Given that it was held in New Mexico, Blue Sky is appropriate.
*(For those who don't know, the sky in Santa Fe & Los Alamos -- due to the extreme altitude -- is a very deep shade of blue, brighter and darker than the typical light-blue you see at normal altitudes.)
If Microsoft cannot afford to pay a daily fine, they can far less afford to lose Europe as a legitimate market completely.
Besides...the result of cutting off Microsoft would not be that people would stop using Microsoft products during the transition; they'd just stop paying Microsoft for the privelege.
This hurts Microsoft more than it hurts anyone else.
What's more, having the open source culture is why the EU isn't fooled by Microsoft's hedging.
If Microsoft actually complies, then all open-source apps can work seamlessly with Microsoft formats. Although they'll be built in Europe, nothing's to stop you from using those apps anywhere else in the world. If you can work seamlessly with a Word document without using MS-Word, why would you buy MS-Word? So despite all of this, what the EU requested, actual compliance with the directive, may be worse for Microsoft than the fine!
Microsoft's best bet is to hold on for as long as possible and hope that, with the release of Vista, they can use the loophole ("But we're not selling XP; you have to prosecute us again over this new product") or, somehow, convince major markets of the world to ban all Open Source Software written after they comply with the directive.
To paraphrase Zathras, "Either way, things bad for Microsoft."
Not to mention the fact that in TFA it states that a company hired to reverse engineer some of the MS code in order to validate the documentation they DID provide found the documentation to be "self-contradictory".
Well, duh. It took me all of two weeks working with MFC (way back when) to figure that out.
He doesn't even have to be anonymous. Once the specs are out, no amount of lawsuit will prevent interoperability for those so inclined.
More to the point of his question, if he communicates with Alesis, they might be perfectly happy to turn his code into an official driver. He may not be able to release it under the GPL, but under those terms, Alesis may be willing to pay for his time and effort.
Actually, a big part of it was the bursting dot-com bubble. All the Indians here on H1B's had to go back home. And when they found themselves all together back at home, they thought, "Hey, we should start ourselves a software business... we can charge much less... and we won't have to deal with racist Americans complaining about us stealing their jobs!"
If the appeal is successful, it will be because of this very thing: Email is unreliable, and being an internet business, Amazon.com would know that!
If you don't believe that email is unreliable, try responding to the "From" column on some of your spam and see how many of those "From" addresses are legitimate!
So you don't just buy products made with Chinese slave labour, you've actually imported it into your own home to wash your dirty undies? Jesus Christ. Fuck off and die. Right now.
The first one stop gaming/DVR/audio/movie device with already recognizable brand awareness wins the living room hands down.
I have a DVR/DVD recorder/DVD player in the living room that's a wonderful toy, and I've already put all of these functions to use. Among other tasks, one thing I do is record "Sesame Street" each day for my 15-month-old son. But if he's ever going to watch an episode, I have to be the one to start it, because my wife (who advanced to PhD Candidacy Computer Science) can't figure out how to work it, and the nanny is from rural China -- great luck showing her how to navigate the menus to get the show going!
I also have a VCR. It plays VHS tapes. All it does is play VHS tapes. You put in a pre-recorded tape, and it starts to play. You push the power or stop/eject button, and it stops. My 15-month-old himself figured out how to work it last night.
If you're going to do an all-in-one device, you're going to have a seriously complicated device. Reason #1 why the iPod succeeded was that any idiot can start listening to music on one, and reason #1 why any idiot can use it is that it doesn't try to be your cell phone/game machine/PDA as well as your digital music player.
Now who do you think makes up the bulk of the market:
- People who like figuring out all the gizmos on combo toys like me? - Otherwise technically adept people who get frustrated if they have to RTFM on an A/V device like my wife? - People who just want to put the tape in and watch the fucking movie?
I'll be honestly shocked if your prediction occurs within a generation, and mildly surprised if it happens at all.
The grandparent post is right. They've got a reputation for being "pretty good" in almost every market where they have a presense, and an easy brand to look for if you're a busy yuppy with no desire to study reviews and compare prices all day.
The real problem they face is that they've had this reputation for so long, that now everyone knows that it's only an "ok" brand. Since it's common knowledge, the kind of "busy yuppie ignorance" that led to sales in the 90's is not creating nearly as many sales now, and the truly good products they make (like the noise-cancelling headphones you mentioned) are negatively affected by that very reputation.
To wit: My first thought upon reading about those headphones was, "Sony makes good noise-cancelling headphones? Wow, who knew?" (Granted, this is in comparison with Bose, which is basically high-priced dogshit.)
There was a point we were talking about possibly putting our technology onto handheld devices. (We were way too late to be able to hit the DS' launch date, which is a true tragedy.) But the problem with Sony, our Japanese rep explained to us, was the way the company was structured: Even though our contact knew the CEOs of both companies well, that wasn't sufficient with Sony because of the independent nature of the silos.
It'd be one thing if the independent pieces were each successful, but since Playstation's carrying all of the weight, there's clearly something wrong.
From what I understand of their culture, they'll go out of business before they'll change.
My bro worked for (major US-based airline headquartered in Atlanta) for a while. And according to the pilots, as soon as the "you can turn on your portable electronic devices" announcement goes on, their instruments all go haywire.
The pilots did not need CMU researchers to tell them this.
The idea behind having a big name doesn't work if the name isn't associated with anything. Irnfrogramresr buying "Atari" makes sense -- there's Pong, that whole old-school feeling, the funky "A" logo. Activision buying "Acclaim" is... Well, I'm trying to come up with an association here, and "Turok" isn't registering on the ol' 'leet-o-meter.
If Activision couldn't buy a bigger name, seems they're better off creating a new brand of their own, a la Toyota's creation of Lexus and Scion.
"It's not like we're filling up the gas tank and shopping around for best miles per gallon. By that logic, nobody should ever do anything except walk outside, because it's free."
Wait... I do fill up at the cheapest station, and I walk to work to save on gas! So what's your point?
You've got a great point there: The obvious result of learning (from WoW or elsewhere) that "time > skill" is that you'll ultimately give up playing WoW to spend more time doing things in real life. Since I already had learned this lesson from other examples, I don't play WoW at all, but it seems you've learned the lesson, and just haven't yet taken the obvious next step to not play WoW any more.
Except for one little detail that will keep you coming back to it anyhow:
There is more to WoW than just playing a video game....
"I would classify the Bards' dedication to their work as an obsession. Plain hard work doesn't begin to describe it."
I'll never forget the time when Marc asked me to re-record the cello on "My love is like the red, red rose" because it was horribly out of tune (I'd tuned the cello to itself, rather than to 440Hz A).
So of course I had to ask: "Since when do you notice something out of tune?"
The point is that there is no way for a single player to get as good equipment as one playing in 40 man raids will get. And that's because blizzard has put all good drops on bosses which you cannot manage yourself.
I quite caught that point, and this is pretty much how things are in real life: The person who goes it alone is not going to have the success of people working in groups. Even if you're talking about (say) a solo recording artist, you're talking about a huge support network surrounding that person, including the producer, studio musicians, promoters, the works. If you're talking about a pro tennis player, the big successes have their entourages including family, coach, trainer, someone to manage the money to make sure they don't go broke, a business manager to deal with the licensing, and for women's tennis, a tutor so they don't miss out on the 9th grade. If you're talking about a hacker, you've got the folks who wrote the compiler, editor, libraries...
In real life, you'll be locked out of the best things trying to do it all yourself, and justly so. The ability to work with a group is more valuable than gold, and you don't have to become an extrovert to learn how.
You're making your comment in jest, I know. You actually have a good counterpoint to his article: His claim is that the life skills WoW teaches are bunk, and you point out that "making money" is a life skill in the USA.
Why not look at his points one by one? He repeats himself twice, so he really just has 3 objections:
Time > Skill
He's right that a great talent can do as much in less time as a mediocre talent. That's just to get the same quality of work.
My best friend is in a band. He and I both admit that I have more musical talent in my left arm than he has in his whole body. The difference is that I'm a slacker, and he's constantly working at it. The result is that he has more and better CDs than I will ever make. His Ability far exceeds anything I've ever accomplished in any context.
And that's how it goes: Ability is a combination of effort and talent, and the coefficients favor effort: The mediocre talents who put in great effort always get ahead of the great talents who put in a mediocre effort in the real world.
I also feel that this is more fair; God has not seen fit to distribute all talents evenly, so claiming that talent is the most valuable thing (moreso than effort or ability) is tantamount to saying that blond hair and blue eyes are more valuable than black hair and brown eyes.
So here, I have to agree with what WoW teaches.
group > solo
I'm an introvert, just like the author. I am not a hermit. A few years back, I took the Dale Carnegie course -- you know, that Dale Carnegie?
The knowledge I gained changed my life. Learning the skills of how to get along with others didn't mean abandoning the introverted lifestyle. The main thing to realize is that people skills are learned skills, not inherent abilities. Even if you're an introvert, that doesn't mean you want to be a hermit or die alone -- and it also doesn't mean you can't learn how to deal with people effectively.
Your so-called "superior" may be an idiot jerk to you, but he got his position because he isn't a jerk to the right people. And if you look at the superiors who are great managers, they aren't great because they know more about your field than you. They're great because they are easy to get along with and know how to let you do your job well.
Take a look at the great bands that were great together, but when they split apart the solo acts all seemed wanting. Or how your family is not just a number of people, but seems to have a life of its own. Very few people really want to be completely alone, but some of us are just not very good at it; it would be a problem, except that anyone can get better at it. I know that I did -- or at the very least, I recognize my mistakes when I make them now.:)
So once again I find that WoW is teaching the right things with real life.
Terms of Service
I don't really have an opinion on this, because I am not a subscriber.:)
Work, in the real world, is more valuable than skill, and it also seems more fair that it should be that way. And well-made groups are more valuable than the sum of their parts -- especially families. In the end, I'd say the top two lessons he says WoW teaches are very important lessons and are the right things to teach.
Slashdot Mirror
Given that it was held in New Mexico, Blue Sky is appropriate.
*(For those who don't know, the sky in Santa Fe & Los Alamos -- due to the extreme altitude -- is a very deep shade of blue, brighter and darker than the typical light-blue you see at normal altitudes.)
Just burn the copies on a Mac or Linux machine.
Piece o' cake.
Why are all of the models in that link mutants? All the people I know have nipples.
If Microsoft cannot afford to pay a daily fine, they can far less afford to lose Europe as a legitimate market completely.
Besides...the result of cutting off Microsoft would not be that people would stop using Microsoft products during the transition; they'd just stop paying Microsoft for the privelege.
This hurts Microsoft more than it hurts anyone else.
What's more, having the open source culture is why the EU isn't fooled by Microsoft's hedging.
If Microsoft actually complies, then all open-source apps can work seamlessly with Microsoft formats. Although they'll be built in Europe, nothing's to stop you from using those apps anywhere else in the world. If you can work seamlessly with a Word document without using MS-Word, why would you buy MS-Word? So despite all of this, what the EU requested, actual compliance with the directive, may be worse for Microsoft than the fine!
Microsoft's best bet is to hold on for as long as possible and hope that, with the release of Vista, they can use the loophole ("But we're not selling XP; you have to prosecute us again over this new product") or, somehow, convince major markets of the world to ban all Open Source Software written after they comply with the directive.
To paraphrase Zathras, "Either way, things bad for Microsoft."
Well, duh. It took me all of two weeks working with MFC (way back when) to figure that out.
It wasn't a raccoon, it was one of those damned armadillos.
And I'm recovering nicely, fuck you very much!
RTFA: They repeated it several times AND it's already been published in a peer-reviewed journal.
Leave it to a slashdotter to be lecturing scientists at Sandia on the scientific method!
He doesn't even have to be anonymous. Once the specs are out, no amount of lawsuit will prevent interoperability for those so inclined.
More to the point of his question, if he communicates with Alesis, they might be perfectly happy to turn his code into an official driver. He may not be able to release it under the GPL, but under those terms, Alesis may be willing to pay for his time and effort.
Actually, a big part of it was the bursting dot-com bubble. All the Indians here on H1B's had to go back home. And when they found themselves all together back at home, they thought, "Hey, we should start ourselves a software business... we can charge much less... and we won't have to deal with racist Americans complaining about us stealing their jobs!"
Well, two out of three ain't bad.
If the appeal is successful, it will be because of this very thing: Email is unreliable, and being an internet business, Amazon.com would know that!
If you don't believe that email is unreliable, try responding to the "From" column on some of your spam and see how many of those "From" addresses are legitimate!
Or are you just jealous that someone with a different skin color than yours makes more money than you do?
So you don't just buy products made with Chinese slave labour, you've actually imported it into your own home to wash your dirty undies? Jesus Christ. Fuck off and die. Right now.
What are you, some kind of redneck?
The first one stop gaming/DVR/audio/movie device with already recognizable brand awareness wins the living room hands down.
I have a DVR/DVD recorder/DVD player in the living room that's a wonderful toy, and I've already put all of these functions to use. Among other tasks, one thing I do is record "Sesame Street" each day for my 15-month-old son. But if he's ever going to watch an episode, I have to be the one to start it, because my wife (who advanced to PhD Candidacy Computer Science) can't figure out how to work it, and the nanny is from rural China -- great luck showing her how to navigate the menus to get the show going!
I also have a VCR. It plays VHS tapes. All it does is play VHS tapes. You put in a pre-recorded tape, and it starts to play. You push the power or stop/eject button, and it stops. My 15-month-old himself figured out how to work it last night.
If you're going to do an all-in-one device, you're going to have a seriously complicated device. Reason #1 why the iPod succeeded was that any idiot can start listening to music on one, and reason #1 why any idiot can use it is that it doesn't try to be your cell phone/game machine/PDA as well as your digital music player.
Now who do you think makes up the bulk of the market:
- People who like figuring out all the gizmos on combo toys like me?
- Otherwise technically adept people who get frustrated if they have to RTFM on an A/V device like my wife?
- People who just want to put the tape in and watch the fucking movie?
I'll be honestly shocked if your prediction occurs within a generation, and mildly surprised if it happens at all.
The grandparent post is right. They've got a reputation for being "pretty good" in almost every market where they have a presense, and an easy brand to look for if you're a busy yuppy with no desire to study reviews and compare prices all day.
The real problem they face is that they've had this reputation for so long, that now everyone knows that it's only an "ok" brand. Since it's common knowledge, the kind of "busy yuppie ignorance" that led to sales in the 90's is not creating nearly as many sales now, and the truly good products they make (like the noise-cancelling headphones you mentioned) are negatively affected by that very reputation.
To wit: My first thought upon reading about those headphones was, "Sony makes good noise-cancelling headphones? Wow, who knew?" (Granted, this is in comparison with Bose, which is basically high-priced dogshit.)
I'm astonished your post isn't at +5 yet.
There was a point we were talking about possibly putting our technology onto handheld devices. (We were way too late to be able to hit the DS' launch date, which is a true tragedy.) But the problem with Sony, our Japanese rep explained to us, was the way the company was structured: Even though our contact knew the CEOs of both companies well, that wasn't sufficient with Sony because of the independent nature of the silos.
It'd be one thing if the independent pieces were each successful, but since Playstation's carrying all of the weight, there's clearly something wrong.
From what I understand of their culture, they'll go out of business before they'll change.
My bro worked for (major US-based airline headquartered in Atlanta) for a while. And according to the pilots, as soon as the "you can turn on your portable electronic devices" announcement goes on, their instruments all go haywire.
The pilots did not need CMU researchers to tell them this.
The idea behind having a big name doesn't work if the name isn't associated with anything. Irnfrogramresr buying "Atari" makes sense -- there's Pong, that whole old-school feeling, the funky "A" logo. Activision buying "Acclaim" is... Well, I'm trying to come up with an association here, and "Turok" isn't registering on the ol' 'leet-o-meter.
If Activision couldn't buy a bigger name, seems they're better off creating a new brand of their own, a la Toyota's creation of Lexus and Scion.
Oh, cool... We do that too. Granted, we have a 14-month old. He's entertaining enough as it is.
"It's not like we're filling up the gas tank and shopping around for best miles per gallon. By that logic, nobody should ever do anything except walk outside, because it's free."
Wait... I do fill up at the cheapest station, and I walk to work to save on gas! So what's your point?
You say that like it's a bad thing.
You've got a great point there: The obvious result of learning (from WoW or elsewhere) that "time > skill" is that you'll ultimately give up playing WoW to spend more time doing things in real life. Since I already had learned this lesson from other examples, I don't play WoW at all, but it seems you've learned the lesson, and just haven't yet taken the obvious next step to not play WoW any more.
Except for one little detail that will keep you coming back to it anyhow:
There is more to WoW than just playing a video game....
"I would classify the Bards' dedication to their work as an obsession. Plain hard work doesn't begin to describe it."
I'll never forget the time when Marc asked me to re-record the cello on "My love is like the red, red rose" because it was horribly out of tune (I'd tuned the cello to itself, rather than to 440Hz A).
So of course I had to ask: "Since when do you notice something out of tune?"
"Fuck you, man. Fuck you."
I quite caught that point, and this is pretty much how things are in real life: The person who goes it alone is not going to have the success of people working in groups. Even if you're talking about (say) a solo recording artist, you're talking about a huge support network surrounding that person, including the producer, studio musicians, promoters, the works. If you're talking about a pro tennis player, the big successes have their entourages including family, coach, trainer, someone to manage the money to make sure they don't go broke, a business manager to deal with the licensing, and for women's tennis, a tutor so they don't miss out on the 9th grade. If you're talking about a hacker, you've got the folks who wrote the compiler, editor, libraries...
In real life, you'll be locked out of the best things trying to do it all yourself, and justly so. The ability to work with a group is more valuable than gold, and you don't have to become an extrovert to learn how.
You're making your comment in jest, I know. You actually have a good counterpoint to his article: His claim is that the life skills WoW teaches are bunk, and you point out that "making money" is a life skill in the USA.
:)
:)
Why not look at his points one by one? He repeats himself twice, so he really just has 3 objections:
Time > Skill
He's right that a great talent can do as much in less time as a mediocre talent. That's just to get the same quality of work.
My best friend is in a band. He and I both admit that I have more musical talent in my left arm than he has in his whole body. The difference is that I'm a slacker, and he's constantly working at it. The result is that he has more and better CDs than I will ever make. His Ability far exceeds anything I've ever accomplished in any context.
And that's how it goes: Ability is a combination of effort and talent, and the coefficients favor effort: The mediocre talents who put in great effort always get ahead of the great talents who put in a mediocre effort in the real world.
I also feel that this is more fair; God has not seen fit to distribute all talents evenly, so claiming that talent is the most valuable thing (moreso than effort or ability) is tantamount to saying that blond hair and blue eyes are more valuable than black hair and brown eyes.
So here, I have to agree with what WoW teaches.
group > solo
I'm an introvert, just like the author. I am not a hermit. A few years back, I took the Dale Carnegie course -- you know, that Dale Carnegie?
The knowledge I gained changed my life. Learning the skills of how to get along with others didn't mean abandoning the introverted lifestyle. The main thing to realize is that people skills are learned skills, not inherent abilities. Even if you're an introvert, that doesn't mean you want to be a hermit or die alone -- and it also doesn't mean you can't learn how to deal with people effectively.
Your so-called "superior" may be an idiot jerk to you, but he got his position because he isn't a jerk to the right people. And if you look at the superiors who are great managers, they aren't great because they know more about your field than you. They're great because they are easy to get along with and know how to let you do your job well.
Take a look at the great bands that were great together, but when they split apart the solo acts all seemed wanting. Or how your family is not just a number of people, but seems to have a life of its own. Very few people really want to be completely alone, but some of us are just not very good at it; it would be a problem, except that anyone can get better at it. I know that I did -- or at the very least, I recognize my mistakes when I make them now.
So once again I find that WoW is teaching the right things with real life.
Terms of Service
I don't really have an opinion on this, because I am not a subscriber.
Work, in the real world, is more valuable than skill, and it also seems more fair that it should be that way. And well-made groups are more valuable than the sum of their parts -- especially families. In the end, I'd say the top two lessons he says WoW teaches are very important lessons and are the right things to teach.
Interesting moral point: Since their whole objective is silencing others, we have the moral high ground in ignoring them? :)
I like that idea.