Re:The end of the Microsoft era?
on
Rebel Code
·
· Score: 1
Open Source is no more significant or worrisome to Microsoft than Apple
I disagree. Microsoft tends to make good money off of Apple owners who buy the Mac version of Office, etc. Linux is pulling people towards looking further for free versions of stuff, and rewards open source. Neither appeals to the folks in Redmond.
Blimey, only a few posts in and already this discussion is officially declared dead by Godwin's Law.
Note that Godwin's Law, like Sturgeon's Law and Moore's Law, are not actually what the named person said. Godwin said that Nazis will be mentioned as a flame war goes on, not that it signifies the death of the argument. Sturgeon said "90% of everything is crud", not "crap" (although in this case, the meaning is retained.) Moore talked about transistor count doubling every 18 months, not processor speed.
Can it still interbreed with its aboveground relatives?
According to one web article:
To their amazement they found that it was almost impossible to mate those living above ground with those in the subterranean world, indicating that the genetic differences are now so great that the ones underground are well on their way to becoming a separate species.
An interesting side note, after a million years of so of cities assuming the theory of evolution is correct we will have organisms specifically evolved to exploit urban environments.
It doesn't take nearly that long. There is a species of mosquito that lives in the London Underground (subway) that is genetically quite different from its surface forebears. Do a google search on "london underground mosquito" to see more.
I would have to be a certifiable class A idiot to want to buy a CD when I could just as easily obtain the music online and roll my own.
I buy CDs, although generally used ones, despite having a cable modem and the knowledge and understanding to find just about anything on the Internet. Some of us call this "honesty", rather than "idiocy." In the absence of honesty, the RIAA would have died many years ago.
The anti-copying schemes, however, are going to push people towards dishonesty, thus eliminating the only ally they have.
The other annoying aspect to JavaScript are them pop-up windows. Unfortunately, there are a number of legitimate uses for these making it difficult to say we should just get rid of them entirely.
One option would be site-level permissions for whether the browser runs the JavaScript of a particular site, and further, whether pop-up windows can be created.
Isn't it just a matter of supply and demand? As long as the video players are dominant the DVD is an item which is going to be more expensive.
The price of an object is based on its value to the customer as much as (or more so) the cost to produce. CDs are cheaper to make than tapes, but they charge less for tapes because it's lower quality and less convenient.
Don't make the same mistake marx did and assume price is a function of production cost. Do a web search for "marginal value theory" for an informative lesson in economics, one which I wish I'd learned 15 years before I did.
If we insist on standardization, we run the risk of cutting off future innovation.
Because the formats are open, old formats can be converted to new.
Consider Linux binaries. The basic format is pretty standardized. Is that cutting off innovation? Unnecessary differences, on the other hand, are an incredible obstacle to progress. Consider how many programmer lifetimes are wasted dealing with byte-swapping, or because Unix, Mac, and PC ASCII files use different end-of-line codes. And there's no real advantage to any one of these.
I think the time has come that we've learned enough about what is good enough and what isn't, and need to try to merge a lot of these efforts into one great installer, rather than a bunch of limited ones.
When you go to a shop and buy a pair of socks, then the price of these stinkers includes a part of the damage shoplifters have done to the store.
Except that shoplifting damages are actually measurable, and a store that doesn't take reasonable measures to prevent shoplifting will soon find itself out of business. These taxes are based on farcical "estimates" of what copying costs, based on guesses of how much copying there is and what seem to be extreme overestimates of how often the person would have bought a legal copy if they couldn't have gotten the illegal one.
BTW, "anti-aliasing" is a bit of a misnumer. Ordered sampling does not remove aliasing.
Yes, but we're not computing to infinite precision, we're generally going down to 8 bits per color per pixel. Once stochastic sampling has reduced the error to less than, say, 0.5 bits per color per pixel, it effectively is eliminated.
Right, the smaller the object, the worse the sampling error. One way to reduce sampling errors in rendering is to use a lower-resolution, averaged color model for an object when it is far away. Essentially you do a pre-process geometry space filtering of the object to get an image space filtering. And, as a further plus, your rendering speed should be better.
Honestly, how often do you stop in the midst of a game of Counter-Strike and say to yourself;
In games like Combat Flight Simulator, I often say to myself, "what direction is that plane heading?" and "how far above the ground am I really?" In rather less frantic games than your average FPS deathmatch, higher image quality is a definite plus.
Lens flare is generally silly. We aren't looking through cameras in these games...
Funny, you insult Americans for not using a logical, sensible measurement system, and then you browbeat us for not using illogical, nonsensical English spellings. Given that many (most?) words have multiple meanings, it's inane to use different spellings to try and indicate meaning in just a few cases.
Unfortunately, the Abell Spelling Reform (doubled vowel indicates the long form, x and c removed from the language, most double consonants eliminated, etc.) goes over like a lead balloon. (or perhaps I should say it "gooz oover liik a led baloon.")
Uh ? Put more RAM. Put even more RAM. And some extra RAM.
My machine is maxed out, unfortunately, at 256 MB. A solid state storage system could be added to an otherwise limited system. (Although at the typical prices they sell for, a new computer would be a cheaper option.)
Oh, I guess what your problem is.
Yeah, it's that the market for what I do isn't generally using Linux.
But yes, a gig of memory and a RAM drive would be a good approach.
I would do grevious bodily injury for one of these devices.
A high percentage of my working day is spent waiting for compiles, as even a single change to a file requires on the order of five minutes of compiling and linking. A lot of that is file read/write time. If I could write it to memory-speed output rather than disk, I would be a happy man. According to the task manager, I'm not hitting virtual memory most of the time, but that hard drive sure is cranking.
Heck, we should probably pass around a hat and get one for Alan and for Linus...
CDs have a big drawback. They don't fit in a pocket.
The smaller size do. You can get 75 mm (~3") CD-Rs that store 156 MB instead of 650+. Sony uses them to store pictures with the CD writer built into the MVC-CD1000. Unfortunately, even with the small discs it's still a rather large camera. Also, you won't find any "100 CD-Rs for $10 after rebate" deals on the small CD-Rs.
What I would really like to do is replace the laptop with a slightly different device. It would have everything the laptop does, but the screen would be able to fold all the way around, like the way people open a magazine and refold it backwards.
If you did that, the keyboard would be on the other side, and keys would probably get hit a lot.
What I'd like to see is the computer bits in the screen half of the laptop, so the keyyboard could be removable. Make the screen a touchscreen, perhaps include a little writing square a la palm, and then you could use it sans keyboard as needed. Much more portable.
I've been waiting for Apple to sue George for the new iMac color-esque grills.
I wonder if Scott Adams has a variant on the great Dilbert where it is demonstrated that the boss's laptop is an etch-a-sketch.
"Hey, how do you reboot this iMac?"
"Turn it up to medium."
"Oh, yeah. Thanks!"
"I wonder when he'll realize we gave him one of those George Foreman grills..."
One is that, for the past 30-35 years, the U.S.A. has had the capacity to produce enough food to feed every person on Earth, thanks to echnological advances. Even though our population has nearly doubled in that time, we *STILL* can produce 30 times as much food as we need.
And yet we don't. Why?
Because those other countries are, with rare exception, likewise capable of feeding themselves. If we could overcome the obstacles to simply getting them food, we would have in the meantime also gotten rid of the obstacles they've placed in their own way that prevent them from feeding themselves.
According to a column in the Washington Post, a local fellow got a form back from the USPTO saying they were refusing his fax because it was -- get this -- upside down. Apparently the examiners are incapable of rotating a piece of paper 180 degrees.
Or perhaps they just awarded a patent to someone else re: said rotation and thus are unable to do it without violating that patent.
Nintendo has been slowly dying out over the past few years
On the TV-out console market yes, but the Gameboy Color is probably the most profitable machine (in terms both of direct sales and game sales) out there. The Pokemon craze has shown only mild signs of fading, and the Gameboy games are still the hottest sellers. The Gameboy Advance was delayed simply because there was no reason not to, they simply had no meaningful competition. So don't expect the company to go away any time soon, although they may not put up much of a fight in the large console market.
You don't explain why you think Sony will drop the ball, though.
They denied that they were dumping Dreamcast a week ago
No they didn't, they "reaffirmed their committment" or some other such weasel words. Lying about such things in official statements would get them sued by investors.
It's fun seeing how many people and organizations were decieved by the phrasing.
Slashdot Mirror
Open Source is no more significant or worrisome to Microsoft than Apple
I disagree. Microsoft tends to make good money off of Apple owners who buy the Mac version of Office, etc. Linux is pulling people towards looking further for free versions of stuff, and rewards open source. Neither appeals to the folks in Redmond.
Blimey, only a few posts in and already this discussion is officially declared dead by Godwin's Law.
Note that Godwin's Law, like Sturgeon's Law and Moore's Law, are not actually what the named person said. Godwin said that Nazis will be mentioned as a flame war goes on, not that it signifies the death of the argument. Sturgeon said "90% of everything is crud", not "crap" (although in this case, the meaning is retained.) Moore talked about transistor count doubling every 18 months, not processor speed.
I wonder what Murphy actually said?
Can it still interbreed with its aboveground relatives?
According to one web article:
To their amazement they found that it was almost impossible to mate those living above ground with those in the subterranean world, indicating that the genetic differences are now so great that the ones underground are well on their way to becoming a separate species.
An interesting side note, after a million years of so of cities assuming the theory of evolution is correct we will have organisms specifically evolved to exploit urban environments.
n d+ mosquito
It doesn't take nearly that long. There is a species of mosquito that lives in the London Underground (subway) that is genetically quite different from its surface forebears. Do a google search on "london underground mosquito" to see more.
http://www.google.com/search?q=london+undergrou
I would have to be a certifiable class A idiot to want to buy a CD when I could just as easily obtain the music online and roll my own.
I buy CDs, although generally used ones, despite having a cable modem and the knowledge and understanding to find just about anything on the Internet. Some of us call this "honesty", rather than "idiocy." In the absence of honesty, the RIAA would have died many years ago.
The anti-copying schemes, however, are going to push people towards dishonesty, thus eliminating the only ally they have.
The other annoying aspect to JavaScript are them pop-up windows. Unfortunately, there are a number of legitimate uses for these making it difficult to say we should just get rid of them entirely.
One option would be site-level permissions for whether the browser runs the JavaScript of a particular site, and further, whether pop-up windows can be created.
Isn't it just a matter of supply and demand? As long as the video players are dominant the DVD is an item which is going to be more expensive.
The price of an object is based on its value to the customer as much as (or more so) the cost to produce. CDs are cheaper to make than tapes, but they charge less for tapes because it's lower quality and less convenient.
Don't make the same mistake marx did and assume price is a function of production cost. Do a web search for "marginal value theory" for an informative lesson in economics, one which I wish I'd learned 15 years before I did.
If we insist on standardization, we run the risk of cutting off future innovation.
Because the formats are open, old formats can be converted to new.
Consider Linux binaries. The basic format is pretty standardized. Is that cutting off innovation? Unnecessary differences, on the other hand, are an incredible obstacle to progress. Consider how many programmer lifetimes are wasted dealing with byte-swapping, or because Unix, Mac, and PC ASCII files use different end-of-line codes. And there's no real advantage to any one of these.
I think the time has come that we've learned enough about what is good enough and what isn't, and need to try to merge a lot of these efforts into one great installer, rather than a bunch of limited ones.
When you go to a shop and buy a pair of socks, then the price of these stinkers includes a part of the damage shoplifters have done to the store.
Except that shoplifting damages are actually measurable, and a store that doesn't take reasonable measures to prevent shoplifting will soon find itself out of business. These taxes are based on farcical "estimates" of what copying costs, based on guesses of how much copying there is and what seem to be extreme overestimates of how often the person would have bought a legal copy if they couldn't have gotten the illegal one.
BTW, "anti-aliasing" is a bit of a misnumer. Ordered sampling does not remove aliasing.
Yes, but we're not computing to infinite precision, we're generally going down to 8 bits per color per pixel. Once stochastic sampling has reduced the error to less than, say, 0.5 bits per color per pixel, it effectively is eliminated.
Right, the smaller the object, the worse the sampling error. One way to reduce sampling errors in rendering is to use a lower-resolution, averaged color model for an object when it is far away. Essentially you do a pre-process geometry space filtering of the object to get an image space filtering. And, as a further plus, your rendering speed should be better.
Honestly, how often do you stop in the midst of a game of Counter-Strike and say to yourself;
In games like Combat Flight Simulator, I often say to myself, "what direction is that plane heading?" and "how far above the ground am I really?" In rather less frantic games than your average FPS deathmatch, higher image quality is a definite plus.
Lens flare is generally silly. We aren't looking through cameras in these games...
Funny, you insult Americans for not using a logical, sensible measurement system, and then you browbeat us for not using illogical, nonsensical English spellings. Given that many (most?) words have multiple meanings, it's inane to use different spellings to try and indicate meaning in just a few cases.
Unfortunately, the Abell Spelling Reform (doubled vowel indicates the long form, x and c removed from the language, most double consonants eliminated, etc.) goes over like a lead balloon. (or perhaps I should say it "gooz oover liik a led baloon.")
Uh ? Put more RAM. Put even more RAM. And some extra RAM.
My machine is maxed out, unfortunately, at 256 MB. A solid state storage system could be added to an otherwise limited system. (Although at the typical prices they sell for, a new computer would be a cheaper option.)
Oh, I guess what your problem is.
Yeah, it's that the market for what I do isn't generally using Linux.
But yes, a gig of memory and a RAM drive would be a good approach.
I would do grevious bodily injury for one of these devices.
A high percentage of my working day is spent waiting for compiles, as even a single change to a file requires on the order of five minutes of compiling and linking. A lot of that is file read/write time. If I could write it to memory-speed output rather than disk, I would be a happy man. According to the task manager, I'm not hitting virtual memory most of the time, but that hard drive sure is cranking.
Heck, we should probably pass around a hat and get one for Alan and for Linus...
Note that Raskin was the one who insisted the Mac have a one button mouse...
CDs have a big drawback. They don't fit in a pocket.
The smaller size do. You can get 75 mm (~3") CD-Rs that store 156 MB instead of 650+. Sony uses them to store pictures with the CD writer built into the MVC-CD1000. Unfortunately, even with the small discs it's still a rather large camera. Also, you won't find any "100 CD-Rs for $10 after rebate" deals on the small CD-Rs.
Cochlear implants work in the reverse direction: electric charges stimulate the auditory nerves.
What I would really like to do is replace the laptop with a slightly different device. It would have everything the laptop does, but the screen would be able to fold all the way around, like the way people open a magazine and refold it backwards.
If you did that, the keyboard would be on the other side, and keys would probably get hit a lot.
What I'd like to see is the computer bits in the screen half of the laptop, so the keyyboard could be removable. Make the screen a touchscreen, perhaps include a little writing square a la palm, and then you could use it sans keyboard as needed. Much more portable.
I've been waiting for Apple to sue George for the new iMac color-esque grills.
I wonder if Scott Adams has a variant on the great Dilbert where it is demonstrated that the boss's laptop is an etch-a-sketch.
"Hey, how do you reboot this iMac?"
"Turn it up to medium."
"Oh, yeah. Thanks!"
"I wonder when he'll realize we gave him one of those George Foreman grills..."
One is that, for the past 30-35 years, the U.S.A. has had the capacity to produce enough food to feed every person on Earth, thanks to echnological advances. Even though our population has nearly doubled in that time, we *STILL* can produce 30 times as much food as we need.
And yet we don't. Why?
Because those other countries are, with rare exception, likewise capable of feeding themselves. If we could overcome the obstacles to simply getting them food, we would have in the meantime also gotten rid of the obstacles they've placed in their own way that prevent them from feeding themselves.
According to a column in the Washington Post, a local fellow got a form back from the USPTO saying they were refusing his fax because it was -- get this -- upside down. Apparently the examiners are incapable of rotating a piece of paper 180 degrees.
Or perhaps they just awarded a patent to someone else re: said rotation and thus are unable to do it without violating that patent.
No, I'm not making this up.
Correct me if I'm wrong
You're incorrect, at least if you're . MSVC has a "Replace" and a "Replace All" button; it is the former that asks you about each instance.
Nintendo has been slowly dying out over the past few years
On the TV-out console market yes, but the Gameboy Color is probably the most profitable machine (in terms both of direct sales and game sales) out there. The Pokemon craze has shown only mild signs of fading, and the Gameboy games are still the hottest sellers. The Gameboy Advance was delayed simply because there was no reason not to, they simply had no meaningful competition. So don't expect the company to go away any time soon, although they may not put up much of a fight in the large console market.
You don't explain why you think Sony will drop the ball, though.
They denied that they were dumping Dreamcast a week ago
No they didn't, they "reaffirmed their committment" or some other such weasel words. Lying about such things in official statements would get them sued by investors.
It's fun seeing how many people and organizations were decieved by the phrasing.