The apps are the gateway though. Why do most folks believe they can't move away from Windows? The apps they use daily don't exist anywhere else or substitutes exist but don't provide the level of compatibility or the look and feel (and possibly the workflow) they are used to.
But someone who uses Firefox, Thunderbird/fox/whatever, OO.o, Gimp, etc on Windows will have a MUCH lower barrier to switching away from Windows when the time comes. Suddenly that Windows upgrade may just turn into a Linux install with all their daily apps pre-configured.
Very rarely is an office suite considered a core part of a business. That core is the revenue generator, the lifeline. If you have a competent IT staff (i.e. a large enough group of people to qualify as what most folks would understand as a "staff") or one good programmer, you presumably hired them for a purpose, likely to work closely within the core business or very closely to it. Good IT assets (I should be hit for calling people assets...we're PEOPLE d*** it!) are expensive and not to be wasted.
So the perceived benefit of pulling such folks off of your core revenue-generating part of your business to work on an office suite seems just that...perceived. As in "unlikely to be realized". I will grant that I can't make the absolute claim that no bug in OO.o or Office could possibly make such a problem that pulling resources away from what your business is in business to do makes sense, but it seems a bit far-fetched.
Anyway, my post came across as a bit acerbic. Sorry about that.
Correction, if there's a bug that really hurts, and you have a competent IT staff (or even just one good programmer) you probably are already paying good money for whatever work they are already doing, and it is probably closer to your core business so pulling them off will hurt even worse.
Or do you think folks employ "competent IT staff and good programmers" just in case they have to debug and develop things are not part of their core business?
I imagine any corporate assets within reach of the executive powers of the EU (i.e. whatever body is in place to enforce such rulings as the EU just made) could be seized in order to compensate for the fine.
Likewise, any officers of the company's European branches could possibly be prosecuted for failing to comply with the order of this body.
As a final parting shot, if that didn't satisfy them, I suppose it is also possible that Microsoft would no longer be able to do business in the EU, but that would be a more diplomatic/political issue and given the federated nature of the EU, much less likely to succeed I would think as some nations might not want to anger Microsoft (or the US, for that matter) by locking them out.
But IANAL, corporate, international or otherwise, so what do I know?
Re:Cost of Lifting Things
on
The Wrong Stuff
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· Score: 2, Insightful
Necessity being the mother of invention, though, until we starting making space exploration a priority, we won't have near the drive to research and discover these advanced propulsion technologies (and please pardon the pun).
QTConvert allows you to fix that problem concerning the DRM issues, without having to burn to CD first. An MP3 export component is available (based on LAME and in early beta, but it does at least produce MP3s) here. Note that you will need to also download the LAME framework there, too. It's all free and sources are available for the component and framework. This is all OS X only though. If someone feels like porting the component to Windows, be my guest.
I'm still in development on these things, but have to spend some time on putting food on the table for awhile. Then I'll get back to these.
Erm...I have to disagree. Someone could be a good programmer, but a poor C++ programmer. A good (generic) programmer is (in my mind anyway) one who understands and implements general best practices. This would include general design principles, cognizance of one's environment (i.e. taking into account whether working within a team and therefore communicating appropriately with others), system design, a forward thinking approach for expandability and/or modularity, etc.
But that person might be a poor C++ programmer. With little experience developing in C++, it will take them longer to complete a proper design and implement it in C++, since they will ( as a good general programmer) be trying to research and understand the nuances of said language.
It is far less likely (near impossible?) that given these definitions, one could be a poor general programmer but a good C++ programmer, but the distinctions can be important. While as a hiring manager, one would like to always bring on board good general programmers, if you can't take the time to bring someone up to speed on the language to be used, you may need also to search for someone who is a good language-specific programmer.
Great. But why would they (the insurance company in this case) need to hijack an email client to do all of this? Granted, I've used Lotus Notes and seen that a great deal of functionality could be had by using its database and development features, but they could just as well have been put into a database/development environment and kept the email side of things clean.
Email is intended to provide a means of communicating a message to another individual. Certain conveniences can be added (auto quoting when responding, filtering, etc), but why do you need to add applications? Scripting? If you want someone to interact with you, create an application. Need a framework to hang it on so that you don't send a fat binary to them? Make it a webapp. Have a custom requirement (your insurance agents for example)? Still make it a webapp. Run a local copy of the webapp that they target that caches the info (just like a mail client caches the outgoing mail until it can send it), then have it synch with the real server when possible, completing the transaction. Maybe send an email when they need to check for updates, but just provide a URL they can click on to actually visit the (again) webapp.
But email...email should be and should have always been pure.
Aaaaactually, there is a grain of truth there. For integers and fixed point calcs, true, there will be no difference in precision between 32 and 64 bit procs, just a difference in the actual range of numbers that can be dealt with.
But, for floats and doubles, more bits means I can capture a more precise number. For example, 2x10^30 + 1x10^-30 would look something akin to 2,000,000---.00000----1 where the hyphens are a bunch of zeros. With a big enough "bitspace", that level of precision can be captured, but if the "bitspace" is too small, you end up "estimating" and wind up with just 2x10^30. For most purposes, dropping such a negligible amount from the operands won't result in a noticeable error. For things where iterative calculations are used for forecasting, it can mount up. And for simulations and so on...well, you get the picture.
Sun owes it to their shareholders to make sure the company remains profitable. From their perspective (and obviously as opposed to virtually every other company out there), it made sense to pay the fee and not have to worry that any of their clients would jump from Sun's Linux based products due to some licensing nit.
In addition, if it is proven that SCO was wrong, Sun could possibly sue to get their $8 mil back. They would be out legal fees but would have a strong legal leg to stand on should they need to push the issue.
As an OS X user, my solution to this has always been to first determine whether the end user will need read only access to the document or rather will want to be able to edit. For example, a resume sent to a prospective employer (not a contracting agency) won't need to be edited.
If it can be read only, I just use the built in Print to PDF functionality and send the person a PDF. That's a near universally readable format and certainly in most business situations.
If it must be editable, then I will generally shoot for RTF, simply because it is, yet again, nearly universally readable.
If they refuse to accept those formats and I have to do business with them, then I will author the document in the editor of my choice and export to the appropriate format. Naturally this can cause problems when the export functionality isn't precise enough, but I can't honestly recall when the last time was that I had to do this anyway.
Yep, a critical patch was released not too long ago. Called the Comprehensive Realtime Accessory Companion Kit (or CRACK), once you install it, you gain access to a new race, the Narcolumbians.
First, this is how they are "fixing" it. Rather than patching to record the behavior or altering the gameworld so that griefing is somehow no longer fun, they are going to patrol their own gameworld and punish griefers. It's a fix with a meat space touch, but still a fix.
Second, Blizzard isn't just a game developer in this case. They are also a game host. Here they are not just selling a game, but a game world and a (must control gag reflex) user experience. As a result, it isn't enough for them to merely let their game out into the wild as it were. They have to provide the appropriate environment for most of their clients to enjoy their game.
Okay, I shouldn't let my knee smack my desk so quickly by reflex. And I shouldn't respond directly to my own posts. But, here we are...
From a legal standpoint, I think I am going to have to agree here (countering my previous point) that what is happening is not technically theft (unless I and the folks who have convinced me are missing important facts).
And it is, as has been pointed out, copyright violation. Still and all, it is a wrong thing. I won't argue that the folks who corrected me are saying it's right (though perhaps they hold that view).
But I will say that you don't have the right to grab those copies. Only the copyright holder or their designee can make that choice of who is allowed to make copies and under what guidelines (barring, of course, fair use dictums, but fair use does not include sharing with a few thousand of your closest friends).
Okay, I'll try again. Let's see...problem is with "takes"...but you don't take something in the conventional sense when you copy...but if I copy, I have something that I don't have the rights to, that is a copy that I didn't pay for...and the copyright holder gets to dictate where those copies go and who must pay for them.
Okay, I've got it now...all of those folks who are copying music without paying for it actually have permission from the artists/music companies to have those unpaid for copies, thus excepting them from the need to pay for it like the rest of us.
Because you see, if I hold copyright on something, I get to say who can and cannot have a copy of my work, including whether you must have put money into my or someone else's pocket. And if you have a copy, and have not abided by my decision as copyright holder, you now have something that doesn't belong to you. At this point its semantics, but it still comes down to theft.
n : a criminal who takes property belong to someone else with the intention of keeping it
Let's see...copyright violation...suggesting I have rights to the copies of a particular work...including digital format of same work...so I as copyright owner get to dictate the terms of how copies are made and distributed...
Darn it, hard as I try, I still can't figure out where the logic breaks down. Nope, I'm pretty much still convinced. Copyright violators are thieves.
I'm afraid you are too late. Having spent too much time without your protective gear, the Brainwave Ulterior Pattern and Knowledge Informational System (BUPKIS) has invaded your thoughts. You now only THINK you are wearing your hat when in fact you are on a CIA interrogation couch, drugged to the gills and hooked up to a machine that is busy fondling your deepest memories.
Of course, since you think you are content, does any of it matter? Isn't that good enough?
It seems to me the only way you could "attack" a settlement would be to prove that some or all of the settlement terms were not legal. For instance, if you and I run corporations and we get into a lawsuit whereby the settlement involves my company stealing money from at least two large banks and giving the funds over to you, that would not be legal.
In this case, I would imagine they would have to prove someone didn't have rights to something, but I can't imagine they could do it.
Actually, has been pointed out in other forums (so no fault of yours not having read them) if Apple tries to keep the same build concept of the iPod but simply drops in a smaller drive, the overall price doesn't come down a whole lot. Meaning, there wouldn't be a huge savings coming down from a 10 Gb drive to a 1 Gb drive.
Now, if they opted to make a flash RAM based (i.e. diskless) iPod, with reduced storage, etc, but all the same features, I imagine they could compete in the lower cost segment.
The $5.2 million also included the cost of the interconnection wiring, server cages and other "stuff" to build out the entire supercomputer. It wasn't just for the G5's.
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The apps are the gateway though. Why do most folks believe they can't move away from Windows? The apps they use daily don't exist anywhere else or substitutes exist but don't provide the level of compatibility or the look and feel (and possibly the workflow) they are used to.
But someone who uses Firefox, Thunderbird/fox/whatever, OO.o, Gimp, etc on Windows will have a MUCH lower barrier to switching away from Windows when the time comes. Suddenly that Windows upgrade may just turn into a Linux install with all their daily apps pre-configured.
I kinda like having dynamic allocation capabilities as part of the language, rather than having to hack around the issue.
Very rarely is an office suite considered a core part of a business. That core is the revenue generator, the lifeline. If you have a competent IT staff (i.e. a large enough group of people to qualify as what most folks would understand as a "staff") or one good programmer, you presumably hired them for a purpose, likely to work closely within the core business or very closely to it. Good IT assets (I should be hit for calling people assets...we're PEOPLE d*** it!) are expensive and not to be wasted.
So the perceived benefit of pulling such folks off of your core revenue-generating part of your business to work on an office suite seems just that...perceived. As in "unlikely to be realized". I will grant that I can't make the absolute claim that no bug in OO.o or Office could possibly make such a problem that pulling resources away from what your business is in business to do makes sense, but it seems a bit far-fetched.
Anyway, my post came across as a bit acerbic. Sorry about that.
Correction, if there's a bug that really hurts, and you have a competent IT staff (or even just one good programmer) you probably are already paying good money for whatever work they are already doing, and it is probably closer to your core business so pulling them off will hurt even worse.
Or do you think folks employ "competent IT staff and good programmers" just in case they have to debug and develop things are not part of their core business?
I imagine any corporate assets within reach of the executive powers of the EU (i.e. whatever body is in place to enforce such rulings as the EU just made) could be seized in order to compensate for the fine.
Likewise, any officers of the company's European branches could possibly be prosecuted for failing to comply with the order of this body.
As a final parting shot, if that didn't satisfy them, I suppose it is also possible that Microsoft would no longer be able to do business in the EU, but that would be a more diplomatic/political issue and given the federated nature of the EU, much less likely to succeed I would think as some nations might not want to anger Microsoft (or the US, for that matter) by locking them out.
But IANAL, corporate, international or otherwise, so what do I know?
Necessity being the mother of invention, though, until we starting making space exploration a priority, we won't have near the drive to research and discover these advanced propulsion technologies (and please pardon the pun).
Chicken, meet Egg. Egg, Chicken.
QTConvert allows you to fix that problem concerning the DRM issues, without having to burn to CD first. An MP3 export component is available (based on LAME and in early beta, but it does at least produce MP3s) here. Note that you will need to also download the LAME framework there, too. It's all free and sources are available for the component and framework. This is all OS X only though. If someone feels like porting the component to Windows, be my guest.
I'm still in development on these things, but have to spend some time on putting food on the table for awhile. Then I'll get back to these.
Regards,
Lynn
Erm...I have to disagree. Someone could be a good programmer, but a poor C++ programmer. A good (generic) programmer is (in my mind anyway) one who understands and implements general best practices. This would include general design principles, cognizance of one's environment (i.e. taking into account whether working within a team and therefore communicating appropriately with others), system design, a forward thinking approach for expandability and/or modularity, etc.
But that person might be a poor C++ programmer. With little experience developing in C++, it will take them longer to complete a proper design and implement it in C++, since they will ( as a good general programmer) be trying to research and understand the nuances of said language.
It is far less likely (near impossible?) that given these definitions, one could be a poor general programmer but a good C++ programmer, but the distinctions can be important. While as a hiring manager, one would like to always bring on board good general programmers, if you can't take the time to bring someone up to speed on the language to be used, you may need also to search for someone who is a good language-specific programmer.
Great. But why would they (the insurance company in this case) need to hijack an email client to do all of this? Granted, I've used Lotus Notes and seen that a great deal of functionality could be had by using its database and development features, but they could just as well have been put into a database/development environment and kept the email side of things clean.
Email is intended to provide a means of communicating a message to another individual. Certain conveniences can be added (auto quoting when responding, filtering, etc), but why do you need to add applications? Scripting? If you want someone to interact with you, create an application. Need a framework to hang it on so that you don't send a fat binary to them? Make it a webapp. Have a custom requirement (your insurance agents for example)? Still make it a webapp. Run a local copy of the webapp that they target that caches the info (just like a mail client caches the outgoing mail until it can send it), then have it synch with the real server when possible, completing the transaction. Maybe send an email when they need to check for updates, but just provide a URL they can click on to actually visit the (again) webapp.
But email...email should be and should have always been pure.
And now you owe me $200 to replace my monitor. It cracked when I tried to deposit your money through the glass.
An OSS version that comes with no support and little in the way of guarantees. A commercially licensed version that does.
Companies will make the same choice they make with other dual licensed OSS projects.
Aaaaactually, there is a grain of truth there. For integers and fixed point calcs, true, there will be no difference in precision between 32 and 64 bit procs, just a difference in the actual range of numbers that can be dealt with.
But, for floats and doubles, more bits means I can capture a more precise number. For example, 2x10^30 + 1x10^-30 would look something akin to 2,000,000---.00000----1 where the hyphens are a bunch of zeros. With a big enough "bitspace", that level of precision can be captured, but if the "bitspace" is too small, you end up "estimating" and wind up with just 2x10^30. For most purposes, dropping such a negligible amount from the operands won't result in a noticeable error. For things where iterative calculations are used for forecasting, it can mount up. And for simulations and so on...well, you get the picture.
Sun owes it to their shareholders to make sure the company remains profitable. From their perspective (and obviously as opposed to virtually every other company out there), it made sense to pay the fee and not have to worry that any of their clients would jump from Sun's Linux based products due to some licensing nit.
In addition, if it is proven that SCO was wrong, Sun could possibly sue to get their $8 mil back. They would be out legal fees but would have a strong legal leg to stand on should they need to push the issue.
As an OS X user, my solution to this has always been to first determine whether the end user will need read only access to the document or rather will want to be able to edit. For example, a resume sent to a prospective employer (not a contracting agency) won't need to be edited.
If it can be read only, I just use the built in Print to PDF functionality and send the person a PDF. That's a near universally readable format and certainly in most business situations.
If it must be editable, then I will generally shoot for RTF, simply because it is, yet again, nearly universally readable.
If they refuse to accept those formats and I have to do business with them, then I will author the document in the editor of my choice and export to the appropriate format. Naturally this can cause problems when the export functionality isn't precise enough, but I can't honestly recall when the last time was that I had to do this anyway.
Yep, a critical patch was released not too long ago. Called the Comprehensive Realtime Accessory Companion Kit (or CRACK), once you install it, you gain access to a new race, the Narcolumbians.
First, this is how they are "fixing" it. Rather than patching to record the behavior or altering the gameworld so that griefing is somehow no longer fun, they are going to patrol their own gameworld and punish griefers. It's a fix with a meat space touch, but still a fix.
Second, Blizzard isn't just a game developer in this case. They are also a game host. Here they are not just selling a game, but a game world and a (must control gag reflex) user experience. As a result, it isn't enough for them to merely let their game out into the wild as it were. They have to provide the appropriate environment for most of their clients to enjoy their game.
Run, don't walk...ever seen what happens when little twisty bits of steel go flying under great stress? I believe that's what they call shrapnel.
Okay, I shouldn't let my knee smack my desk so quickly by reflex. And I shouldn't respond directly to my own posts. But, here we are...
From a legal standpoint, I think I am going to have to agree here (countering my previous point) that what is happening is not technically theft (unless I and the folks who have convinced me are missing important facts).
And it is, as has been pointed out, copyright violation. Still and all, it is a wrong thing. I won't argue that the folks who corrected me are saying it's right (though perhaps they hold that view).
But I will say that you don't have the right to grab those copies. Only the copyright holder or their designee can make that choice of who is allowed to make copies and under what guidelines (barring, of course, fair use dictums, but fair use does not include sharing with a few thousand of your closest friends).
Okay, I'll try again. Let's see...problem is with "takes"...but you don't take something in the conventional sense when you copy...but if I copy, I have something that I don't have the rights to, that is a copy that I didn't pay for...and the copyright holder gets to dictate where those copies go and who must pay for them.
Okay, I've got it now...all of those folks who are copying music without paying for it actually have permission from the artists/music companies to have those unpaid for copies, thus excepting them from the need to pay for it like the rest of us.
Because you see, if I hold copyright on something, I get to say who can and cannot have a copy of my work, including whether you must have put money into my or someone else's pocket. And if you have a copy, and have not abided by my decision as copyright holder, you now have something that doesn't belong to you. At this point its semantics, but it still comes down to theft.
Hrm...a quick visit to dictionary.com reveals:
thief
n : a criminal who takes property belong to someone else with the intention of keeping it
Let's see...copyright violation...suggesting I have rights to the copies of a particular work...including digital format of same work...so I as copyright owner get to dictate the terms of how copies are made and distributed...
Darn it, hard as I try, I still can't figure out where the logic breaks down. Nope, I'm pretty much still convinced. Copyright violators are thieves.
I'm afraid you are too late. Having spent too much time without your protective gear, the Brainwave Ulterior Pattern and Knowledge Informational System (BUPKIS) has invaded your thoughts. You now only THINK you are wearing your hat when in fact you are on a CIA interrogation couch, drugged to the gills and hooked up to a machine that is busy fondling your deepest memories.
Of course, since you think you are content, does any of it matter? Isn't that good enough?
-removes his tinfoil hat-
Except here, we're decorating the armored transport with camoflaged soldiers...or something. ;)
IANAL.
It seems to me the only way you could "attack" a settlement would be to prove that some or all of the settlement terms were not legal. For instance, if you and I run corporations and we get into a lawsuit whereby the settlement involves my company stealing money from at least two large banks and giving the funds over to you, that would not be legal.
In this case, I would imagine they would have to prove someone didn't have rights to something, but I can't imagine they could do it.
Any other thoughts?
Actually, has been pointed out in other forums (so no fault of yours not having read them) if Apple tries to keep the same build concept of the iPod but simply drops in a smaller drive, the overall price doesn't come down a whole lot. Meaning, there wouldn't be a huge savings coming down from a 10 Gb drive to a 1 Gb drive.
Now, if they opted to make a flash RAM based (i.e. diskless) iPod, with reduced storage, etc, but all the same features, I imagine they could compete in the lower cost segment.
The $5.2 million also included the cost of the interconnection wiring, server cages and other "stuff" to build out the entire supercomputer. It wasn't just for the G5's.