Imagine the kinds of integration you could do for a shopper using an RFID. Although you can do the same thing today with barcodes, it's not nearly as elegant.
A shopper can stand in front of an item at the Walmart store, and the Walmart website can offer that product along with possible alternatives. It's also great for selecting bigger items (which tend not to always be stocked) and buying them online while in the store.
People are more interested in shopping when they are in the store - they aren't as interested when they are sitting in their chair at home. Vendors can use this technology to induce the impulse buy, but on much larger ticket items. In fact, items with better sales margins can bubble-up and encourage the shoppers to spend even more.
Here here! I really wish people would understand the difference.
This is *not* a virus for Windows, it is a manifestation of social engineering using a trojan application. For that matter, just about any modern operating system would be capable of executing this code (Linux, NT, MacOS X, etc.) -- the real source of the problem here are the end users.
If I sold you a gun, is it my fault when you shoot yourself with it?
So what happens when the telemarketer calls you with the script; "Hello, Gee Em Eh See would like to offer you a low percentage-rate alternative car financing because of your excellent credit rating."
Absolutely not. You can't have company names that sound so familiar in the same area that the customer is unable to determine if this is the same company they have done business with before.
Honestly, if Mike Rowe called you and said "Hello, this is Mike calling from MikeRoweSoft and I would like to offer you web development services for your Microsoft Windows 2000 platform." -- would *you* be able to tell the difference?
I'm not so sure MS is doing this because of domain squatting, it could just be that it's going to cost them a lot less than $10K to take him to court. Mike should have checked on this first, for $5K the MS response might have been quite different.
At any rate, he is clearly infringing on the Microsoft trademark. Imagine if someone could call themselves "Gee Em" and start selling cars, or if a company adopted the name "Eye Bee Em" and started selling computers and consulting services.
I've only scrolled through one of these so far, but there is very little mention of the costs associated with closed source (ie: Windows) -vs- open source (ie: Linux) solutions?
Clearly this report is biased towards closed source commercial solutions running on Linux, and did not consider an open source equivalent for many aspects of the project. For example, in.NET -vs- J2EE you would have saved $350K if you had used an open source app server, development tools and database server.
Furthermore, the open source nature of Linux was not considered in this study. While you may choose to accept support from a third party, you may also opt out and support the operating system (and all aspects of your open source platform) with internal IT. What happens at EOL with the W2K solution?
Fortunately, I don't believe that development staff are ignorant of these facts. Quite honestly, these numbers indicate that a commercialized Linux solution (RedHat, Oracle, BEA Weblogic) will perform on-par with a Windows 2000/.NET platform and cost about the same.
From the "remember when..." dept, at one point during the boombox fad it became fashionable to have one of these gizmos with a TV built in.
People soon discovered that it was difficult to lug around these large portable stereos, they required too many batteries, the TV's didn't have very good reception and it was entirely unnecessary to watch television while you were out in the park with your buddies. The music was fine, and so smaller portable stereos prevailed and without the TV option.
So, now we're going to have a portable device that will let us watch movies and listen to music. Microsoft is about to unleash the boombox+TV combo for the next generation, and it seems plausible that it could emerge as a fad with a niche market but I don't imagine it will supplant the iPod/MP3 walkman market.
That's my prediction for 2004. MS buys SCO to "save" the rest of the industry from this scourge, rebrands SCO Linux as Microsoft Linux Professional and releases it with an MS Office bundle.
So we'll get MS Word for Linux, but under the worst possible circumstances. MS gets to expand into a new market segment and they will look good doing it, everyone (including Linus himself) will appreciate what Microsoft has done for us. Sadly, if this is what happens it seems likely it was planned this way from the start.
Companies with apps that integrate with Word will likely not be candidates for either OpenOffice or the latest version of MS Office.
The advent of the MS Office Convertor Pack isn't going to make your Office 2003 upgrade all that comfortable for downlevel compatibility, especially if you can't afford to upgrade everyone. MS is expecting that you will adopt a new compliment of technologies, so you will need to consider retooling app integration if you really are considering upgrading to the newer version of Office.
OOo has a reasonably good SDK http://api.openoffice.org with Java, C/C++ and BASIC-like support. You can prompt the user with forms, integrate with a database, etc... Although not an ideal workflow solution like Lotus Notes, it can be constructed in a similiar fashion to MS Office.
In any event, it seems plausible that MS will be losing a substantial revenue stream as users either remain on "legacy" MS Office environments or consider open solutions for document management.
Now that the national do-not-call registry is in place, telephone slammers everywhere are looking for a new outlet. Well, you can bet that they are going to start looking at VoIP telephones as prime candidates for telemarketing; and to make this happen they will be establishing strong business alliances with VoIP providers.
This will cash-infuse VoIP businesses like Vonage, which will help them beat the POTS soundly on dollar value. All of this is going to get further momentum as companies like AT&T start to get entrenched in the VoIP market.
With that said, the last technological hurdle is to integrated your VoIP communication with various modes of communication (email, fax, online chat, voice) on multiple devices (PC, telephone and cellphone).
Imagine if I could select "Joe" from my address book and then choose how I want to communicate. If Joe is sitting at his computer I could select an online chat (they call it instant messaging now, it use to be talkd), or if I was at my PC and I wanted to send Joe a printed document I could fax it to him.
Once you break the confines of your plain old telephone service, all of these convergences are possible. VoIP will breakout as these become available, and the spammers are going to subsidize the whole thing.
If you're an investor, I have a suspicion that AT&T will be the first company to do all of this...
This is the real danger of this case. If Microsoft could somehow prove that they had exclusive rights to the term "Windows" as it relates to computer operating systems with graphical displays, then there would be widespread reprocussions.
The X Window System would have to become the X Window(tm)-capable System. When describing an actual window onscreen in a textbook, you would be required to state something to the effect "The computer Window(tm)". We wouldn't have Window Managers, we would have Window(tm)-like Managers.
This is a totally frivolous case, MS has already lost out on the trademark for Word and they are seeking to protected an even more generic computing term.
The problem isn't Microsoft, the problem is that if they win this case they will have precident on the Windows trademark and will then be able to chase after anyone else (commercial and otherwise) who might be using that term. I think there is enough prior here that MS doesn't have a case, but we'll see how it plays out in court.
You can certainly see many of the elements of an interative interface in these "leaked" screenshots. Just look at the installer for example, it's like navigating Moby Dick.
MS is taking a lot of chances here, the installer starts with "What do you want to do?" and not the proverbial Install button. There really is only one option here; "Install"; the other options are obfuscated behind "Perform additional tasks". If this is truly meant to be task-based, the nesting of tasks like this is bound to confuse the user.
The "Windows Security" screen is even more iterative, and menu selections are extremely verbose. I can't wait to see how they handle voice navigation for all of this, it's going to make the Windows interface almost unusable for people with disabilities.
There is nothing this tracking can do that can't be accomplished with old fashion attendance records.
RFID for tracking inventory is fine, but a child is not inventory. With this kind of system they will be desensitized to this permanent monitoring, and are more likely to institute similiar measures when they have leadership positions in our society.
Aside from the grotesque cost of doing all this, one might wonder how secure this system is. I can imagine the after-school bully having a wired PDA that can give him the exact location of his victim. The system is intended to protect children from disappearing -- but ironically may just provide perpetrators the informatoin they need to find a victim anywhere / anytime.
competative disadvantage and PR flim-flamming
on
Merrill Lynch Rips Sun
·
· Score: 3, Insightful
Sun is in dire straits, based on their latest PR campaign ("The Sun Java System") they have abandoned any semblance of technology in their technology. In a nutshell, "The Sun Java System is a radical new approach for synchronizing IT investments with business priorities by decreasing IT costs." How does this have anything to do with IT? What kind of _product_ is this?
Meanwhile, they seem to be able to demonstrate a positive cashflow even with a tough economic climate. This is a good thing, but they continue to have "one-time" expense every other quarter.
Merrill is wrong when it comes to R&D, this is clearly the only thing that can save Sun now. You don't win in the technology game by promising things like the Sun Java System; you win by demonstrating technology that cannot be obtained elsewhere.
I must agree on this one. This is just another opportunity for Microsoft to establish market dominance where they currently have no relevance.
From a business perspective, once the alliance is complete this provides a way to immediately announce the availablility of WindowsCE on more platforms than anyone else. Ug.
While it is great to have a free market economy, it is unfortunate when companies have huge financial coffers that provide them a golden parchute to commercial success. The good news is this won't last forever; the bad news is this could last long enough to quelch any real innovation.
Kolab is looking interesting, and if you combine this with Kontact you could just have the real Lotus Notes killer. With MS Exchange support, the extensibility of Kontact would make it easy to integrate in a Lotus Notes environment as well.
Ostensibly these look to be part of KDE 3.2, has anyone done the download/compile/install yet that can confirm/deny this.
This is great stuff, btw. I'm excited that KDE is tackling these kinds of applications, I may just switch back from Moz once the kinks have been worked out.
This does not bode well for Sun. Bill Joy was truly a visionary and they are going to have to make significant changes in R&D strategy to compensate for this loss. Note that SUNW stock is reacting accordingly, I expect we'll see $2.80 before the end of '03.
Joy is such a luddite that there really is no threat of him starting another technology company. It's likely he will pursue more writing and pontificating, while Sun will flounder aimlessly as they seek a niche in this new technology market.
Interestingly enough, I've been having a similar problem with a Windows NT network except I now need Administrator to set a password for me.
My company requires us to change passwords every 90 days. The system remembers up to the last 9 passwords; I have filled up all historical passwords and now *any* subsequent password -- regardless of complexity -- fails.
There are rules, and if I follow them with even a random set of letters/numbers/"special character" the new password is rejected. Anyone else who changes their password using my newly invented password will work. I suspect somehow my password history is corrupt, now you can imagine my frustration whenever I need to change my Windows password. Even more frustrating is that I usually wait until my password is about to expire before picking another one, so if I can't change my password soon enough my account gets locked out and I'm stuck just sitting at my desk waiting for someone in IS to re-coordinate my password update.
There is human and technological fallibility to this problem. When either aspect fails the system of protections does not work.
I must say that after playing with stocks for a little over 2 years now I have found the SEC reports (especially 10Q's) to be very informative.
If you're even thinking of investing in a company, read a recent 10Q first. This will clue you in on the state of the company, you'll find out if there are any external forces that may jeopardize the business and -- best of all -- it will point you in the direction of their competition.
Look at the competetors. Weed out the weak companies and get the one that is most likely to succeed in a sector (not necessarily the one that your "gut" tells you to go with).
Point #2 is significant in this case; any IP infringement I have seen in the past has been prefixed with a cease and desist letter. No evidence has been presented, this is a clear-cut case of FUD on the part of SCO.
Don't forget, SCO is also under SEC investigation for financial misdoings. "The consolidated complaint alleges certain improprieties regarding the circumstances surrounding the underwriters' conduct during the Company's [SCO's] initial public offering and the failure to disclose such conduct in the registration statement in violation of the Securities Act of 1933, as amended." This is not a company on the up & up, it's not impossible to imagine a shady dealing with MS to ensure uncertainty in the Linux camp.
With the current SCO pricing strategy the TCO argument for Linux goes out the window. Technically speaking it's more expensive to run a Linux shop than an NT/W2K shop. MS now wins the cost argument handsdown; interesting how that happened. Also note that the MS deal gives $5M to SCO for the next 3 quarters. With the cost of payroll at around $5M this is enough to keep the company afloat. The additional $8M initial amount can be used to mitigate deferred revenues and other long term expenses. This deal is fishy, I expect someone is going to get hurt real bad and it might just be Microsoft.
What this journalistic snippet fails to mention is the fact that there are some tasks that XP excelled and other tasks where KDE outperformed XP. In other words, while XP was a bit faster for the user to initiate email it was easier for the Linux user to play an audio CD.
Most of the numbers were expected. For example, the Windows Media Player is a more complicated tool than the KDE CD Player; therefore it is not surprising the KDE was quicker at this task.
What did surprise me was that KDE took so long to change the background (almost x2 as long as XP) yet the users thought it was easy. This might have something to do with the more advanced background features native to KDE; for example, a background per-desktop or a scheduled background change.
To modify shortcut icons in the toolbar was much quicker under KDE and I have always found this to be more cumbersome than XP. Perhaps the XP "personalized" menus have something to do with this? Users not only took less time to create icons in the toolbar but KDE users generally graded this task as easier than their Windows XP counterparts.
One other interesting comparison is email; users took a little longer to perform this task under KDE but they generally graded this as easier to do than their XP counterparts.
I'm also a fan of the Apple Extended Keyboard II; although I also like the M the Apple had a tighter feel that didn't make nearly as much noise. Anyone know if the iMate ADB->USB adaptor can be used to run the Apple with a PC running Linux?
Then by this argument, if GM built a car with 10 steering wheels it's perfectly acceptable because 9 of these steering wheels are merely "extras"?
Hogwash. We have specifications / protocols for a _reason_. When applications violate these specs, developers and end-users are left picking up the pieces.
As far as I'm concerned, Microsoft has demonstrated they are unable to follow industry standard specifications. As a result, they should be prohibited from participating in any standards-based development for no less than 10 years. This will let other companies build programs to leverage emerging standards without unfair competition.
The problem is that for anyone who does 99% of their work in Linux, the occasional Win32 app that requires a reboot can completely derail your environment. After the reboot, quite often you'll need other tools that are already configured under Linux (eg: development environment). Now what?
TBPH, I think that emulators are the death knell for an OS. A good example is OS/2; IBM was so focused on providing seamless Win32 support that they failed to deliver on OS/2.
It's to everyones benefit that rather than use emulators to get the last mile of app support, you should use whatever OSS solutions are available even if they are less capable than their Win32 counterparts...
Slashdot Mirror
Imagine the kinds of integration you could do for a shopper using an RFID. Although you can do the same thing today with barcodes, it's not nearly as elegant.
A shopper can stand in front of an item at the Walmart store, and the Walmart website can offer that product along with possible alternatives. It's also great for selecting bigger items (which tend not to always be stocked) and buying them online while in the store.
People are more interested in shopping when they are in the store - they aren't as interested when they are sitting in their chair at home. Vendors can use this technology to induce the impulse buy, but on much larger ticket items. In fact, items with better sales margins can bubble-up and encourage the shoppers to spend even more.
Here here! I really wish people would understand the difference.
This is *not* a virus for Windows, it is a manifestation of social engineering using a trojan application. For that matter, just about any modern operating system would be capable of executing this code (Linux, NT, MacOS X, etc.) -- the real source of the problem here are the end users.
If I sold you a gun, is it my fault when you shoot yourself with it?
So what happens when the telemarketer calls you with the script; "Hello, Gee Em Eh See would like to offer you a low percentage-rate alternative car financing because of your excellent credit rating."
Absolutely not. You can't have company names that sound so familiar in the same area that the customer is unable to determine if this is the same company they have done business with before.
Honestly, if Mike Rowe called you and said "Hello, this is Mike calling from MikeRoweSoft and I would like to offer you web development services for your Microsoft Windows 2000 platform." -- would *you* be able to tell the difference?
I'm not so sure MS is doing this because of domain squatting, it could just be that it's going to cost them a lot less than $10K to take him to court. Mike should have checked on this first, for $5K the MS response might have been quite different.
At any rate, he is clearly infringing on the Microsoft trademark. Imagine if someone could call themselves "Gee Em" and start selling cars, or if a company adopted the name "Eye Bee Em" and started selling computers and consulting services.
I've only scrolled through one of these so far, but there is very little mention of the costs associated with closed source (ie: Windows) -vs- open source (ie: Linux) solutions?
.NET -vs- J2EE you would have saved $350K if you had used an open source app server, development tools and database server.
Clearly this report is biased towards closed source commercial solutions running on Linux, and did not consider an open source equivalent for many aspects of the project. For example, in
Furthermore, the open source nature of Linux was not considered in this study. While you may choose to accept support from a third party, you may also opt out and support the operating system (and all aspects of your open source platform) with internal IT. What happens at EOL with the W2K solution?
Fortunately, I don't believe that development staff are ignorant of these facts. Quite honestly, these numbers indicate that a commercialized Linux solution (RedHat, Oracle, BEA Weblogic) will perform on-par with a Windows 2000/.NET platform and cost about the same.
From the "remember when..." dept, at one point during the boombox fad it became fashionable to have one of these gizmos with a TV built in.
People soon discovered that it was difficult to lug around these large portable stereos, they required too many batteries, the TV's didn't have very good reception and it was entirely unnecessary to watch television while you were out in the park with your buddies. The music was fine, and so smaller portable stereos prevailed and without the TV option.
So, now we're going to have a portable device that will let us watch movies and listen to music. Microsoft is about to unleash the boombox+TV combo for the next generation, and it seems plausible that it could emerge as a fad with a niche market but I don't imagine it will supplant the iPod/MP3 walkman market.
That's my prediction for 2004. MS buys SCO to "save" the rest of the industry from this scourge, rebrands SCO Linux as Microsoft Linux Professional and releases it with an MS Office bundle.
So we'll get MS Word for Linux, but under the worst possible circumstances. MS gets to expand into a new market segment and they will look good doing it, everyone (including Linus himself) will appreciate what Microsoft has done for us. Sadly, if this is what happens it seems likely it was planned this way from the start.
Companies with apps that integrate with Word will likely not be candidates for either OpenOffice or the latest version of MS Office.
The advent of the MS Office Convertor Pack isn't going to make your Office 2003 upgrade all that comfortable for downlevel compatibility, especially if you can't afford to upgrade everyone. MS is expecting that you will adopt a new compliment of technologies, so you will need to consider retooling app integration if you really are considering upgrading to the newer version of Office.
OOo has a reasonably good SDK http://api.openoffice.org with Java, C/C++ and BASIC-like support. You can prompt the user with forms, integrate with a database, etc... Although not an ideal workflow solution like Lotus Notes, it can be constructed in a similiar fashion to MS Office.
In any event, it seems plausible that MS will be losing a substantial revenue stream as users either remain on "legacy" MS Office environments or consider open solutions for document management.
Now that the national do-not-call registry is in place, telephone slammers everywhere are looking for a new outlet. Well, you can bet that they are going to start looking at VoIP telephones as prime candidates for telemarketing; and to make this happen they will be establishing strong business alliances with VoIP providers.
This will cash-infuse VoIP businesses like Vonage, which will help them beat the POTS soundly on dollar value. All of this is going to get further momentum as companies like AT&T start to get entrenched in the VoIP market.
With that said, the last technological hurdle is to integrated your VoIP communication with various modes of communication (email, fax, online chat, voice) on multiple devices (PC, telephone and cellphone).
Imagine if I could select "Joe" from my address book and then choose how I want to communicate. If Joe is sitting at his computer I could select an online chat (they call it instant messaging now, it use to be talkd), or if I was at my PC and I wanted to send Joe a printed document I could fax it to him.
Once you break the confines of your plain old telephone service, all of these convergences are possible. VoIP will breakout as these become available, and the spammers are going to subsidize the whole thing.
If you're an investor, I have a suspicion that AT&T will be the first company to do all of this...
This is the real danger of this case. If Microsoft could somehow prove that they had exclusive rights to the term "Windows" as it relates to computer operating systems with graphical displays, then there would be widespread reprocussions.
The X Window System would have to become the X Window(tm)-capable System. When describing an actual window onscreen in a textbook, you would be required to state something to the effect "The computer Window(tm)". We wouldn't have Window Managers, we would have Window(tm)-like Managers.
This is a totally frivolous case, MS has already lost out on the trademark for Word and they are seeking to protected an even more generic computing term.
The problem isn't Microsoft, the problem is that if they win this case they will have precident on the Windows trademark and will then be able to chase after anyone else (commercial and otherwise) who might be using that term. I think there is enough prior here that MS doesn't have a case, but we'll see how it plays out in court.
This was damn funny IMHO, can someone mod parent up a little more?
You can certainly see many of the elements of an interative interface in these "leaked" screenshots. Just look at the installer for example, it's like navigating Moby Dick.
MS is taking a lot of chances here, the installer starts with "What do you want to do?" and not the proverbial Install button. There really is only one option here; "Install"; the other options are obfuscated behind "Perform additional tasks". If this is truly meant to be task-based, the nesting of tasks like this is bound to confuse the user.
The "Windows Security" screen is even more iterative, and menu selections are extremely verbose. I can't wait to see how they handle voice navigation for all of this, it's going to make the Windows interface almost unusable for people with disabilities.
There is nothing this tracking can do that can't be accomplished with old fashion attendance records.
RFID for tracking inventory is fine, but a child is not inventory. With this kind of system they will be desensitized to this permanent monitoring, and are more likely to institute similiar measures when they have leadership positions in our society.
Aside from the grotesque cost of doing all this, one might wonder how secure this system is. I can imagine the after-school bully having a wired PDA that can give him the exact location of his victim. The system is intended to protect children from disappearing -- but ironically may just provide perpetrators the informatoin they need to find a victim anywhere / anytime.
Sun is in dire straits, based on their latest PR campaign ("The Sun Java System") they have abandoned any semblance of technology in their technology. In a nutshell, "The Sun Java System is a radical new approach for synchronizing IT investments with business priorities by decreasing IT costs." How does this have anything to do with IT? What kind of _product_ is this?
Meanwhile, they seem to be able to demonstrate a positive cashflow even with a tough economic climate. This is a good thing, but they continue to have "one-time" expense every other quarter.
Merrill is wrong when it comes to R&D, this is clearly the only thing that can save Sun now. You don't win in the technology game by promising things like the Sun Java System; you win by demonstrating technology that cannot be obtained elsewhere.
I must agree on this one. This is just another opportunity for Microsoft to establish market dominance where they currently have no relevance.
From a business perspective, once the alliance is complete this provides a way to immediately announce the availablility of WindowsCE on more platforms than anyone else. Ug.
While it is great to have a free market economy, it is unfortunate when companies have huge financial coffers that provide them a golden parchute to commercial success. The good news is this won't last forever; the bad news is this could last long enough to quelch any real innovation.
Kolab is looking interesting, and if you combine this with Kontact you could just have the real Lotus Notes killer. With MS Exchange support, the extensibility of Kontact would make it easy to integrate in a Lotus Notes environment as well.
Ostensibly these look to be part of KDE 3.2, has anyone done the download/compile/install yet that can confirm/deny this.
This is great stuff, btw. I'm excited that KDE is tackling these kinds of applications, I may just switch back from Moz once the kinks have been worked out.
This does not bode well for Sun. Bill Joy was truly a visionary and they are going to have to make significant changes in R&D strategy to compensate for this loss. Note that SUNW stock is reacting accordingly, I expect we'll see $2.80 before the end of '03.
Joy is such a luddite that there really is no threat of him starting another technology company. It's likely he will pursue more writing and pontificating, while Sun will flounder aimlessly as they seek a niche in this new technology market.
Interestingly enough, I've been having a similar problem with a Windows NT network except I now need Administrator to set a password for me.
My company requires us to change passwords every 90 days. The system remembers up to the last 9 passwords; I have filled up all historical passwords and now *any* subsequent password -- regardless of complexity -- fails.
There are rules, and if I follow them with even a random set of letters/numbers/"special character" the new password is rejected. Anyone else who changes their password using my newly invented password will work. I suspect somehow my password history is corrupt, now you can imagine my frustration whenever I need to change my Windows password. Even more frustrating is that I usually wait until my password is about to expire before picking another one, so if I can't change my password soon enough my account gets locked out and I'm stuck just sitting at my desk waiting for someone in IS to re-coordinate my password update.
There is human and technological fallibility to this problem. When either aspect fails the system of protections does not work.
I must say that after playing with stocks for a little over 2 years now I have found the SEC reports (especially 10Q's) to be very informative.
If you're even thinking of investing in a company, read a recent 10Q first. This will clue you in on the state of the company, you'll find out if there are any external forces that may jeopardize the business and -- best of all -- it will point you in the direction of their competition.
Look at the competetors. Weed out the weak companies and get the one that is most likely to succeed in a sector (not necessarily the one that your "gut" tells you to go with).
Point #2 is significant in this case; any IP infringement I have seen in the past has been prefixed with a cease and desist letter. No evidence has been presented, this is a clear-cut case of FUD on the part of SCO.
More info here:
Linux Dispute Keeps Escalating
Don't forget, SCO is also under SEC investigation for financial misdoings. "The consolidated complaint alleges certain improprieties regarding the circumstances surrounding the underwriters' conduct during the Company's [SCO's] initial public offering and the failure to disclose such conduct in the registration statement in violation of the Securities Act of 1933, as amended." This is not a company on the up & up, it's not impossible to imagine a shady dealing with MS to ensure uncertainty in the Linux camp.
With the current SCO pricing strategy the TCO argument for Linux goes out the window. Technically speaking it's more expensive to run a Linux shop than an NT/W2K shop. MS now wins the cost argument handsdown; interesting how that happened. Also note that the MS deal gives $5M to SCO for the next 3 quarters. With the cost of payroll at around $5M this is enough to keep the company afloat. The additional $8M initial amount can be used to mitigate deferred revenues and other long term expenses. This deal is fishy, I expect someone is going to get hurt real bad and it might just be Microsoft.
What this journalistic snippet fails to mention is the fact that there are some tasks that XP excelled and other tasks where KDE outperformed XP. In other words, while XP was a bit faster for the user to initiate email it was easier for the Linux user to play an audio CD.
Most of the numbers were expected. For example, the Windows Media Player is a more complicated tool than the KDE CD Player; therefore it is not surprising the KDE was quicker at this task.
What did surprise me was that KDE took so long to change the background (almost x2 as long as XP) yet the users thought it was easy. This might have something to do with the more advanced background features native to KDE; for example, a background per-desktop or a scheduled background change.
To modify shortcut icons in the toolbar was much quicker under KDE and I have always found this to be more cumbersome than XP. Perhaps the XP "personalized" menus have something to do with this? Users not only took less time to create icons in the toolbar but KDE users generally graded this task as easier than their Windows XP counterparts.
One other interesting comparison is email; users took a little longer to perform this task under KDE but they generally graded this as easier to do than their XP counterparts.
Works like a champ. Companies need to be just as concerned from internal exploits, which means this update must be applied everywhere ASAP.
Kudos to Microsoft for working with groups like NIPC to get the word out. There's no excuse for not getting your Windows boxes patched on this one.
I'm also a fan of the Apple Extended Keyboard II; although I also like the M the Apple had a tighter feel that didn't make nearly as much noise. Anyone know if the iMate ADB->USB adaptor can be used to run the Apple with a PC running Linux?
Then by this argument, if GM built a car with 10 steering wheels it's perfectly acceptable because 9 of these steering wheels are merely "extras"?
Hogwash. We have specifications / protocols for a _reason_. When applications violate these specs, developers and end-users are left picking up the pieces.
As far as I'm concerned, Microsoft has demonstrated they are unable to follow industry standard specifications. As a result, they should be prohibited from participating in any standards-based development for no less than 10 years. This will let other companies build programs to leverage emerging standards without unfair competition.
The problem is that for anyone who does 99% of their work in Linux, the occasional Win32 app that requires a reboot can completely derail your environment. After the reboot, quite often you'll need other tools that are already configured under Linux (eg: development environment). Now what?
TBPH, I think that emulators are the death knell for an OS. A good example is OS/2; IBM was so focused on providing seamless Win32 support that they failed to deliver on OS/2.
It's to everyones benefit that rather than use emulators to get the last mile of app support, you should use whatever OSS solutions are available even if they are less capable than their Win32 counterparts...