Re:Similiaries to Netscape vs MS not unfounded
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Google v. Microsoft
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· Score: 2, Informative
Not to me. I fought to use Netscape 4 for years and finally got sick of the constant crashes and switched to the dark side. I've tried a number of Mozilla releases and haven't found the same speed and stability I get from IE. I admit I haven't tried in the last year, it's just such a pain to switch browser only to switch back.
Yeah, I used Netscape 4.77 up until Mozilla got to 1.0, actually. And the crashes were annoying.
But when IE 4 crashed (and I used to use it a lot too) it took my entire DESKTOP with it. And so, even if Netscape crashed more often (as I recall, they were even) I could keep going with other programs.
Feature-wise, they were similar, except for ActiveX (which most folks don't use because it's so platform-specific, not to mention insecure). IE5 beats Netscape 4, sure, but that's not the comparison that was being made.
heheheheee... we have a new name for the flyover zone!
(apologies to those of half-decent intelligence and education who got stuck in the Midwestern United States by some cosmic folly...)
Re:How stupid do you have to be?
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SCO Offline
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· Score: 1
Analysis shows that all other sites on that router ring are working properly, that the net is no slower than usual and that You can still download SCO Linux from their site.
That link prompts me for a username and password. Darn! I really wanted to download something from them and add to the traffic!
It should be telling that 99.5% of the customers are unaffected. Those 99.5% "get it."
No, actually, not at all.
Every single customer who hears about them doing this and has no idea how much "bandwidth" they might be using (or what that even is) is affected, because they don't know if they are next.
It has nothing to do with the definition of "unlimited," either. It has to do with the fact that they told people they were violating rules that they still refuse to even describe in any coherent way.
It doesn't matter that they're right about not wanting to serve these customers. It's just bad business to handle it the way they have. It's indefensible... there is NO REASON to go about it the way they have, but you seem to ignore that. There are plenty of perfectly acceptable ways to handle it, but you don't care. All you fixate on is that "Well, the customers were wrong to use that much bandwidth!" which is entirely irrelevant.
I'm not saying, have never said, and never will say that Comcast should just suck it up and let them use as much bandwidth as they want at the current rate. I'm saying that sending vague threatening letters, sometimes with completely incorrect information, and absolutely nothing solid about what is wrong, is a very bad way to handle your issues with customers.
NO! You can't choose to go out and get Bob's Electricity vs Larry's Electricity. Its a naturalized monopoly. You don't have a choice of utility company, you do have one about which OS you run. Jeez.
Except that, a whole lot of people have argued that MS didn't do anything *really* wrong in how it achieved OS market dominance, because it was for a greater good... without that standardization, we would never have gotten so far with desktop computer technology.
Now, I don't necessarily agree that it's all ok because there was something more important at stake. I still think that either MS should have played fair and let the victor emerge from natural market forces, or the government should have stepped in a long time ago to help form a "standard," but regulated OS. Still, if you accept the idea that in order for us to make progress with desktop technology, we need a "standard" OS, then you are arguing that operating systems do not and should not work in the free-market competitive system. Instead they should be naturalized monopolies.
And with that, look at regulation of utilities: since I *can't* just ditch SCE and go with LADWP (oh, how I would love to), they have to play by much stricter rules than companies who can be regulated by market competition. There's an argument for operating system software to work the same way.
I AGREE 100% There are places in this world that do not have international copy right laws.. Places that Linux and Windows XP sit on the same shelf in a software store and cost the same damn price.. Know what... No one touches the linux stuff.
That supports the notion that Microsoft has a clear monopoly in the OS market. Which does mean they have to play by different rules in the other software markets.
On the other hand, it could be that no one's paying 4000 toman for RH 9 because they can download it for free...
Taht's not true at all. Many, many people know and do have other options. I don't use Linux because it sucks (I'm not getting into this conversation). I don't use Apple because it's overpriced, and I don't like the lock-in. Thus, I *choose* Windows.
That's all well and good. You're in plentiful company, with 95% of desktop machines running some flavor of Windows.
But then, since this *is* a monopoly (and we won't even get into how Windows gained monopoly status), certain rules apply. You're not allowed to use monopoly position in one market, however it was gained (legally or illegally) to leverage your position in another market. For example, it's not legal to use your OS monopoly to leverage your position in the web browser, office productivity, or media player markets. These other products have to stand on their own merits, independent of the control you have over the OS.
The courts have ruled on the browser market; MS illegally leveraged their position there. Corel never did take them on about the office productivity market, but they might have had a case. Now Real is giving them hell, not because they integrated WMP into the OS, but because they forbade OEMs with Windows license agreements (i.e., all of them) to bundle competing media players. This is a no-no if you have a monopoly, because they can't simply choose to bundle a different OS to get out of the agreement. It's *irrelevant* that Real is only doing this because they started sucking and people didn't want to use them anymore, because the argument is that MS's OEM agreements violated anti-trust law, and based on the previous court decisions, they're probably right.
The cost to consumer of Windows XP Home when bundled with a computer from one of the major players is about $50. Yes the source is Balmer, so believe it as you like. As part of a $1500 computer, the price issue is pretty irrelevant.
So when you're buying 1,000 computers for an office building, and you're $25,000 over budget...
It sure can make a difference, and it will happen faster in government agencies, for a few reasons:
- They're more price-sensitive in a lot of things: if there's no money, there's no money. They can't just wait until next quarter's revenues to come in. The budget is written more or less in stone for the whole year.
- A government agency is less likely to treat their employees with kid gloves about stuff like this. "Here, we're doing this" is a lot more common, because people at the lower levels are relatively well-paid and have good benefits for the level of training and education the job requires.
- There tend to be fewer "CEO" types who need to be spoiled.
- Some of us are trying to get the point across to the masses that the transparency of OSS is a very important enhancement to government agencies who should be transparent to their citizenry.
I worked in a corporate tech department for about two years, and now I'm at a government agency (doing something completely different, though). It's a very different world; some better, some worse. But I think that Linux will be pushed into being ready for the desktop by a government "bureaucracy" first, before it becomes truly ready for prime-time.
A good example would be searching for information about a specific product -- say a dvd player, or a computer monitor. All you get are links to sites that aggregate links to places that sell the product.
1) it no longer has the usefulness it once did, due to all the spam in it.
What spam? Haven't had any problems here. Can you be more specific?
2) Google has so far failed to do anything constructive about it.
Until I know what spam you're talking about, I won't be able to evaluate that point.
3) Google's new technologies just aren't that good anymore. Look at Froogle--I have yet to see it perform as well as things like PriceWatch.
Google does one thing and does it well. Froogle hasn't been all that useful to me yet, but I haven't really needed to go farther than newegg or amazon yet. Sure, Pricewatch is better... *if* you're searching for the very, very narrow band of products they deal with. It's not a very valid comparison.
4) Google is losing business left and right--most prominent example: Yahoo is now planning to dump Google.
I don't know whether Google is actually losing business left and right. Every time I turn around I find another website that's using Google for its search engine. But the Yahoo! decision may not have to do with Google's quality... it simply may be that they don't feel they can remain competitive if people realize they're using their main competitor's product. The Google pagerank system also may choke off some of their ad sales opportunities.
5) they have failed to take advantage of the synergies possible in a full-blown portal, like Yahoo.
And amen to that! All that "synergy" just makes me dizzy. if I want to look for something on the web, I don't want to be bombarded with fifteen thousand links for stuff I never use. Yahoo! has so many services, half the time I want to use one of them I can barely find it on the home page. At least "games" and "mail" are easy enough to find without using the front page.
For search engines, though, it's simply a matter of loading a new page, and maybe changing a setting somewhere.
Except that MS wants to change that. By putting their MSN toolbar on every IE window by default, they can bypass the need to even *go* to a page to search.
You go belly up because the market DEMANDS MS products. There are no MS thugs with guns forcing companies to sell MS. It's completely and entirely market driven.
Oh, puh-lease. I suppose it was the market that drove MS's decisions to put fake error messages in Windows 3.1? That it was simply a market phenomenon when MS violated their joint development agreement with IBM by telling developers to code for Windows instead of OS/2? That the consumers demanded them to exploit dozens of cooperative development agreements with all kinds of companies, which were only made to send software engineers in to steal code and then incorporate it into Windows? Remember the Stacker settlement? They were a tiny slice of the pie.
Anyone who thinks that Windows is the dominant OS because "it's just better" is fooling themselves. MS did many, many things that were at best unethical and usually illegal to obtain their dominant position in the market. They've been convicted of it, for crying out loud. Get over it: they're crooks. Just successful ones.
No, not at all. MS did at one time require OEMs to sign contracts that they would pay for a copy of Windows for every CPU shipped, regardless of what OS was installed on the computer. The other choice was to pay full cover price for every copy of Windows, putting the OEM at a ridiculous competitive disadvantage. MS simply didn't make bulk deals on Windows licenses without that per-processor agreement. This is one of the practices that was found to be anticompetitive by the DOJ.
Complaining about how OEMs are forced to sell Windows is just like complaining about how you're forced to hike your prices when the memory prices worldwide go up. It's the market, stupid.
No, it's not. If it was the market, then prices would scale with volume in a somewhat smooth curve. MS did not set its prices based on the market for its OS. They set two prices: one for those who played ball and one for those who didn't. This isn't how supply and demand in a competitive free market works.
Get this: in the early '90's, if a company wanted to sell *any* copies of Windows, they had only two choices. Sure, one made better "business sense" than the other, in the same way that it makes more "business sense" to just pay the mob protection money rather than incur the cost of vandalism and theft. But there wasn't any reasonable way to buy only the copies of Windows that you actually intended to sell.
If you walked into McDonald's, and you found out that Quarter Pounders were $2 each, but *only* if you bought one for everyone in the family... otherwise, they're $6 each... which are you going to do? Do you care that your 10-year-old wants a Whopper instead? Or do you tell him to shut up because you're trying to feed your family?
Haven't read the rest of the responses yet, so this may be a bit redundant, but if you want to play and chat with your girlfriend when she's far away, get into an MMOG. Doesn't really matter which one, as long as you both like it... EQ, SWG, DAOC, heck, even AO isn't so bad these days. Then you can use Roger Wilco or something similar to talk together. You may want to have two separate characters, one that you play on your own when you're not both on and one that you play only alongside hers.
But, seriously, if you're thinking about getting into a game as a socialization thing, make sure it's a game that is built for socialization. My husband and I have had all sorts of happy hours playing EQ, SWG, even E&B together (before EA's ridiculous policy of expiring your subscription two days early left me with no desire to ever give them money again).
I don't think that it makes sense to support the less than 1% of users paying for basic service who are using bandwidth at three times the rate they are paying for if the result will very likely be that ALL users will likely begin to get punitive throttling and hard limits.
No, it doesn't make sense to support them. That doesn't mean that the way in which Comcast has decided to *not* support them isn't VERY bad business.
Didn't I give you two examples of how you can handle the situation... one of which is decent customer service, and the other is what they're actually doing? Of *course* they can't support these folks on the current plan, though to some extent Comcast got what *they* asked for when they advertised the impossible "unlimited" bandwidth. But the games they're playing with them are ridiculous.
Finally, it's not Comcast who has said that the soft limit is 100 GB per month, it's an anonymous employee who's afraid of losing his job if they find out he said so. Comcast *will not* release the information about how high is too high, which means that people who consume a relatively moderate 20 GB/month can sit there biting their nails about whether they'll get the letter next. And even folks with very mild usage won't know whether they're "heavy" users or not, since Comcast doesn't provide any information to their customers about how you know how much bandwidth you're sucking up.
There's a good way and a bad way to get rid of customers that cost you money. The best way, of course, is to not get into the situation in the first place, by not advertising services you have no ability or intention to provide.
I'm glad that idiot is listed so high, that lawsuit was just wrong. I guess he owns the market on "Spike" huh? I was hoping the network won, but it turns out there was a settlement, wonder how much it cost to have Mr. Lee grace the network with "his name" - what a tool
He could certainly make a case... until reading this article, I thought he had something to do with the network. Not just because they used the name "Spike," but because the style of their logo reminded me vaguely of something Spike-Lee related (though I'm not sure what).
And then there's the fact that it's a stupid name for a TV network. The first several times I saw the logo, I thought it was a *show* called Spike TV, because that would make sense.
Nope. I've seen the bottoms get popped out, but I've also seen cold cans explode. We had a very sticky front seat of a car after leaving a can in it for a cold week.
Wow... for a second I was thinking your story was impossible.
Then I realized, no, I just am a native of Los Angeles, where "antifreeze" is something you add to the radiator to keep it from overheating.
I was disappointed with the SCO mention too. It was just about how they were making enemies in the Linux community by suing IBM.
Actually, I think it was about saying that the folks in the Linux community who are angry with them are terrorists. Which is either self-pitying exaggeration or belittling the problems of terrorism, depending on how you look at it.
That's the dumbest moment in advertising? I thought that commercial was hilarious!!
Apparently, gauging from the responses, people have a love/hate relationship with the commercial.
Me, I never saw it, but it sounds like it would strike me as trying too hard to be offbeat and quirky, like most Quizno's commercials. They've always made me feel like the only point to going there is if I care what fast-food wrapper I'm seen with.
Seems like they might be hitting a particular target group right on the nose, but alienating a lot of other folks at the same time.
I understand _exactly_ what they are saying on both sides. My point is be careful what you ask for. If you want your connection to cost $40 and you want your ISP to set precisely defined limits that apply to everyone with the assumption they will use every bit of it, you're going to find yourself with a 128Kbps cable modem.
You're saying that what these people think the cable company told them they have for service is unreasonable. This is true. It's not actually *possible* to provide "unlimited" bandwidth.
But how the hell are people supposed to know that, in the face of a company who supposedly knows this business telling them otherwise? Why wouldn't they believe that the company is capable of giving them exactly what they say they are?
Fuck him and everyone like him. They need to buy SLAs. They know it.
A few of them might, but most of them probably actually really don't. Keep in mind, Comcast won't even tell them how much bandwidth they are using. Measurement of bandwidth is not extremely intuitive, even if you *do* know the difference between a megabit and a megabyte (and your average computer user is still struggling with the RAM/hard drive distinction, from my personal and professional experience). People know that cable modem is magnitudes "faster" than dial-up, but heck, they don't even know the difference between latency and bandwidth, both of which make broadband "faster" than dial-up. They're shocked when you tell them why satellite is bad for gaming (but isn't it as "fast" as my old DSL?").
You're simply expecting these users to correctly "interpret" the advertising, when it's not their responsibility and often not within their grasp. If Comcast wants to place a limit on bandwidth, fine, they have to come up with an actual number and give it to these people, *and* help them figure out how much they're using. Otherwise they're going to piss people off (as they're now doing) and leave folks with a nasty taste in their mouth about the whole thing, a la "Gee, what if I get one of those letters like my neighbor Fred did?" Keep in mind, since they won't tell ANYONE how much bandwidth is "ok" or how much they are using, it leaves everyone uncertain about whether or not they're next.
I have that issue with my (dialup) isp, that the isp itself has an unlimited policy, but they forwarded me a nastygram that *they* recieved from their upstream provider during a month where I was downloading iso's heavily.
What? They are forwarding their own provider problems to you? How unprofessional.
Just inform them that if they can't handle their own business transactions without your help, you'll need to go with someone who can. If they provide you with unlimited service, and your heavy usage under those terms gives them upstream troubles, that's up to *them* to handle, not you.
So is it ok to offer... customers toothpaste that protects from caries... even though all these products don't do that in reality?
Well, my toothpaste label does say "anticavity" and furthermore that it "contains fluoride for cavity prevention" [emphasis original], and the back contains the usual American Dental Association tag that "Tom's of Maine Natural Fluoride Toothpaste has been shown to be an effective decay-preventive dentifrice which can be of significant value in a conscientiously applied program of oral hygiene and regular professional care."
So that might not be the best example for this situation... (especially since I've never had a cavity).;-)
In general, I agree with you, but someone had to nitpick of course, and it's probably better that it's not someone who disagrees...
Overall I thought the letter was rude. They did, however, fail to take in to account that we had barely used the connection during the previous few months. I don't recall seeing any mail from them during that time thanking me for going well under my alotted hours, thus saving them money.
But, they did several things that Comcast failed to do, that are good customer policies:
- Gave you actual numbers for what they consider a "Power User."
- Gave you a remedy if you wish to keep using at this rate.
- Advised you of specifically what action they would take to discourage you from overusing the service.
It would be good if they took into account your usage history as a whole, and sent you a letter advising you of your usage for the current month, that it exceeds their normal limits, but that it appears to be an aberration and might simply be because you switched dial-up software and it doesn't work as you expect or something. And that they will take the other measures described if the high usage continues in the next billing period. That puts you on notice, so if it turns out your new roommate is spending three hours jacking off to internet porn every morning before work, you can have a little chat with them and avoid any issues. But having a stated policy and enforcing it in a manner that gives users some choice about what to do and power over what actions are taken against them is much better business than Comcast.
Not necessarily. In this case for example, ALL customers say "Cool, it's unlimited". So let's say 1000 customers subscribe. in those, 5 are going to "Abuse" it, and are going to get kicked out. They are still left with 995 customers that consume 10MB/month and pay for the "unlimited" service. Looks good to me.
Well, on paper it does...
But here's the thing: it's lousy customer service to say "Ok, you're a customer we don't want, get lost... no, there's nothing you can do about it" (which is basically what they've said; though they imply that there's a remedy, they won't tell you what it is). You can argue that it doesn't matter if you piss off the customers that are costing you too much to service, except that...
- It doesn't cost you too much to provide them with cable TV, and they will say "screw you too, Comcast" and go satellite.
- It doesn't cost you too much to provide service to everyone they know who is in your service area, and you're liable to lose a few of those people also when they hear this horror story.
It's one thing to say "Ok, listen, we don't want to place hard caps on our customers, but you're just *way* out there. You've averaged X bandwidth per month; our whole userbase has averaged Y. Let's talk about what might be the issue, and whether you'd be better served with a different package. Here's a handy tool for tracking your bandwidth from your computer, so you can see what it is you're doing that's causing this issue."
It's another thing to say "You're doing something wrong. Stop it. We can't tell you just what's wrong about it, or how you stop doing it, or what the difference between correct behavior and incorrect behavior is... you should just *know*." This is my mom's attitude toward discipline, and believe me, if I had been able to switch providers, I would have.
Anyway, in the first case, you are servicing your customer in an appropriate manner, and regardless of the outcome they will probably feel like you're a decent business. In the second case, you leave people with a Very Bad Feeling about the whole situation, and they will spread that around, possibly losing you a whole lot of other current or potential business.
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Not to me. I fought to use Netscape 4 for years and finally got sick of the constant crashes and switched to the dark side. I've tried a number of Mozilla releases and haven't found the same speed and stability I get from IE. I admit I haven't tried in the last year, it's just such a pain to switch browser only to switch back.
Yeah, I used Netscape 4.77 up until Mozilla got to 1.0, actually. And the crashes were annoying.
But when IE 4 crashed (and I used to use it a lot too) it took my entire DESKTOP with it. And so, even if Netscape crashed more often (as I recall, they were even) I could keep going with other programs.
Feature-wise, they were similar, except for ActiveX (which most folks don't use because it's so platform-specific, not to mention insecure). IE5 beats Netscape 4, sure, but that's not the comparison that was being made.
redneckistan
heheheheee... we have a new name for the flyover zone!
(apologies to those of half-decent intelligence and education who got stuck in the Midwestern United States by some cosmic folly...)
Analysis shows that all other sites on that router ring are working properly, that the net is no slower than usual and that You can still download SCO Linux from their site.
That link prompts me for a username and password. Darn! I really wanted to download something from them and add to the traffic!
It should be telling that 99.5% of the customers are unaffected. Those 99.5% "get it."
No, actually, not at all.
Every single customer who hears about them doing this and has no idea how much "bandwidth" they might be using (or what that even is) is affected, because they don't know if they are next.
It has nothing to do with the definition of "unlimited," either. It has to do with the fact that they told people they were violating rules that they still refuse to even describe in any coherent way.
It doesn't matter that they're right about not wanting to serve these customers. It's just bad business to handle it the way they have. It's indefensible... there is NO REASON to go about it the way they have, but you seem to ignore that. There are plenty of perfectly acceptable ways to handle it, but you don't care. All you fixate on is that "Well, the customers were wrong to use that much bandwidth!" which is entirely irrelevant.
I'm not saying, have never said, and never will say that Comcast should just suck it up and let them use as much bandwidth as they want at the current rate. I'm saying that sending vague threatening letters, sometimes with completely incorrect information, and absolutely nothing solid about what is wrong, is a very bad way to handle your issues with customers.
NO! You can't choose to go out and get Bob's Electricity vs Larry's Electricity. Its a naturalized monopoly. You don't have a choice of utility company, you do have one about which OS you run. Jeez.
Except that, a whole lot of people have argued that MS didn't do anything *really* wrong in how it achieved OS market dominance, because it was for a greater good... without that standardization, we would never have gotten so far with desktop computer technology.
Now, I don't necessarily agree that it's all ok because there was something more important at stake. I still think that either MS should have played fair and let the victor emerge from natural market forces, or the government should have stepped in a long time ago to help form a "standard," but regulated OS. Still, if you accept the idea that in order for us to make progress with desktop technology, we need a "standard" OS, then you are arguing that operating systems do not and should not work in the free-market competitive system. Instead they should be naturalized monopolies.
And with that, look at regulation of utilities: since I *can't* just ditch SCE and go with LADWP (oh, how I would love to), they have to play by much stricter rules than companies who can be regulated by market competition. There's an argument for operating system software to work the same way.
I AGREE 100% There are places in this world that do not have international copy right laws.. Places that Linux and Windows XP sit on the same shelf in a software store and cost the same damn price.. Know what... No one touches the linux stuff.
That supports the notion that Microsoft has a clear monopoly in the OS market. Which does mean they have to play by different rules in the other software markets.
On the other hand, it could be that no one's paying 4000 toman for RH 9 because they can download it for free...
Taht's not true at all. Many, many people know and do have other options. I don't use Linux because it sucks (I'm not getting into this conversation). I don't use Apple because it's overpriced, and I don't like the lock-in. Thus, I *choose* Windows.
That's all well and good. You're in plentiful company, with 95% of desktop machines running some flavor of Windows.
But then, since this *is* a monopoly (and we won't even get into how Windows gained monopoly status), certain rules apply. You're not allowed to use monopoly position in one market, however it was gained (legally or illegally) to leverage your position in another market. For example, it's not legal to use your OS monopoly to leverage your position in the web browser, office productivity, or media player markets. These other products have to stand on their own merits, independent of the control you have over the OS.
The courts have ruled on the browser market; MS illegally leveraged their position there. Corel never did take them on about the office productivity market, but they might have had a case. Now Real is giving them hell, not because they integrated WMP into the OS, but because they forbade OEMs with Windows license agreements (i.e., all of them) to bundle competing media players. This is a no-no if you have a monopoly, because they can't simply choose to bundle a different OS to get out of the agreement. It's *irrelevant* that Real is only doing this because they started sucking and people didn't want to use them anymore, because the argument is that MS's OEM agreements violated anti-trust law, and based on the previous court decisions, they're probably right.
The cost to consumer of Windows XP Home when bundled with a computer from one of the major players is about $50. Yes the source is Balmer, so believe it as you like. As part of a $1500 computer, the price issue is pretty irrelevant.
So when you're buying 1,000 computers for an office building, and you're $25,000 over budget...
It sure can make a difference, and it will happen faster in government agencies, for a few reasons:
- They're more price-sensitive in a lot of things: if there's no money, there's no money. They can't just wait until next quarter's revenues to come in. The budget is written more or less in stone for the whole year.
- A government agency is less likely to treat their employees with kid gloves about stuff like this. "Here, we're doing this" is a lot more common, because people at the lower levels are relatively well-paid and have good benefits for the level of training and education the job requires.
- There tend to be fewer "CEO" types who need to be spoiled.
- Some of us are trying to get the point across to the masses that the transparency of OSS is a very important enhancement to government agencies who should be transparent to their citizenry.
I worked in a corporate tech department for about two years, and now I'm at a government agency (doing something completely different, though). It's a very different world; some better, some worse. But I think that Linux will be pushed into being ready for the desktop by a government "bureaucracy" first, before it becomes truly ready for prime-time.
A good example would be searching for information about a specific product -- say a dvd player, or a computer monitor. All you get are links to sites that aggregate links to places that sell the product.
Unless you type "-buy" at the end...
1) it no longer has the usefulness it once did, due to all the spam in it.
What spam? Haven't had any problems here. Can you be more specific?
2) Google has so far failed to do anything constructive about it.
Until I know what spam you're talking about, I won't be able to evaluate that point.
3) Google's new technologies just aren't that good anymore. Look at Froogle--I have yet to see it perform as well as things like PriceWatch.
Google does one thing and does it well. Froogle hasn't been all that useful to me yet, but I haven't really needed to go farther than newegg or amazon yet. Sure, Pricewatch is better... *if* you're searching for the very, very narrow band of products they deal with. It's not a very valid comparison.
4) Google is losing business left and right--most prominent example: Yahoo is now planning to dump Google.
I don't know whether Google is actually losing business left and right. Every time I turn around I find another website that's using Google for its search engine. But the Yahoo! decision may not have to do with Google's quality... it simply may be that they don't feel they can remain competitive if people realize they're using their main competitor's product. The Google pagerank system also may choke off some of their ad sales opportunities.
5) they have failed to take advantage of the synergies possible in a full-blown portal, like Yahoo.
And amen to that! All that "synergy" just makes me dizzy. if I want to look for something on the web, I don't want to be bombarded with fifteen thousand links for stuff I never use. Yahoo! has so many services, half the time I want to use one of them I can barely find it on the home page. At least "games" and "mail" are easy enough to find without using the front page.
For search engines, though, it's simply a matter of loading a new page, and maybe changing a setting somewhere.
Except that MS wants to change that. By putting their MSN toolbar on every IE window by default, they can bypass the need to even *go* to a page to search.
You go belly up because the market DEMANDS MS products. There are no MS thugs with guns forcing companies to sell MS. It's completely and entirely market driven.
Oh, puh-lease. I suppose it was the market that drove MS's decisions to put fake error messages in Windows 3.1? That it was simply a market phenomenon when MS violated their joint development agreement with IBM by telling developers to code for Windows instead of OS/2? That the consumers demanded them to exploit dozens of cooperative development agreements with all kinds of companies, which were only made to send software engineers in to steal code and then incorporate it into Windows? Remember the Stacker settlement? They were a tiny slice of the pie.
Anyone who thinks that Windows is the dominant OS because "it's just better" is fooling themselves. MS did many, many things that were at best unethical and usually illegal to obtain their dominant position in the market. They've been convicted of it, for crying out loud. Get over it: they're crooks. Just successful ones.
No, not at all. MS did at one time require OEMs to sign contracts that they would pay for a copy of Windows for every CPU shipped, regardless of what OS was installed on the computer. The other choice was to pay full cover price for every copy of Windows, putting the OEM at a ridiculous competitive disadvantage. MS simply didn't make bulk deals on Windows licenses without that per-processor agreement. This is one of the practices that was found to be anticompetitive by the DOJ.
Complaining about how OEMs are forced to sell Windows is just like complaining about how you're forced to hike your prices when the memory prices worldwide go up. It's the market, stupid.
No, it's not. If it was the market, then prices would scale with volume in a somewhat smooth curve. MS did not set its prices based on the market for its OS. They set two prices: one for those who played ball and one for those who didn't. This isn't how supply and demand in a competitive free market works.
Get this: in the early '90's, if a company wanted to sell *any* copies of Windows, they had only two choices. Sure, one made better "business sense" than the other, in the same way that it makes more "business sense" to just pay the mob protection money rather than incur the cost of vandalism and theft. But there wasn't any reasonable way to buy only the copies of Windows that you actually intended to sell.
If you walked into McDonald's, and you found out that Quarter Pounders were $2 each, but *only* if you bought one for everyone in the family... otherwise, they're $6 each... which are you going to do? Do you care that your 10-year-old wants a Whopper instead? Or do you tell him to shut up because you're trying to feed your family?
Haven't read the rest of the responses yet, so this may be a bit redundant, but if you want to play and chat with your girlfriend when she's far away, get into an MMOG. Doesn't really matter which one, as long as you both like it... EQ, SWG, DAOC, heck, even AO isn't so bad these days. Then you can use Roger Wilco or something similar to talk together. You may want to have two separate characters, one that you play on your own when you're not both on and one that you play only alongside hers.
But, seriously, if you're thinking about getting into a game as a socialization thing, make sure it's a game that is built for socialization. My husband and I have had all sorts of happy hours playing EQ, SWG, even E&B together (before EA's ridiculous policy of expiring your subscription two days early left me with no desire to ever give them money again).
I don't think that it makes sense to support the less than 1% of users paying for basic service who are using bandwidth at three times the rate they are paying for if the result will very likely be that ALL users will likely begin to get punitive throttling and hard limits.
No, it doesn't make sense to support them. That doesn't mean that the way in which Comcast has decided to *not* support them isn't VERY bad business.
Didn't I give you two examples of how you can handle the situation... one of which is decent customer service, and the other is what they're actually doing? Of *course* they can't support these folks on the current plan, though to some extent Comcast got what *they* asked for when they advertised the impossible "unlimited" bandwidth. But the games they're playing with them are ridiculous.
Finally, it's not Comcast who has said that the soft limit is 100 GB per month, it's an anonymous employee who's afraid of losing his job if they find out he said so. Comcast *will not* release the information about how high is too high, which means that people who consume a relatively moderate 20 GB/month can sit there biting their nails about whether they'll get the letter next. And even folks with very mild usage won't know whether they're "heavy" users or not, since Comcast doesn't provide any information to their customers about how you know how much bandwidth you're sucking up.
There's a good way and a bad way to get rid of customers that cost you money. The best way, of course, is to not get into the situation in the first place, by not advertising services you have no ability or intention to provide.
I'm glad that idiot is listed so high, that lawsuit was just wrong. I guess he owns the market on "Spike" huh? I was hoping the network won, but it turns out there was a settlement, wonder how much it cost to have Mr. Lee grace the network with "his name" - what a tool
He could certainly make a case... until reading this article, I thought he had something to do with the network. Not just because they used the name "Spike," but because the style of their logo reminded me vaguely of something Spike-Lee related (though I'm not sure what).
And then there's the fact that it's a stupid name for a TV network. The first several times I saw the logo, I thought it was a *show* called Spike TV, because that would make sense.
Nope. I've seen the bottoms get popped out, but I've also seen cold cans explode. We had a very sticky front seat of a car after leaving a can in it for a cold week.
Wow... for a second I was thinking your story was impossible.
Then I realized, no, I just am a native of Los Angeles, where "antifreeze" is something you add to the radiator to keep it from overheating.
How about Apple's release of countless models of Macintosh systems in the mid-90s,
This was just the 2003 list. You want the top business blunders of all time? That would take a lot more pages.
I was disappointed with the SCO mention too. It was just about how they were making enemies in the Linux community by suing IBM.
Actually, I think it was about saying that the folks in the Linux community who are angry with them are terrorists. Which is either self-pitying exaggeration or belittling the problems of terrorism, depending on how you look at it.
That's the dumbest moment in advertising? I thought that commercial was hilarious!!
Apparently, gauging from the responses, people have a love/hate relationship with the commercial.
Me, I never saw it, but it sounds like it would strike me as trying too hard to be offbeat and quirky, like most Quizno's commercials. They've always made me feel like the only point to going there is if I care what fast-food wrapper I'm seen with.
Seems like they might be hitting a particular target group right on the nose, but alienating a lot of other folks at the same time.
I understand _exactly_ what they are saying on both sides. My point is be careful what you ask for. If you want your connection to cost $40 and you want your ISP to set precisely defined limits that apply to everyone with the assumption they will use every bit of it, you're going to find yourself with a 128Kbps cable modem.
You're saying that what these people think the cable company told them they have for service is unreasonable. This is true. It's not actually *possible* to provide "unlimited" bandwidth.
But how the hell are people supposed to know that, in the face of a company who supposedly knows this business telling them otherwise? Why wouldn't they believe that the company is capable of giving them exactly what they say they are?
Fuck him and everyone like him. They need to buy SLAs. They know it.
A few of them might, but most of them probably actually really don't. Keep in mind, Comcast won't even tell them how much bandwidth they are using. Measurement of bandwidth is not extremely intuitive, even if you *do* know the difference between a megabit and a megabyte (and your average computer user is still struggling with the RAM/hard drive distinction, from my personal and professional experience). People know that cable modem is magnitudes "faster" than dial-up, but heck, they don't even know the difference between latency and bandwidth, both of which make broadband "faster" than dial-up. They're shocked when you tell them why satellite is bad for gaming (but isn't it as "fast" as my old DSL?").
You're simply expecting these users to correctly "interpret" the advertising, when it's not their responsibility and often not within their grasp. If Comcast wants to place a limit on bandwidth, fine, they have to come up with an actual number and give it to these people, *and* help them figure out how much they're using. Otherwise they're going to piss people off (as they're now doing) and leave folks with a nasty taste in their mouth about the whole thing, a la "Gee, what if I get one of those letters like my neighbor Fred did?" Keep in mind, since they won't tell ANYONE how much bandwidth is "ok" or how much they are using, it leaves everyone uncertain about whether or not they're next.
I have that issue with my (dialup) isp, that the isp itself has an unlimited policy, but they forwarded me a nastygram that *they* recieved from their upstream provider during a month where I was downloading iso's heavily.
What? They are forwarding their own provider problems to you? How unprofessional.
Just inform them that if they can't handle their own business transactions without your help, you'll need to go with someone who can. If they provide you with unlimited service, and your heavy usage under those terms gives them upstream troubles, that's up to *them* to handle, not you.
So is it ok to offer... customers toothpaste that protects from caries... even though all these products don't do that in reality?
;-)
Well, my toothpaste label does say "anticavity" and furthermore that it "contains fluoride for cavity prevention" [emphasis original], and the back contains the usual American Dental Association tag that "Tom's of Maine Natural Fluoride Toothpaste has been shown to be an effective decay-preventive dentifrice which can be of significant value in a conscientiously applied program of oral hygiene and regular professional care."
So that might not be the best example for this situation... (especially since I've never had a cavity).
In general, I agree with you, but someone had to nitpick of course, and it's probably better that it's not someone who disagrees...
Overall I thought the letter was rude. They did, however, fail to take in to account that we had barely used the connection during the previous few months. I don't recall seeing any mail from them during that time thanking me for going well under my alotted hours, thus saving them money.
But, they did several things that Comcast failed to do, that are good customer policies:
- Gave you actual numbers for what they consider a "Power User."
- Gave you a remedy if you wish to keep using at this rate.
- Advised you of specifically what action they would take to discourage you from overusing the service.
It would be good if they took into account your usage history as a whole, and sent you a letter advising you of your usage for the current month, that it exceeds their normal limits, but that it appears to be an aberration and might simply be because you switched dial-up software and it doesn't work as you expect or something. And that they will take the other measures described if the high usage continues in the next billing period. That puts you on notice, so if it turns out your new roommate is spending three hours jacking off to internet porn every morning before work, you can have a little chat with them and avoid any issues. But having a stated policy and enforcing it in a manner that gives users some choice about what to do and power over what actions are taken against them is much better business than Comcast.
Not necessarily. In this case for example, ALL customers say "Cool, it's unlimited". So let's say 1000 customers subscribe. in those, 5 are going to "Abuse" it, and are going to get kicked out. They are still left with 995 customers that consume 10MB/month and pay for the "unlimited" service. Looks good to me.
Well, on paper it does...
But here's the thing: it's lousy customer service to say "Ok, you're a customer we don't want, get lost... no, there's nothing you can do about it" (which is basically what they've said; though they imply that there's a remedy, they won't tell you what it is). You can argue that it doesn't matter if you piss off the customers that are costing you too much to service, except that...
- It doesn't cost you too much to provide them with cable TV, and they will say "screw you too, Comcast" and go satellite.
- It doesn't cost you too much to provide service to everyone they know who is in your service area, and you're liable to lose a few of those people also when they hear this horror story.
It's one thing to say "Ok, listen, we don't want to place hard caps on our customers, but you're just *way* out there. You've averaged X bandwidth per month; our whole userbase has averaged Y. Let's talk about what might be the issue, and whether you'd be better served with a different package. Here's a handy tool for tracking your bandwidth from your computer, so you can see what it is you're doing that's causing this issue."
It's another thing to say "You're doing something wrong. Stop it. We can't tell you just what's wrong about it, or how you stop doing it, or what the difference between correct behavior and incorrect behavior is... you should just *know*." This is my mom's attitude toward discipline, and believe me, if I had been able to switch providers, I would have.
Anyway, in the first case, you are servicing your customer in an appropriate manner, and regardless of the outcome they will probably feel like you're a decent business. In the second case, you leave people with a Very Bad Feeling about the whole situation, and they will spread that around, possibly losing you a whole lot of other current or potential business.