In case anyone was wondering if there was anything out there that actually would make use of this, the now defunct Origin Systems spent $1M+ on a THX-certified sound studio and used it to create all the sound & music for Ultima IX. Didn't help Origin in the end (unfortunately for us Ultimaphiles, U9 was a colossal sales failure and lead to EA absorbing the once proud company into itself) but it did have nice sound:)
If you're paying $550 for a good DVD player in Montreal, then you be getting ripped off my friend. My brother got one last Christmas (a Toshiba or a Pioneer, I forget which) for something like $300.
A means by which legal rights are assigned to an individual or corporation for an idea, process or invention. Said rights would entitle the owner to exclusivity on said idea, process or invention for a predetermined span of time. Infringement on said idea, process or invention would result in monetary recompense or legal recourse.
Follow-up patent: the process by which said rights are submitted for determination. Would Include a listing of said rights in a large institution for use in enforcement via legal proceedings. Said institution could be called a "patent office".
Last thing I heard about this movie was that it was 2 years late and a few million over budget. Sure, the scenes look nice, but it seems it's taking them 6 months to do that single, break-taking scene. Uh, that is not good.
Another thing: I like - rather, used to like - the Final Fantasy series quite a bit, but as much I think Square's got some killer CG artists, I can't see this flick doing all that well in North America. There are really only two audiences for this movie: fans of CG (geeks) and FF fans. Are there enough fans betwen the two groups to make Square back its investment? I'm not sure... Wood Shavings!
Marshall did some good stuff, no question there, but as someone above pointed out, the Marshall Plan was both loved and hated by Europeans.
For those of you not familliar with the Marshall Plan, it was - reduced to the basics - a plan by which America dumped millions and billions of dollars into wartorn Europe. A wonderful gesture to be sure. But, as the cynical among you would guess, there was catch. This money could only be spent on American goods.
So what did that mean? While it provided devastated Europe with the means to quickly rebuild and jump back into civilization, it economically enslaved them to the US for decades.
Think about it. As a businessman in, say, France, how you do compete with this plan? You sell textiles, and good cheap ones at that. But no matter how cheap and well you make them, it's hard to compete with the essentially free textiles that American firm overseas is putting out. I say essentially free because the textiles are still being bought; they're just being pad for by the American funds dumped into Europe.
So while the Marshall Plan was a Good Thing(tm) on the one hand, it was a Bad Thing(tm) on the other. In essence, George Marshall could (and should IMHO) be the American Person of the Century. When you combine his plan with the fact that the US was a thousand miles away from the bombs and such (hey, us Canucks were too, but we didn't have no steenkin' Marshall Plan!) it's easy to see how he pretty much guranteed the US the economic throne for the rest of the century.
This is good for the US. It is not for the rest of the world. As such, I would humbly submit that he is not a good choice for Man of the Century. [SARCASM]Of course, we already know an American will win that honour, seeing as how America is the greatest nation to ever grace our planet[/SARCASM]:)
I've been getting something of a history lesson reading up on the implcations of the ruling. I've seen it posted quite a few times on/. how stockholders in AT&T (ATT) and Standard Oil (SO) benefited from the break-ups of both companies.
How might the break-up of Microsoft (MS) differ from those landmark anti-trust cases with regard to stock? Specifically (and my lack of historical knowledge shows here) what kind of damages were ATT and SO facing? As I understand it, ATT and SO were basically monopolies that prevented entry, but did they bully smaller companies a la MS?
I guess my underlying question is this: given MS' bullying tactics, would a break-up of MS be different from those of ATT and SO because of all the people MS has stepped on along the way who are now looking to loot the MS coffers in compensation for years of abuse? Could this be a critical difference between those earlier decisions and this one, or is this nothing new? ie. were there companies like AOL, Sun, etc. around ready to pounce on ATT or SO when they were ruled against?
I, like I'm sure many/.ers, was a little disappointed by the Finding of Fact (FoF) in Jude Jackson's (JJ) dismissal of Open Source Software (OSS) and Linux in general. But then I thought about it. He's right!
The key is to remember how he defined the market. JJ defined the relevant market as Wintel desktops. Not servers, not middleware, no netboxes, just desktop PC OSes.
So given that narrow range, you should - if you're honest - see why JJ'd dismiss OSS and Linux. Linux is not a desktop, not yet. It's still quite a ways off from being a viable Windows competitor, above and beyond the Application Barrier problem. JJ was right to dismiss Linux in this context.
I particularly liked JJ's M$ rebuttal that binding IE to the OS did not benefit the many Windows users who are not netizens - it was certainly something I had not even thought of, and in retrospect it's glaringly absent from the argument Microsoft put forth! I followed the trial pretty closely so I don't think I missed the DOJ mentioning this fact. If that's true, I tip my hat to JJ for spotting that omission.
Furthermore, I've been interested to read what people have thought would happen to the M$ stock. There seems to be a few history buffs on the thread who have seen AT&T and Standard Oil's respective stocks rise quite profitably after their breakups. While I'm certainly not an economist, and I don't know a lot about those two anti-trust cases - save that they were concerning monopolies - I have a question for those knowledgeable in such matters.
Namely, when AT&T and Standard Oil were slapped down by Big Brother, were there a number of smaller companies wronged by the giants, or were they simply obstructing entrants into their respective fields? I ask because if not Microsoft's situations might be a tad different. Microsoft might well do fine - their stock included - if they were broken up, but what effect might pending lawsuits have? This verdict seems to offer up a crowbar to Netscape, Sun, AOL, and a host of others who've suffered at Microsoft's hands as a means of breaking open the Microsoft coffers and looting them.
If Microsoft ultimately loses - and it looks bad for them now - will we be seeing more DR-DOS-type lawsuits? If so, how will this affect Microsoft's stock, and are there any precendents for this?
At any rate, I think we should all feel quite vinidicated. It's always nice when a bully gets a dressing down. Whether or not we've entered the Post-Microsoft Era remains to be seen IMO, but at the very least it should be an interesting ride from here on in.
I couldn't help but notice that the Findings of Fact (FoF) weren't posted in M$ Word, only in PDF and WordPerfect *L* I heard from another source that JJ is a Mac user actually, and I got the impression - both from the trial and from the FoF - that he wasn't too well aquainted with Linux.
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In case anyone was wondering if there was anything out there that actually would make use of this, the now defunct Origin Systems spent $1M+ on a THX-certified sound studio and used it to create all the sound & music for Ultima IX. Didn't help Origin in the end (unfortunately for us Ultimaphiles, U9 was a colossal sales failure and lead to EA absorbing the once proud company into itself) but it did have nice sound :)
Wood Shavings!
If you're paying $550 for a good DVD player in Montreal, then you be getting ripped off my friend. My brother got one last Christmas (a Toshiba or a Pioneer, I forget which) for something like $300.
Wood Shavings!
Wood Shavings!
A means by which legal rights are assigned to an individual or corporation for an idea, process or invention. Said rights would entitle the owner to exclusivity on said idea, process or invention for a predetermined span of time. Infringement on said idea, process or invention would result in monetary recompense or legal recourse.
Follow-up patent: the process by which said rights are submitted for determination. Would Include a listing of said rights in a large institution for use in enforcement via legal proceedings. Said institution could be called a "patent office".
Wood Shavings!
Last thing I heard about this movie was that it was 2 years late and a few million over budget. Sure, the scenes look nice, but it seems it's taking them 6 months to do that single, break-taking scene. Uh, that is not good. Another thing: I like - rather, used to like - the Final Fantasy series quite a bit, but as much I think Square's got some killer CG artists, I can't see this flick doing all that well in North America. There are really only two audiences for this movie: fans of CG (geeks) and FF fans. Are there enough fans betwen the two groups to make Square back its investment? I'm not sure...
Wood Shavings!
For those of you not familliar with the Marshall Plan, it was - reduced to the basics - a plan by which America dumped millions and billions of dollars into wartorn Europe. A wonderful gesture to be sure. But, as the cynical among you would guess, there was catch. This money could only be spent on American goods.
So what did that mean? While it provided devastated Europe with the means to quickly rebuild and jump back into civilization, it economically enslaved them to the US for decades.
Think about it. As a businessman in, say, France, how you do compete with this plan? You sell textiles, and good cheap ones at that. But no matter how cheap and well you make them, it's hard to compete with the essentially free textiles that American firm overseas is putting out. I say essentially free because the textiles are still being bought; they're just being pad for by the American funds dumped into Europe.
So while the Marshall Plan was a Good Thing(tm) on the one hand, it was a Bad Thing(tm) on the other. In essence, George Marshall could (and should IMHO) be the American Person of the Century. When you combine his plan with the fact that the US was a thousand miles away from the bombs and such (hey, us Canucks were too, but we didn't have no steenkin' Marshall Plan!) it's easy to see how he pretty much guranteed the US the economic throne for the rest of the century.
This is good for the US. It is not for the rest of the world. As such, I would humbly submit that he is not a good choice for Man of the Century. [SARCASM]Of course, we already know an American will win that honour, seeing as how America is the greatest nation to ever grace our planet[/SARCASM] :)
How might the break-up of Microsoft (MS) differ from those landmark anti-trust cases with regard to stock? Specifically (and my lack of historical knowledge shows here) what kind of damages were ATT and SO facing? As I understand it, ATT and SO were basically monopolies that prevented entry, but did they bully smaller companies a la MS?
I guess my underlying question is this: given MS' bullying tactics, would a break-up of MS be different from those of ATT and SO because of all the people MS has stepped on along the way who are now looking to loot the MS coffers in compensation for years of abuse? Could this be a critical difference between those earlier decisions and this one, or is this nothing new? ie. were there companies like AOL, Sun, etc. around ready to pounce on ATT or SO when they were ruled against?
The key is to remember how he defined the market. JJ defined the relevant market as Wintel desktops. Not servers, not middleware, no netboxes, just desktop PC OSes.
So given that narrow range, you should - if you're honest - see why JJ'd dismiss OSS and Linux. Linux is not a desktop, not yet. It's still quite a ways off from being a viable Windows competitor, above and beyond the Application Barrier problem. JJ was right to dismiss Linux in this context.
I particularly liked JJ's M$ rebuttal that binding IE to the OS did not benefit the many Windows users who are not netizens - it was certainly something I had not even thought of, and in retrospect it's glaringly absent from the argument Microsoft put forth! I followed the trial pretty closely so I don't think I missed the DOJ mentioning this fact. If that's true, I tip my hat to JJ for spotting that omission.
Furthermore, I've been interested to read what people have thought would happen to the M$ stock. There seems to be a few history buffs on the thread who have seen AT&T and Standard Oil's respective stocks rise quite profitably after their breakups. While I'm certainly not an economist, and I don't know a lot about those two anti-trust cases - save that they were concerning monopolies - I have a question for those knowledgeable in such matters.
Namely, when AT&T and Standard Oil were slapped down by Big Brother, were there a number of smaller companies wronged by the giants, or were they simply obstructing entrants into their respective fields? I ask because if not Microsoft's situations might be a tad different. Microsoft might well do fine - their stock included - if they were broken up, but what effect might pending lawsuits have? This verdict seems to offer up a crowbar to Netscape, Sun, AOL, and a host of others who've suffered at Microsoft's hands as a means of breaking open the Microsoft coffers and looting them.
If Microsoft ultimately loses - and it looks bad for them now - will we be seeing more DR-DOS-type lawsuits? If so, how will this affect Microsoft's stock, and are there any precendents for this?
At any rate, I think we should all feel quite vinidicated. It's always nice when a bully gets a dressing down. Whether or not we've entered the Post-Microsoft Era remains to be seen IMO, but at the very least it should be an interesting ride from here on in.
I couldn't help but notice that the Findings of Fact (FoF) weren't posted in M$ Word, only in PDF and WordPerfect *L* I heard from another source that JJ is a Mac user actually, and I got the impression - both from the trial and from the FoF - that he wasn't too well aquainted with Linux.