I Don't even know where to start with this one...
on
A Modest Model Railroad
·
· Score: 4, Funny
"Jim Dias holds short of the Merced yards to allow Ray deBlieck to clear a passing track so that he can run around his caboose and turn his engine and put it away on one of the turntable leads.
Yesterday I ordered a new Apple PowerBook G4, top of the line, the real deal. It's going to be my first Mac. I was having some buyer's remorse, but after reading this it looks like it was the best decision I've made in years!!
Standard practice to keep ownership?? Out of the 16 years I've been writing software I've been contracting all but 4 of them. Only once have I every not had to sign an agreement that stated that the company I was contracting for did not retain full ownership of what I produced.
So the question is "How do you get around this?" I'd love to know, because from the contracts I've had (mostly large telco's) it was either sign the paper or I don't get the work.
A large part of the article seemed concerned with "perserving human nature". Human nature, as we know it, started some 50,000 years ago. That's when the various Homo Erectos/Sapians killed off all the Neanderthals.
The great migrations started as we moved over Eurasia and at about 30,000 years ago we moved into Austriala and proceeded to kill off all the large animals that had no real fear of man built in. Then 10,000 years ago we moved on into North and South America and proceeded to kill off all the large animals there (mammoth, tigers, etc).
We've seemed to have run out of big animals to kill so now we pretty much just kill each other - just look at any headline in any newspaper.
I don't know know about you, but if I can "live forever" I'm not real thrilled about "preserving human nature" - at least not in the form it's been in for the last 50,000 years...
I think that you are failing to take history into account here. The entire reason that these MS products/components are better than anything else currently on the market is because Microsoft was able to leverage their illegal monopoly to get them to the point they are. If originally MS and Netscape were on even footing, i.e. neither included with the OS and neither had a short-cut on the desktop to do the download, then it would have been a fair fight to see who would dominate (not saying that MS wouldn't have won anyhow, given all the cash they have).
So by making them split out these applications and allowing OEMs to install other apps without the MS apps present would foster competition. And that is what we all have to gain from this whole mess.
However, from what I can gather it would seem that MS must "offer" a scaled down version. So it would seem that they still will be free to sell the full version with all the goodies. I really don't see what the motivation for OEMs is to install a scaled back version given that MS would most likely be allowed to set pricing on both (perhaps even having the scaled back version more expensive - I haven't seen discussed at all).
As sad as it is to admit perhaps the original poster is more correct than I thought. For these apps, maybe it's just too late...
It would seem to me that most all of the postings so far are missing the point of this technology.
Its unique selling proposition is "It sounds good at extremely low bit rates" which is good for wireless. Yes, 3G will come out sometime in our lifetime (maybe) but that still doesn't mean that we know how the pricing is going to be structured for this. We could get nailed with a per megabyte fee. Also, the carriers only have so much bandwidth on each cell tower. Remember they have T1s and the like running to these cell towers and each cell has to service hundreds and up to thousands of users at the same time. So, to the carriers it makes a big difference what the band width is. (Yes, I work in the wireless business and this is a very real concern)
So what does this mean to you? Well, the carriers will be the ones who specify, to a certain degree, what codec they would like to see on the phones from their OEMs and you can be sure they would rather see a codec which requires less bandwidth. So, some partnerships are most likely developing between the carriers and these guys (and the carriers' default WAP portal site owners - which usually are just the carriers themselves).
If we look at this from the point of just comparing it to MP3 it makes no sense. But if we look at it from a broader business sense it may make very good sense.
The subject says it all! Spamming this email address with overly anti-Microsoft emails may have the effect of causing intellegent, well thought out emails to be discarded.
Please, please use your head and point out what you honestly believe the problems are (and back them up with facts when possible). We may be able to make a different here. Let's not screw it up!
If you read the article you'll see a "spokeswoman said 750,000 testers received each beta version of Windows 2000." Microsoft sent these out to everyone! I recieved each and every one, myself, and promptly throw them in the garbage or made drink coasters out of them.
She then goes on to say the "hundreds of companies have signed of on the incredibly high quality and reliability of Windows 2000." So, let's give them an optimistic 500 companies that signed off on it. This results in.07% signoff. Now there's something to brag about!
Yes, I image the signoff process, what ever that is, is a bit more complex than my overly simplistic numbers indicate, but still!
If we think about this a little more we may see that it may be a case of mismanaging expectations. Sun was going to release Java to the standards body but did a 180. However, all the licensing and community process that Sun had done is far better than most anything done by Microsoft. Have you seen MFC in any standards body? It's sort of like when companies give bonuses. Let's say that I work for a company that gives no bonuses. You work for one that regularly gives bonuses. Now when your company cuts your bonus in half you whine like mad. You're still getting more of a bonus than me and I'm not whining! So when Sun cuts back on what we're expecting, even when it is more than what most other vendors provide, we still a whine like mad.
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"Jim Dias holds short of the Merced yards to allow Ray deBlieck to clear a passing track so that he can run around his caboose and turn his engine and put it away on one of the turntable leads.
All kidding aside, it's just a great setup.
"128x128x32 with a decent scaling algorithm (and an optional set of pre-scaled images at smaller sizes) seems to cover pretty much everything."
Yeah, and we'll never need more than 640K either.
Yesterday I ordered a new Apple PowerBook G4, top of the line, the real deal. It's going to be my first Mac. I was having some buyer's remorse, but after reading this it looks like it was the best decision I've made in years!!
Standard practice to keep ownership?? Out of the 16 years I've been writing software I've been contracting all but 4 of them. Only once have I every not had to sign an agreement that stated that the company I was contracting for did not retain full ownership of what I produced.
So the question is "How do you get around this?" I'd love to know, because from the contracts I've had (mostly large telco's) it was either sign the paper or I don't get the work.
A large part of the article seemed concerned with "perserving human nature". Human nature, as we know it, started some 50,000 years ago. That's when the various Homo Erectos/Sapians killed off all the Neanderthals.
The great migrations started as we moved over Eurasia and at about 30,000 years ago we moved into Austriala and proceeded to kill off all the large animals that had no real fear of man built in. Then 10,000 years ago we moved on into North and South America and proceeded to kill off all the large animals there (mammoth, tigers, etc).
We've seemed to have run out of big animals to kill so now we pretty much just kill each other - just look at any headline in any newspaper.
I don't know know about you, but if I can "live forever" I'm not real thrilled about "preserving human nature" - at least not in the form it's been in for the last 50,000 years...
I think that you are failing to take history into account here. The entire reason that these MS products/components are better than anything else currently on the market is because Microsoft was able to leverage their illegal monopoly to get them to the point they are. If originally MS and Netscape were on even footing, i.e. neither included with the OS and neither had a short-cut on the desktop to do the download, then it would have been a fair fight to see who would dominate (not saying that MS wouldn't have won anyhow, given all the cash they have).
So by making them split out these applications and allowing OEMs to install other apps without the MS apps present would foster competition. And that is what we all have to gain from this whole mess.
However, from what I can gather it would seem that MS must "offer" a scaled down version. So it would seem that they still will be free to sell the full version with all the goodies. I really don't see what the motivation for OEMs is to install a scaled back version given that MS would most likely be allowed to set pricing on both (perhaps even having the scaled back version more expensive - I haven't seen discussed at all).
As sad as it is to admit perhaps the original poster is more correct than I thought. For these apps, maybe it's just too late...
It would seem to me that most all of the postings so far are missing the point of this technology.
Its unique selling proposition is "It sounds good at extremely low bit rates" which is good for wireless. Yes, 3G will come out sometime in our lifetime (maybe) but that still doesn't mean that we know how the pricing is going to be structured for this. We could get nailed with a per megabyte fee. Also, the carriers only have so much bandwidth on each cell tower. Remember they have T1s and the like running to these cell towers and each cell has to service hundreds and up to thousands of users at the same time. So, to the carriers it makes a big difference what the band width is. (Yes, I work in the wireless business and this is a very real concern)
So what does this mean to you? Well, the carriers will be the ones who specify, to a certain degree, what codec they would like to see on the phones from their OEMs and you can be sure they would rather see a codec which requires less bandwidth. So, some partnerships are most likely developing between the carriers and these guys (and the carriers' default WAP portal site owners - which usually are just the carriers themselves).
If we look at this from the point of just comparing it to MP3 it makes no sense. But if we look at it from a broader business sense it may make very good sense.
The subject says it all! Spamming this email address with overly anti-Microsoft emails may have the effect of causing intellegent, well thought out emails to be discarded.
Please, please use your head and point out what you honestly believe the problems are (and back them up with facts when possible). We may be able to make a different here. Let's not screw it up!
If you read the article you'll see a "spokeswoman said 750,000 testers received each beta version of Windows 2000." Microsoft sent these out to everyone! I recieved each and every one, myself, and promptly throw them in the garbage or made drink coasters out of them.
She then goes on to say the "hundreds of companies have signed of on the incredibly high quality and reliability of Windows 2000." So, let's give them an optimistic 500 companies that signed off on it. This results in .07% signoff. Now there's something to brag about!
Yes, I image the signoff process, what ever that is, is a bit more complex than my overly simplistic numbers indicate, but still!
If we think about this a little more we may see that it may be a case of mismanaging expectations. Sun was going to release Java to the standards body but did a 180. However, all the licensing and community process that Sun had done is far better than most anything done by Microsoft. Have you seen MFC in any standards body? It's sort of like when companies give bonuses. Let's say that I work for a company that gives no bonuses. You work for one that regularly gives bonuses. Now when your company cuts your bonus in half you whine like mad. You're still getting more of a bonus than me and I'm not whining! So when Sun cuts back on what we're expecting, even when it is more than what most other vendors provide, we still a whine like mad.