I think that people could be a bit more creative with their pictures.
I looked at quite a few, yet didn't see anything similar to the following: - Ipod underwater off the coast of Florida - Ipod tossed into air at Harvard Law Graduation Commencments - Ipod underneath the left rear wheel of a London DoubleDecker bus - Ipod *just* out of reach under Chinatown NYC Canal Street storm grate. - Highspeed photography of a bullet passing through an iPod at Eastman-Kodak photography research lab, NC USA. - mostly melted iPod inside one of Michigan State U's diamond growth microwave ovens. - iPod being a sledge-a-matic victim at an *actual* Gallagher standup comedy show.
You have to admit that 1000s of pictures of a hand holding an iPod in front of a monument is rather boring.
The grade inflation problem is quite interesting. A few years back, I participated in the NSA's mathematics modelling prize competition. The problem that they supplied to use was one of grade inflation. The problem was this: At a given university, grade inflation had run rampant. The average GPA of students had risen to X% (I forgot the number, but it was basically an A-). The problem was to determine and create an algorithm that accurately assessed and awared merit based scholarships based solely on GPA.
The problem itself is interesting from a mathematical perspective. What is even more interesting are the other uses for such a solution. NSA typically uses thinly veiled intelligence/war problems for this math competition. The grade-inflation problem is no exception.
A grade inflation solution would have many purposes in the area of Satellite surveilance. As satellites *all* become more accurate at gathering intelligence (aka high grade = high accuracy), how do we detect which intelligence is the *most* true (highest accuracy)?
I forgot the other uses for this technology, perhaps a fellow slashdotter can fill in more details. I remember that we had about 5-6 uses for grade-inflation from a military standpoint.
Geez. In this specific instance, the RIAA isn't doing anything that say they are doing wrong. The RIAA giving permission to degrade copyrighted works that are already being distributed illegally. I'm actually applaud the RIAA for this, because it exact oppisite reasons than those that you point out. Here's a blow-by-blow:
They assume all users are guilty of piracy, and will proceed with that in mind If Overpeer receives permission to degrade Britney's "I'm a slave 4 u", and they degrade copies that are already trading on a p2p network, then how have they assumed *I* am guilty of piracy? I didn't download anything from Britney in the first place.
Since all users pirate works(see above point), they release copy-protected works that do not work according to standards...other than the infamous "neener-neener, you can't copy this" standard I'm not sure exactly what you are saying. I occasionally purchase CDs and I have yet to buy one that doesn't rip into MP3s on my computer. I'm sure the day will come that I pay for a copy-restricted CD at which point, I will return it and rigorously demand a full refund from the place of purchase. Don't forget that in a capitalist society, the consumer has the most power.
Through their extensive lobbying efforts, they're seeking to remove what little legal rights we had to items purchased. (e.g. When I buy a gallon of milk. I have to make sure there's no EULA. Of course, I can't see me taking the time to reverse engineer it) The Overpeer actions don't hurt any standards and they don't involve any lobbying. Overpeer has permission from the Copyright holders to do what they are doing. Again, this doesn't effect the non-criminal.
Now they're actively trying to poison P2P networks I don't see this as poisoning the P2P networks, but rather poisoning the distribution of ilegally copied works over the P2P networks. Is that really a bad thing?
From the mini-PC website: Vulcan hopes it will attract mobile computer-users willing to pay for wirelessly transmitted movie trailers"
Although I would often find streaming wireless movie trailers usefull (e.g. I'm at a restaurant with friends and we're deciding which movie to go see), I don't know of anybody who would actually *pay* for this service. After all, we are going to *pay* to see the actual movie, right? I also wouldn't put down $1200-$1500 that doesn't even work as well as a Sony Picturebook, just for the privelege of these wireless movie trailers.
Luckily, this is one of those *concept* electronic show ideas that will never see the light of day (in it's current form).
Although I agree that the error message does an excellent job describing the error, I have a nit to pick with any dialog box that specifically asks one question and doesn't set the buttons as answers to the question.
It's rather microsoftish. For example: Your preferences have changed. Would you like to restart to use your new preferences: [OK] [CANCEL]. Or even better, they try to word the error message around the buttons: Press OK to accept the new settings or CANCEL to discard the settings [OK] [CANCEL] rather than a much simpler: WOuld you like to accept the new settings? [YES] [NO].
I'll probably be modded down for saying this, but what about VBA? It is one of the most important scripting languages. I work in the finance world where Perl/Python/C++ on Unix are used for many things, but VBA is just as or more important because we all use Excel, and *the* scripting language for excel is VBA.
I also know that other fields use VBA without knowing that the other scripting languages even exist. Having a scripting city without VBA is sort of like having San Fransisco without china town.
Even if you are vehemently opposed to VBA for moral reasons, think about the benefit of having a VBA section of your website. When people search the web for VBA help, they come to your website, get the help that they need and learn that these other beautiful scripting languages exist that might provide benefits which VBA cannot.
There is NO meatspace analogy for a well-designed filesystem for one simple reason:
INFORMATION CAN EXIST IN MULTIPLE PLACES, realword stuff can't. Even the data representation of a file, can only be written in one place on a harddrive. A file should represent information rather than some physical collection of bits on a platter. The OS (not the application), should handle the abstraction of taking the bits on the platter and representing it as information.
Somebody else commented: "When you are working on some (paper and pencil) project, and just stand up and walk away, do you exepect it to be available at the office tomorrow?".
Well, yes. On a computer, I would expect it to available tomorrow *exactly* the way i left it. The only reason that I don't expect this in the real world is because it's not a feasible possibility. If it were, then I would expect it to be as I left it in the real world, too.
You commented: "My biggest concern with this new system is that if you fail to generate good keywords (I suspect this will be a big problem) it is going to be hard to browse through a likely directory to find the file."
Although I will admit that current searching technologies are not very good at determining what I actually want (e.g. misspellings, synonyms), I will say that I don't think that choosing keywords would be a problem. I believe that choosing which directory to place the file in is a more complicated problem, because you can only pick one place (without worrying about shortcuts or links). Many of the searchable keywords would be generated from the document itself: last-edited-today, various project keywords, application-based (e.g. excel-spreadsheet, letter), keywords based upon the content. Ultimately, I believe this system would be *more* tolerant of poor organization, rather than less as you state. I believe that people would adapt to it and learn to use good keywords easier than they did for hierachical filesystems. I will admit, however, that it is a flaw *whenever* people have to adapt to something, and most have alread adapted to the idea of a hierachical filesystem.
You also mention that the PalmOS filesystem implements such a filesystem poorly, but please don't crush the idea based upon one implementation. I see NO reason that application developers would have to worry about implementing a keyword filesystem any more than they would hierachical filesystem. It sounds like Palm's version isn't mature enough to be useful.
The industry is working to remove the hierachical filesystem. It's only a matter of time. Look at WindowsXP Tablet edition's note-taking program. You basically have one *file* for all of your notes... ever. You can subdivide and categorize these notes, but it's all one file.
If you try to forget everything that you know about computers, and then abstractly think about what a filesystem should be you come to one of the following two conclusions:
1. "Filesystem? I don't need no stinkin filesystem!" An ideal Palm-esque computing environment wouldn't have any filesystem. There simply isn't any reason for it. Why would you store addresses in an address file or a book report in a word file? Saving/Opening files should be transparent to the end user. Versioning should be built in, yet simple to understand. Forking files can be accomplished without copying a file. This is intuitively the simplist idea.
2. If you somehow *have* to think in terms of files, then your conclusion may be to use files. However, I don't see why anybody would come up with a hierachical file system, unless they were accomidating for hardware limitations. Placing files somewhere within a huge directory tree is just too darn complicated. Why should the same file not exist in multiple directories? Why should copies of a file exist? Everything, including advanced security policies (more advanced than what is currently possible) is available for a *keyword* driven filesystem.
I believe this is a step in the right direction and I can't wait until my favorite OS (not Linux) adopts a similar feature.
now, microsoft's "save as html" feature in word, excel, etc definately produces some cryptic, overly bloated, and nearly unusable html.. </i><img src="pix.gif" width="1" height="1"></p style="messy">
<content type="MSWord" created="Microsft" data="useless"><include stylesheet="useless_bloated.css">What are you talking about? MS Word's save is <h1><'/h1>HTML is how I learned to write webpages. </p style="mozilla_noncompliant">
As for two week rollouts - I wish! Try 2 day rollouts. You'd be surprised how little testing goes into these applications.
Exactly! Suppose ibank A is pricing a complicated instrument. If their software took two weeks to quality check and verify, then ibank B would do the software in two days and purchase/sell the instrument before ibank A could ever get to it. What if ibank B makes a mistake in their software that ibank A doesn't make? Well, ibank B will more than cover their losses during the next two weeks when they roll out 7 new packages for pricing 7 new instruments and ibank A is still working on the first instrument.
Trading support software is developed in-house at *all* of the investment banks (i.e. Supported in house, no warranty).
What's unusual is that this guy (story's original author) thinks that he's going to get the said traders to move away from Excel. Yeah, that will happen when Enron regains its credibility as a market maker. I got news for him. The traders drive the trader-support tools. He should think to stop using excel *after* the traders start asking him to stop using excel.
All traders everywhere use Excel. All Risk depts everwhere use Excel. A majority of quant modeling is done with excel.
Please post any exceptions below, because I'm interested in knowing who doesn't use excel.
A final point is that VBA for Excel is highly polished and the best currently available. It's very easy to code and compile C++ DLLs that directly link into Excel through VBA. A lot of people are doing this, there's a lot of information available,.net promises to make this even easier to do, and there's little reason to switch to something different.
Sorry to be way off topic, but I like, Cliff, that you replied with a comment rather than editorializing your opinion in the article body.
I didn't notice anybody else commenting on this fact so I thought that I would let you know.
WRT the article, in certain situations, your ticket is a binding legal contract and if that contract says *12:00AM*, then well you get let in at 12:00AM.
You may want to give some thought to hedging any foreign exchange rate risk.
For example if the company wants to pay you 30k Euros up front and 30k Euros upon completion (in 6 Months), then you should minimize the risk that something will happen to the currency in 6 Months that will make your final payment worthless. Although Euros seem like a stable currency, it is new, and other currencies, such as Rubles or Yen are not as stable. It's cheap and easy to hedge your currency.
All you have to do is go to the bank and lock in a 6M forward exchange rate. These are cheap instruments and they are easy to obtain. For the Euro example, today the Euro trades at 1.1 Euro to the dollar. It's reasonable that you could walk into a bank and purchase a forward exchange agreement for 1.07 Euro to the dollar in 6 Months. Now you have *locked* in US Dollar amount of your contract for the small price of less than 3%. It's a small price to pay for insurance that your contract isn't worthless in 6M.
If you are uncomfortable setting up a forward contract through a bank, then you can synthetically create such an agreement via options on interest rates and the inflation index. This is a little too complicated for one Slashdot comment, but feel free to read Hull's Options and Derivatives book if you are interested in more info.
I have a problem with Quick 2003 for the Mac. Citibank says to use a PIN to access my data. I have set up an account at the Citi online website, but *neither* the PIN or my Citi online password access the data. What gives? Does anybody else know which of these two to use? One of them worked at one time, but now nothing!!
My commentary on your post: (1) Naming their product to sound like Windows attracts Windows users; (2) Making it look like OSX in ways attracts Mac users and the general public; (3) Website designed like Apple's website -- makes it easy to use, and familiar; (4) Debian-based -- couldn't base it on a better, more stable, distro; (5) Making deals with big-time players like Walmart. In short, these guys make good business decisions.
(1) Windows naming. I'll go along with that. (2) Making it look like OSX attracts Mac users??? OSX is so new that NOBODY is familiar enough with it to feel comfortable on a cheap-PC. Also, 99.999% of OS X users realize that their GUI is different and better than Windows and they aren't likely to be *fooled* into using a Lindows ripoff.
(3) Good design attracts users (or at least it keeps users, which is close enough). I'm willing to go along with this point. (4) I can't comment on Debian being the most stable distro. My 6 years of Linux experience consists entirely of Redhat and I've never needed to look elsewhere for more stability. (5) Making deals with big name players will move machines. That's for sure.
I agree that the strategies that you list are the best way to gain marketshare (I won't naively admit that MS could ever "topple" as you do). Once they have a 5% or so marketshare, then they can worry about people running as root and more proprieatary programs. Until then, just be the cheapest and get the job done. For the record, as you probably agree, I don't think that they need to ever release ISOs of their distribution for download. Just release the sourcecode whereever they have to in compliance with the GPL. Companies sell products. They don't give them away. AOL seems like they need a little something right now to set things straight. Acquiring Lindows might be just the thing.
Although I'm no fan of Bill Gates, I find this game disturbing. Out of respect for a fellow human being, I don't need some game that shows a detailed image of someone running a chainsaw through somebodies stomach or bill gates' head being held high in the air.
No Thanks. I prefer my gore to be anonymous as in Quake 3 violence.
BTW, since Bill Gates does give so much of his (personal) money to education and third world countries, maybe we should respect him a little more by *not* playing this game.
Re:Lacks any ability to glide
on
Fanwing Planes?
·
· Score: 2
"It's only downfall (he he) is that it lacks any ability to glide in the event of an engine outage. "
Kind of like your typical passenger laden 747 often glides to safety if there is an electrical or engine failure?</sarcasm>
All of your assumptions are valid... except that price elasticity is different for different products. If this wasn't the case, then *everything* would sell for $0.11 per minute (assuming that to be the optimal cost), and there would be no such thing as an excise tax (or all purchases would be excise taxed equally).
Read up on your microeconomics before you post. Microeconomics is a cool geeky subject with lots of math and theories that rival physical theories.
When I bought my Logitech optical a 1.5 years ago, I stopped at RadioShack on the way home to pick up a blue LED. I was planning to change it first thing when I got home.
However, upon pluggin my mouse into the computer, the logitech logo and mouse in general glowed blue!!! I was happy. Although the LED on the bottom was red, they had an *extra* LED that was blue for the logo and the *glowing* plastic. That made my day and it involved NO soldering.
JabberWokky, your analogy is poor. Although I agree that they should be legally allowed to access the backdoor, I don't like your analogy.
The reason why is that you can't *use* your bike if it's locked. You are perfectly capable of *using* a locked Tivo for its intended purposes.
A better analogy might be if the bicycle manufacturer *locked* the wheels to the bike. You'd still be able to ride the bicycle (aka use the tivo for its intended purpose), but you couldn't steal wheels from other bicycles and you wouldn't be able to change a tire unless you went to a *bicycle-company* certified mechanic who had the key (they do actually sell skewers for bike wheels with locks/keys). This might be akin stealing content from other Tivos or opening up and fixing/modding the Tivo.
I'm sure there are better analogies, but I just didn't think that yours applied very well. I do agree with your points, however.
Slashdot Mirror
...because both users already told Case that they don't plan on switching.
:-) Sorry, I couldn't resist. Actually, I do use Omniweb and I like it very much.
I looked at quite a few, yet didn't see anything similar to the following:
- Ipod underwater off the coast of Florida
- Ipod tossed into air at Harvard Law Graduation Commencments
- Ipod underneath the left rear wheel of a London DoubleDecker bus
- Ipod *just* out of reach under Chinatown NYC Canal Street storm grate.
- Highspeed photography of a bullet passing through an iPod at Eastman-Kodak photography research lab, NC USA.
- mostly melted iPod inside one of Michigan State U's diamond growth microwave ovens.
- iPod being a sledge-a-matic victim at an *actual* Gallagher standup comedy show.
You have to admit that 1000s of pictures of a hand holding an iPod in front of a monument is rather boring.
The grade inflation problem is quite interesting. A few years back, I participated in the NSA's mathematics modelling prize competition. The problem that they supplied to use was one of grade inflation. The problem was this: At a given university, grade inflation had run rampant. The average GPA of students had risen to X% (I forgot the number, but it was basically an A-). The problem was to determine and create an algorithm that accurately assessed and awared merit based scholarships based solely on GPA.
The problem itself is interesting from a mathematical perspective. What is even more interesting are the other uses for such a solution. NSA typically uses thinly veiled intelligence/war problems for this math competition. The grade-inflation problem is no exception.
A grade inflation solution would have many purposes in the area of Satellite surveilance. As satellites *all* become more accurate at gathering intelligence (aka high grade = high accuracy), how do we detect which intelligence is the *most* true (highest accuracy)?
I forgot the other uses for this technology, perhaps a fellow slashdotter can fill in more details. I remember that we had about 5-6 uses for grade-inflation from a military standpoint.
They assume all users are guilty of piracy, and will proceed with that in mind
If Overpeer receives permission to degrade Britney's "I'm a slave 4 u", and they degrade copies that are already trading on a p2p network, then how have they assumed *I* am guilty of piracy? I didn't download anything from Britney in the first place.
Since all users pirate works(see above point), they release copy-protected works that do not work according to standards...other than the infamous "neener-neener, you can't copy this" standard
I'm not sure exactly what you are saying. I occasionally purchase CDs and I have yet to buy one that doesn't rip into MP3s on my computer. I'm sure the day will come that I pay for a copy-restricted CD at which point, I will return it and rigorously demand a full refund from the place of purchase. Don't forget that in a capitalist society, the consumer has the most power.
Through their extensive lobbying efforts, they're seeking to remove what little legal rights we had to items purchased. (e.g. When I buy a gallon of milk. I have to make sure there's no EULA. Of course, I can't see me taking the time to reverse engineer it)
The Overpeer actions don't hurt any standards and they don't involve any lobbying. Overpeer has permission from the Copyright holders to do what they are doing. Again, this doesn't effect the non-criminal.
Now they're actively trying to poison P2P networks
I don't see this as poisoning the P2P networks, but rather poisoning the distribution of ilegally copied works over the P2P networks. Is that really a bad thing?
Although I would often find streaming wireless movie trailers usefull (e.g. I'm at a restaurant with friends and we're deciding which movie to go see), I don't know of anybody who would actually *pay* for this service. After all, we are going to *pay* to see the actual movie, right? I also wouldn't put down $1200-$1500 that doesn't even work as well as a Sony Picturebook, just for the privelege of these wireless movie trailers.
Luckily, this is one of those *concept* electronic show ideas that will never see the light of day (in it's current form).
It's rather microsoftish. For example: Your preferences have changed. Would you like to restart to use your new preferences: [OK] [CANCEL]. Or even better, they try to word the error message around the buttons: Press OK to accept the new settings or CANCEL to discard the settings [OK] [CANCEL] rather than a much simpler: WOuld you like to accept the new settings? [YES] [NO].
I also know that other fields use VBA without knowing that the other scripting languages even exist. Having a scripting city without VBA is sort of like having San Fransisco without china town.
Even if you are vehemently opposed to VBA for moral reasons, think about the benefit of having a VBA section of your website. When people search the web for VBA help, they come to your website, get the help that they need and learn that these other beautiful scripting languages exist that might provide benefits which VBA cannot.
INFORMATION CAN EXIST IN MULTIPLE PLACES, realword stuff can't.
Even the data representation of a file, can only be written in one place on a harddrive. A file should represent information rather than some physical collection of bits on a platter. The OS (not the application), should handle the abstraction of taking the bits on the platter and representing it as information.
Well, yes. On a computer, I would expect it to available tomorrow *exactly* the way i left it. The only reason that I don't expect this in the real world is because it's not a feasible possibility. If it were, then I would expect it to be as I left it in the real world, too.
You commented: "My biggest concern with this new system is that if you fail to generate good keywords (I suspect this will be a big problem) it is going to be hard to browse through a likely directory to find the file."
Although I will admit that current searching technologies are not very good at determining what I actually want (e.g. misspellings, synonyms), I will say that I don't think that choosing keywords would be a problem. I believe that choosing which directory to place the file in is a more complicated problem, because you can only pick one place (without worrying about shortcuts or links). Many of the searchable keywords would be generated from the document itself: last-edited-today, various project keywords, application-based (e.g. excel-spreadsheet, letter), keywords based upon the content. Ultimately, I believe this system would be *more* tolerant of poor organization, rather than less as you state. I believe that people would adapt to it and learn to use good keywords easier than they did for hierachical filesystems. I will admit, however, that it is a flaw *whenever* people have to adapt to something, and most have alread adapted to the idea of a hierachical filesystem.
You also mention that the PalmOS filesystem implements such a filesystem poorly, but please don't crush the idea based upon one implementation. I see NO reason that application developers would have to worry about implementing a keyword filesystem any more than they would hierachical filesystem. It sounds like Palm's version isn't mature enough to be useful.
The industry is working to remove the hierachical filesystem. It's only a matter of time. Look at WindowsXP Tablet edition's note-taking program. You basically have one *file* for all of your notes... ever. You can subdivide and categorize these notes, but it's all one file.
1. "Filesystem? I don't need no stinkin filesystem!" An ideal Palm-esque computing environment wouldn't have any filesystem. There simply isn't any reason for it. Why would you store addresses in an address file or a book report in a word file? Saving/Opening files should be transparent to the end user. Versioning should be built in, yet simple to understand. Forking files can be accomplished without copying a file. This is intuitively the simplist idea.
2. If you somehow *have* to think in terms of files, then your conclusion may be to use files. However, I don't see why anybody would come up with a hierachical file system, unless they were accomidating for hardware limitations. Placing files somewhere within a huge directory tree is just too darn complicated. Why should the same file not exist in multiple directories? Why should copies of a file exist? Everything, including advanced security policies (more advanced than what is currently possible) is available for a *keyword* driven filesystem.
I believe this is a step in the right direction and I can't wait until my favorite OS (not Linux) adopts a similar feature.
</i><img src="pix.gif" width="1" height="1"></p style="messy">
<content type="MSWord" created="Microsft" data="useless"><include stylesheet="useless_bloated.css">What are you talking about? MS Word's save is <h1><'/h1>HTML is how I learned to write webpages. </p style="mozilla_noncompliant">
Exactly! Suppose ibank A is pricing a complicated instrument. If their software took two weeks to quality check and verify, then ibank B would do the software in two days and purchase/sell the instrument before ibank A could ever get to it. What if ibank B makes a mistake in their software that ibank A doesn't make? Well, ibank B will more than cover their losses during the next two weeks when they roll out 7 new packages for pricing 7 new instruments and ibank A is still working on the first instrument.
What's unusual is that this guy (story's original author) thinks that he's going to get the said traders to move away from Excel. Yeah, that will happen when Enron regains its credibility as a market maker. I got news for him. The traders drive the trader-support tools. He should think to stop using excel *after* the traders start asking him to stop using excel.
All traders everywhere use Excel. All Risk depts everwhere use Excel. A majority of quant modeling is done with excel.
Please post any exceptions below, because I'm interested in knowing who doesn't use excel.
A final point is that VBA for Excel is highly polished and the best currently available. It's very easy to code and compile C++ DLLs that directly link into Excel through VBA. A lot of people are doing this, there's a lot of information available, .net promises to make this even easier to do, and there's little reason to switch to something different.
What are you doing on this US website? Go away and start your own "News for Nerds" website... or should I say "News fur ein Nerden"
I didn't notice anybody else commenting on this fact so I thought that I would let you know.
WRT the article, in certain situations, your ticket is a binding legal contract and if that contract says *12:00AM*, then well you get let in at 12:00AM.
For example if the company wants to pay you 30k Euros up front and 30k Euros upon completion (in 6 Months), then you should minimize the risk that something will happen to the currency in 6 Months that will make your final payment worthless. Although Euros seem like a stable currency, it is new, and other currencies, such as Rubles or Yen are not as stable. It's cheap and easy to hedge your currency.
All you have to do is go to the bank and lock in a 6M forward exchange rate. These are cheap instruments and they are easy to obtain. For the Euro example, today the Euro trades at 1.1 Euro to the dollar. It's reasonable that you could walk into a bank and purchase a forward exchange agreement for 1.07 Euro to the dollar in 6 Months. Now you have *locked* in US Dollar amount of your contract for the small price of less than 3%. It's a small price to pay for insurance that your contract isn't worthless in 6M.
If you are uncomfortable setting up a forward contract through a bank, then you can synthetically create such an agreement via options on interest rates and the inflation index. This is a little too complicated for one Slashdot comment, but feel free to read Hull's Options and Derivatives book if you are interested in more info.
I have a problem with Quick 2003 for the Mac. Citibank says to use a PIN to access my data. I have set up an account at the Citi online website, but *neither* the PIN or my Citi online password access the data. What gives? Does anybody else know which of these two to use? One of them worked at one time, but now nothing!!
(1) Naming their product to sound like Windows attracts Windows users; (2) Making it look like OSX in ways attracts Mac users and the general public; (3) Website designed like Apple's website -- makes it easy to use, and familiar; (4) Debian-based -- couldn't base it on a better, more stable, distro; (5) Making deals with big-time players like Walmart. In short, these guys make good business decisions.
(1) Windows naming. I'll go along with that.
(2) Making it look like OSX attracts Mac users??? OSX is so new that NOBODY is familiar enough with it to feel comfortable on a cheap-PC. Also, 99.999% of OS X users realize that their GUI is different and better than Windows and they aren't likely to be *fooled* into using a Lindows ripoff.
(3) Good design attracts users (or at least it keeps users, which is close enough). I'm willing to go along with this point.
(4) I can't comment on Debian being the most stable distro. My 6 years of Linux experience consists entirely of Redhat and I've never needed to look elsewhere for more stability.
(5) Making deals with big name players will move machines. That's for sure.
I agree that the strategies that you list are the best way to gain marketshare (I won't naively admit that MS could ever "topple" as you do). Once they have a 5% or so marketshare, then they can worry about people running as root and more proprieatary programs. Until then, just be the cheapest and get the job done. For the record, as you probably agree, I don't think that they need to ever release ISOs of their distribution for download. Just release the sourcecode whereever they have to in compliance with the GPL. Companies sell products. They don't give them away. AOL seems like they need a little something right now to set things straight. Acquiring Lindows might be just the thing.
No Thanks. I prefer my gore to be anonymous as in Quake 3 violence.
BTW, since Bill Gates does give so much of his (personal) money to education and third world countries, maybe we should respect him a little more by *not* playing this game.
Kind of like your typical passenger laden 747 often glides to safety if there is an electrical or engine failure?</sarcasm>
All of your assumptions are valid... except that price elasticity is different for different products. If this wasn't the case, then *everything* would sell for $0.11 per minute (assuming that to be the optimal cost), and there would be no such thing as an excise tax (or all purchases would be excise taxed equally).
Read up on your microeconomics before you post. Microeconomics is a cool geeky subject with lots of math and theories that rival physical theories.
However, upon pluggin my mouse into the computer, the logitech logo and mouse in general glowed blue!!! I was happy. Although the LED on the bottom was red, they had an *extra* LED that was blue for the logo and the *glowing* plastic. That made my day and it involved NO soldering.
Dude, I'm sorry to be a typical nitpicky slashdot guy. When are you going to take your timewarp.org live? Is it based upon Rocky Horror PS?
The reason why is that you can't *use* your bike if it's locked. You are perfectly capable of *using* a locked Tivo for its intended purposes.
A better analogy might be if the bicycle manufacturer *locked* the wheels to the bike. You'd still be able to ride the bicycle (aka use the tivo for its intended purpose), but you couldn't steal wheels from other bicycles and you wouldn't be able to change a tire unless you went to a *bicycle-company* certified mechanic who had the key (they do actually sell skewers for bike wheels with locks/keys). This might be akin stealing content from other Tivos or opening up and fixing/modding the Tivo.
I'm sure there are better analogies, but I just didn't think that yours applied very well. I do agree with your points, however.
gperf