"I can't come up with anything else in the entire marketing world where marketers knowingly introduce a flawed or inadequate product [and] it helps grow your user base." '"
So says Peter Sealy.
The funny thing is both beta's mentioned by the article are not flawed or inadequite. Todays betas are far closer to an actual realease than previous generations of software.
Also they forgot to mention that betas are typically free. Who wouldn't want free near commercial grade software?
power supply, cables, and controllers -- add another $55
*Retail Price* *Maybe* - The estimates given for the raw materials cost sound suspect. I'm pretty sure that a contract to deliver parts for the XBox comes with a much lower price per unit than your average trip to the computer superstore.
If you read the patent text he's basically describing the warp drive from star trek.
"whereby providing for the gravitational imbalance such that the lowered pressure of inflationary vacuum state is pulling said space vehicle forward in modified spacetime."
interesting i guess.
in normal fashion both slashdot and the reporting news outlet have got it all wrong. it's not a perpetual motion machine - becuase it requires input of a nuclear reactor to make it "go". It's no more a perpetual motion machine than a space probe launched from earth.
nor is this "anti gravity". the patent describes a device that will "modify" space time such that an area of "low pressure vacuum" and "high pressure vacuum" are created. the low pressure area is infront of the ship and the high pressure is behind the ship. the ship travels forward because it's caught in the middle. i guess.
Where can you go to get a Linux preinstall? Does that same manufacturer sell the Linux system (or *gasp* empty system) cheaper or more expensive than the equivalent Windows box? (Hint: 99% of the time, its cheaper to get the Windows box, and wipe it).
Hardware and software are not related for the sake of discussion of a software monopoly. There are enough vendors in the market that will sell a machine without an operating system that it is not possible to make a case that MS is monopolizing the hardware distribution channels.
Linux doesn't even _exist_ in that area, especially in places where piracy runs rampant. Linux becomes the premium operating system, which doesn't make any sense, because it doesn't cost the manufacturer _anything_ to ship an empty system, and it costs little to image Linux systems
False. Some of Dell's systems now come with no OS option, Linux and Windows for example. Any local shop will install an alterante OS for you. Linuxs' price is high becuase demand (by the market-at-large) is low.
This is misleading. Microsoft is a monopoly because they are the only ones who can enter into the various distributions channels of products termed 'operating systems' without incurring unreasonable economic burdens.
There is only *one* ditribution channel that seems to have unreasonable economic burdens, that of the pre-install. The cost to box and ship the software or deliver it on-line is the "same" as any other software vendor. Linspire has already proved this becuase they are offering to license their wares for a scant 5M U.S.
But make no mistake; Microsoft is a monopoly, and that's been 'proven' in federal court.
Monopoly on what? On operating systems? Becuase that is what we are talking about. If I recall the orginally anti trust case was brought because microsoft was using their power as the primary desktop OS to stifle competition with other non-os microsoft applications. They were found guilty, and they certainly were.
We're talking about the OS now - it *is* a different thing. There is nothing at all preventing a user from switching OS's. They have the choice. Not only do they have the choice, but it is rediculosly easy to aquire an alternate OS. Until XP or Vista starts to defend it's installation by refusing to remove itself from the harware upon which it was installed (similar to IE's refusal to fully delete itself) - the reality will be that the OS market is open season for competition.
MS isn't in the business of knowing who you are or what you do. They want you to buy their software, not collect your personal data. It shows in their software. Activation is completely anonymous as is error reporting and authenticity checks. This is not true however, for Google.
They want to know who you are, what you do, what you click, buy, read and where you want to go. It's not going to stop there. Google wants information about every corner of the world. Thanks to a digital age, it is possible to gleen this information from our on-line habits.
MS is making a strike at google's efforts by putting tighter restrictions on how they can use, and possibly distribute your information in the future.
Interesting that you bring this up. Are you checking the release version? I'm pretty sure they wouldn't include a merge module for a beta of the dotnet framework.
Yes, they expire at some point. The CTP Sept. of SQL Server studio will tell you how many days you have left (Help -> About...), I think it's almost a year from install. I don't know about the older versions. VS Studio has no such warning but expect it to work for about 6 months.
You wouldn't know really if you at the receiving end of a monopoly power. You've probably overpaid for your iPod but there is no way to tell because there are no other players that support the PlayFair format, thus no competition for your FairPlay player dollars. Why is it that WMA files play on a variety of players?
Format wars only hurt us, the consumers. Most formats are open - but Apple is pursing a rather old and archaic strategy A LA MS word formats.
As far as MS goes - it's a completly different discussion.
MS's antitrust suit was orginally raised by competitors of MS. There is no one right now in a position to challenge Apple in that regard except consumers. There is no competiton with Apple hardware, becuase there cannot be. Doesn't that strike you as wrong?
There is competition for iTunes. There is competition for the iPod. It's entirely possible to use iTunes to buy music that doesn't go to an iPod at all, and it's entirely possible to use an iPod with someoen else's service.
Last time i checked the iPod was then only device that could play AAC DRM files. That's pretty monopolistic.
You are smoking crack. The iPod and iTunes are as anti-competitive as it gets. The hardware is completely closed and no third party software can run on it. There are also a limited number of codec's that work with the iPod. The only thing that you can do is play AAC, MP3 and DRM'd apple music on it. It is a black box. It even enforces DRM practices on non-DRM music.
Apple chooses to enforce their monopoly on the market by forcing consumers to use only apple products to access the iTunes music store - No iPod, no iTunes. It is a monopoly now - because Apple currently has a majority of the mp3 player market share, and a 100% monopoly on music encoded in an Apple DRM format. They are also actively discouraging 3rd parties from interfacing with their hardware and software (real player). Thus, they are using their monopoly advantage to exclude competition in the market of players that can play AAC/DRM formatted music. It is of course their "right" because they manufacture the hardware and software. Ultimately, the lack of formats on the iPod reduces the consumers' choice decreases the utility of the device thus harming the consumer. This again is the mark of a monopoly. Though the rough textbook definition is "monopoly: If a certain firm is the only one that can produce a certain good, it has a monopoly in the market for that good." (econterms.com)
To put this in a MS context: If Microsoft manufactured their own player - and their own software for playing and listening to music. Then they *actively* discouraged other vendors and companies from interfacing with their software and seemingly refused to grant licenses at a reasonable rate - they would probably be taken to court. As it is, there are a variety of WMV capable players out there and a number of music services that utilize the format for content delivery.
As a parallel observation to the current discussion - Apple has actively pursued an anti-competitive strategy both on a software and hardware level. Take for example the difficulty in getting Linux to run on Mac hardware, or BeOS. Or perhaps the total lack of 3rd party hardware that can run OS X? OS X as it currently ships has as many or more features than XP SP2. The real indicator of monopolistic practices at work is a lack of diversity in a market place. In the case of apple, there are apple logos on just about everything a Mac user would buy, or what the get for "free". Sure, there are features there that other products do not have such as the AirPort express with iTunes integration. However, that is a result of Apple's unwillingness to license Apple DRM to other companies on a reasonable basis. Apple's transition to a Media platform will only worsen this trend. As this battle continues Apple will use licensing and intellectual property as their cudal in the fight against competition.
It would not be so bad if all of Apple's products functioned as well as they are formed. Apple's products are generally beautiful, but the nice design comes at a cost. In the last three years hardware issues have plagued the iPod line. Starting with the Apple Battery scandal, Massive iPod mini DOA issues, almost everyone I know has had some problem or another with their iPod. Their machines have had problems as well. Most recently the 1.8 G5 iMacs have had thermal issues. On a software front, Apples updates have caused serious problems on a couple of occasions in the last few years. Pretty sad considering Apple knows every single machine and it's shipped configuration. The real kicker is that Apple doesn't seem to care. Getting these issues resolved have caused end users time and money because of slow apple response, and poor policy making (high restocking fees, hidden part return deadlines). My point in all of this is that Mac users have to put up with this, and Apple has no market force to correct it. The reason? Apple has a monopoly on the Mac.
In closing this kind of thing can only last so long - I would argue that the speed with which the iPod Nano screen scratch suit was brought against Apple
This is total junk science. Why is this being posted as "news"? Paul claim "Without this electrical circuit, the storm would fail almost instantly due to".
The use of the word "instantly" when discussing any weather phenomena is not accurate. Everything takes time to form, or not - to use such terms indicates the author is over exagerating his claims.
Terms like "massive capacitor bank" and "harmonic circuits" are also used to wow the audience into thinking that perhaps the author might actually know what he is talking about.
Not only that but it's on "opensourcenergy.org" after poking around I felt like I should get my tin foil hat out, I'd be in good company. Check out this great piece of reporting: http://www.opensourceenergy.org/_layouts/apps/dp/i ndex.asp
JS is enough to make someone stop programming and never look back. You need a compiled language first so the student can begin to understand syntax. After syntax you need to understand data types and flow. Then you can begin to create a program.
Browser Javascript provides little/no guidance in any of these persuits. Nor is there a truly coherent reference on just how each of the JS engines are implemented.
Compiled, well documented languages are a good place to start. Pascal or C are good bets.
This is just silly. PHP is far from "simpler" than Java.
He does not mean simple as in stupid, he means simple as in easy to use. The infrastructure, the language, the libraries are all more accessible in PHP than in Java. It is for these reasons programmers like PHP.
Your points Re: Tasks that are more sophisticated are right on though.
Big PR stunts? Gates has been giving money for *years* (at least as far back as 1997) to charitable organziations. He's also personally responsible for the gates foundation. MS, and gates in particular has been quite generous. Much more so than other silicon valley tech companies. In fact, i recently tried to find information on charitable giving done by steve jobs or apple but to no avail. It seems that they collected some money for the red cross in the wake of katrina but i didn't find any actual donations from apple. How generous of them to off "free" advertising space.
Slashdot Mirror
Hi, RTFA.
He wrote about how the EXPERIENCE of flying is god awful. He's right too.
RTFA.
"I can't come up with anything else in the entire marketing world where marketers knowingly introduce a flawed or inadequate product [and] it helps grow your user base." '"
So says Peter Sealy.
The funny thing is both beta's mentioned by the article are not flawed or inadequite. Todays betas are far closer to an actual realease than previous generations of software.
Also they forgot to mention that betas are typically free. Who wouldn't want free near commercial grade software?
power supply, cables, and controllers -- add another $55
*Retail Price* *Maybe* - The estimates given for the raw materials cost sound suspect. I'm pretty sure that a contract to deliver parts for the XBox comes with a much lower price per unit than your average trip to the computer superstore.
Fearless Immortal Mice.
The answer is! 42.
If you read the patent text he's basically describing the warp drive from star trek.
"whereby providing for the gravitational imbalance such that the lowered pressure of inflationary vacuum state is pulling said space vehicle forward in modified spacetime."
interesting i guess.
in normal fashion both slashdot and the reporting news outlet have got it all wrong. it's not a perpetual motion machine - becuase it requires input of a nuclear reactor to make it "go". It's no more a perpetual motion machine than a space probe launched from earth.
nor is this "anti gravity". the patent describes a device that will "modify" space time such that an area of "low pressure vacuum" and "high pressure vacuum" are created. the low pressure area is infront of the ship and the high pressure is behind the ship. the ship travels forward because it's caught in the middle. i guess.
not a physics major.
Where can you go to get a Linux preinstall? Does that same manufacturer sell the Linux system (or *gasp* empty system) cheaper or more expensive than the equivalent Windows box? (Hint: 99% of the time, its cheaper to get the Windows box, and wipe it).
Hardware and software are not related for the sake of discussion of a software monopoly. There are enough vendors in the market that will sell a machine without an operating system that it is not possible to make a case that MS is monopolizing the hardware distribution channels.
Linux doesn't even _exist_ in that area, especially in places where piracy runs rampant. Linux becomes the premium operating system, which doesn't make any sense, because it doesn't cost the manufacturer _anything_ to ship an empty system, and it costs little to image Linux systems
False. Some of Dell's systems now come with no OS option, Linux and Windows for example. Any local shop will install an alterante OS for you. Linuxs' price is high becuase demand (by the market-at-large) is low.
This is misleading. Microsoft is a monopoly because they are the only ones who can enter into the various distributions channels of products termed 'operating systems' without incurring unreasonable economic burdens.
There is only *one* ditribution channel that seems to have unreasonable economic burdens, that of the pre-install. The cost to box and ship the software or deliver it on-line is the "same" as any other software vendor. Linspire has already proved this becuase they are offering to license their wares for a scant 5M U.S.
But make no mistake; Microsoft is a monopoly, and that's been 'proven' in federal court.
Monopoly on what? On operating systems? Becuase that is what we are talking about. If I recall the orginally anti trust case was brought because microsoft was using their power as the primary desktop OS to stifle competition with other non-os microsoft applications. They were found guilty, and they certainly were.
We're talking about the OS now - it *is* a different thing. There is nothing at all preventing a user from switching OS's. They have the choice. Not only do they have the choice, but it is rediculosly easy to aquire an alternate OS. Until XP or Vista starts to defend it's installation by refusing to remove itself from the harware upon which it was installed (similar to IE's refusal to fully delete itself) - the reality will be that the OS market is open season for competition.
This is the second article posted from "Open Source Energy". It is nothing but junk science.
STOP POSTING THIS CRAP.
This isn't news - or anything it's just junk science written up by people who manage to take other people's money and waste it in the name "science".
More importantly, however, it would break South Korea loose from the monopolistic grasp of Microsoft, which the country currently finds itself under
if there is another product for sale (linspire) then MS does not have a monopoly.
Two words: Larry Ellison.
This is a preemptive strike against Google.
MS isn't in the business of knowing who you are or what you do. They want you to buy their software, not collect your personal data. It shows in their software. Activation is completely anonymous as is error reporting and authenticity checks. This is not true however, for Google.
They want to know who you are, what you do, what you click, buy, read and where you want to go. It's not going to stop there. Google wants information about every corner of the world. Thanks to a digital age, it is possible to gleen this information from our on-line habits.
MS is making a strike at google's efforts by putting tighter restrictions on how they can use, and possibly distribute your information in the future.
Interesting that you bring this up. Are you checking the release version? I'm pretty sure they wouldn't include a merge module for a beta of the dotnet framework.
Yes, they expire at some point. The CTP Sept. of SQL Server studio will tell you how many days you have left (Help -> About...), I think it's almost a year from install. I don't know about the older versions. VS Studio has no such warning but expect it to work for about 6 months.
Surprisingly, anti-Microsoft sentiment had less to do with the choice than one might imagine. Linux stands on its own merits.
Or the other possibility is that people (non-techies) don't care what their OS is as long as it is useable. It needs to "just work".
You wouldn't know really if you at the receiving end of a monopoly power. You've probably overpaid for your iPod but there is no way to tell because there are no other players that support the PlayFair format, thus no competition for your FairPlay player dollars. Why is it that WMA files play on a variety of players?
Format wars only hurt us, the consumers. Most formats are open - but Apple is pursing a rather old and archaic strategy A LA MS word formats.
As far as MS goes - it's a completly different discussion.
MS's antitrust suit was orginally raised by competitors of MS. There is no one right now in a position to challenge Apple in that regard except consumers. There is no competiton with Apple hardware, becuase there cannot be. Doesn't that strike you as wrong?
lol - yeah. almost everyone comes to apples defense when it comes to this argument. i was expecting to get a poor reception to this argument :-)
There is competition for iTunes. There is competition for the iPod. It's entirely possible to use iTunes to buy music that doesn't go to an iPod at all, and it's entirely possible to use an iPod with someoen else's service.
Last time i checked the iPod was then only device that could play AAC DRM files. That's pretty monopolistic.
You are smoking crack. The iPod and iTunes are as anti-competitive as it gets. The hardware is completely closed and no third party software can run on it. There are also a limited number of codec's that work with the iPod. The only thing that you can do is play AAC, MP3 and DRM'd apple music on it. It is a black box. It even enforces DRM practices on non-DRM music.
Apple chooses to enforce their monopoly on the market by forcing consumers to use only apple products to access the iTunes music store - No iPod, no iTunes. It is a monopoly now - because Apple currently has a majority of the mp3 player market share, and a 100% monopoly on music encoded in an Apple DRM format. They are also actively discouraging 3rd parties from interfacing with their hardware and software (real player). Thus, they are using their monopoly advantage to exclude competition in the market of players that can play AAC/DRM formatted music. It is of course their "right" because they manufacture the hardware and software. Ultimately, the lack of formats on the iPod reduces the consumers' choice decreases the utility of the device thus harming the consumer. This again is the mark of a monopoly. Though the rough textbook definition is "monopoly: If a certain firm is the only one that can produce a certain good, it has a monopoly in the market for that good." (econterms.com)
To put this in a MS context: If Microsoft manufactured their own player - and their own software for playing and listening to music. Then they *actively* discouraged other vendors and companies from interfacing with their software and seemingly refused to grant licenses at a reasonable rate - they would probably be taken to court. As it is, there are a variety of WMV capable players out there and a number of music services that utilize the format for content delivery.
As a parallel observation to the current discussion - Apple has actively pursued an anti-competitive strategy both on a software and hardware level. Take for example the difficulty in getting Linux to run on Mac hardware, or BeOS. Or perhaps the total lack of 3rd party hardware that can run OS X? OS X as it currently ships has as many or more features than XP SP2. The real indicator of monopolistic practices at work is a lack of diversity in a market place. In the case of apple, there are apple logos on just about everything a Mac user would buy, or what the get for "free". Sure, there are features there that other products do not have such as the AirPort express with iTunes integration. However, that is a result of Apple's unwillingness to license Apple DRM to other companies on a reasonable basis. Apple's transition to a Media platform will only worsen this trend. As this battle continues Apple will use licensing and intellectual property as their cudal in the fight against competition.
It would not be so bad if all of Apple's products functioned as well as they are formed. Apple's products are generally beautiful, but the nice design comes at a cost. In the last three years hardware issues have plagued the iPod line. Starting with the Apple Battery scandal, Massive iPod mini DOA issues, almost everyone I know has had some problem or another with their iPod. Their machines have had problems as well. Most recently the 1.8 G5 iMacs have had thermal issues. On a software front, Apples updates have caused serious problems on a couple of occasions in the last few years. Pretty sad considering Apple knows every single machine and it's shipped configuration. The real kicker is that Apple doesn't seem to care. Getting these issues resolved have caused end users time and money because of slow apple response, and poor policy making (high restocking fees, hidden part return deadlines). My point in all of this is that Mac users have to put up with this, and Apple has no market force to correct it. The reason? Apple has a monopoly on the Mac.
In closing this kind of thing can only last so long - I would argue that the speed with which the iPod Nano screen scratch suit was brought against Apple
Hahaha, that's funny i mod you +4 Funny.
:-)
It does seem like there have been a lot more dupes/bad posts recently though
-Zx
Now we know why Taco has so many dupes. He's play WoW all the time!
This is total junk science. Why is this being posted as "news"? Paul claim "Without this electrical circuit, the storm would fail almost instantly due to".
i ndex.asp
The use of the word "instantly" when discussing any weather phenomena is not accurate. Everything takes time to form, or not - to use such terms indicates the author is over exagerating his claims.
Terms like "massive capacitor bank" and "harmonic circuits" are also used to wow the audience into thinking that perhaps the author might actually know what he is talking about.
Not only that but it's on "opensourcenergy.org" after poking around I felt like I should get my tin foil hat out, I'd be in good company. Check out this great piece of reporting: http://www.opensourceenergy.org/_layouts/apps/dp/
Hell no.
JS is enough to make someone stop programming and never look back. You need a compiled language first so the student can begin to understand syntax. After syntax you need to understand data types and flow. Then you can begin to create a program.
Browser Javascript provides little/no guidance in any of these persuits. Nor is there a truly coherent reference on just how each of the JS engines are implemented.
Compiled, well documented languages are a good place to start. Pascal or C are good bets.
we sue the inventors and implementors of the programming languages that are used to write insecure software!
or better yet, we could sue the hardware manufactures for allowing their hardware to run insecure software!
This is just silly. PHP is far from "simpler" than Java.
He does not mean simple as in stupid, he means simple as in easy to use. The infrastructure, the language, the libraries are all more accessible in PHP than in Java. It is for these reasons programmers like PHP.
Your points Re: Tasks that are more sophisticated are right on though.
Big PR stunts? Gates has been giving money for *years* (at least as far back as 1997) to charitable organziations. He's also personally responsible for the gates foundation. MS, and gates in particular has been quite generous. Much more so than other silicon valley tech companies. In fact, i recently tried to find information on charitable giving done by steve jobs or apple but to no avail. It seems that they collected some money for the red cross in the wake of katrina but i didn't find any actual donations from apple. How generous of them to off "free" advertising space.
Science will come - but science isn't going to give us a colony on mars that we can go and visit. Industry will and capitalism.
I say bring it on.
It is time for the scientific strangle hold on manned space flight to end, and for our childhood dreams to come true.