I wonder too if Apple have some patents tucked away under a sofa somewhere they could bring out to demand hefty fees for permission to sync with their stuff.
"People simply use their PCs (and Macs) as appliances"
That's like saying "people simply use their cars (and automobiles) as vehicles". A Mac IS a PC too, its just one where the same vendor controls the hardware, software and outlets.
I always laugh when the concept of Windows sales come up as something to shout about. Yes, around 80% is pre-installed on new PCs. Microsoft make sure that in EVERY store, online and offline, that the customer only ever sees Windows. They make sure the media talk about "PCs" when they mean Windows PCs to stake claim on the concept of a PC, that Windows is an essential part of the device, that must always exist. How many times have you heard "PC virus" when it's a Windows virus?
Their choice is Windows, Windows, Windows, Windows, Windows, Windows or Windows. Not even different versions of Windows, Microsoft deny them even that. The choices the customer has is which edition of the current Windows. The price is always hidden in the total cost, leaving the customer to assume it's free when it's added to the price.
People who buy a new PC are NOT choosing Windows, they are choosing a PC which they can't buy without Windows. This is a tax, not sales. Microsoft go out of their way to ensure the customer only knows about Windows.
Microsoft have NEVER sold a single piece of software, nor will they ever start. They don't believe in it. You buy a LICENSE in the form of a generated number to use Microsoft software under terms and conditions THEY set. You never own it. It is NOT a sale. That's not to say it's not a big earner because it certainly is.
I'm not so sure on the idea that Windows 7 will break the enterprise market. It started off nice and slick being apparently "Vista as it should have been" but the more I see about it, the more people are starting to notice it's getting more like Vista by the day as they add in features. This seems to confirm the stories early on that Windows 7 is just Vista released with a make over.
Even assuming it pulls back from that before release I still think it will struggle. XP is good enough for most businesses, when money is tight and you're fighting to survive and keep your staff employed, upgrading your PCs, spending a fortune on new licenses (and in all likelyhood new hardware) just because Microsoft want you to is NOT an option if you're getting no ROI for your business.
Windows 7 won't be cheap. Microsoft will make sure people are punished for refusing Vista, so Windows 7 will be priced to make up that loss of income. Netbooks have happened since XP was released too. Microsoft have seen their markups on laptops and desktops being threatened by people wanting low cost, low spec machines for simple tasks. They've had to mangle together an old OS they have been desperate to drop and offer it for peanuts just to get market share. From what I hear of the way Windows 7 has developed, it has as much chance of fitting on a netbook as Vista does, which means XP lives even longer....another fail.
For a lot of reasons, the IT climate has changed since XP. People never rebelled against a new version of Windows before Vista. Linux wasn't a viable option for the mainstream either. It's now more than viable, it's now better for a lot of things than what Microsoft's billions of R&D can offer. Sure it has some stuff still to do but it's there for most normal users. Now people can compare a $300 OS with a free OS and Microsoft have to convince them that their malware magnet is £300 better than the competition. Times they are a changin'.
I dunno about a nutter, but someone who desperately wants to convince himself that the Bush fairytale was the truth despite all the evidence to the contrary which outed before, during and since. There are a handful still out there, thankfully they're well away from the big red button.
I seem to remember one of Carl Roves tactics for getting leaders elected was a policy of keeping repeating something over and over again so that eventually the public will absorb it as the truth.
How many million quotes from the Bush administration would include the keywords 911 Iraq Sadaam WMD Osamma Bin Laden etc
I do believe Iraq and Al Queda had a connection. One of the people claiming to be part of Al Queda was in Iraq at some point; that's it. Nothing more. By that same strength of conviction almost EVERY country can be linked to Al Queda, including the UK and US.
Sadaam had as much to fear from Al Queda as every other secular government. Al Quaeda and other groups with the same ideology want a hard line Islamic rule, not unlike Saudi Arabia or Iran. It's why Afghanistan was a prime spot for a base.
Rewriting history works as well as the US learning from it's mistakes and knowing when not to repeat them. Perhaps two failed wars in a generation will be a better teacher than just one. You'd imagine for a country who want to be seen as world leaders and examples to follow wouldn't need an extra lesson but.....well, sometimes it takes people a little longer to pass the test.
The UN are the sum of their parts, with the policies determined by the member states and their interests. Every member shares it's responsibility, specially those with the power of veto which they often abuse to forward / protect their own national interests.
The primary reason Windows is relevant is that both it and Office are Microsoft's two cash cows. The profits from both these fund a LOT of other projects, many of which lose money and fail to gain any traction. When either one of their cash cows fails to bring home the bacon as it previously has done, it ripples through EVERY other part of Microsoft. There are always blips, but in the case of Windows, Windows 7 is not likely to be the "return to profit making form" that you'd expect from the successor to a failed project. For other departments this means the budget is tighter for a more permanent length of time with the pressure of not losing too much money to buy market share.
Damn that was funny, cheers. If I had mod points I'd use them.
While the XBOX and the XBOX 360 are decent, the Sony equivalents are much the same. The Wii spanked BOTH those in terms of sales and popularity. Is the Wii making or losing money for Nintendo? What about the XBOX 360 part of Microsoft, how is that affecting the bottom line? We still have potential lawsuits over faulty hardware to take into account.
Microsoft do have a habit of not seeing a potential money making sector as it grows, until it's big enough to catch their attention and by that time there are other entrenched players to unseat. Usually at that point Microsoft try to do their own thing, vendor locked and half baked, which tends to fail. The next point is to buy someone already successful in that sector, buying the market share they can't get on merit. If they can't buy market share it's the old smear/legal threats campaign to destroy the competition. The only area they did actually offer a good product comparable with the competition was the XBOX & it's successor the XBOX 360.
As the credit crunch continues and people still have to watch their spending Microsoft will continue to have a hard time. They relied on the usual hype with Windows to have Vista being sung from the rooftops as the savior to their IT woes, and it bombed. Perhaps some of the criticism was unjustified but plenty was very much on the mark, and the people rebelled. When you have a multi-billion-doller sure thing you can afford to count on the money rolling in, so when it doesn't you find you've spent a LOT in other areas that you're in even more shit. So you send out the PR drones / proxies / astorturfers to try and brainwash the people and eventually have to give up, give the pig a make over and a new name....and charge more for it to make up the losses.
The Zune is just another example of a boat they missed and have been desperately running alongside it trying to catch up, all the while being ignored by almost everyone except the die hard fanboys. How many projects to Microsoft keep pumping money into without making it back before they get canceled. Sure each part of Microsoft plays into the whole, some are losing money, some are making it while their two cash cows Windows and Office keep many afloat. The Windows cash cow went on a severe diet over the last couple of years, and shows no real signs of putting on the weight it's been accustomed to.
Microsoft's PR may give you the idea that they're playing for keeps but in a market like personal mp3/4 players the iPod is king. PR people ALWAYS talk up their products, it's their jobs. There are plenty of great mp3/4 players but the iPod is still king (as much as I wouldn't be seen dead with one personally). Personal gadgets are often used as street cred, where people use them as trophies to be accepted into a crowd. Microsoft will NEVER be trendy, unless you're attending a corporate Christmas office party where the average age of the party attendees is in their 50's and the common thread is "mid life crisis".
They tried with the Zune before and failed. Even if they have learned some lessons and redesigned the Zune into something reasonably cool, the name Zune has as much cool cred as Windows ME. Microsoft are often keen to rebrand a failed project, apply a new skin and launch it as a new product hoping it will work the second time. It's yet to work for them, this time they didn't waste the money on rebranding, which could be a sign of a budget cut.
Every other week Microsoft are laying people off, or cutting back on budgets for some projects or plans. The Zune will be a drain for Microsoft to pour some money down, while trying in vain to capture some market share and income from an entrenched leader. This time next year the Zune will be one of the growing list of failures that finally got the axe from the accounts department at Microsoft trying to cut away the dead weight.
"Things that live under rocks on the floor of the Pacific Ocean knew it would happen"
Citation required. How many were polled, what was the species make up and how many were just sheltering from predators when the clipboard people came to call and were just answering the questions to avoid drawing the "outsider" tag and being forced outside?
Yeah it occurred to me after posting that the concept of the Czar was pre-communism in Russia. When a country has a long turbulent history some things blend together in the mind.
Does anyone find it strange that a country steeped in an anti-communist / pro-capitalist past / present / future chooses to adopt a Russian term for an overseer? We've seen so many fuck ups by past US administrations because they got their panties in a twist about the fear of communism with Cuba, the McCarthy trials etc. The Republicans in particular have their supporters mind warped into seeing commies everywhere, yet it hasn't occurred to them that "Czar" is not a Western / US word.
They rail against state control over personal freedoms and here the government are trying to let people know where they stand and the people don't notice. Not only that, but many right wingers are thrilled that a Czar is taking charge to impose order, although presumably that only applies when the order being imposed is on an area they agree with and not with their rights to own guns etc.
It's like the story telling entertainment industries. They tell so many stories of corporate / political abuse of citizens which resonate with the audience and the audience never notices why. Stories resonate because they have enough basis in reality for the audience to relate to, yes they are fictional characters, fictional corporations, fictional laws etc but the base is real, and believable. It's believable because there is plenty of news about REAL people committing similar crimes and abuses and often getting away with it. The entertainment industry is showing us the world as it is through fictional rewrites and what do we do about it? Fuck all.
How many more times do we have to be shown reality before we decide that enough is enough?
But that's how it's supposed to work in a world created by the elite for the elite. The little people are scum who exist to toil and sweat for peanuts making the elite richer. Scum are not supposed to be allowed to get things for free, they are there to have what little they do earn claimed back in the form of mass market goods via slick psychologist advised PR campaigns. This is the natural order of things.
Isn't LISP an ideal companion to Python? Thnakes in cartoons talk with lithps after all, and Snagglepuss even. LISP maybe eethy to read but it's not easy to thay, that'th why they call it a lithp.
The secret lies in the common acceptance of mutual ass sniffing. I'm not sure we would (or should) apply the secret recipe to mankind, it could lead to some awkward situations, not to mention only appeal to a small minority of enlightened fetishists.
I noticed a mistake in my original post, they are looking at patents in these areas, they haven't gotten them....yet. You're right though, there is plenty of prior art on this one. Microsoft did try to patent sudo which they didn't invent and don't use just to extract money from FOSS projects. They tried to patent ODF in some countries despite trying to kill it through the ISO then from within the ODF board itself. This seems like vintage Microsoft to me. They won't change.
From the sales persons perspective, if they are told to use this (like I was) and question it's legality or fairness the employers suddenly notice all sorts of petty things to use as excuses to give you official warnings. In short, many work places want loyalty to the company and any scams it has going (the old "be a team player" adage) over loyalty to the customer. The customer is only a walking wallet which needs to be sucked dry. You speak up, you'll be unemployed within a few months at most.
The sales staff can easily just pass the buck and reply with "here's HO's details, write to them, they'll tell you." Any time the customer is expected to put a request in writing, more often than not the customers' ire will have dissipated by the time they get home so they won't be bothered to write. Sometimes the offer of getting it from HO is enough to convince the customer that it must be right so they give in on the spot without confirmation.
Sales is all about acting, selling an illusion. If the sales person appears confident, knowledgeable, friendly and willing to bend to your needs they will be successful in getting your money most of the time. Whether that's all smoke and mirrors with inflated starting prices so the discounts appear big, even though they were budgeted for to begin with don't matter.....the impression the customer gets is what counts. It's an act.
If the sales person is hesitant and has to keep checking stuff do you believe what they're telling you? People are new in jobs all the time, and will go through this phase so that has to be accounted for. If they tell you some store policy, do you believe they know it? In fairness someone new to the job wouldn't be dealing with complaints so that's not really a fair analogy.
There's another ellement to the (not) defective argument that people tend to forget. In the UK at least there's a clause that it has to be fit for purpose on the customers equipment.
I bought an LP many years ago which jumped like hell on my player so I took it back. I wanted the LP so I was happy with an exchange but the new one did the same thing. I took that back and again was happy with another exchange on the proviso that the sales person tested it on the store player first. He did, it played fine so I watched that very item being slid into the sleeve and handed to me, only to find it jumped like the others on my player. No other record jumped so my player was fine, the LP played fine in the store so it was fine.
When I took it back we didn't want an exchange, but he tried to brush me off with store credit, which my reply was "I want that LP, if all your stock is faulty I'll buy it elsewhere, for that I need my money back. I can't spend YOUR store credit in another store." He didn't really have much of an option as the law (at least then) stated that it had to work on the customers equipment, in this case it didn't on mine, therefor it meets the definition of "defective" even though it was perfect in the store.
Granted this was several years ago and the corporations have bought a lot of new laws and changes in laws since then so it may not apply anymore, but it's an angle to look for that many overlook. Even if it's not clear now, it may be enough of an argument to push the store over the line into giving in to your reasonable demands. Try it, you just never know.
Ah the old idea of "being upfront with your customers before they buy", spawned from the same people who brought you such classics as "the small print" lol.
I've only seen a few small independents with signs like that, most of the large retailers I've seen don't want the public image of shiesters so wouldn't display it. If it ain't displayed clearly, though.
I wonder how much it'd knock off US multi-nationals stock prices if the rest of the world decided overnight that patents were a bad idea and scraped them altogether, wiping all existing patents into oblivion. How many large US companies rely on their patents to control their markets, or bully competitors? If their patent portfolio is wiped out in every other area except the US, what happens?
This is a hypothetical nightmare for some patent trolls which they will lobby tooth and nail to ensure never comes to pass.
Microsoft, Sony & Apple have all eye'd the sitting room as the next battleground for media domination and control. They know people use their TV's for more and more functions, not unlike a web browser which started life as a simple application but has now grown to be multi-functioned and used to interact with more and more things.
Sony and Microsoft have their consoles able to connect to the net, play DVDs etc. They know that if they can get the trojan horse in the home, they can sell peripherals designed for that unit, and know that if it breaks in a couple of years the customer has already invested a fortune in peripherals that they will most likely replace like-for-like. All three want to be the COMPLETE solution from end to end, rather than just part of a heterogeneous solution. They will use vendor lock-in, proprietary formats, DRM etc to ensure that despite the barriers their customers will face having to deal with it all, when all they want is a system to easily plug together and just work.
It's staggering that Microsoft would get a patent on something which seems blatantly obvious as the next feature on a TV based console. It's no surprise that they applied for it however.
Does this mean that if they get a flurry of pop ups like IE used to do, that it'll be flicking channels so fast that it works like a strobe light on epilepsy sufferers?
I'm sorry, Mr Doj can't come to the phone right now, he's on vacation in his summer home kindly supplied by his very good friends at Microsoft. Don't worry, I'm sure Mr Ballmer will express your concerns in a fair and balanced way before any time is spent looking at other viewpoints for appearances sake.
Usually when I have paid cash for something and told my refund will be in the form of store credit, I ask them to point out where I paid in store credit on the receipt, and where in the statute books it states I can't be refunded in the currency I paid in.
Stay polite but firm, refuse point blank to accept less and keep moving up the command chain when the next chump sent to deal with you repeats the same as the last chump. Make sure you use a loud but calm voice to ensure that other customers hear you. Mind you, I enjoy twisting a sales person inside out with logic until they run out of excuses and agree to what the law states I'm entitled to just to get me out the door. Remember, the longer you tie these people up dealing with you, the more time they lose trying to sell stuff to other customers.
Of course this only works with a real brick and mortar store.
Slashdot Mirror
I wonder too if Apple have some patents tucked away under a sofa somewhere they could bring out to demand hefty fees for permission to sync with their stuff.
"People simply use their PCs (and Macs) as appliances"
That's like saying "people simply use their cars (and automobiles) as vehicles". A Mac IS a PC too, its just one where the same vendor controls the hardware, software and outlets.
I always laugh when the concept of Windows sales come up as something to shout about. Yes, around 80% is pre-installed on new PCs. Microsoft make sure that in EVERY store, online and offline, that the customer only ever sees Windows. They make sure the media talk about "PCs" when they mean Windows PCs to stake claim on the concept of a PC, that Windows is an essential part of the device, that must always exist. How many times have you heard "PC virus" when it's a Windows virus?
Their choice is Windows, Windows, Windows, Windows, Windows, Windows or Windows. Not even different versions of Windows, Microsoft deny them even that. The choices the customer has is which edition of the current Windows. The price is always hidden in the total cost, leaving the customer to assume it's free when it's added to the price.
People who buy a new PC are NOT choosing Windows, they are choosing a PC which they can't buy without Windows. This is a tax, not sales. Microsoft go out of their way to ensure the customer only knows about Windows.
Microsoft have NEVER sold a single piece of software, nor will they ever start. They don't believe in it. You buy a LICENSE in the form of a generated number to use Microsoft software under terms and conditions THEY set. You never own it. It is NOT a sale. That's not to say it's not a big earner because it certainly is.
I'm not so sure on the idea that Windows 7 will break the enterprise market. It started off nice and slick being apparently "Vista as it should have been" but the more I see about it, the more people are starting to notice it's getting more like Vista by the day as they add in features. This seems to confirm the stories early on that Windows 7 is just Vista released with a make over.
Even assuming it pulls back from that before release I still think it will struggle. XP is good enough for most businesses, when money is tight and you're fighting to survive and keep your staff employed, upgrading your PCs, spending a fortune on new licenses (and in all likelyhood new hardware) just because Microsoft want you to is NOT an option if you're getting no ROI for your business.
Windows 7 won't be cheap. Microsoft will make sure people are punished for refusing Vista, so Windows 7 will be priced to make up that loss of income. Netbooks have happened since XP was released too. Microsoft have seen their markups on laptops and desktops being threatened by people wanting low cost, low spec machines for simple tasks. They've had to mangle together an old OS they have been desperate to drop and offer it for peanuts just to get market share. From what I hear of the way Windows 7 has developed, it has as much chance of fitting on a netbook as Vista does, which means XP lives even longer....another fail.
For a lot of reasons, the IT climate has changed since XP. People never rebelled against a new version of Windows before Vista. Linux wasn't a viable option for the mainstream either. It's now more than viable, it's now better for a lot of things than what Microsoft's billions of R&D can offer. Sure it has some stuff still to do but it's there for most normal users. Now people can compare a $300 OS with a free OS and Microsoft have to convince them that their malware magnet is £300 better than the competition. Times they are a changin'.
I dunno about a nutter, but someone who desperately wants to convince himself that the Bush fairytale was the truth despite all the evidence to the contrary which outed before, during and since. There are a handful still out there, thankfully they're well away from the big red button.
I seem to remember one of Carl Roves tactics for getting leaders elected was a policy of keeping repeating something over and over again so that eventually the public will absorb it as the truth.
How many million quotes from the Bush administration would include the keywords 911 Iraq Sadaam WMD Osamma Bin Laden etc
I do believe Iraq and Al Queda had a connection. One of the people claiming to be part of Al Queda was in Iraq at some point; that's it. Nothing more. By that same strength of conviction almost EVERY country can be linked to Al Queda, including the UK and US.
Sadaam had as much to fear from Al Queda as every other secular government. Al Quaeda and other groups with the same ideology want a hard line Islamic rule, not unlike Saudi Arabia or Iran. It's why Afghanistan was a prime spot for a base.
Rewriting history works as well as the US learning from it's mistakes and knowing when not to repeat them. Perhaps two failed wars in a generation will be a better teacher than just one. You'd imagine for a country who want to be seen as world leaders and examples to follow wouldn't need an extra lesson but.....well, sometimes it takes people a little longer to pass the test.
The UN are the sum of their parts, with the policies determined by the member states and their interests. Every member shares it's responsibility, specially those with the power of veto which they often abuse to forward / protect their own national interests.
Yep, it plays for sure alright.
The primary reason Windows is relevant is that both it and Office are Microsoft's two cash cows. The profits from both these fund a LOT of other projects, many of which lose money and fail to gain any traction. When either one of their cash cows fails to bring home the bacon as it previously has done, it ripples through EVERY other part of Microsoft. There are always blips, but in the case of Windows, Windows 7 is not likely to be the "return to profit making form" that you'd expect from the successor to a failed project. For other departments this means the budget is tighter for a more permanent length of time with the pressure of not losing too much money to buy market share.
Damn that was funny, cheers. If I had mod points I'd use them.
/legal threats campaign to destroy the competition. The only area they did actually offer a good product comparable with the competition was the XBOX & it's successor the XBOX 360.
While the XBOX and the XBOX 360 are decent, the Sony equivalents are much the same. The Wii spanked BOTH those in terms of sales and popularity. Is the Wii making or losing money for Nintendo? What about the XBOX 360 part of Microsoft, how is that affecting the bottom line? We still have potential lawsuits over faulty hardware to take into account.
Microsoft do have a habit of not seeing a potential money making sector as it grows, until it's big enough to catch their attention and by that time there are other entrenched players to unseat. Usually at that point Microsoft try to do their own thing, vendor locked and half baked, which tends to fail. The next point is to buy someone already successful in that sector, buying the market share they can't get on merit. If they can't buy market share it's the old smear
As the credit crunch continues and people still have to watch their spending Microsoft will continue to have a hard time. They relied on the usual hype with Windows to have Vista being sung from the rooftops as the savior to their IT woes, and it bombed. Perhaps some of the criticism was unjustified but plenty was very much on the mark, and the people rebelled. When you have a multi-billion-doller sure thing you can afford to count on the money rolling in, so when it doesn't you find you've spent a LOT in other areas that you're in even more shit. So you send out the PR drones / proxies / astorturfers to try and brainwash the people and eventually have to give up, give the pig a make over and a new name....and charge more for it to make up the losses.
The Zune is just another example of a boat they missed and have been desperately running alongside it trying to catch up, all the while being ignored by almost everyone except the die hard fanboys. How many projects to Microsoft keep pumping money into without making it back before they get canceled. Sure each part of Microsoft plays into the whole, some are losing money, some are making it while their two cash cows Windows and Office keep many afloat. The Windows cash cow went on a severe diet over the last couple of years, and shows no real signs of putting on the weight it's been accustomed to.
Microsoft's PR may give you the idea that they're playing for keeps but in a market like personal mp3/4 players the iPod is king. PR people ALWAYS talk up their products, it's their jobs. There are plenty of great mp3/4 players but the iPod is still king (as much as I wouldn't be seen dead with one personally). Personal gadgets are often used as street cred, where people use them as trophies to be accepted into a crowd. Microsoft will NEVER be trendy, unless you're attending a corporate Christmas office party where the average age of the party attendees is in their 50's and the common thread is "mid life crisis".
They tried with the Zune before and failed. Even if they have learned some lessons and redesigned the Zune into something reasonably cool, the name Zune has as much cool cred as Windows ME. Microsoft are often keen to rebrand a failed project, apply a new skin and launch it as a new product hoping it will work the second time. It's yet to work for them, this time they didn't waste the money on rebranding, which could be a sign of a budget cut.
Every other week Microsoft are laying people off, or cutting back on budgets for some projects or plans. The Zune will be a drain for Microsoft to pour some money down, while trying in vain to capture some market share and income from an entrenched leader. This time next year the Zune will be one of the growing list of failures that finally got the axe from the accounts department at Microsoft trying to cut away the dead weight.
"Things that live under rocks on the floor of the Pacific Ocean knew it would happen"
Citation required. How many were polled, what was the species make up and how many were just sheltering from predators when the clipboard people came to call and were just answering the questions to avoid drawing the "outsider" tag and being forced outside?
WTF? I thought BluRay won, and was welcomed with a luke warm "meh" from consumers. Is this the new HD format to replace it?
Yeah it occurred to me after posting that the concept of the Czar was pre-communism in Russia. When a country has a long turbulent history some things blend together in the mind.
Does anyone find it strange that a country steeped in an anti-communist / pro-capitalist past / present / future chooses to adopt a Russian term for an overseer? We've seen so many fuck ups by past US administrations because they got their panties in a twist about the fear of communism with Cuba, the McCarthy trials etc. The Republicans in particular have their supporters mind warped into seeing commies everywhere, yet it hasn't occurred to them that "Czar" is not a Western / US word.
They rail against state control over personal freedoms and here the government are trying to let people know where they stand and the people don't notice. Not only that, but many right wingers are thrilled that a Czar is taking charge to impose order, although presumably that only applies when the order being imposed is on an area they agree with and not with their rights to own guns etc.
It's like the story telling entertainment industries. They tell so many stories of corporate / political abuse of citizens which resonate with the audience and the audience never notices why. Stories resonate because they have enough basis in reality for the audience to relate to, yes they are fictional characters, fictional corporations, fictional laws etc but the base is real, and believable. It's believable because there is plenty of news about REAL people committing similar crimes and abuses and often getting away with it. The entertainment industry is showing us the world as it is through fictional rewrites and what do we do about it? Fuck all.
How many more times do we have to be shown reality before we decide that enough is enough?
But that's how it's supposed to work in a world created by the elite for the elite. The little people are scum who exist to toil and sweat for peanuts making the elite richer. Scum are not supposed to be allowed to get things for free, they are there to have what little they do earn claimed back in the form of mass market goods via slick psychologist advised PR campaigns. This is the natural order of things.
I never thought about that until you mentioned it but yeah it seems I picked this name and was waiting for the ideal thread to nail it lololol.
Isn't LISP an ideal companion to Python? Thnakes in cartoons talk with lithps after all, and Snagglepuss even. LISP maybe eethy to read but it's not easy to thay, that'th why they call it a lithp.
The secret lies in the common acceptance of mutual ass sniffing. I'm not sure we would (or should) apply the secret recipe to mankind, it could lead to some awkward situations, not to mention only appeal to a small minority of enlightened fetishists.
I noticed a mistake in my original post, they are looking at patents in these areas, they haven't gotten them....yet. You're right though, there is plenty of prior art on this one. Microsoft did try to patent sudo which they didn't invent and don't use just to extract money from FOSS projects. They tried to patent ODF in some countries despite trying to kill it through the ISO then from within the ODF board itself. This seems like vintage Microsoft to me. They won't change.
From the sales persons perspective, if they are told to use this (like I was) and question it's legality or fairness the employers suddenly notice all sorts of petty things to use as excuses to give you official warnings. In short, many work places want loyalty to the company and any scams it has going (the old "be a team player" adage) over loyalty to the customer. The customer is only a walking wallet which needs to be sucked dry. You speak up, you'll be unemployed within a few months at most.
The sales staff can easily just pass the buck and reply with "here's HO's details, write to them, they'll tell you." Any time the customer is expected to put a request in writing, more often than not the customers' ire will have dissipated by the time they get home so they won't be bothered to write. Sometimes the offer of getting it from HO is enough to convince the customer that it must be right so they give in on the spot without confirmation.
Sales is all about acting, selling an illusion. If the sales person appears confident, knowledgeable, friendly and willing to bend to your needs they will be successful in getting your money most of the time. Whether that's all smoke and mirrors with inflated starting prices so the discounts appear big, even though they were budgeted for to begin with don't matter.....the impression the customer gets is what counts. It's an act.
If the sales person is hesitant and has to keep checking stuff do you believe what they're telling you? People are new in jobs all the time, and will go through this phase so that has to be accounted for. If they tell you some store policy, do you believe they know it? In fairness someone new to the job wouldn't be dealing with complaints so that's not really a fair analogy.
There's another ellement to the (not) defective argument that people tend to forget. In the UK at least there's a clause that it has to be fit for purpose on the customers equipment.
I bought an LP many years ago which jumped like hell on my player so I took it back. I wanted the LP so I was happy with an exchange but the new one did the same thing. I took that back and again was happy with another exchange on the proviso that the sales person tested it on the store player first. He did, it played fine so I watched that very item being slid into the sleeve and handed to me, only to find it jumped like the others on my player. No other record jumped so my player was fine, the LP played fine in the store so it was fine.
When I took it back we didn't want an exchange, but he tried to brush me off with store credit, which my reply was "I want that LP, if all your stock is faulty I'll buy it elsewhere, for that I need my money back. I can't spend YOUR store credit in another store." He didn't really have much of an option as the law (at least then) stated that it had to work on the customers equipment, in this case it didn't on mine, therefor it meets the definition of "defective" even though it was perfect in the store.
Granted this was several years ago and the corporations have bought a lot of new laws and changes in laws since then so it may not apply anymore, but it's an angle to look for that many overlook. Even if it's not clear now, it may be enough of an argument to push the store over the line into giving in to your reasonable demands. Try it, you just never know.
Ah the old idea of "being upfront with your customers before they buy", spawned from the same people who brought you such classics as "the small print" lol.
I've only seen a few small independents with signs like that, most of the large retailers I've seen don't want the public image of shiesters so wouldn't display it. If it ain't displayed clearly, though.
I wonder how much it'd knock off US multi-nationals stock prices if the rest of the world decided overnight that patents were a bad idea and scraped them altogether, wiping all existing patents into oblivion. How many large US companies rely on their patents to control their markets, or bully competitors? If their patent portfolio is wiped out in every other area except the US, what happens?
This is a hypothetical nightmare for some patent trolls which they will lobby tooth and nail to ensure never comes to pass.
Microsoft, Sony & Apple have all eye'd the sitting room as the next battleground for media domination and control. They know people use their TV's for more and more functions, not unlike a web browser which started life as a simple application but has now grown to be multi-functioned and used to interact with more and more things.
Sony and Microsoft have their consoles able to connect to the net, play DVDs etc. They know that if they can get the trojan horse in the home, they can sell peripherals designed for that unit, and know that if it breaks in a couple of years the customer has already invested a fortune in peripherals that they will most likely replace like-for-like. All three want to be the COMPLETE solution from end to end, rather than just part of a heterogeneous solution. They will use vendor lock-in, proprietary formats, DRM etc to ensure that despite the barriers their customers will face having to deal with it all, when all they want is a system to easily plug together and just work.
It's staggering that Microsoft would get a patent on something which seems blatantly obvious as the next feature on a TV based console. It's no surprise that they applied for it however.
Does this mean that if they get a flurry of pop ups like IE used to do, that it'll be flicking channels so fast that it works like a strobe light on epilepsy sufferers?
I'm sorry, Mr Doj can't come to the phone right now, he's on vacation in his summer home kindly supplied by his very good friends at Microsoft. Don't worry, I'm sure Mr Ballmer will express your concerns in a fair and balanced way before any time is spent looking at other viewpoints for appearances sake.
Usually when I have paid cash for something and told my refund will be in the form of store credit, I ask them to point out where I paid in store credit on the receipt, and where in the statute books it states I can't be refunded in the currency I paid in.
Stay polite but firm, refuse point blank to accept less and keep moving up the command chain when the next chump sent to deal with you repeats the same as the last chump. Make sure you use a loud but calm voice to ensure that other customers hear you. Mind you, I enjoy twisting a sales person inside out with logic until they run out of excuses and agree to what the law states I'm entitled to just to get me out the door. Remember, the longer you tie these people up dealing with you, the more time they lose trying to sell stuff to other customers.
Of course this only works with a real brick and mortar store.