The Commission found Microsoft tied its own Windows Media Player so it would appear on every computer running Windows, unfairly competing against RealNetworks' Real Player and others.
Yes, bundling Media Player with Windows gives MS an unfair advantage givent their market penetration. However, Windows does not prevent you from downloading any media software you want and using it. This is the same intellectualization people use when they talk about offensive books or TV programs. Yes, these things are readily available, but if you don't like their content, you can always refuse to read those books or watch those programs. And so it goes with Windows: use Media Player or don't -- you have a choice.
In the end, it isn't about Media Player, per se, but Microsoft's domination of the software market. However, all the EU is doing is poking Gulliver with their Lilliputian sticks. Unless the EU plans on banning Microsoft entriely (and how could they!), they will never be able to put enough of a chokehold on Ballmer and Company to seriously dent their market share.
...when these TV shows show up on DVD, will they have commercials embedded in them that can't be skipped over? It seems like the next natural step. Is this then going to migrate to web content? Sounds like a kind of DRM-in-disguise, only instead of keeping you from altering the content, they're keeping you from watching the content the way you want.
I am not sure what you mean there. Are you implying that Microsoft inovates? Could you give me an example of this. I honestly can't think of one thing Microsoft has inovated. I can give countless examples of times Microsoft has tried to copy a competitors product, but it was far worse and then just bundled it in with the OS for "free" to just kill out their competion.
No, I don't mean Microsoft innovates. I mean Larry Ellison is trying to compete with Microsoft and is so far having no luck. I've said this time and time again -- Oracle gains nothing now by buying into Linux but growing pains and the probable destruction of whatever Linux group they suck up (Ubuntu, Red Hat, Novell, etc.). This is a move that should have been made 5 years ago, but now seems more like a dying shriek than giving themselves an actual chance to compete.
[IBM senior vice president Steve] Mills said Oracle has stuck to industry standards but does not have a long track record of involvement in open-source communities.
That would mean becoming innovative, opening themselves up to new ideas, new ways of thinking. Can't have that! Then they might actually be able to compete with Microsoft.
Slashdot (and Digg for that matter), is like any organized group -- there will be people who will join because they want to commiserate with the like-minded, there will be people who are "just curious", and then there will be people of questionable character who are there to spread their own form of idiocy and bigotry. Can't be helped -- if you could do an accurate breakdown of membership by personality type, it would probably fit the Bell curve to a tee.
We're always going to suffer with this. I happen to think Slashdot's system, while not perfect, is certainly better than some. At least, despite the many times I have incurred some faction's wrath with my comments, I feel like I'm communicating with a fairly well-read and intelligent group most of the time. Some people don't like me and that's their perogative. I keep on posting because I think for the most part people appreciate my adding to the discourse and because I don't really care what others think ultimately, as they only have my posts to go by and don't know the real "me."
That said, I'd never want a faction to come along and mod me up all the time simply because they "like" me, anymore than I want a faction to mod me down because they "hate" me. I"ve noted an inequity now and again, as it's obvious someone doesn't have a sense of humor, doesn't understand my sense of humor, or got their hands on some mod points and plan to punish the "enemy." I think the moderation system here makes it harder for that kind of thing to go on, and I think Digg could learn a thing or two from the idea.
If you don't like the idea, keep looking. If you don't mind or don't care, take the test -- as long as you're not suicidal, homicidal, or bipolar you pretty much don't have anything to fear. From what you've said, it sounds like you're aiming for the former and not the latter. Just my 2 cents.
While even critics of the administration applaud the effort, they question what authority these officials have. Unlike inspectors general at federal agencies, these privacy officers lack the subpoena power necessary to conduct investigations and don't report to Congress.
And so, they become propaganda tools and little else. They need to give the position teeth, but then that's exactly what the governent doesn't want, given how the 9/11 Commission took the goverment to task for its ineptitude. The last thing they need is a government-appointed civil liberties watchdog actually doing his/her job and exposing the malfeasance going on behind the scenes.
Seriously, though, I am all for science and genetic engineering and all that, but this is simply crazy. We are talking about a world where some people hate other's guts, simply because their skin color is not the same as theirs, where wackos cut other's throats simply because they are not worshipping the same deity*... And you want to release genetically re-engineered humans into society? Sheesh. Talk about premature.
For more information (and a ripping good yarn to boot), read Heinlein's Friday, which carries his usual cogent thought on a society containing "Artificial Persons."
A top producer of hard-core porn will start selling downloadable movies that customers can burn to DVD and watch on their TVs, illustrating how Southern California's multibillion-dollar adult entertainment industry may again set the technological pace for Hollywood.
Heck, adult entertainment has been behind a lot or major breakthroughs in technology:
The VCR - porn at home
Chat rooms - talk to others about and trade porn
The Web - find any porn you want, anytime
DVDs - high quality porn
I suspect this will continue on into the arena of full 3-D sensoround technology, whenever that become available.
Maybe its time we started boycotting Yahoo? This would mean amongst other things replacing people replacing own their Geocities pages with a boycot message.
Why stop at Yahoo? Haven't Google and Microsoft also been involved with the Chinese Goverment, block access to information and censoring Chinese diisidents?
That's all the patent system has turned into is a new revenue stream for lawyers. The patent system is killing software innovation by putting weaker companies completely out of business and making stronger companies waste valuable time and resources fighting baseless patent lawsuits. And mind you, we the customers are taking it on the chin as the prices go up.
No one like to see Microsoft win, but this would be a case where a judge could send a message to patent squatters and say to them: find another line of work. Microsoft would just happen to be the beneficiary.
All the attacker needs is the patch - they can look at that to see whats changed and where & deduce from that where to start looking for attack vectors. It's not particularly a big help for them to hear "Function blah in program blah has changed"
System Administrators on the other hand do not have time to reverse engineer the patch, but can read the summary and say "we don't use function blah in program blah, lets apply the patch as it won't affect our operations" or "Holy shit, we have program blah exposed to a hostile network, lets quickly test our stuff & rush the patch out"
And that's the crux of the problem. Of course, given Microsoft's checkered security history, why should this come as a shock? If I were a system administrator, I'd be applying every patch they handed me, on the off chance it's patching an obscure vulnerability I'd never catch in a million years. You can't worry about what Micrososft thinks is severe; while not every vulnerability is immediately exploitable, we've seen how easily unpatched vulnerabilties have allowed the black hats to create botnets overnight. If there's a way, the bad guys will find it, and it's stupid to leave any part of your system vulnerable for too long.
The NIST quantum key distribution (QKD) system uses single photons, the smallest particles of light...
Ok, maybe I missed something back when I took QM in college, but photons are the only particle of light, aren't they? They are not the only electromagentic particle, but are the only constituents of the light we see. Or has the universe become even stranger and no one told me?
Microsoft gives software developers a lot of personal freedom over both the work and the work environment. I order my own supplies, customize my office as I see fit, schedule my own trips and meetings, and select my own training courses. I choose when I show up for work and when I leave, and what to wear while I'm there. I can eat on campus or off, reheat something from home in the kitchen or scavenge leftovers from meetings. I can even work remotely from home (within reason).
Out of Office Reply: I'm not currently in my office, which is being rennovated to accomodate a swimming pool and a helipad, but am instead on a business trip to Hawaii, for a training course in pearl diving. Once I return to Redmond, I'll be happy to get in touch with you, after sampling the fine quailty pizza left over from the last meeting about Vista. Take care!
Many of the privacy worries center on whether RFID tags--typically miniscule chips with an antenna a few inches long that can transmit a unique ID number--can be read from afar. If the range is a few inches, the privacy concerns are reduced. But at ranges of 30 feet, the tags could theoretically be read by hidden sensors alongside the road, in the mall or in the hands of criminals hoping to identify someone on the street by his or her ID number.
Unless the Feds are going to come up with an air-tight encryption scheme, this is a recipe for disaster. This isn't like the EZPass I have on my car, which is only linked to my account and determines if I have enough to pay the toll. These chips will potentially carry a lot of personal and very useful information, especially if you're a crook looking to use somebody's id to get across the border or to create fake identity documents for sale.
Frankly, this whole idea is mainly a panacea. If it works, the bad guys will simply sneak across the thousands of miles of undefended and unmonitored border we have in the US. Others will start turning innocent people into mules by swiping their identities and using them to get things across. Instead of making the borders of this nation more secure, the government is creating even more insidious ways for someone to come into this country. I think it's time to go back to the drawing board.
From LinuxDevices.com: The report was released by the Committee for Economic Development (CED), a non-profit, non-partisan public policy research organization comprised of about 200 senior corporate executives and university leaders.
This isn't government waste -- this is a public group trying to advise the government. Of course, being non-partisan, the Demopublicans and Republicrats in Congress won't pay attention.
she's just misguided. any rational person would examine the pros and cons of anything they decide to champion. All we have to do is wait for some DRM f***up to affect her life before she thinks "hmm, maybe it does more than it claims to do...." it's just too bad that people don't do that in the first place.
Anybody got a country CD from Sony with the rootkit still on it?;)
It's troubling when someone with no apparent business background and understanding of technology to the depth necessary to grasp what DRM has done and will do gets a bully pulpit this high and this visible. I don't know one of the referenced articles is accurate in describing how Ms. Tate love for DRM really is a result of:
Apparently, her love of country music has brought her to this studied position
but, "love of country music" seems anemic justification and mostly a non sequitur in justifying something of magnitude DRM.
Last night a FCC commissioner came out in favor of...DRM? Yes, at a reception sponsored by the DC Bar Association in her honor, Commissioner Deborah Taylor Tate, the newest addition to the FCC, spoke eloquently on a number of issues but perhaps most remarkable was her advocacy for strong copyright protections. Hailing from The Music City, Nashville, this former Tennessee Regulatory Commissioner proclaimed her love for country music and the artists that wish to use DRM to protect their content.
Of course, this is just her personal opinion. However her position on the FCC lends it credibility it wouldn't ordinarily have. I don't know her tech credentials, but I doubt she's on top of the whole subject and is just espousing a knee-jerk reaction based on the usual political babble. She's probably a frustrated country artist at heart. Anyway, she's so obsucre as government people go, I doubt her promotion of DRM is going to create a groundswell of public support anytime soon.
Today, Linux growth includes a vast number of new comers, sometimes well versed in technology but at other times not so well versed. These new users are coming to us and asking us to help them cross the great divide. I hope that more people will extend a hand to someone who sincerely appreciates Linux and wishes to be part of the Linux community, and help offset those who see new comers as bad.
Everyone starts out as a newbie at one time -- sorry to burst the bubble of those of you who thought you were imbued with the power of the Linux kernel neo-natally. I remember when I first got into computers back in the TRS-80 era and went to college only to discover there was a whole other side to computers you didn't see in Popular Electronics. I learned C and Unix, and now all these years later I've learned Perl and begun absorbing Linux. I'm not the smartest guy on the block, but I'm also not Gomer Pyle, Web Developer.
I've noticed a tendency for those steeped in the mystique of Linux to see anyone with an opinion contrary to theirs as some kind of infidel, interloper, or at worst, lower that your average lawyer. You dare not point out flaws in logic or try to compare two distributions, lest you incur the wrath of "the gods." A perfect example is my comments yesterday about whether Linux should use proprietary drivers. My idea is that yes, it sounds like a good idea, until reverse engineered equivalents are available or someone comes along and starts a graphics company that uses open source exclusively for their drivers. Seems logical enough and the moderators agreed. But some folks thought I was ignorant:
But let me clue you in on something. Torvald's motto of "world domination", is a joke! He isn't being serious! I'm sorry you didn't understand this before, but now you do.
Or that I was suggesting the wholesale destruction of Liunx:
No, if making Linux non-free is the only way to develop greater market share, then you can keep it, binary drivers and all. I'll take freedom, thank you.
I'm sorry to say that some in the Linux community seems to become more insular as each year passes, which is a shame because there are so many great people pushing it. Linux is a great operating system, works well for just about anything you need. It could eat away at Windows' advantage in the marketplace with just some tweaks to make it so easy to install and run that Joe Average doesn't think twice about it. But if the more fanatic members of the community keep treating every new person with a new idea or new question like some kind of pariah, Linux will remain just another operating system.
Anyone in the ubuntu community doesn't quite understand what will happen if oracle were to buy out Ubuntu. Ubuntu in my experience is targeted at making it easy for n00bs to use linux. Oracle will definitely NOT be focusing on this area. They'll be focusing on tweaking whatever OS they do use to make oracle easier to use and setup. They don't care about the latest video codec, your new soundcard, or that great new 3D rendered desktop.
Kiss Ubuntu goodbye is the long and the short of it. It will be subsumed into Orix, which if it's anything like the Oracle DB, will be buggy, riddled with security flaws, and generally filled with unnecessary overhead. It's amazing how many clueless big company CEOs think they can snap up some small company with a good idea, incorporate it into their own bloated company, and come out with something better. Ain't gonna happen.
My comments for yesterday about Oracle trying to buy Novell still hold. This isn't going to help Oracle compete against Microsoft; if anything, it will threaten to strangle any creativity in Ubuntu and allow Oracle to be overtaken by its competitors. Oracle should stick to making databases.
Interestingly, at the time Windows for x86 64-bit was being developed, there were rumors that such support was a payback for the time AMD's CEO Jerry Sanders testified on behalf of Microsoft for their antitrust suit. As the Intel-AMD lawsuit drags on, there's no telling what kind of picture the documents it brings to light will eventually paint about the computer industry.Everybody is sleeping with everybody else. The enemy of my enemy is my friend. Do unto others before they do unto you. That's the current state of the computer industry.
I'm all for AMD sticking it to Intel. Intel has spent a long time trying to shoehorn their processors into everything (can you say Apple?) and if it weren't for AMD, there would be no serious challenges to their dominance. Of course, Microsoft gets to play the lady-in-waiting and doesn't really care who ends up winning, but it's like the Mafia: AMD has done for MS, so MS will return the favor.
Mind you I am not biased by the fact that my Sony Vaio running XP with an Athlon processor is one of the smoothest machines I've ever run. Did I just say that?
Even more BS. They already support Linux, all of them. Some better than others. But "support" does not mean "free drivers".
Semantics. The drivers are "free" but "proprietary," meaning their not going to be stupid enough to hand some geeks the source code and watch whatever competitive advantage they have melt away when their competitors get their hands on the technology.
This is just the continuing battle between the need to make money and the desire to have freedom of choice. The easiest way to solve the problem is for someone to start a graphics systems company that uses all open source technology and then stand back and watch.
When was the last time Redmond spat out anything new, exciting, or technologically earth-shaking? Why should they be doing so now? Where's the incentive? They have 90% of the market and therefore are not required by market forces to make any true improvements or upgrades to their current software, let alone create anything new. The only reason for Vista's existence is to try and improve on their sorry security record. Their competitors are all far behind and despite the popularity of a whole slew of technologies like Linux, MySql, etc., no one's really knocking on the door. Until MS's share of the market dips to about 70% don't expect BG to stop counting his money.
There you have it. If Linux systems ever want to develop greater market penetration and actually challenge the dominance of Windows, they need to to be able to handle all the same things, including video. I say, use the proprietary drivers until approrpiate ones can be reverse engineered, then dump them for the open source versions. If more and more people begin to use Linux systems, eventually the graphics systems manufacturers are going to have to cave to market forces and support the open source system.
Slashdot Mirror
Yes, bundling Media Player with Windows gives MS an unfair advantage givent their market penetration. However, Windows does not prevent you from downloading any media software you want and using it. This is the same intellectualization people use when they talk about offensive books or TV programs. Yes, these things are readily available, but if you don't like their content, you can always refuse to read those books or watch those programs. And so it goes with Windows: use Media Player or don't -- you have a choice.
In the end, it isn't about Media Player, per se, but Microsoft's domination of the software market. However, all the EU is doing is poking Gulliver with their Lilliputian sticks. Unless the EU plans on banning Microsoft entriely (and how could they!), they will never be able to put enough of a chokehold on Ballmer and Company to seriously dent their market share.
...when these TV shows show up on DVD, will they have commercials embedded in them that can't be skipped over? It seems like the next natural step. Is this then going to migrate to web content? Sounds like a kind of DRM-in-disguise, only instead of keeping you from altering the content, they're keeping you from watching the content the way you want.
No, I don't mean Microsoft innovates. I mean Larry Ellison is trying to compete with Microsoft and is so far having no luck. I've said this time and time again -- Oracle gains nothing now by buying into Linux but growing pains and the probable destruction of whatever Linux group they suck up (Ubuntu, Red Hat, Novell, etc.). This is a move that should have been made 5 years ago, but now seems more like a dying shriek than giving themselves an actual chance to compete.
That would mean becoming innovative, opening themselves up to new ideas, new ways of thinking. Can't have that! Then they might actually be able to compete with Microsoft.
Hmmmmm... my sarcasm detector is going off...
Slashdot (and Digg for that matter), is like any organized group -- there will be people who will join because they want to commiserate with the like-minded, there will be people who are "just curious", and then there will be people of questionable character who are there to spread their own form of idiocy and bigotry. Can't be helped -- if you could do an accurate breakdown of membership by personality type, it would probably fit the Bell curve to a tee.
We're always going to suffer with this. I happen to think Slashdot's system, while not perfect, is certainly better than some. At least, despite the many times I have incurred some faction's wrath with my comments, I feel like I'm communicating with a fairly well-read and intelligent group most of the time. Some people don't like me and that's their perogative. I keep on posting because I think for the most part people appreciate my adding to the discourse and because I don't really care what others think ultimately, as they only have my posts to go by and don't know the real "me."
That said, I'd never want a faction to come along and mod me up all the time simply because they "like" me, anymore than I want a faction to mod me down because they "hate" me. I"ve noted an inequity now and again, as it's obvious someone doesn't have a sense of humor, doesn't understand my sense of humor, or got their hands on some mod points and plan to punish the "enemy." I think the moderation system here makes it harder for that kind of thing to go on, and I think Digg could learn a thing or two from the idea.
If you don't like the idea, keep looking. If you don't mind or don't care, take the test -- as long as you're not suicidal, homicidal, or bipolar you pretty much don't have anything to fear. From what you've said, it sounds like you're aiming for the former and not the latter. Just my 2 cents.
And so, they become propaganda tools and little else. They need to give the position teeth, but then that's exactly what the governent doesn't want, given how the 9/11 Commission took the goverment to task for its ineptitude. The last thing they need is a government-appointed civil liberties watchdog actually doing his/her job and exposing the malfeasance going on behind the scenes.
For more information (and a ripping good yarn to boot), read Heinlein's Friday, which carries his usual cogent thought on a society containing "Artificial Persons."
Personally, I wish to welcome our Bug-Eyed Freak Overlords...
Heck, adult entertainment has been behind a lot or major breakthroughs in technology:
I suspect this will continue on into the arena of full 3-D sensoround technology, whenever that become available.
Why stop at Yahoo? Haven't Google and Microsoft also been involved with the Chinese Goverment, block access to information and censoring Chinese diisidents?
That's all the patent system has turned into is a new revenue stream for lawyers. The patent system is killing software innovation by putting weaker companies completely out of business and making stronger companies waste valuable time and resources fighting baseless patent lawsuits. And mind you, we the customers are taking it on the chin as the prices go up.
No one like to see Microsoft win, but this would be a case where a judge could send a message to patent squatters and say to them: find another line of work. Microsoft would just happen to be the beneficiary.
System Administrators on the other hand do not have time to reverse engineer the patch, but can read the summary and say "we don't use function blah in program blah, lets apply the patch as it won't affect our operations" or "Holy shit, we have program blah exposed to a hostile network, lets quickly test our stuff & rush the patch out"
And that's the crux of the problem. Of course, given Microsoft's checkered security history, why should this come as a shock? If I were a system administrator, I'd be applying every patch they handed me, on the off chance it's patching an obscure vulnerability I'd never catch in a million years. You can't worry about what Micrososft thinks is severe; while not every vulnerability is immediately exploitable, we've seen how easily unpatched vulnerabilties have allowed the black hats to create botnets overnight. If there's a way, the bad guys will find it, and it's stupid to leave any part of your system vulnerable for too long.
Ok, maybe I missed something back when I took QM in college, but photons are the only particle of light, aren't they? They are not the only electromagentic particle, but are the only constituents of the light we see. Or has the universe become even stranger and no one told me?
Out of Office Reply: I'm not currently in my office, which is being rennovated to accomodate a swimming pool and a helipad, but am instead on a business trip to Hawaii, for a training course in pearl diving. Once I return to Redmond, I'll be happy to get in touch with you, after sampling the fine quailty pizza left over from the last meeting about Vista. Take care!
Unless the Feds are going to come up with an air-tight encryption scheme, this is a recipe for disaster. This isn't like the EZPass I have on my car, which is only linked to my account and determines if I have enough to pay the toll. These chips will potentially carry a lot of personal and very useful information, especially if you're a crook looking to use somebody's id to get across the border or to create fake identity documents for sale.
Frankly, this whole idea is mainly a panacea. If it works, the bad guys will simply sneak across the thousands of miles of undefended and unmonitored border we have in the US. Others will start turning innocent people into mules by swiping their identities and using them to get things across. Instead of making the borders of this nation more secure, the government is creating even more insidious ways for someone to come into this country. I think it's time to go back to the drawing board.
From LinuxDevices.com: The report was released by the Committee for Economic Development (CED), a non-profit, non-partisan public policy research organization comprised of about 200 senior corporate executives and university leaders.
This isn't government waste -- this is a public group trying to advise the government. Of course, being non-partisan, the Demopublicans and Republicrats in Congress won't pay attention.
Anybody got a country CD from Sony with the rootkit still on it? ;)
It's troubling when someone with no apparent business background and understanding of technology to the depth necessary to grasp what DRM has done and will do gets a bully pulpit this high and this visible. I don't know one of the referenced articles is accurate in describing how Ms. Tate love for DRM really is a result of:
Apparently, her love of country music has brought her to this studied position
but, "love of country music" seems anemic justification and mostly a non sequitur in justifying something of magnitude DRM.
To be fair, the quote is based on an article about this on the Technology Liberation Front web site:
Last night a FCC commissioner came out in favor of...DRM? Yes, at a reception sponsored by the DC Bar Association in her honor, Commissioner Deborah Taylor Tate, the newest addition to the FCC, spoke eloquently on a number of issues but perhaps most remarkable was her advocacy for strong copyright protections. Hailing from The Music City, Nashville, this former Tennessee Regulatory Commissioner proclaimed her love for country music and the artists that wish to use DRM to protect their content.
Of course, this is just her personal opinion. However her position on the FCC lends it credibility it wouldn't ordinarily have. I don't know her tech credentials, but I doubt she's on top of the whole subject and is just espousing a knee-jerk reaction based on the usual political babble. She's probably a frustrated country artist at heart. Anyway, she's so obsucre as government people go, I doubt her promotion of DRM is going to create a groundswell of public support anytime soon.
Everyone starts out as a newbie at one time -- sorry to burst the bubble of those of you who thought you were imbued with the power of the Linux kernel neo-natally. I remember when I first got into computers back in the TRS-80 era and went to college only to discover there was a whole other side to computers you didn't see in Popular Electronics. I learned C and Unix, and now all these years later I've learned Perl and begun absorbing Linux. I'm not the smartest guy on the block, but I'm also not Gomer Pyle, Web Developer.
I've noticed a tendency for those steeped in the mystique of Linux to see anyone with an opinion contrary to theirs as some kind of infidel, interloper, or at worst, lower that your average lawyer. You dare not point out flaws in logic or try to compare two distributions, lest you incur the wrath of "the gods." A perfect example is my comments yesterday about whether Linux should use proprietary drivers. My idea is that yes, it sounds like a good idea, until reverse engineered equivalents are available or someone comes along and starts a graphics company that uses open source exclusively for their drivers. Seems logical enough and the moderators agreed. But some folks thought I was ignorant:
But let me clue you in on something. Torvald's motto of "world domination", is a joke! He isn't being serious! I'm sorry you didn't understand this before, but now you do.
Or that I was suggesting the wholesale destruction of Liunx:
No, if making Linux non-free is the only way to develop greater market share, then you can keep it, binary drivers and all. I'll take freedom, thank you.
I'm sorry to say that some in the Linux community seems to become more insular as each year passes, which is a shame because there are so many great people pushing it. Linux is a great operating system, works well for just about anything you need. It could eat away at Windows' advantage in the marketplace with just some tweaks to make it so easy to install and run that Joe Average doesn't think twice about it. But if the more fanatic members of the community keep treating every new person with a new idea or new question like some kind of pariah, Linux will remain just another operating system.
Kiss Ubuntu goodbye is the long and the short of it. It will be subsumed into Orix, which if it's anything like the Oracle DB, will be buggy, riddled with security flaws, and generally filled with unnecessary overhead. It's amazing how many clueless big company CEOs think they can snap up some small company with a good idea, incorporate it into their own bloated company, and come out with something better. Ain't gonna happen.
My comments for yesterday about Oracle trying to buy Novell still hold. This isn't going to help Oracle compete against Microsoft; if anything, it will threaten to strangle any creativity in Ubuntu and allow Oracle to be overtaken by its competitors. Oracle should stick to making databases.
I'm all for AMD sticking it to Intel. Intel has spent a long time trying to shoehorn their processors into everything (can you say Apple?) and if it weren't for AMD, there would be no serious challenges to their dominance. Of course, Microsoft gets to play the lady-in-waiting and doesn't really care who ends up winning, but it's like the Mafia: AMD has done for MS, so MS will return the favor.
Mind you I am not biased by the fact that my Sony Vaio running XP with an Athlon processor is one of the smoothest machines I've ever run. Did I just say that?
Semantics. The drivers are "free" but "proprietary," meaning their not going to be stupid enough to hand some geeks the source code and watch whatever competitive advantage they have melt away when their competitors get their hands on the technology.
This is just the continuing battle between the need to make money and the desire to have freedom of choice. The easiest way to solve the problem is for someone to start a graphics systems company that uses all open source technology and then stand back and watch.
When was the last time Redmond spat out anything new, exciting, or technologically earth-shaking? Why should they be doing so now? Where's the incentive? They have 90% of the market and therefore are not required by market forces to make any true improvements or upgrades to their current software, let alone create anything new. The only reason for Vista's existence is to try and improve on their sorry security record. Their competitors are all far behind and despite the popularity of a whole slew of technologies like Linux, MySql, etc., no one's really knocking on the door. Until MS's share of the market dips to about 70% don't expect BG to stop counting his money.
There you have it. If Linux systems ever want to develop greater market penetration and actually challenge the dominance of Windows, they need to to be able to handle all the same things, including video. I say, use the proprietary drivers until approrpiate ones can be reverse engineered, then dump them for the open source versions. If more and more people begin to use Linux systems, eventually the graphics systems manufacturers are going to have to cave to market forces and support the open source system.