Gates et al. are not criticizing BSD because they probably have and will end up making more money off code released under it than than any of the original coders did. Not to mention that Steve Jobs (who will end up making millions off BSD-licensed software) is providing a new platform for new MS IE and Office upgrades--more $$$.
The lack of attacks against the BSD license doesn't mean the BSD is necessarily "The Good" open source license, as I have been hearing advocates talk about lately. It just means that it is the license that the attackers can benefit from the most.
This netcraft survey shows that out of the top 50 hosting locations (by uptime), representing 1754 sites, 24 total sites are running Windows derivitives (about 450 are running heavy-duty Unix offerings, and the rest are Linux/BSD.)
Not that this fact is particularly relevant, because perhaps the hosting locations that use Windows don't make the top 50 uptime slots. Seriously, though, what I'm pointing out is that there are a number of ways to skin this cat: IDG and Gartner have two different assessments, and I have a third. It wouldn't surprise me if we are all correct.
I don't agree that this was a non-obvious invention. The 'non-obvious' part was done in the 50s and before, with research on information theory, the fast fourier transform, psychoacoustics, and so on---all of which is out there for anyone to use. Pretty much everyone who knows about these things and saw how the Music and Telco industries are multi-billion-dollar sectors in an environment where bandwidth is limited but computing power is excessive has thought of this. Not to say its a trivial task, but its one of engineering.
MP3s real success is its placement in the market i.e. its widespread adoption--they were there with the right tools at the right time, and allowed people to use it gratis. They probably aren't the best format out there, but they were good enough and fraunhoffer played the right cards at the right time. Plus they secured their dominant position when Napster chose to use mp3 as its sole file-trading format. (not that there was much of a choice at the time.)
That being said, its dominance may even come to an end when Windows XP gets adopted widely and Napster and Thomson start charging--I already know people who have switched all of their music over to the wmf format. But for now, the market has made it the standard--last time I searched for.ogg files on gnutella there were about 3 hits.
Apparently, this is the hidden hurdle that open alternatives face. The only entities that can invest enough money into something to make it a market-place standard are those who hope to make a ton of money off of wide-spread adoption.
Re:Whats New & Why you should get it
on
Mozilla 0.9.1 Out
·
· Score: 2
Thanks for the tip. I wasn't aware that there was a workaround, and so the last time I ran into this I ended up blowing away all my profile to fix it. You are doing a great service here by triaging these complaints. If this isn't a planned, organized effort, maybe it should be. (Whenever important Mozilla news gets posted on major web forum, an informed developer should actively dispel myths and douse flames.)
What (specifically) was the patent about?
What did microsoft put in to Windows 95,98,ME,NT, etc.?
How about mp3/ra/ogg? Are they subject to this patent as well?
There are two forces working when you want to keep your network secure: technology and psychology.
At one end, to be ultra-secure, you could go really nuts, have each machine use a different password, have each user change their password every month, require all passwords to be mixed case including numbers and letters, and so forth.
This, of course, could reduce your security, because your users will stick post-its to their monitors with their passwords on them, or email the passwords to themselves at Yahoo so that they have a record in case they forget.
You can't forget the human element here, because the human memory system is based on entirely different principles than a computer's is. People use all types of tricks to aid their less-than-perfect memories, the strategies they use in response to a paranoid admin's security policies may end up making the system much less secure when the human element is factored in.
Furthermore, its a mistake to think that this can be totally solved by HR policies and proper education of the user, because you might be setting up a system that can't be used by many people unless they introduce external memory aids (which are security risks). It would be as if (hypothetically) you were a record company heavily overcharging for CDs of a popular music "artist" or group, but complaining when people trade mp3s of the songs you refuse to sell them at a price they are willing to pay. Beware of your own rules and realize how they can sometimes encourage users to behave in ways that are antithetical to your ultimate goals.
I have conducted experiments and GOMS-type simulations comparing these two keyboards. I have read much of the research on the subject, including Dvorak's book, the Navy report, and the more recent scientific work and popular press coverage. It is simply not true that the only research that demonstrated the advantage of the Dvorak keyboard was done by Dvorak. What is true is that the research he did was very good, even by today's standards. Furthermore, he was not interested in "Getting Rich" off the invention--he was a professor pioneering the field of human factors, and his main interest was in developing the optimal layout. Had he wanted to capitalize on it, he would not have spent ten years developing the keyboard, nor would not have cared about the left- and right- handed versions. He really wanted to give people a better way of typing, and probably his biggest failure is that he didn't market it very well.
The most interesting thing I have learned about the whole situation is this: First, there are a bunch of people who are Dvorak Advocates. They often believe they have found the One True Way, and attempt to convince and influence others into seeing it their way. However, most Dvorak users are live-and-let-live about it, willing to give people information, but realizing that most people do not have the diligence or the desire to learn the alternate mapping. Only a small number are these "Advocaters".
But, what is even more interesting is that there are also a bunch of Qwerty Evangalists out there. These are people who are utterly convinced that the Dvorak keyboard is a hoax, and attempt to convince everybody that they are right. There are probably more websites out there about why Qwerty is better than Dvorak than vice versa. I find these people very interesting (pcidevel appears to be one of them), because they generally have never tried the Dvorak keyboard, the Dvorak keyboard never did anything to their family, the Dvorak keyboard never flamed them on slashdot. They just have a need to tell people that the Dvorak sucks. Maybe they read about the Myth of the Keys, and think it makes them look devilishly smart to outwit all these people who think they are smarter than the general public.
I would suggest to anyone thinking about the Dvorak keyboard that they shouldn't switch if they ever use anyone else's machine. Or if they hope to gain speed. (You might gain 10%-20% in some situations, but most of the typing we do is not limited by our upper typing speed but by the speed at which we can think about what to say next, so the choice of a keyboard doesn't really matter too much. Plus, you can probably increase your speed 10-20% by spending a month practicing to type faster.) However, changing will decrease the number of errors you make, but errors have a relatively small cost these days (compared to the typewriter days, when an error could cost you minutes and minutes). Changing will decrease your finger movement, balance the amount that each hand types, and reduce a lot of awkward movements you do while typing. I don't know of any research showing that these qualities will reduce RSI, and this would be very difficult to determine experimentally, but there are numerous anecdotal testimonies that people have offered. In that respect, a "sample" size of 1 is a completely valid experiment, because it generalizes to the entire population who matters--person who reports their experience.
Microsoft's biggest competitor isn't Linux, Mac, OS/2, Sun, Oracle, Beos, etc.--its themselves, because they have to give people a reason to buy new versions of their old products. They do this in several different ways--one is by adding features (e.g., they added Explorer to their OS, and XP has built-in.zip and mp3/wma support. These additions weren't necessarily motivated by the need to kill off netscape/winzip/winamp,--they were motivated by the need to get users to upgrade.) Another way is to make their older products subtly incompatible with their newer products (Like all the different versions of Word that didn't work well with eachother, or the criminal differences between Word format and their Works format. For a long time, it was impossible to read one with the other. A third way is to make it difficult, impossible, or illegal to move old software to a new computer.
Their.net strategy is a way to avoid all these games. Instead of having to produce a better word processor to convince people to upgrade from Office 97, they develop a steady revenue stream by offering their product as a service, and charging monthly.
Its brilliant, and they probably have the power to do it. Fortunately, as long as their are free alternatives out there (mozilla, abiword, openoffice, etc.), they will not be able to capitalize entirely on their position, EVEN IF THOSE ALTERNATIVES ARE NOT USED BY THE MAJORITY OF COMPUTER USERS. AOL funds Netscape development but uses Explorer because right now, Explorer is a little better, and if they don't have an "Ace in the hole", Microsoft will no longer need to give away Explorer. Microsoft's strategy can be successful at quashing competing companies, but the open source alternatives don't play by the same business rules, and are thus very important for keeping Microsoft in check.
Thanks to This Site, you can find all of the anagrams of TMA-1:
A ME TON,
A ME NOT,
A MEN TO,
A MONTE,
A MET NO,
A MET ON,
MANE TO,
AMEN TO,
MEAN TO,
NAME TO,
TAME NO,
TAME ON,
MEAT NO,
MEAT ON,
MATE NO,
MATE ON,
TEAM NO,
TEAM ON,
AM TONE,
AM NOTE,
MA TONE,
MA NOTE,
MAN TOE,
MAO TEN,
MAO NET,
TAM ONE,
TAM EON,
MAT ONE,
MAT EON,
AN ME TO,
AN TOME,
NATO ME,
ANT MOE,
TAN MOE,
NAT MOE,
OAT MEN,
TAO MEN,
AT ME NO,
AT ME ON,
AT OMEN,
AT MOEN
I can find significance in at least a dozen of these, especially when I comparing them to all the characters and events out there in literature and mythology.For example, MEAT ON is the opposite of NO MEAT. "AMEN TO"--TMA-1 symbolizes God, because God is the 1 you say AMEN TO. I could go on, but we all get the picture.
I used to believe that if you played heavy metal music backwards, you would here satanic messages. Then, I just realized how good people are at finding patterns in noise and making associations.
In my opinion, it is really petty for an author to complain about a review, and down-right childish to make that last personal attack on Cliff. Somewhat ironic, too, because Cliff claimed that Wheat misinterpreted 2001 and found meaning where there was none. In response, Wheat claims that Cliff misinterpreted his own work. Wheat is a relativist when he writes about others, but not when others write about him. BTW, LEONARD and ALDERON are anagrams as well. What do you make of that?
This is probably a really old problem--I experienced it way back in 1990, when I was taught programming by the typing teacher. At that time, rumor had it that the class wasn't going to be taught again, because new regulations required that someone teaching a programming class must be certified with a masters degree. There are very few masters-degreed computer geeks who would be willing to work for $17,000, not to mention going back to a place that most of them were ridiculed and mocked at. To top it off, to teach high school, you also usually need to be certified, which eliminated the possibility of hiring "adjunct" faculty like they do at colleges.
My question is, which would you prefer: a lame computer class that provides some structure and a potential for learning new things, or no class at all? In today's public school system, those appear to be the choices. The truth is, nobody really learns how to program in a class anyway--they learn how to program by programming, often as a requirement for getting a grade in a class, but frequently not.
In other news, Microsoft got tired of the Government sueing them and decided to buy them out. Bill Gates, the new Vice President of the United States of Microsoft was quoted, "It is a perfect fit. We are both bloated monopolistic bureacracies with income derived from legally-required regularly-levied fees placed upon all citizens. For these fees, we both provide over-valued and frequently broken services. Plus, we are both headquarterd in a Washington. Together, we will provide a new level of leveraged enterprise services capitalizing on a new global market provided by our newly-achieved economies of scale." Protesters will be placated by recieving a 7 billion-dollar tax cut.
...since the main product is what is the most difficult to create, I fail to see how GPL it would help the company recoup the investment (and doesn't the fact that the main product would be GPL'ed, that the addons would have to be GPL too?)
The point is that this project is apparently cutting the company out of the picture. Its already clear (as per my above post) that a gaming community can support and sustain itself once a base system and tools for creating new scenarios are out there. Now, with a free base system and high-quality artwork and sounds available, there is no need for a company--the community can design, develop, and play their own games without the intervention of a corporate entity.
This project (I couldn't determine if OpenQuartz was a company or not) reminds me of many shareware and pay-for gaming communities that seem to succeed. For instance, Dink Smallwood (now given away free) was a Zelda-like game that you could play in about 10 hours, and had some slightly annoying interface issues. Most games like this would appear and disappear without much noise, but the author released some tools for creating modifications, and there are now 50-100 "d-mods" that individuals have developed, keeping this Win95-era the game alive for years.
The guy at spiderweb games, a shareware company that is apparantly releasing their Exile series on linux, created the fairly successful "Blades of Exile" game that allowed the community to build its own adventures. I'm not sure if it was as successful as he had hoped, however, because I think his later games are unmodifiable,.
There are certainly dozens of professional games that have similar communities--there are hundreds of scenarios available out there for Age of Empires/AOK, and there must be thousands available for Quake/doom/etc.
In fact, there are many games out there that become much greater because they have a community developing the games. The success of these games might have more to do with the people writing their own scenarios and modifications than in the original technical or marketing activity of the original designers. I would think that in many of these cases, the wide-spread availability of novel free scenarios has increased the profits of these companies, rather than diminished them.
In a way, he was accurate about the houses--only he was talking about trailer houses. Thin walls, made of plastic and aluminum, cost about $36,000 of today's dollars, and last about 25 years. Too bad they aren't strong enough to land your helicopter on top of. What he didn't get right (as previous poster said) is the attitude of people of the future--we don't generally choose to live in those trailer houses if we can afford better.
Steinbeck made a big deal about how trailer houses were going to change the face of the country in "Travels with Charlie". I'm not sure whether they did, but change did happen.
The most important benchmark they showed was their charts--ugly products of Microsoft Excel. Even though a lot has changed in those 4.5 years, its still easier to make your charts in windows.
I saw that a few ip addresses were returning "[search].exe" and "[search]" the other day on gnutella. Out of curiosity, I tried to download them, but was unsuccessful. Then I blocked these IP addresses and dropped all messages from them. It seems that the real reason this 'virus' will spread slowly is because its nearly impossible to download anything from gnutella. The authors of this trojan must not have been too bright--they should have infected a P2P network with better throughput, like Napster.
They will make you an offer just like the free year of AOL/MSN. When you purchase a computer today, you get a free year of Microsoft Office. (Who wouldn't like a free year of microsoft office?) This will bring the initial price of the system down, making the $1000 pc an $800 pc. Then, a year down the road, once all of your documents are in Word, the price of changing to a fixed-price or Free word processor is not worth the inconvenience.
And don't expect them to allow you to purchase JUST microsoft Word. The least you will be able to get will be a Word/Excel/Outlook/Explorer package (You heard it here...they won't be giving explorer away anymore, but maybe they will pretend that you get it "Free" with your rental of Office.) For a slightly larger price, you might be able to add powerpoint/access/picture editor etc. By requiring the bundling, enough copies of their products will exist out there that nobody in their right minds would choose to use anything else. And they can charge more, because you are getting 3-5 pieces of software for one low price.
For example: If the rental price was $5/month/application, many home users would buy Word, maybe get outlook, and probably move to Netscape. Net sales/month: $10 if they are lucky.
But, if the rental price were $20/month for a package of four applications, and this is the least you can get, more than half of those same people who only got Word and Outlook would probably go for it. Net sales/month: $15-$20/month easily.
If the microsoft marketing department is looking to hire, I'm available.
This story is ridiculous. Whatever pseudo-scientific principles the study is based on, you shouldn't believe the results, even if they have a couple anecdotes to back them up. There wasn't even a control condition reported! Big deal if a bunch of young people report that they have memory problems. Young people have had memory problems for thousands of years. An ancient strategy is offloading memory to external memory devices (pads of paper, pieces of string, your girlfriend, etc.). Even if they found out that younger people had greater memory problems (which they didn't), they didn't show that younger people use memory aids more than older people (from the research I've read, older people tend to use external memory cues more frequently than younger people). And even if they showed that younger people used these external memory aids more (they didn't), the correlational nature of the study does not preclude other factors from causing this, such as preservatives in our foods, radiation from household appliances, nutrasweet, drugs, alcohol, pokemon (the research was from Japan), or even new and revolutionary bedding products.
Oh well. More crap for the "information overload is a disease" pamphlets. Using external memory aids is only going to help you remember things better, so don't take the article's implicit device and throw out your datebook.
I think it is a strategy to identify ad-serving clients. Specifically, there are fake clients that return "yoursearch.html" or somesuch. A way to avoid this is to search for random text and block everyone who returns hits to you.
0. It's in RealPlayer format. When you go to watch it, the trailer is in this tiny window surrounded by junk. Click on "CLICK TO ENLARGE VIDEO" and it doesn't actually enlarge the video, but it does get rid of the extra junk; then you can use the zoom command to enlarge the video. (Why did they think the extra junk was a good idea? Why make it harder to see it zoomed?)
Remember when Real were the good guys? I just had to reinstall the RealPlayer because my beta had expired. After 5 minutes of downloading, installing, disabling startcenter, disabling automatic desktop icons, unselecting email notification (luckily, sales@real.com was accepted), dumping the 'content panel' (which is the crap that goes around the content), getting rid of the the ad bar, keeping Realplayer (tm) from being the default media player for every fricking type multimedia file, denying the right to set inbc.com or real.com as my home page, and stopping the automatic "welcome to Real" movie, I was sent to a real.com web page.
When I finally got to the trailer, it luckily wasn't/.ed yet. Don't these companies REALize that if they put their media in non-proprietary formats, it might be cheaper and better for both them and their targeted audience? Too bad there aren't any commonly used, stable, high-quality, free, FREE media formats out there.
Slashdot Mirror
The lack of attacks against the BSD license doesn't mean the BSD is necessarily "The Good" open source license, as I have been hearing advocates talk about lately. It just means that it is the license that the attackers can benefit from the most.
Not that this fact is particularly relevant, because perhaps the hosting locations that use Windows don't make the top 50 uptime slots. Seriously, though, what I'm pointing out is that there are a number of ways to skin this cat: IDG and Gartner have two different assessments, and I have a third. It wouldn't surprise me if we are all correct.
MP3s real success is its placement in the market i.e. its widespread adoption--they were there with the right tools at the right time, and allowed people to use it gratis. They probably aren't the best format out there, but they were good enough and fraunhoffer played the right cards at the right time. Plus they secured their dominant position when Napster chose to use mp3 as its sole file-trading format. (not that there was much of a choice at the time.)
That being said, its dominance may even come to an end when Windows XP gets adopted widely and Napster and Thomson start charging--I already know people who have switched all of their music over to the wmf format. But for now, the market has made it the standard--last time I searched for .ogg files on gnutella there were about 3 hits.
Apparently, this is the hidden hurdle that open alternatives face. The only entities that can invest enough money into something to make it a market-place standard are those who hope to make a ton of money off of wide-spread adoption.
Thanks for the tip. I wasn't aware that there was a workaround, and so the last time I ran into this I ended up blowing away all my profile to fix it. You are doing a great service here by triaging these complaints. If this isn't a planned, organized effort, maybe it should be. (Whenever important Mozilla news gets posted on major web forum, an informed developer should actively dispel myths and douse flames.)
Did you mean incredible or incredulous? Although they technically mean the same thing, they also mean the opposite things.
What (specifically) was the patent about?
What did microsoft put in to Windows 95,98,ME,NT, etc.?
How about mp3/ra/ogg? Are they subject to this patent as well?
At one end, to be ultra-secure, you could go really nuts, have each machine use a different password, have each user change their password every month, require all passwords to be mixed case including numbers and letters, and so forth.
This, of course, could reduce your security, because your users will stick post-its to their monitors with their passwords on them, or email the passwords to themselves at Yahoo so that they have a record in case they forget.
You can't forget the human element here, because the human memory system is based on entirely different principles than a computer's is. People use all types of tricks to aid their less-than-perfect memories, the strategies they use in response to a paranoid admin's security policies may end up making the system much less secure when the human element is factored in.
Furthermore, its a mistake to think that this can be totally solved by HR policies and proper education of the user, because you might be setting up a system that can't be used by many people unless they introduce external memory aids (which are security risks). It would be as if (hypothetically) you were a record company heavily overcharging for CDs of a popular music "artist" or group, but complaining when people trade mp3s of the songs you refuse to sell them at a price they are willing to pay. Beware of your own rules and realize how they can sometimes encourage users to behave in ways that are antithetical to your ultimate goals.
Don't let the pictures attached to the article fool you. Sometimes Microsoft users are overweight too.
Ok, if video games based on movies don't count...how about Super Ma..., uhm X-wi...... I guess you're right.
The most interesting thing I have learned about the whole situation is this: First, there are a bunch of people who are Dvorak Advocates. They often believe they have found the One True Way, and attempt to convince and influence others into seeing it their way. However, most Dvorak users are live-and-let-live about it, willing to give people information, but realizing that most people do not have the diligence or the desire to learn the alternate mapping. Only a small number are these "Advocaters".
But, what is even more interesting is that there are also a bunch of Qwerty Evangalists out there. These are people who are utterly convinced that the Dvorak keyboard is a hoax, and attempt to convince everybody that they are right. There are probably more websites out there about why Qwerty is better than Dvorak than vice versa. I find these people very interesting (pcidevel appears to be one of them), because they generally have never tried the Dvorak keyboard, the Dvorak keyboard never did anything to their family, the Dvorak keyboard never flamed them on slashdot. They just have a need to tell people that the Dvorak sucks. Maybe they read about the Myth of the Keys, and think it makes them look devilishly smart to outwit all these people who think they are smarter than the general public.
I would suggest to anyone thinking about the Dvorak keyboard that they shouldn't switch if they ever use anyone else's machine. Or if they hope to gain speed. (You might gain 10%-20% in some situations, but most of the typing we do is not limited by our upper typing speed but by the speed at which we can think about what to say next, so the choice of a keyboard doesn't really matter too much. Plus, you can probably increase your speed 10-20% by spending a month practicing to type faster.) However, changing will decrease the number of errors you make, but errors have a relatively small cost these days (compared to the typewriter days, when an error could cost you minutes and minutes). Changing will decrease your finger movement, balance the amount that each hand types, and reduce a lot of awkward movements you do while typing. I don't know of any research showing that these qualities will reduce RSI, and this would be very difficult to determine experimentally, but there are numerous anecdotal testimonies that people have offered. In that respect, a "sample" size of 1 is a completely valid experiment, because it generalizes to the entire population who matters--person who reports their experience.
Their .net strategy is a way to avoid all these games. Instead of having to produce a better word processor to convince people to upgrade from Office 97, they develop a steady revenue stream by offering their product as a service, and charging monthly.
Its brilliant, and they probably have the power to do it. Fortunately, as long as their are free alternatives out there (mozilla, abiword, openoffice, etc.), they will not be able to capitalize entirely on their position, EVEN IF THOSE ALTERNATIVES ARE NOT USED BY THE MAJORITY OF COMPUTER USERS. AOL funds Netscape development but uses Explorer because right now, Explorer is a little better, and if they don't have an "Ace in the hole", Microsoft will no longer need to give away Explorer. Microsoft's strategy can be successful at quashing competing companies, but the open source alternatives don't play by the same business rules, and are thus very important for keeping Microsoft in check.
A ME TON, A ME NOT, A MEN TO, A MONTE, A MET NO, A MET ON, MANE TO, AMEN TO, MEAN TO, NAME TO, TAME NO, TAME ON, MEAT NO, MEAT ON, MATE NO, MATE ON, TEAM NO, TEAM ON, AM TONE, AM NOTE, MA TONE, MA NOTE, MAN TOE, MAO TEN, MAO NET, TAM ONE, TAM EON, MAT ONE, MAT EON, AN ME TO, AN TOME, NATO ME, ANT MOE, TAN MOE, NAT MOE, OAT MEN, TAO MEN, AT ME NO, AT ME ON, AT OMEN, AT MOEN
I can find significance in at least a dozen of these, especially when I comparing them to all the characters and events out there in literature and mythology.For example, MEAT ON is the opposite of NO MEAT. "AMEN TO"--TMA-1 symbolizes God, because God is the 1 you say AMEN TO. I could go on, but we all get the picture.
I used to believe that if you played heavy metal music backwards, you would here satanic messages. Then, I just realized how good people are at finding patterns in noise and making associations.
In my opinion, it is really petty for an author to complain about a review, and down-right childish to make that last personal attack on Cliff. Somewhat ironic, too, because Cliff claimed that Wheat misinterpreted 2001 and found meaning where there was none. In response, Wheat claims that Cliff misinterpreted his own work. Wheat is a relativist when he writes about others, but not when others write about him. BTW, LEONARD and ALDERON are anagrams as well. What do you make of that?
My question is, which would you prefer: a lame computer class that provides some structure and a potential for learning new things, or no class at all? In today's public school system, those appear to be the choices. The truth is, nobody really learns how to program in a class anyway--they learn how to program by programming, often as a requirement for getting a grade in a class, but frequently not.
Sorry--I couldn't resist.
Cool! I feel like I was actually there. Thanks for the report--somebody should mod this up.
The point is that this project is apparently cutting the company out of the picture. Its already clear (as per my above post) that a gaming community can support and sustain itself once a base system and tools for creating new scenarios are out there. Now, with a free base system and high-quality artwork and sounds available, there is no need for a company--the community can design, develop, and play their own games without the intervention of a corporate entity.
The guy at spiderweb games, a shareware company that is apparantly releasing their Exile series on linux, created the fairly successful "Blades of Exile" game that allowed the community to build its own adventures. I'm not sure if it was as successful as he had hoped, however, because I think his later games are unmodifiable,.
There are certainly dozens of professional games that have similar communities--there are hundreds of scenarios available out there for Age of Empires/AOK, and there must be thousands available for Quake/doom/etc.
In fact, there are many games out there that become much greater because they have a community developing the games. The success of these games might have more to do with the people writing their own scenarios and modifications than in the original technical or marketing activity of the original designers. I would think that in many of these cases, the wide-spread availability of novel free scenarios has increased the profits of these companies, rather than diminished them.
What's a yurt? Was that a misspelling, or something real?
Steinbeck made a big deal about how trailer houses were going to change the face of the country in "Travels with Charlie". I'm not sure whether they did, but change did happen.
The most important benchmark they showed was their charts--ugly products of Microsoft Excel. Even though a lot has changed in those 4.5 years, its still easier to make your charts in windows.
I saw that a few ip addresses were returning "[search].exe" and "[search]" the other day on gnutella. Out of curiosity, I tried to download them, but was unsuccessful. Then I blocked these IP addresses and dropped all messages from them. It seems that the real reason this 'virus' will spread slowly is because its nearly impossible to download anything from gnutella. The authors of this trojan must not have been too bright--they should have infected a P2P network with better throughput, like Napster.
And don't expect them to allow you to purchase JUST microsoft Word. The least you will be able to get will be a Word/Excel/Outlook/Explorer package (You heard it here...they won't be giving explorer away anymore, but maybe they will pretend that you get it "Free" with your rental of Office.) For a slightly larger price, you might be able to add powerpoint/access/picture editor etc. By requiring the bundling, enough copies of their products will exist out there that nobody in their right minds would choose to use anything else. And they can charge more, because you are getting 3-5 pieces of software for one low price.
For example: If the rental price was $5/month/application, many home users would buy Word, maybe get outlook, and probably move to Netscape. Net sales/month: $10 if they are lucky.
But, if the rental price were $20/month for a package of four applications, and this is the least you can get, more than half of those same people who only got Word and Outlook would probably go for it. Net sales/month: $15-$20/month easily.
If the microsoft marketing department is looking to hire, I'm available.
Oh well. More crap for the "information overload is a disease" pamphlets. Using external memory aids is only going to help you remember things better, so don't take the article's implicit device and throw out your datebook.
I think it is a strategy to identify ad-serving clients. Specifically, there are fake clients that return "yoursearch.html" or somesuch. A way to avoid this is to search for random text and block everyone who returns hits to you.
Remember when Real were the good guys? I just had to reinstall the RealPlayer because my beta had expired. After 5 minutes of downloading, installing, disabling startcenter, disabling automatic desktop icons, unselecting email notification (luckily, sales@real.com was accepted), dumping the 'content panel' (which is the crap that goes around the content), getting rid of the the ad bar, keeping Realplayer (tm) from being the default media player for every fricking type multimedia file, denying the right to set inbc.com or real.com as my home page, and stopping the automatic "welcome to Real" movie, I was sent to a real.com web page.
When I finally got to the trailer, it luckily wasn't /.ed yet. Don't these companies REALize that if they put their media in non-proprietary formats, it might be cheaper and better for both them and their targeted audience? Too bad there aren't any commonly used, stable, high-quality, free, FREE media formats out there.