't think it was possible to fit so many generalizations and assumptions into two little sentences. Good work.
My feeling is that we'll never see "Vista-only" games by anyone other than MS (cf. Halo 2). Game developers have still not fully exploited DirectX 9, and nearly all games that are out today still list "Windows 98/2000/XP" as compatible OS versions.
But the real reason here is that game makers want the biggest audience possible. Let's say that 4 years from now, Vista holds 75% of the Windows "home desktop" marketshare (this is probably reasonable). Games still won't be Vista-only, because losing 15 or 20 percent of your potential market right off the bat is suicide.
I prefer CD's only as I want quality and freedom. I like to have the right to rip them to FLAC and put them on my iAudio X5. DRM and compressed downloaded music just does not make sense. Quality over Quantity I always say.
It's true that he didn't say anything about patents, but it's rather obvious when you look at the language used.
So the genesis of the elephant is irrelevant?
Damn, that even rhymes.
Let's exaggerate this a bit. Say some guy is responsible for the deaths of thousands of people, but through doing this he aquires great amounts of money. If he gives half of the money away, does that make him a good guy? I dunno.
I guess it depends on what you consider "success" to be. If success means becoming a huge monopolistic company that seeks to hold onto its power no matter what (even going so far as to break laws), then yeah, MS has been successful.
And talking about the online music underground isn't complete without mentioning the much older scene of chiptune artists (and the demoscene in general).
AAC, MP3, and nearly every aspect of every MPEG standard is patented. Because of this, you cannot (legally) create software or hardware that conforms to these standards without paying royalties. Even worse, paying royalties to MPEG patent holders implicitly supports software patents.
Is Apple's lossless format patent- and royalty-free? I didn't think so.
So just go and change your argument again, and then make baseless assertions about what I said. Just go ahead and do that. Oh wait, looks like you already did.
Uhh, Alt+F4?