Slashdot Mirror
Embracing Digital Photography
MBCook writes: "This story at ZDNet seems to be an omen of things to come. It describes how Kodak discovered that when their software is installed on XP and someone plugs in a Kodak camera, Microsoft's software is always the one that comes up. The article also mentions that it is also quite a effort to make the Kodak software come up ever time." Yet another software maker finds that the maker of the OS gets first dibs...
But now, many "old economy" companies, like Kodak, want to get their fingers into Net services. These companies can afford their own antitrust lawyers, they have their own image of respectability, and they don't depend on Microsoft's goodwill for short-term revenue or stock price. Therefore, they have more to gain by playing hardball with Microsoft than by meekly cooperating with Microsoft's business plans.
The 800-pound gorrilla has to start playing with the 1500-pound tigers.
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send all spam to theotherwhitemeat@ropine.com
It is valuable to complain about and publicise each event, so that no one gets the idea that Microsoft has reformed.
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Napster-to-go says "Fill and refill your compatible MP3 player", which is a lie. It's not MP3. It's WMA with DRM.
The problem with this, is sometimes M$ manages to put out the best product, regardless of whether it's stolen from someone else or not. GNU/Linux is awesome and I run it half the time, but there are simple things that it can't come close to. Things like the clipboard? I can copy something from IE and paste it into Word and it's formatted the same way, be it a table or whatever. Just to name one thing. There are many others too, but I'm not here to nitpick Linux. My point is for some things, M$ deserves some credit. But either way, I should not be forced to use IE for a web browser, or their photo software for my camera. For that, I must (must, by choice) use inferior products, which just pisses me off.
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Linux: The world's best text-adventure game.
Read the EFF's Fair Use FAQ
Anyone ever see that Dilbert cartoon where Dogbert makes a billion dollars with his software company? They go out walking and Dilbert says, "Yeah, but money can't buy a sunset, Dogbert."
To which Dogbert replies, "No, but I licensed the digital rights."
Dlugar
Computer Go: Writing Software to Play the Ancient Game of Go
you and I both understand and hate M$. but we're NOT the typical user.
at every company I've been at in the last 10 yrs or so (I'm a software engineer), winblows has been on the desktop of all employees except for us software guys.
accounting, sales, marketing, execs - they all use winblows. they're forced to - they have no choice - the i/s department usually only supports M$ on the desktop.
so it doesn't really become a matter of choice. you work for a company, they put an M$ box on your desk. you eat the dogfood they feed you.
knowing that M$ owns the corporate desktop (and most home desktops as well), its easy to see how M$ wants a cut of each chargable action. and by placing their apps ahead of others in the default selection gives them unfair advantage. and even though kodak seems to have tried their best to work with M$ on this, M$ turned a cold shoulder and only after a bit of publicity did they consider changing XP to be more vendor neutral.
It's hard to argue with Mr. Gates when he says his customers like his products...after all, you keep buying them, don't you?
total flamebait. like I said, in corp america, there's no choice; you must use M$ or the i/s dept. won't support you. its a well known monopoly at the corp level, whether you think you have a choice or not (and you don't).
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"It is now safe to switch off your computer."
Example: Joe Sixpack plugs in his Kodak camera, MS's software pops up, along with a button that says "order a 5x7 of this picture". He clicks it, orders, and Photoprinter.com or whatever owes Microsoft a nickel. Jesus.