Well, quite honestly, it's true that digital media is pretty fragile and that (despite being perfectly suited to copying) much of it will be lost because it wasn't copied. But I'm damn willing to bet that there's so much digital media out there in various forms, being copied and recopied that our digital age will on balance leave behind *way* more than previous ones.
Fast forward a 1000 years. Will anyone be able to reverse engineer the media and formats, especially given that the media will mostly be highly degraded.
Its been pretty challenging to recover information from 1000 year old media today, and it was almost exclusively plaintext printed on various media in large type faces, using symbols we mostly know.
I mean the Microsoft Office document format is almost undocumentable, drop it on a magnetic storage media like a hard drive... what hope do we have reverse engineering it from 1000 years from now, especially if there was a civilisation collapse, and the one doing the recovering doesn't have much continuity to ours. Say we knocked ourselves back to 17th century technology, went a few hundred years without electricity and 'rediscovered' electronics and computers along a whole new path...
For installation on your Apple-branded computer, i.e. a Macintosh.
I bought a birdhouse kit the other day. It said "For construction of a birdhouse". It came with instructions for making a bird house. Guess what, I didn't make a birdhouse. I modified it into a playground for my kids hampster.
Should the birdhouse vendor be allowed to prevent me from what I'm did? "i.e. Thou shalt make a birdhouse!"
Read the license.
Why should I? I bought it. I need a license to make and distribute copies, etc. I don't need a license to use the copy I bought.
Apple wants to be a "boutique" computer maker, where they control the entire widget. They own all of the rights, the code, the hardware, and put all of the R&D into the product. They can sell it however they want to; people who want cheapass Macs be damned.
And once I buy it, I can use it however I like. Its up to me whether I install it on a Mac, hack it onto a PC, use it for rifle target practice. Apple doesn't get to decide what I do with it, once I buy it. Because of copyright, I need their permermission to make copies, but I don't need permission to use it. And in the case of software, the copy you make in order to use it is automatically permitted.
I still don't get where this entitlement attitude comes from.
What I don't get is where this attitude that someone else gets to decide what you do with the stuff you buy?
If you bought a birdhouse would you feel you had some legal obligation to build a bird house? Simply because the birdhouse maker told you that was it was designed for? I'd laugh my ass off if they tried to include a 'license agreement' that required me to make a birdhouse -- there is no way they could legally do that.
I'll agree apple has balls selling a product with a statement that says I have to use it in a certain way. But it has about as much legal force as a fart in the wind storm.
But don't think that you have some special right to break license agreements.
Apple doesn't have some special right to impose a license agreement on whether and how I use what I buy. And I don't need a license agreement to use a copy of the software I bought.
they'll simply pull the retail version of the OS X upgrade from the market. Bye bye clone market. But this won't affect the already-pirating OSX86 cloners.
If you read the entire thread. I said this myself. This what Apple should have done.
That said, the clone market will only take a serious hit; the really low end market will be dead, but the market won't be completely dead. The clone market, after all, could aways buy a Mac mini, part it out, toss away the case, pull the CPU, hard drive, and dvdrw and repack it into a desktop case on a desktop mainboard. Figure $600 for a mini. If they can re-use the CPU and hard drive and dvdrw etc, they'll recover around $200. That means getting their hand on a copy of OSX will be about about $400.
A little steep, but in the same ballpark as Vista Ultimate at retail.
They could definitely put together a desktop tower with OSX for $1500, turn a profit, and fill a niche Apple hasn't addressed.
because a VM is still much easier to backup and restore than a system installed directly on hardware.
I disagree. The bulk of the effort will be in backing up and restoring the settings and documents. Running a backup program's 'restore image' to hard drive for a bare metal OS vs 'copying a file' for a vm OS, is pretty minor.
Why couldn't it be both seamless and sandboxed from the host OS?
Because those two criteria are mutually exclusive.
If it can't access my documents folders, then its not seamless. If it can't pop things up on my screen at will, then its not seamless. If it can't trap keyboard input and react, then its not seamless.
If it can, then its not much of a sandbox.
You seem to be making an awful lot of assumptions.
Since my definition of seamless precludes it being sandboxed and yours evidently doesn't, I assume we have different notions of what 'seamless' and/or 'sandbox' means. I'd be interested to know what 'seamless' means to you.
"Recent advances in cooperative technology and classical communication are based entirely on the assumption that the Internet and active networks are not in conflict with object-oriented languages....
Aha... now I know where my boss got the idea for our new project.
Unless its being used for primary activities. In this example it was VM'd because that's the only way it will run. The person with the mac in question uses it for Outlook and some CRM app. If his VM's not up, he's not up. Being able to browse the web and play with iphoto while his system is restoring is a meager consololation prize.
Plus you have to put this into context. The post i originally replied to suggested that Vista should "seamlessly incorporate a VM" to support all legacy software. And my counterpoint was that doing so would effectively mean that Vista would seamlessly support all XP malware, which is counter productive. There isn't much value in Vista being secure if it seamlessly supports XP malware.
The mac example, was primarily an illustration of what 'seamless' support for xp malware accomplishes.
What do you mean it's not practical? This is one of the best aspects of virtual machines. If something bad happens to your install, you just swap the VM image out for a backup version with all your apps and settings installed (but without the viruses/damage) and off you go again.
Ok, so after he backs up all his documents, and settings from inside the VM, and then restores from a backup. How exactly is that any more convenient than restoring a "non-VM" from a backup?
How can you be free when your neighbors can gain access to your wallet for whatever they desire (new car, new home, food stamps, cover their retirement expenses,...)? That basically makes you a slave where you work for others' enrichment, not yourself.
Why on earth are you a slave working for other' enrichment?
According to your logic, all you have to do to stop being a slave is to quit working and just access your neighbors wallets for whatever you desire. Freedom is closer than you think.;)
It's rediculous to assume that the people who like obscure things don't also like mainstream things, or that a sale of an obscure items equals loss of a sale on a bigger item.
Its not that these people don't like both, its that they only have so much money, and that until recently only one of the items was readily available. So yes, in the big scheme of things, if 20 billion dollars is spent on obscure items that didn't used to be available, that's 20 billion that's not going to be spent on other stuff.
One of the real factors affecting the music industry is the rise of the cellphone and gaming industries. Even if piracy were impossible music sales would probably be down simply due people spending that disposable income on cellphone contracts, video games, etc.
After all the sale of an obscure item either equals the loss of a sale on -something-, or that the money would have gone into savings. Givin the savings rate in the US is practically zero, that means its probably the former.
So yeah, some people will skip mcdonalds to buy the obscure CD, some people will skip on a new t-shirt,... and a lot of people are going to skip on some other more popular CD.
My personal experience is that the part of your thesis that isn't happening is Step 4:
Yes. Precisely. The first 3 are all happening. Its just #4 that isn't panning out.
It seems to me that blockbusters are getting bigger, AND the tail is getting longer. More money is being spent at both ends of the curve.
Yes, to both the tail is getting longer and the blockbusters are getting bigger.
This would imply that the curves in the New Scientist article graphic are incorrect: the long tail isn't stealing dollars from the blockbusters.
Not quite. The article isn't saying that the tail is too "short", but simply that its much flatter and thinner then they expected.
People who really want the obscure stuff =are= buying the obscure stuff so the tail is there, but they are surprised that despite the availability of such a wider range of product, that things are actually becoming more concentrated around the blockbusters. This is somewhat counter intuitive.
Microsoft is going to have to sever all backwards compatibility at some point if they want a fresh start. Microsoft BOUGHT an Emulator/Virtualizer (Virtual PC), how hard would it be to make a seamless sandboxed XP install?
We don't really want all our XP malware and viruses to run seamlessly in a virtual layer.
Microsoft wants (needs) running really legacy stuff to be a least a bit of a hassle.
A guy I know runs XP in parallels on the Mac with some key windows apps he uses, and got it all infected with malware. Sure, at least he can kill the malware by shutting parallels down, that's not really a practical solution though, since he can't use the apps he needs.
That is the fundamental unique challenge Microsoft faces. They need to ensure backwards compatibility, and simultaneously ensure legacy malware won't run.
Not to sound to fanboyish, but Apple has done this TWICE in the last 10 years.
And its one of the reasons enterprises are leery about being heavily invested in Apple. If you still depend on something from 10 years ago your fucked. SEVERAL companies I work with still run software written for MS-DOS. And it works on Vista, most of it just works. Some of it required a bit of coaxing. And a couple apps runs in a VM (and Virtual PC from microsoft is a free download).
There is exactly one and only one application I've been unable to get working under Vista in any form. (And I wasn't able to get it working under Windows 2000 or XP either.) Its a dos application for programming a certain era of Motorola 2-way radios via a RIB box attached to a serial port. And for that... I made a bootable usb dongle with win98se, that they plugin and reboot from when they need it.
Good luck getting a System6 or 7 or even OS9 app running on your new intel macbook. Sure their's pearpc, but it hardly qualifies as official support, and there are lots of caveats.
Ok. You feel you should be able to buy them separately. I'll even go so far as to agree with you.
I don't feel I 'should' be able to buy them seprately. I =can= buy them separately.
Unfortunately for both of us, the people who are in the legal position to decide that (the CEO and Board of Directors of Apple), have decided that they do not want to sell it that way.
er... except they do.
I'd like to use the Wii OS on my home built game-system Know where I can buy a copy?
No. That's not for sale except as part of the Wii. But I can buy a copy of OSX in a box at bestbuy for under $200.
What is the long tail? The summary, and TFA (I skimmed it so maybe I missed this) seem to indicate that the long tail theory means the more obscure stuff will be more popular.
The long tail theory is:
1) More obscure stuff will be more profitable (because distribution costs are down - you can distribute electronic goods for practically nothing, and even real goods are more profitable because you can keep them in a warehouse in Wisconsin instead of taking up premium shelf space at a retail store downtown NYC)
2) Because its profitable, people will actually carry it.
3) Because people will carry it, people that actually want it will be able to find it and buy it.
4) Because people can find and buy the obscure stuff they want they'll spend less on the popular stuff they don't want as much. So the blockbusters will lose some of their sales to the obscure stuff.
What does any of what you wrote have to do with Psystar? Would you actually buy one of their overpriced pieces of shit to run OS X?
Yes I would consider it. According to their store: $744 for a 'tower' that runs OSX, 4GB ram, 1 hard drive, 3.0 GHz E8400 cpu, a crappy cheap vidcard and no monitor. I drop another $500 or so on the vid card I actually want, a monitor, and a 2nd hard drive.
I've heard they run a bit loud too so might budget a bit to replace the stock cpu fan and upgrade the power supply.
The specs I want for $1300 give or take, running OSX painlessly. That is exactly what I want.
More importantly, if psystar makes it, there will be others soon after, and I'm sure I'll be able to build exactly what I want through one of them. So yeah, I'm hoping Psystar makes it.
What they should be doing is fixing Vista so it can be "lighter" and do it for free as a patch.
What do you think Windows 7 actually is?
Its EXACTLY that. Its just Vista-point-one.
The ONLY reason they are releasing it as "Windows 7" instead of as "Vista Service Pack 3" is for marketing purposes, because too many people won't buy "Vista SP3" because its called Vista and they think "Vista sucks", but they'll buy "Windows 7". So that's what Microsoft will sell them.
Except if they take it off the shelf because you can't do what you want with it, then you're effectively denying it to everyone else. Where would they be if they had to please every single potential consumer, and couldn't sell it otherwise?
The only people who they want to have it, are people who bought macs. They bundle it with those macs. I fail to see who is being denied??
Besides, it's not you that they're saying is restricted,
Read the EULA. That's exactly what they are saying.
it's a third party who's making money modifying their product and reselling it.
Not meaningfully.
Years ago there was a copyright case where a Christian Evangelical organization was reselling DVDs of popular movies with the sex and profanity removed; the court found against them because they were modifying a creative work, eviscerating the creator's control over it.
Look, personally, I think that is a real grey area. On the one hand I can see that its an unauthorized derivative work... on the other hand if some Christian Fundie wants to watch "Pretty Woman" without a few scenes they are free to skip them... if they want to pay a couple bucks to have someone make skipping them that much easier, I find it hard to see a problem with it. So for me, that's already a pretty edge case.
That said, I think there is more to that case than you let on. I thought part of it was that it arguably wasn't clear that people were getting censored copies too.
That said, this situation is clearly different. The situation with Apple is that they want you to play your copy of Pretty Woman only on Sony DVD players. And psystar is modifying things so that it also works with a Samsung player. And psystar is giving you the ORIGINAL OSX disk, not a modified copy.
Can you really say THAT is is 'eviscerating the creator's vision'? You got the original disc.
Additionally, if you've never reinstalled OSX on a Psystar, you boot up your PC from a utility disk they provide that sets up the system so that the original OSX CD will install. They could ship the systems like that if they wanted to, with the OSX copy in its original shrink wrap. So it would be end users who are actually doing the install. Would that be ok?
And if it is ok, should it really be a humongous deal if Psystar does it for you as part of the service, especially as they are still including the original OSX disc you bought?
The cheapest one you can configure on their web site is $2299 (so HUNDREDS more, not thousands). If you wait until one is refurbished, you will probably be closer to $2k.
1) By well under 2k I'm talking $1200-1300. I admit you could have reasonably interpreted it to mean something else.
2) The cheapest MacPro you can configure on their web site would need several hundred bucks in aftermarket upgrades to meet the specs of my $1200-1300 unit.
- it comes with one 320GB hard drive. I spec'd 2 (and I wouldn't go with something as small as 320. It would probably be a pair of 1TB drives, or at least 750s. Or a fast raptor and a 1TB drive. In any case the unit that comes with the Pro is shite. So lets say I drop another $50 to get the 750, and then add a raptor aftermarket, for another $200 total.
- it comes with a piece-of-crap ATI radeon HD 2600. So I'll need to drop in the video card I want after market. So add ~$250 for the GTX260.
- it comes with no display. My 1200-1300 unit comes with a 21" LCD. Add another $200.00
- RAM it comes with 2GB. I want at least 4. And since its a Mac pro I'm stuck with the more expensive ECC ram. Apple's going to charge me $500 for that 'upgrade'. But at least I can get it for half the price at newegg. Add another $200.
So my $2300 Mac Pro needs $850 in parts to meet the specs I want, costing a total $3150.00... vs a $1200-1300 PC.
That's just FUCKED.
If you wait until one is refurbished, you will probably be closer to $2k.
And it will be a refurb. Meaning I'm now paying a premium for something that's both used and not even current. Nice. And it will still need $850 in parts.
I think you need to check your math there. That hardware should run well under ONE thousand.
It probably could run under 1k. But it would use parts I wouldn't want. I don't want the cheapest c2d on the market, nor the cheapest motherboard, nor the cheapest monitor. I like to buy good quality power supplies and sturdy cases, and good keyboards and mice etc.
You have no fucking clue what you are talking about. Mortgages don't "come up for renewal".
Either you live somewhere where the rules are different or you have no fucking clue. Most people in North America pay for their home in a series of 3 to 5 year mortgages that renew (almost automatically) when they expire. So if it takes you 20 years to pay off your home, it was far more likely to have been financed as 4 5 year mortgages, not 1 20 year mortage. Google "mortage renewal".
You have no fucking clue what you are talking about. The credit crunch predates the stock market drop by months.
I phrased that rather poorly. I meant that its one of the reasons the credit crunch has gotten so bad. Because on the one hand the banks have dramatically reduced the availability of credit, and on the other hand companies (and homeowners) have dramatically reduced their ability to qualify for what little credit there is.
No one's saying your desires are irrational, but Apple is under no obligation to sell you what you want.
Which, if your read my post is fine. But if someone else is willing to sell it, I'll consider it.
The trouble I have with Apple is that they do sell what I want. I can buy a white-box I'm happy with. And I can buy OSX in a retail box. Now that I've bought these things I should be able to do whatever I want with them. Including modify them to work together the way I want.
Apple wants to tell me I can't. I object to that.
If I sell you hammer, I don't get to tell you that what you build with it. I don't get to tell you you can't modify it. Why does apple get to tell me what I do with their OS after I've bought it. If they don't want me to buy OSX and use it the way I want, then they can take it off the shelf, and not sell it to me.
These companies don't seem to get it. You can't just slap OS X on generic parts and call it the same as Apple. With Apple you're also paying for support, for prestige, for lots of intangibles that people value.
Except that some people don't value support, prestige or intangibles.
Suppose I want a simple Core2Duo tower with 2 hard drives, a free PCI slot, a 9600GT or GTX260 video card to dual boot XP/*nix and OSX. That hardware will run well under $2k even after you drop a 21" monitor on it. Sure it might not have bluetooth, but that isn't a spec item you care about anyway.
Apple doesn't sell anything remotely like this. Yet its exactly what I want. I need a PCI slot to run some work related interface cards. I want to play windows games.
The only thing that comes close to satisfying what I actually want is the MacPro, with a Quad Core Xeon(s), for THOUSANDS more. I don't need, nor have any use for a Quad Core Xeon, especially not one with any of the video cards Apple offers with them.
If Apple doesn't want to sell me this, fine, but I'd seriously consider buying it from someone who does.
Testing the waters, Hardware vendors want to sell something other than windows. I'm willing to bet one (or more) of the big 5 PC vendors is behind this
I just can't see it.
Even in the most decisive win for Psystar the ONLY thing apple has to do is take OSX off the retail shelf. That's all folks! if Psystar can't buy OSX, it can't bundle OSX. Game over!
Apple then only bundles OSX with actual Apple computer, and it delivers new versions to registered customers via Apple Software update, requiring them to have a valid apple hardware serial number and a credit card to, obtain that particular update.
Then the only way anyone is going to get OSX then is to either buy an Apple, or to Pirate it. Neither of which will do Psystar or anyone else in the 'big 5' any good. Sure Psystar could buy a mini, and 'rebundle' OSX with a Core2Quad tower... but Psystar is going to have a tough time being price competive, paying $500+ per license... unless they part out the mini's on ebay or something to recoup the cost.
That a companies stock value serves as some kind of 'score' by which one can judge a companies performance is one of the bigger scams ever perpetrated upon the American public.
What the stock price does serve well as, is as an indicator of the stockholders confidence in their ability to resell the stock at a profit. And no more.
Not quite. The most important real impact of a stock price is that impacts the ability of the company to borrow and raise capital. They will be unable/less able to borrow as the stock valuation plummets; and existing loans may even be called in. They will also be unable to raise new capital with a share offering -- because at low share prices they have to issue a LOT of shares to raise any capital, and the more shares they issue, the more they dilute the existing shareholds, which pushes the price down further...
The stock market's "guesstimate" of a companies value has about zip point zilch to do with a companies financial health - as the latter is determined by cash flow. (I.E. income greater than outgo, the ability to meet obligations, etc.. etc...)
Agreed-ish. But having their valuation trashed can seriously impact their cash flow.
Google's stock could drop to $.01/share tomorrow without impacting their income, or ability to meet their obligations.
Not necessarily. If the share price hits various thresholds, all kinds of things can happen that do impact its cash flow, particularly if the company has any debts, and its credit has any connection to its market valuation, which it often does.
It works in much the same way that a significant housing price slump can screw with your mortgage. For example if your house loses 35% of its value, and your mortgage comes up for renewal, and you now have 'negative equity', the bank is either going to want a pile more collateral, a big lump sum payment, or will foreclose on the loan, and it will probably raise your rates too -- even if you would have had no trouble continuing with your payments the way they were.
That, by the way, is pretty much exactly how the current housing price collapse is screwing with a lot of people right now.
Companies face a similar situation, and its one of the reasons for the 'credit crunch'. Companies can't get credit (or even keep the credit they had) because they no longer have the share valuation that would collateralize that credit.
On number 1, yes they do. Every click on a Google ad gives Google money from a business.
So the public doesn't give google money. We evidently agree.
On number 2, no they don't automatically have the money, but in a slowing economy, advertising budgets are going to be one of the last to be completely eliminated in hopes of attracting more customers.
Right. It won't be completely eliminated. It will be reduced.
Yes, but I still see ads for AIG, Ford, GM, etc. and no less than before they got bailed out/went bankrupt. Sure they might not have a 10 billion dollar budget on ads, but they are still going to advertise and Google is as cheap as any other way to get your ads out.
To be fair google is still stealing market share from old media, and the migration rate is exceeding the slowdown rate... so its currently bucking the the trend, but its still not immune to a slow down.
I also think that Google has spent a lot of money on the T-Mobile/Android deals. Android took a lot of time and money to develop, and also StreetView took many man-hours to complete. However, in the long run, Android is going to make Google billions in licensing and other revenue streams.
We'll see. Android hasn't exactly had a stellar launch. And StreetView is never complete. It will be interesting to see how much effort it takes to keep that up to date, and how well they can target new contruction/reconstruction activities.
Slashdot Mirror
Well, quite honestly, it's true that digital media is pretty fragile and that (despite being perfectly suited to copying) much of it will be lost because it wasn't copied. But I'm damn willing to bet that there's so much digital media out there in various forms, being copied and recopied that our digital age will on balance leave behind *way* more than previous ones.
Fast forward a 1000 years. Will anyone be able to reverse engineer the media and formats, especially given that the media will mostly be highly degraded.
Its been pretty challenging to recover information from 1000 year old media today, and it was almost exclusively plaintext printed on various media in large type faces, using symbols we mostly know.
I mean the Microsoft Office document format is almost undocumentable, drop it on a magnetic storage media like a hard drive... what hope do we have reverse engineering it from 1000 years from now, especially if there was a civilisation collapse, and the one doing the recovering doesn't have much continuity to ours. Say we knocked ourselves back to 17th century technology, went a few hundred years without electricity and 'rediscovered' electronics and computers along a whole new path...
For installation on your Apple-branded computer, i.e. a Macintosh.
I bought a birdhouse kit the other day. It said "For construction of a birdhouse". It came with instructions for making a bird house. Guess what, I didn't make a birdhouse. I modified it into a playground for my kids hampster.
Should the birdhouse vendor be allowed to prevent me from what I'm did? "i.e. Thou shalt make a birdhouse!"
Read the license.
Why should I? I bought it. I need a license to make and distribute copies, etc. I don't need a license to use the copy I bought.
Apple wants to be a "boutique" computer maker, where they control the entire widget. They own all of the rights, the code, the hardware, and put all of the R&D into the product. They can sell it however they want to; people who want cheapass Macs be damned.
And once I buy it, I can use it however I like. Its up to me whether I install it on a Mac, hack it onto a PC, use it for rifle target practice. Apple doesn't get to decide what I do with it, once I buy it. Because of copyright, I need their permermission to make copies, but I don't need permission to use it. And in the case of software, the copy you make in order to use it is automatically permitted.
I still don't get where this entitlement attitude comes from.
What I don't get is where this attitude that someone else gets to decide what you do with the stuff you buy?
If you bought a birdhouse would you feel you had some legal obligation to build a bird house? Simply because the birdhouse maker told you that was it was designed for? I'd laugh my ass off if they tried to include a 'license agreement' that required me to make a birdhouse -- there is no way they could legally do that.
I'll agree apple has balls selling a product with a statement that says I have to use it in a certain way. But it has about as much legal force as a fart in the wind storm.
But don't think that you have some special right to break license agreements.
Apple doesn't have some special right to impose a license agreement on whether and how I use what I buy.
And I don't need a license agreement to use a copy of the software I bought.
they'll simply pull the retail version of the OS X upgrade from the market. Bye bye clone market. But this won't affect the already-pirating OSX86 cloners.
If you read the entire thread. I said this myself. This what Apple should have done.
That said, the clone market will only take a serious hit; the really low end market will be dead, but the market won't be completely dead. The clone market, after all, could aways buy a Mac mini, part it out, toss away the case, pull the CPU, hard drive, and dvdrw and repack it into a desktop case on a desktop mainboard. Figure $600 for a mini. If they can re-use the CPU and hard drive and dvdrw etc, they'll recover around $200. That means getting their hand on a copy of OSX will be about about $400.
A little steep, but in the same ballpark as Vista Ultimate at retail.
They could definitely put together a desktop tower with OSX for $1500, turn a profit, and fill a niche Apple hasn't addressed.
because a VM is still much easier to backup and restore than a system installed directly on hardware.
I disagree. The bulk of the effort will be in backing up and restoring the settings and documents. Running a backup program's 'restore image' to hard drive for a bare metal OS vs 'copying a file' for a vm OS, is pretty minor.
Why couldn't it be both seamless and sandboxed from the host OS?
Because those two criteria are mutually exclusive.
If it can't access my documents folders, then its not seamless.
If it can't pop things up on my screen at will, then its not seamless.
If it can't trap keyboard input and react, then its not seamless.
If it can, then its not much of a sandbox.
You seem to be making an awful lot of assumptions.
Since my definition of seamless precludes it being sandboxed and yours evidently doesn't, I assume we have different notions of what 'seamless' and/or 'sandbox' means. I'd be interested to know what 'seamless' means to you.
"Recent advances in cooperative technology and classical communication are based entirely on the assumption that the Internet and active networks are not in conflict with object-oriented languages....
Aha... now I know where my boss got the idea for our new project.
And now for the test of strength... :)
Usually a VM is for secondary activities.
Unless its being used for primary activities. In this example it was VM'd because that's the only way it will run. The person with the mac in question uses it for Outlook and some CRM app. If his VM's not up, he's not up. Being able to browse the web and play with iphoto while his system is restoring is a meager consololation prize.
Plus you have to put this into context. The post i originally replied to suggested that Vista should "seamlessly incorporate a VM" to support all legacy software. And my counterpoint was that doing so would effectively mean that Vista would seamlessly support all XP malware, which is counter productive. There isn't much value in Vista being secure if it seamlessly supports XP malware.
The mac example, was primarily an illustration of what 'seamless' support for xp malware accomplishes.
How is it any less convenient?
Its not less convenient. But you said: "This is one of the best aspects of virtual machines."
How would something that is equally inconvenient on real vs virtual machines be "one of the best aspects of virtual machines"?
What do you mean it's not practical? This is one of the best aspects of virtual machines. If something bad happens to your install, you just swap the VM image out for a backup version with all your apps and settings installed (but without the viruses/damage) and off you go again.
Ok, so after he backs up all his documents, and settings from inside the VM, and then restores from a backup. How exactly is that any more convenient than restoring a "non-VM" from a backup?
How can you be free when your neighbors can gain access to your wallet for whatever they desire (new car, new home, food stamps, cover their retirement expenses, ...)? That basically makes you a slave where you work for others' enrichment, not yourself.
Why on earth are you a slave working for other' enrichment?
According to your logic, all you have to do to stop being a slave is to quit working and just access your neighbors wallets for whatever you desire. Freedom is closer than you think. ;)
It's rediculous to assume that the people who like obscure things don't also like mainstream things, or that a sale of an obscure items equals loss of a sale on a bigger item.
Its not that these people don't like both, its that they only have so much money, and that until recently only one of the items was readily available. So yes, in the big scheme of things, if 20 billion dollars is spent on obscure items that didn't used to be available, that's 20 billion that's not going to be spent on other stuff.
One of the real factors affecting the music industry is the rise of the cellphone and gaming industries. Even if piracy were impossible music sales would probably be down simply due people spending that disposable income on cellphone contracts, video games, etc.
After all the sale of an obscure item either equals the loss of a sale on -something-, or that the money would have gone into savings. Givin the savings rate in the US is practically zero, that means its probably the former.
So yeah, some people will skip mcdonalds to buy the obscure CD, some people will skip on a new t-shirt,... and a lot of people are going to skip on some other more popular CD.
My personal experience is that the part of your thesis that isn't happening is Step 4:
Yes. Precisely. The first 3 are all happening. Its just #4 that isn't panning out.
It seems to me that blockbusters are getting bigger, AND the tail is getting longer. More money is being spent at both ends of the curve.
Yes, to both the tail is getting longer and the blockbusters are getting bigger.
This would imply that the curves in the New Scientist article graphic are incorrect: the long tail isn't stealing dollars from the blockbusters.
Not quite. The article isn't saying that the tail is too "short", but simply that its much flatter and thinner then they expected.
People who really want the obscure stuff =are= buying the obscure stuff so the tail is there, but they are surprised that despite the availability of such a wider range of product, that things are actually becoming more concentrated around the blockbusters. This is somewhat counter intuitive.
Microsoft is going to have to sever all backwards compatibility at some point if they want a fresh start. Microsoft BOUGHT an Emulator/Virtualizer (Virtual PC), how hard would it be to make a seamless sandboxed XP install?
We don't really want all our XP malware and viruses to run seamlessly in a virtual layer.
Microsoft wants (needs) running really legacy stuff to be a least a bit of a hassle.
A guy I know runs XP in parallels on the Mac with some key windows apps he uses, and got it all infected with malware. Sure, at least he can kill the malware by shutting parallels down, that's not really a practical solution though, since he can't use the apps he needs.
That is the fundamental unique challenge Microsoft faces. They need to ensure backwards compatibility, and simultaneously ensure legacy malware won't run.
Not to sound to fanboyish, but Apple has done this TWICE in the last 10 years.
And its one of the reasons enterprises are leery about being heavily invested in Apple. If you still depend on something from 10 years ago your fucked.
SEVERAL companies I work with still run software written for MS-DOS. And it works on Vista, most of it just works. Some of it required a bit of coaxing. And a couple apps runs in a VM (and Virtual PC from microsoft is a free download).
There is exactly one and only one application I've been unable to get working under Vista in any form. (And I wasn't able to get it working under Windows 2000 or XP either.) Its a dos application for programming a certain era of Motorola 2-way radios via a RIB box attached to a serial port. And for that... I made a bootable usb dongle with win98se, that they plugin and reboot from when they need it.
Good luck getting a System6 or 7 or even OS9 app running on your new intel macbook. Sure their's pearpc, but it hardly qualifies as official support, and there are lots of caveats.
Ok. You feel you should be able to buy them separately. I'll even go so far as to agree with you.
I don't feel I 'should' be able to buy them seprately. I =can= buy them separately.
Unfortunately for both of us, the people who are in the legal position to decide that (the CEO and Board of Directors of Apple), have decided that they do not want to sell it that way.
er... except they do.
I'd like to use the Wii OS on my home built game-system Know where I can buy a copy?
No. That's not for sale except as part of the Wii. But I can buy a copy of OSX in a box at bestbuy for under $200.
What is the long tail? The summary, and TFA (I skimmed it so maybe I missed this) seem to indicate that the long tail theory means the more obscure stuff will be more popular.
The long tail theory is:
1) More obscure stuff will be more profitable (because distribution costs are down - you can distribute electronic goods for practically nothing, and even real goods are more profitable because you can keep them in a warehouse in Wisconsin instead of taking up premium shelf space at a retail store downtown NYC)
2) Because its profitable, people will actually carry it.
3) Because people will carry it, people that actually want it will be able to find it and buy it.
4) Because people can find and buy the obscure stuff they want they'll spend less on the popular stuff they don't want as much. So the blockbusters will lose some of their sales to the obscure stuff.
In reality, this doesn't seem to be happening.
What does any of what you wrote have to do with Psystar? Would you actually buy one of their overpriced pieces of shit to run OS X?
Yes I would consider it. According to their store: $744 for a 'tower' that runs OSX, 4GB ram, 1 hard drive, 3.0 GHz E8400 cpu, a crappy cheap vidcard and no monitor. I drop another $500 or so on the vid card I actually want, a monitor, and a 2nd hard drive.
I've heard they run a bit loud too so might budget a bit to replace the stock cpu fan and upgrade the power supply.
The specs I want for $1300 give or take, running OSX painlessly. That is exactly what I want.
More importantly, if psystar makes it, there will be others soon after, and I'm sure I'll be able to build exactly what I want through one of them. So yeah, I'm hoping Psystar makes it.
What they should be doing is fixing Vista so it can be "lighter" and do it for free as a patch.
What do you think Windows 7 actually is?
Its EXACTLY that. Its just Vista-point-one.
The ONLY reason they are releasing it as "Windows 7" instead of as "Vista Service Pack 3" is for marketing purposes, because too many people won't buy "Vista SP3" because its called Vista and they think "Vista sucks", but they'll buy "Windows 7". So that's what Microsoft will sell them.
Except if they take it off the shelf because you can't do what you want with it, then you're effectively denying it to everyone else. Where would they be if they had to please every single potential consumer, and couldn't sell it otherwise?
The only people who they want to have it, are people who bought macs. They bundle it with those macs. I fail to see who is being denied??
Besides, it's not you that they're saying is restricted,
Read the EULA. That's exactly what they are saying.
it's a third party who's making money modifying their product and reselling it.
Not meaningfully.
Years ago there was a copyright case where a Christian Evangelical organization was reselling DVDs of popular movies with the sex and profanity removed; the court found against them because they were modifying a creative work, eviscerating the creator's control over it.
Look, personally, I think that is a real grey area. On the one hand I can see that its an unauthorized derivative work... on the other hand if some Christian Fundie wants to watch "Pretty Woman" without a few scenes they are free to skip them... if they want to pay a couple bucks to have someone make skipping them that much easier, I find it hard to see a problem with it. So for me, that's already a pretty edge case.
That said, I think there is more to that case than you let on. I thought part of it was that it arguably wasn't clear that people were getting censored copies too.
That said, this situation is clearly different. The situation with Apple is that they want you to play your copy of Pretty Woman only on Sony DVD players. And psystar is modifying things so that it also works with a Samsung player. And psystar is giving you the ORIGINAL OSX disk, not a modified copy.
Can you really say THAT is is 'eviscerating the creator's vision'? You got the original disc.
Additionally, if you've never reinstalled OSX on a Psystar, you boot up your PC from a utility disk they provide that sets up the system so that the original OSX CD will install. They could ship the systems like that if they wanted to, with the OSX copy in its original shrink wrap. So it would be end users who are actually doing the install. Would that be ok?
And if it is ok, should it really be a humongous deal if Psystar does it for you as part of the service, especially as they are still including the original OSX disc you bought?
The cheapest one you can configure on their web site is $2299 (so HUNDREDS more, not thousands). If you wait until one is refurbished, you will probably be closer to $2k.
1) By well under 2k I'm talking $1200-1300. I admit you could have reasonably interpreted it to mean something else.
2) The cheapest MacPro you can configure on their web site would need several hundred bucks in aftermarket upgrades to meet the specs of my $1200-1300 unit.
- it comes with one 320GB hard drive. I spec'd 2 (and I wouldn't go with something as small as 320. It would probably be a pair of 1TB drives, or at least 750s. Or a fast raptor and a 1TB drive. In any case the unit that comes with the Pro is shite. So lets say I drop another $50 to get the 750, and then add a raptor aftermarket, for another $200 total.
- it comes with a piece-of-crap ATI radeon HD 2600. So I'll need to drop in the video card I want after market. So add ~$250 for the GTX260.
- it comes with no display. My 1200-1300 unit comes with a 21" LCD. Add another $200.00
- RAM it comes with 2GB. I want at least 4. And since its a Mac pro I'm stuck with the more expensive ECC ram. Apple's going to charge me $500 for that 'upgrade'. But at least I can get it for half the price at newegg. Add another $200.
So my $2300 Mac Pro needs $850 in parts to meet the specs I want, costing a total $3150.00... vs a $1200-1300 PC.
That's just FUCKED.
If you wait until one is refurbished, you will probably be closer to $2k.
And it will be a refurb. Meaning I'm now paying a premium for something that's both used and not even current. Nice. And it will still need $850 in parts.
I think you need to check your math there. That hardware should run well under ONE thousand.
It probably could run under 1k. But it would use parts I wouldn't want. I don't want the cheapest c2d on the market, nor the cheapest motherboard, nor the cheapest monitor. I like to buy good quality power supplies and sturdy cases, and good keyboards and mice etc.
You have no fucking clue what you are talking about. Mortgages don't "come up for renewal".
Either you live somewhere where the rules are different or you have no fucking clue. Most people in North America pay for their home in a series of 3 to 5 year mortgages that renew (almost automatically) when they expire. So if it takes you 20 years to pay off your home, it was far more likely to have been financed as 4 5 year mortgages, not 1 20 year mortage. Google "mortage renewal".
You have no fucking clue what you are talking about. The credit crunch predates the stock market drop by months.
I phrased that rather poorly. I meant that its one of the reasons the credit crunch has gotten so bad. Because on the one hand the banks have dramatically reduced the availability of credit, and on the other hand companies (and homeowners) have dramatically reduced their ability to qualify for what little credit there is.
No one's saying your desires are irrational, but Apple is under no obligation to sell you what you want.
Which, if your read my post is fine. But if someone else is willing to sell it, I'll consider it.
The trouble I have with Apple is that they do sell what I want. I can buy a white-box I'm happy with. And I can buy OSX in a retail box. Now that I've bought these things I should be able to do whatever I want with them. Including modify them to work together the way I want.
Apple wants to tell me I can't. I object to that.
If I sell you hammer, I don't get to tell you that what you build with it. I don't get to tell you you can't modify it. Why does apple get to tell me what I do with their OS after I've bought it. If they don't want me to buy OSX and use it the way I want, then they can take it off the shelf, and not sell it to me.
These companies don't seem to get it. You can't just slap OS X on generic parts and call it the same as Apple. With Apple you're also paying for support, for prestige, for lots of intangibles that people value.
Except that some people don't value support, prestige or intangibles.
Suppose I want a simple Core2Duo tower with 2 hard drives, a free PCI slot, a 9600GT or GTX260 video card to dual boot XP/*nix and OSX. That hardware will run well under $2k even after you drop a 21" monitor on it. Sure it might not have bluetooth, but that isn't a spec item you care about anyway.
Apple doesn't sell anything remotely like this. Yet its exactly what I want. I need a PCI slot to run some work related interface cards. I want to play windows games.
The only thing that comes close to satisfying what I actually want is the MacPro, with a Quad Core Xeon(s), for THOUSANDS more. I don't need, nor have any use for a Quad Core Xeon, especially not one with any of the video cards Apple offers with them.
If Apple doesn't want to sell me this, fine, but I'd seriously consider buying it from someone who does.
Testing the waters, Hardware vendors want to sell something other than windows. I'm willing to bet one (or more) of the big 5 PC vendors is behind this
I just can't see it.
Even in the most decisive win for Psystar the ONLY thing apple has to do is take OSX off the retail shelf. That's all folks! if Psystar can't buy OSX, it can't bundle OSX. Game over!
Apple then only bundles OSX with actual Apple computer, and it delivers new versions to registered customers via Apple Software update, requiring them to have a valid apple hardware serial number and a credit card to, obtain that particular update.
Then the only way anyone is going to get OSX then is to either buy an Apple, or to Pirate it. Neither of which will do Psystar or anyone else in the 'big 5' any good. Sure Psystar could buy a mini, and 'rebundle' OSX with a Core2Quad tower... but Psystar is going to have a tough time being price competive, paying $500+ per license... unless they part out the mini's on ebay or something to recoup the cost.
That a companies stock value serves as some kind of 'score' by which one can judge a companies performance is one of the bigger scams ever perpetrated upon the American public.
What the stock price does serve well as, is as an indicator of the stockholders confidence in their ability to resell the stock at a profit. And no more.
Not quite. The most important real impact of a stock price is that impacts the ability of the company to borrow and raise capital. They will be unable/less able to borrow as the stock valuation plummets; and existing loans may even be called in. They will also be unable to raise new capital with a share offering -- because at low share prices they have to issue a LOT of shares to raise any capital, and the more shares they issue, the more they dilute the existing shareholds, which pushes the price down further...
The stock market's "guesstimate" of a companies value has about zip point zilch to do with a companies financial health - as the latter is determined by cash flow. (I.E. income greater than outgo, the ability to meet obligations, etc.. etc...)
Agreed-ish. But having their valuation trashed can seriously impact their cash flow.
Google's stock could drop to $.01/share tomorrow without impacting their income, or ability to meet their obligations.
Not necessarily. If the share price hits various thresholds, all kinds of things can happen that do impact its cash flow, particularly if the company has any debts, and its credit has any connection to its market valuation, which it often does.
It works in much the same way that a significant housing price slump can screw with your mortgage. For example if your house loses 35% of its value, and your mortgage comes up for renewal, and you now have 'negative equity', the bank is either going to want a pile more collateral, a big lump sum payment, or will foreclose on the loan, and it will probably raise your rates too -- even if you would have had no trouble continuing with your payments the way they were.
That, by the way, is pretty much exactly how the current housing price collapse is screwing with a lot of people right now.
Companies face a similar situation, and its one of the reasons for the 'credit crunch'. Companies can't get credit (or even keep the credit they had) because they no longer have the share valuation that would collateralize that credit.
On number 1, yes they do. Every click on a Google ad gives Google money from a business.
So the public doesn't give google money. We evidently agree.
On number 2, no they don't automatically have the money, but in a slowing economy, advertising budgets are going to be one of the last to be completely eliminated in hopes of attracting more customers.
Right. It won't be completely eliminated. It will be reduced.
Yes, but I still see ads for AIG, Ford, GM, etc. and no less than before they got bailed out/went bankrupt. Sure they might not have a 10 billion dollar budget on ads, but they are still going to advertise and Google is as cheap as any other way to get your ads out.
To be fair google is still stealing market share from old media, and the migration rate is exceeding the slowdown rate... so its currently bucking the the trend, but its still not immune to a slow down.
I also think that Google has spent a lot of money on the T-Mobile/Android deals. Android took a lot of time and money to develop, and also StreetView took many man-hours to complete. However, in the long run, Android is going to make Google billions in licensing and other revenue streams.
We'll see. Android hasn't exactly had a stellar launch. And StreetView is never complete. It will be interesting to see how much effort it takes to keep that up to date, and how well they can target new contruction/reconstruction activities.