Huh? At 2.4GHz and below, the price difference is about equivalent to a nice dinner for two with a good bottle of wine. Stay in for a night and you've saved enough to get the better option. It certainly shouldn't put anyone off.
You took the words right out of my mouth. The fact that Netflix was allowed to patent Business Model's just goes to show that the patent system in the USA is little more than a revenue generating exercise by corrupt bureaucrats.
You can either have different wallpapers loading as you switch workspaces (as KDE does) and suffer the delay as it loads. Or you can have them all loaded at login time and watch your memory usage go through the roof if you have more than a handful of workspaces. Seriously, is there a way to implement this that doesn't suck ?
A single wallpaper might be a bit boring. But it's loads more efficient than the alternative.
In the end, the film's performance may have simply reflected an astute observation Jackson made during an interview more than a year ago when, speaking of the concept of a film featuring snakes on a plane, said: "You either want to see that, or you don't."
The snakes on a plane concept is just not going to appeal to a sizable percentage of people. I managed to miss all the internet hype completely, so my reaction was based purely on seeing the TV adverts. It didn't excite me at all. Maybe I'll watch it one day on Sky Movies, but that's it.
In case you missed it, WWDC is meant for developers. Also speaking as a Mac user, I thought there was a lot for developers to be excited about. You and I. as users will get our chance our chance to dribble over Leopard next spring.
The one thing he forgot to include in his grips/wants list is support for the built in iSight camera. I've got a friend who also has a MacBook Pro and pointed him to Parallels just this weekend. He was pretty thrilled by it, but the first question he asked was "does the camera work?".
I hope they bring out some Parallels Tools for Linux too. Would love to have Ubuntu 6.06 running as smooth and slick as WinXP does.
LOL. Yeah but that's the way the rest of the world goes it mate. And to them it seems normal. And you know what, it may not be as elegant as using CFS, but it works well enough and gets the job done.
I am SO going to miss OpenVMS...
Why miss it? It's been ported to Itanium so its not going away any time soon, and despite the slating Itanium gets from rags like The Register, they're actually very good systems. Very solid and very quick. I've replaced a number of ES45's with rx4640's and the latter whoops the former on performance. It seems to be a much better balanced system for I/O too. Plus Montecito is what, a month away, which will make Alpha OpenVMS upgrades to Itanium even more attractive.
Mostly this concerns me from a personal point of view. I would call myself an "integrator", in so far as what I do is work very closely with HP and HP resellers in pre-sales, delivery, installation and integration of the solution with the customers existing environments. In my experience the customers approach (or are approached by) HP or their Resellers directly, and where Oracle is involved (80% of the time) their sphere of influence extends to the DB implementation and related business, with only some input (for sizing, performance, etc) to the design of the architecture the DB will run on. The rest of the architecture is scoped and delivered through HP working with their Resellers and partners (like me). The choice of hardware and the OS the DB will run on is not decided by Oracle, and they have little or no say in the matter. That's decided between the customer and HP/Reseller in pre-sales technical workshops.
In a "new world" where Oracle can push Son-Of-Raw-Iron, and where the Linux component gives them a huge range of hardware support to choose from and a much bigger mind share grab because of the "Linux" brand image, the whole process of Sales delivery would change. Resellers would be forced to re-evaluate the nature of their relationships with vendors like HP. Perhaps choosing first to take their customers to Oracle before deciding which hardware vendor to get involved. A decision that Oracle would be in a very strong position to influence.
The nature of my relationship with all the parties involved would probably have to change too, as the work I currently do for HP and their Resellers would probably be picked up by Oracle. I'd either have to get an "in" with Oracle, get squeezed out, or be left picking over the scraps.
Well that's one possible scenario anyway. And I might be being overly skeptical, but I have to have a plan ready for that just in case.
But wasn't TruCluster a reimplimentation of the VAXcluster layered product?
Yep. Though its not quite as good as the cluster filesystem on OpenVMS. Any cluster member can read files (of 64k or larger) direct from shared storage, but asynchronous writes are still funneled over the cluster interconnect to an AdvFS domain server. So its important for optimum performance (and to avoid flooding the Memory Channel interconnect) to align the server for a particular AdvFS domain with the cluster member doing the most I/O to that domain. However, AdvFS on TruCluster does support Direct I/O, so if an application has multiple instances running on different cluster members, and they can communicate with each other to coordinate I/O as Oracle RAC does over the cluster interconnect (when its not using ASM) then the app can open files with using O_DIRECTIO and write to them directly, bypassing the AdvFS domain server and AdvFS buffer cache.
The only other Unix Cluster Filesystem I've seen that I would compare to OpenVMS and doesn't have this asynchronous limitation is the Symetrical Cluster File System from Polyserve. Though I'm a bit wary of proposing them as a solution to Linux customers as their products also run on MS Windows, and I'd be very surprised if MS doesn't gobble them up at some point in the future and dump the Linux port.
I, as a long-time OpenVMS user, can't imagine not having a cluster-aware FS.
Ah, but you, like me, have "grown up" with an OS that implements SSI (Single System Image) natively. We know the benefits of having cluster common system files and application directories. For example a common account/password database without having to resort to NFS or similar. But the rest of the industry have never experienced this and frankly don't know what they're missing. As you may be aware, HP were planning to port TruCluster functionality from Tru64 over to HP-UX, but last year it got canned. My understanding of events is that this decision was customer driven. I was told that HP held workshops with their top customers and asked them what it was they wanted. The message they got back from that was their customers didn't like the fact HP were about to change HP-UX into something almost unrecognizable that would force the majority of their customer base to re-learn what they already knew. They wanted to move forward with a "unix standard" CFS implementation (i.e. Veritas) and didn't see SSI as a big enough reason to make such a huge change. Veritas had a product almost ready that meant HP-UX could get to market with a CFS a year ahead of when the TruCluster port was due to finish, so the decision by HP to drop it was a no brainer. The majority of their customers just didn't want it! Once TruCluster finally dies (it's not quite yet, you can still buy it) I doubt you will ever see another another commercial Unix SSI cluster solution. The industry just doesn't seem to see the need.
How do database apps running on RAC nodes share scripts, flat files, etc without a DLM and cluster-aware FS?
Well, I'm no Oracle expert, but as I understand it if you're running Oracle ASM, then from inside Oracle you can change directory, and view files (cd, ls) from any node in the cluster as if you were running an OS native cluster filesystem. So once oracle is up and running it can look to itself for any node specific scripts it needs. Plus it has its own DLM.
As for app binaries, Oracle recommends you have an 18GB filesystem (disk or partition) that is private to each RAC cluster member and the Oracle binaries and startup files are located in there. The Oracle RAC installation process then copies parts of the Oracle kit that need to be cluster common into a common area which I think exists inside of ASM. 18GB is nothing these days, and you can easily create this on a SAN and make it private to a system using selective storage presentation and SAN Zoning from the SAN of your choice. So having multiple copies of some Oracle files on your cluster is not considered a problem.
So the real question is indeed, as already noted in this thread, will Oracle code, package, and support a particular Linux distro? I think it has to go that way. Here are two reasons why.
I think Oracle have to tread very carefully here. If they were to take a Linux distribution like Ubuntu or Debian (saves them having to buy a Linux vendor) strip it down and integrate it with their own software and sell it, then this would be a direct attack on the likes of Sun, IBM, HP, etc. Why would anyone need Solaris or AIX or HP-UX anymore if the OS is bundled with the product? Oracle would steal OS market share from all the hardware/OS vendors + all the Service, Support and Integration revenue that the goes along with that. It would see a huge shift in the balance of power and revenue away from the Vendors towards Oracle, and a lot of money would flow with it. Even worse, if Solaris market share took a hit, then the demand for SPARC would drop and Sun would be hit on their hardware sales. Same for HP on Integrity (Itanium) just as they're starting to get some momentum behind it.
Oracle would benefit from this enormously, but they'll make a lot of enemies in the process.
Actually it wasn't DEC Rdb they got it from, it was the DLM (Distributed Lock Manager) code from Tru64 Alpha's TruCluster that some twit in Compaq sold them. Sometime round 1998 if I remember right. I worked for Compaq in the (ex-DEC) UK Unix Support Group at the time and remember being horrified when I found out. At the time Oracle relied heavily on the DLM + CFS (Cluster File System) in Tru64 Unix to be able to run multiple database instances for a single database on different systems (Oracle Parallel Server).
My worst fear was that they would take the DLM, built their own platform neutral CFS implementation, and Tru64's DLM + CFS would become irrelevant. As it turned out Compaq had plans to kill off Alpha anyway, but the rest of my prediction came true.
OCFS is now old hat, and today Oracle have ASM. Their own, integrated, built in DLM and CFS implementation that gives them complete platform neutrality. Great for Oracle, but HP (ex Compaq, ex Digital) really shot their foot off on that one.
In fact ASM pretty much eliminates the need for any Vendor cluster filesystem. What other products are there that use CFS + DLM in the way that RAC does? I can't think of any, which also makes Veritas one of the big losers in this story.
Microsoft did this about 15 years ago (ish) in the UK. I was working at DEC's UK Customer support center at the time and MS outsourced much of their support to DEC because they just didn't have enough skilled people in-house to cover all the support calls they were getting.
I installed it and it pulled down some good things. Didn't magically make Ubuntu play DVD's though using the default "movie player". I had to take a second bite at the cherry and install VLC and Xine.
I don't know if this is against the Ubuntu philosophy or not, but what I'd like to see is Ubuntu produce something similar to Easyubuntu, but not using the legally questionable source. Instead if they licensed all the technology they needed to give Ubuntu the same multi-media experience as you can get with windows and Mac OS X, bundled it into a downloadable toolset it would polish off Ubuntu just nicely. I appreciate that some of it might have to be close source and they would definitely have to charge for it to pay for the licensing fees etc. But at least it would give Joe Public a single place to go to get all they need. And it would be maintainable by Ubuntu, and most important of all it would be guaranteed legal. Easyubuntu would still exist for those people who wanted to continue as now.
Ubuntu 6.06 is definitely the slickest desktop I've seen on Linux yet. Though its hardware detection still wasn't as good as SuSE on my MacBook Pro. SuSE was the only one that allowed me to pick the correct resolution first time and run with no manual changes. And I've had to plagiarize its xorg.conf to get Ubuntu and Redhat to display correctly.
At the end of the day, I switched from Windows and Linux to OSX. I can't see me switching back in the near future unless linux distributions like Ubuntu get serious about providing the codex and multi-media software that people use on a day to day basis.
I've heard of it, but never tried it. I'll find out shortly though as I've just finished downloading the Ubuntu 6.06 DVD iso and I'm about to install it. Thanks for the link.
Joe Public is only going to encounter the MP3 format when they rip music off CD's they already own. For legal sources of music and video from the Internet, they are much more likely to run into WMA and AAC. And Joe Public is not going to know they need to strip off DRM (probably won't have heard of DRM) and certainly won't know how to go about it.
Under Linux, I opened Xine and clicked "Play DVD"
Oh come on! You know as well as I do that XINE won't play DVD's out of the box. I've got SuSE 10.1 installed on a VM and although it came with the xine libs installed there was no UI player. Even having installed that it still refuses to play DVD's informing me it doesn't have the appropriate plugin and siting "legal issues".
You can't play DVDs on a default Windows install either
Amazing that we don't get this by default considering the outrageous price we have to pay for it. I didn't know that, and I just confirmed it by firing up Win XP Home in a Parallels VM on my MBP and tried to run a DVD. Guess I've been spoiled by Apple who ship OSX with a DVD player as part of the OS.
I'll stick by my original point though. If you want to gain traction against MS on the Desktop, then you need to be doing it one better than them, not matching their lameness feature for feature. If Apple can do it, then so should Ubuntu.
I haven't had an issue playing anything other than proprietary MS or Apple formats under Linux since I switched a year ago
Which only happens to be 99% of the file formats that Joe Public is likely to run into. This is the reason why Linux on the consumer desktop will never get off the ground. It has to be a strong multi-media contender out of the box and come pre-installed with everything needed to run the most popular file formats. Its unacceptable that a new user can't play DVDs and has to work out they're missing stuff like libdvdcss and how to install it before they can get going. Until this kind of usability issue gets fixed, Linux will always be a niche player on the desktop.
... is in the eating. First they have to demonstrate they can match the rest of their OS competitors. For that the number of viruses Vista proves to be vulnerable to have to drop to near Zero. Then they have to match or best the rest in terms of the number of security vulnerabilities from non-admin locally logged in accounts. They won't eliminate them completely, that's virtually impossible. But they can be measured on this too.
Frankly MS have a mountain to climb, and I'll bet that a year from now (assuming it actually ships in that time frame) Bob Muglia will be too embarrassed by that claim to show his face.
Now wait for the legislation banning these from sale to the general public for "anti terrorist" reasons.
Some politician will read this and think.. hmm.. now a terrorist can jump out of a plane 120 miles away from Washington, armed with 200lb of high explosives, and suicide himself on top of the White House with no warning.
"In XP, when you send a report of a crash or Stop error, you rarely hear back. Vista tries to close the loop, with a Control Panel window that should - someday - offer patches, updated drivers, and other solutions to problems you report."
Mac OSX has a problem reporter too, but it's like the man said WRT XP. You have an application dump core on you; you fill in a description and submit it, and it disappears into a black hole somewhere inside Apple. To be able to get a list of the application dumps you've submitted and tie them to specific future fixes would be very nice indeed.
or at least come up with a Mac OSX like model where you get an onscreen password prompt when you run something like Windows Update
If all you get is an onscreen password when you need to do something sensitive, then you're cheating and running with admin rights on your account! You can still run Software Update and all that good stuff from a standard (non-admin) account on OSX, but it prompts you to supply the name and password of a valid admin account before it will let you. This is what I do. I have an "admin" account as well as my own which just runs as a standard user.
Oh come on. I love my mac as much as anyone, but the GUI is definitely NOT intuitive and often DOESN'T just work
Really? Let me give you two real world examples of where you're wrong. I have a couple of friends who don't work in anything close to a computer industry. The guy is a security guard, and his wife helps to run a small shop. Several times every year I used to get phone calls from them asking me to come and fix their Windows PC. They had no idea what was going wrong with it (the usual, spyware, adware, viruses etc). But they were totally sick of their computing experience. So about 18 months back I persuaded them to get an iMac. I spent 1 evening showing them the basics. Left them with a book and buggered off. They called me once to ask about MS Office and whether they should buy it, and to tell me they'd subscribed to a Mac magazine. Since then I've had ZERO calls from them about problems. Not a single one.
Then there's my GF. She uses my old PowerBook and its a similar story. I gave her some basic instruction on the differences, and she was productive almost immediately. I've introduced her to some more advanced uses of the GUI since then, which she's had no problem taking on board. But she just gets on and uses it, and that was her first experience with a Mac of any kind. The only time I intervene is to make sure she's got the latest security updates on it and to back it up for her. That's it.
If you think there's any Linux distro out there, or any Linux desktop that could deliver the same no brainer user experience, then you're smoking crack my friend. Gnome and KDE have come on leaps and bounds over the years, but they've a way to go yet.
Compared to the kernel option, that's still lame, because its not just about showing files in a list in a window.
Mac OS X has got this licked, and shows how powerful the "kernel option" really is. For example, in OSX I can do the following:
Open up a file in the Text editor
Command-Click on the mini icon (or file name) in the title bar to see a drop down menu of the path to that file.
Select the directory from that menu containing the file to open up a new file manager window containing that directory view
Click on the file name in the directory and change the name to something else.
Watch the file name in the open Text editor session change without me having to even touch it.
Click and drag the file from this location, into another completely different location
Command-click on the file icon (or filename) in the Text Editor window and observe how both the file name and directory path to that file have now changed.
In the traditional old way of doing things, you'd have to close your file, then rename it, then move it, then open it again under its new name and location. But not any more. Apps like Text Edit just know that the underlying file details have changed. That is what's cool about the desktop harnessing the kernel for these tasks.
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Huh? At 2.4GHz and below, the price difference is about equivalent to a nice dinner for two with a good bottle of wine. Stay in for a night and you've saved enough to get the better option. It certainly shouldn't put anyone off.
You took the words right out of my mouth. The fact that Netflix was allowed to patent Business Model's just goes to show that the patent system in the USA is little more than a revenue generating exercise by corrupt bureaucrats.
You can either have different wallpapers loading as you switch workspaces (as KDE does) and suffer the delay as it loads. Or you can have them all loaded at login time and watch your memory usage go through the roof if you have more than a handful of workspaces. Seriously, is there a way to implement this that doesn't suck ?
A single wallpaper might be a bit boring. But it's loads more efficient than the alternative.
You're glad that he got killed? Man you're sick.
Grrrr !!!!
The snakes on a plane concept is just not going to appeal to a sizable percentage of people. I managed to miss all the internet hype completely, so my reaction was based purely on seeing the TV adverts. It didn't excite me at all. Maybe I'll watch it one day on Sky Movies, but that's it.
In case you missed it, WWDC is meant for developers. Also speaking as a Mac user, I thought there was a lot for developers to be excited about. You and I. as users will get our chance our chance to dribble over Leopard next spring.
The one thing he forgot to include in his grips/wants list is support for the built in iSight camera. I've got a friend who also has a MacBook Pro and pointed him to Parallels just this weekend. He was pretty thrilled by it, but the first question he asked was "does the camera work?".
I hope they bring out some Parallels Tools for Linux too. Would love to have Ubuntu 6.06 running as smooth and slick as WinXP does.
Why miss it? It's been ported to Itanium so its not going away any time soon, and despite the slating Itanium gets from rags like The Register, they're actually very good systems. Very solid and very quick. I've replaced a number of ES45's with rx4640's and the latter whoops the former on performance. It seems to be a much better balanced system for I/O too. Plus Montecito is what, a month away, which will make Alpha OpenVMS upgrades to Itanium even more attractive.
Mostly this concerns me from a personal point of view. I would call myself an "integrator", in so far as what I do is work very closely with HP and HP resellers in pre-sales, delivery, installation and integration of the solution with the customers existing environments. In my experience the customers approach (or are approached by) HP or their Resellers directly, and where Oracle is involved (80% of the time) their sphere of influence extends to the DB implementation and related business, with only some input (for sizing, performance, etc) to the design of the architecture the DB will run on. The rest of the architecture is scoped and delivered through HP working with their Resellers and partners (like me). The choice of hardware and the OS the DB will run on is not decided by Oracle, and they have little or no say in the matter. That's decided between the customer and HP/Reseller in pre-sales technical workshops.
In a "new world" where Oracle can push Son-Of-Raw-Iron, and where the Linux component gives them a huge range of hardware support to choose from and a much bigger mind share grab because of the "Linux" brand image, the whole process of Sales delivery would change. Resellers would be forced to re-evaluate the nature of their relationships with vendors like HP. Perhaps choosing first to take their customers to Oracle before deciding which hardware vendor to get involved. A decision that Oracle would be in a very strong position to influence.
The nature of my relationship with all the parties involved would probably have to change too, as the work I currently do for HP and their Resellers would probably be picked up by Oracle. I'd either have to get an "in" with Oracle, get squeezed out, or be left picking over the scraps.
Well that's one possible scenario anyway. And I might be being overly skeptical, but I have to have a plan ready for that just in case.
Yep. Though its not quite as good as the cluster filesystem on OpenVMS. Any cluster member can read files (of 64k or larger) direct from shared storage, but asynchronous writes are still funneled over the cluster interconnect to an AdvFS domain server. So its important for optimum performance (and to avoid flooding the Memory Channel interconnect) to align the server for a particular AdvFS domain with the cluster member doing the most I/O to that domain. However, AdvFS on TruCluster does support Direct I/O, so if an application has multiple instances running on different cluster members, and they can communicate with each other to coordinate I/O as Oracle RAC does over the cluster interconnect (when its not using ASM) then the app can open files with using O_DIRECTIO and write to them directly, bypassing the AdvFS domain server and AdvFS buffer cache.
The only other Unix Cluster Filesystem I've seen that I would compare to OpenVMS and doesn't have this asynchronous limitation is the Symetrical Cluster File System from Polyserve. Though I'm a bit wary of proposing them as a solution to Linux customers as their products also run on MS Windows, and I'd be very surprised if MS doesn't gobble them up at some point in the future and dump the Linux port.
Ah, but you, like me, have "grown up" with an OS that implements SSI (Single System Image) natively. We know the benefits of having cluster common system files and application directories. For example a common account/password database without having to resort to NFS or similar. But the rest of the industry have never experienced this and frankly don't know what they're missing. As you may be aware, HP were planning to port TruCluster functionality from Tru64 over to HP-UX, but last year it got canned. My understanding of events is that this decision was customer driven. I was told that HP held workshops with their top customers and asked them what it was they wanted. The message they got back from that was their customers didn't like the fact HP were about to change HP-UX into something almost unrecognizable that would force the majority of their customer base to re-learn what they already knew. They wanted to move forward with a "unix standard" CFS implementation (i.e. Veritas) and didn't see SSI as a big enough reason to make such a huge change. Veritas had a product almost ready that meant HP-UX could get to market with a CFS a year ahead of when the TruCluster port was due to finish, so the decision by HP to drop it was a no brainer. The majority of their customers just didn't want it! Once TruCluster finally dies (it's not quite yet, you can still buy it) I doubt you will ever see another another commercial Unix SSI cluster solution. The industry just doesn't seem to see the need.
Well, I'm no Oracle expert, but as I understand it if you're running Oracle ASM, then from inside Oracle you can change directory, and view files (cd, ls) from any node in the cluster as if you were running an OS native cluster filesystem. So once oracle is up and running it can look to itself for any node specific scripts it needs. Plus it has its own DLM.
As for app binaries, Oracle recommends you have an 18GB filesystem (disk or partition) that is private to each RAC cluster member and the Oracle binaries and startup files are located in there. The Oracle RAC installation process then copies parts of the Oracle kit that need to be cluster common into a common area which I think exists inside of ASM. 18GB is nothing these days, and you can easily create this on a SAN and make it private to a system using selective storage presentation and SAN Zoning from the SAN of your choice. So having multiple copies of some Oracle files on your cluster is not considered a problem.
Oracle would benefit from this enormously, but they'll make a lot of enemies in the process.
Actually it wasn't DEC Rdb they got it from, it was the DLM (Distributed Lock Manager) code from Tru64 Alpha's TruCluster that some twit in Compaq sold them. Sometime round 1998 if I remember right. I worked for Compaq in the (ex-DEC) UK Unix Support Group at the time and remember being horrified when I found out. At the time Oracle relied heavily on the DLM + CFS (Cluster File System) in Tru64 Unix to be able to run multiple database instances for a single database on different systems (Oracle Parallel Server).
My worst fear was that they would take the DLM, built their own platform neutral CFS implementation, and Tru64's DLM + CFS would become irrelevant. As it turned out Compaq had plans to kill off Alpha anyway, but the rest of my prediction came true.
OCFS is now old hat, and today Oracle have ASM. Their own, integrated, built in DLM and CFS implementation that gives them complete platform neutrality. Great for Oracle, but HP (ex Compaq, ex Digital) really shot their foot off on that one.
In fact ASM pretty much eliminates the need for any Vendor cluster filesystem. What other products are there that use CFS + DLM in the way that RAC does? I can't think of any, which also makes Veritas one of the big losers in this story.
Microsoft did this about 15 years ago (ish) in the UK. I was working at DEC's UK Customer support center at the time and MS outsourced much of their support to DEC because they just didn't have enough skilled people in-house to cover all the support calls they were getting.
I installed it and it pulled down some good things. Didn't magically make Ubuntu play DVD's though using the default "movie player". I had to take a second bite at the cherry and install VLC and Xine.
I don't know if this is against the Ubuntu philosophy or not, but what I'd like to see is Ubuntu produce something similar to Easyubuntu, but not using the legally questionable source. Instead if they licensed all the technology they needed to give Ubuntu the same multi-media experience as you can get with windows and Mac OS X, bundled it into a downloadable toolset it would polish off Ubuntu just nicely. I appreciate that some of it might have to be close source and they would definitely have to charge for it to pay for the licensing fees etc. But at least it would give Joe Public a single place to go to get all they need. And it would be maintainable by Ubuntu, and most important of all it would be guaranteed legal. Easyubuntu would still exist for those people who wanted to continue as now.
Ubuntu 6.06 is definitely the slickest desktop I've seen on Linux yet. Though its hardware detection still wasn't as good as SuSE on my MacBook Pro. SuSE was the only one that allowed me to pick the correct resolution first time and run with no manual changes. And I've had to plagiarize its xorg.conf to get Ubuntu and Redhat to display correctly.
At the end of the day, I switched from Windows and Linux to OSX. I can't see me switching back in the near future unless linux distributions like Ubuntu get serious about providing the codex and multi-media software that people use on a day to day basis.
I've heard of it, but never tried it. I'll find out shortly though as I've just finished downloading the Ubuntu 6.06 DVD iso and I'm about to install it. Thanks for the link.
Joe Public is only going to encounter the MP3 format when they rip music off CD's they already own. For legal sources of music and video from the Internet, they are much more likely to run into WMA and AAC. And Joe Public is not going to know they need to strip off DRM (probably won't have heard of DRM) and certainly won't know how to go about it.
Oh come on! You know as well as I do that XINE won't play DVD's out of the box. I've got SuSE 10.1 installed on a VM and although it came with the xine libs installed there was no UI player. Even having installed that it still refuses to play DVD's informing me it doesn't have the appropriate plugin and siting "legal issues".
I'll stick by my original point though. If you want to gain traction against MS on the Desktop, then you need to be doing it one better than them, not matching their lameness feature for feature. If Apple can do it, then so should Ubuntu.
Frankly MS have a mountain to climb, and I'll bet that a year from now (assuming it actually ships in that time frame) Bob Muglia will be too embarrassed by that claim to show his face.
Now wait for the legislation banning these from sale to the general public for "anti terrorist" reasons.
Some politician will read this and think
What a world we live in!
I like the look of this:
Mac OSX has a problem reporter too, but it's like the man said WRT XP. You have an application dump core on you; you fill in a description and submit it, and it disappears into a black hole somewhere inside Apple. To be able to get a list of the application dumps you've submitted and tie them to specific future fixes would be very nice indeed.
Then there's my GF. She uses my old PowerBook and its a similar story. I gave her some basic instruction on the differences, and she was productive almost immediately. I've introduced her to some more advanced uses of the GUI since then, which she's had no problem taking on board. But she just gets on and uses it, and that was her first experience with a Mac of any kind. The only time I intervene is to make sure she's got the latest security updates on it and to back it up for her. That's it.
If you think there's any Linux distro out there, or any Linux desktop that could deliver the same no brainer user experience, then you're smoking crack my friend. Gnome and KDE have come on leaps and bounds over the years, but they've a way to go yet.
Compared to the kernel option, that's still lame, because its not just about showing files in a list in a window.
Mac OS X has got this licked, and shows how powerful the "kernel option" really is. For example, in OSX I can do the following:
In the traditional old way of doing things, you'd have to close your file, then rename it, then move it, then open it again under its new name and location. But not any more. Apps like Text Edit just know that the underlying file details have changed. That is what's cool about the desktop harnessing the kernel for these tasks.