If I ever read about this story *AGAIN*, of course with the remark that everybody who thinks otherwise didn't "look into the details", I'm going to scream.
Anyway.
Let's try it really simple, step-by-step:
If you sell a product, let's say a table, there is intended use and non-intended use. Non-intendet use of a table is cracking your skull open by falling onto a sharp corner.
So what will you request next? Everybody who sells tables with sharp corners to get sued?
For years, Microsoft had great success with NT selling it as "Not Unix"
Wrong, they had great succes with NT selling it as "runs on cheap hardware".
That was the only real advantage NT had and Microsoft knew that well. And it worked, Windows/PC is often so much cheaper than Unix/proprietary that it's also better, despite the shortcomings.
Linux changed all that.
Now Microsoft sounds like a Unix-vendor: "But TCO is lower"
Microsoft biggest selling-point ("good enough but cheaper") isn't working anymore.
The big business secret of Microsoft was to capitalize on other companies work. PC-vendors make only razor-thin margins to put out cheap hardware which made DOS/PC a lot cheaper and often also a lot better (because when you are "good enough", cheaper is the same as better) than Apple or Unix or Amiga.
The only serous previous challenger was OS/2 which had 2 big problems: The biggest problem was that it was made by IBM and no PC-maker in their right mind would use an OS made by the competition. The second problem was that despite the popular myth that "good compatibility killed the OS/2 platform", the reverse was true and while Win16 compatibility was OK, Win32 compatibility sucked.
Linux also has the latter problem, however it comes with a whole slew of advantages: It runs on the same hardware, it is cheap and it's available from many vendors.
So Linux will take away markets where it is "good enough" and little backwards-compatibility is needed. For example Novell said they would concentrate on call-centers to sell SUSE Linux to. And I see no reason why they shouldn't be able to do it - Linux can do everything that is needed (call centers don't need any Win32-games and MS Office) and is cheaper.
A similar situation is seen at governmental computers: With Linux offering the additional advantage of being able to be 100% supported internally, makes it great for governments outside the US. Even if Linux is twice as expensive, half of the expenses come back as tax-dollars, that's what makes it so great for governments. Anyway, of course there is still the problem of backwards-compatibility, that's why pioneers like Munich will take a couple of years to do the switch. However, once the software is ported to Linux, other cities and governments can do the switch much faster and easier. While Munich and a handful of other governments won't do much harm for Microsoft's bottom line, the NEXT round, when Win2K becomes unsupported, will already hurt them a lot.
It will certainly take a very long time (there will never be a "year" of the desktop, it's more like a decade or even 2 decades) but one market after another will go to Linux and Microsoft can't really do anything about it.
As far as losses go, there are huge sums of money spent on marketing IIRC Microsoft said they spent 500 million at the XBox launch on marketing alone - of course I don't know how much of that went to Japan.
But you are correct, I've used a completely wrong phrase: Japan got the best price because XBox1 was such a huge dissapointment there, which I think nobody can deny - even Microsoft.
Yeah, but that they ate fish is a lot more debatable (why not small dinosaurs? Eagles for example hunt for land animals all the time. Why not plants? A couple of birds eat plants.) and that they were more fuel-efficient is really pushing it...
Wrong, MS' expectations are *understated* because they want to "beat expectations" every time.
XBox tanked big.
And with PS3 coming out *later* than XBox360, XBox360 will only be the "hot new console" for about 6 months - and PS3 will be "hot new" for several years. Together with BluRay, more controllers and support for 2 screens, I guess Microsoft will not post any sales expectations because this time it will be even worse.
If it isn't, why does Windows support some hybrid backward-forward slash file serparator? (Sometimes you can use / as directory separator, too)
The reason is Microsoft wants software with "/" to work on Windows, but they do not want Windows-software with a backslash to work anywhere else.
Yeah, I know for you Windows-fans, that's just great. For everybody else it's just a moronic decision that costs millions of wasted hours every year for the whole industry.
Microsoft could have made the switch any time when it was clear that / will be used all around the Internet - it would have cost them NOTHING since they already supported / - All they should have done was show / in Explorer and "depricate" \ - everything would still work with both forward and backslash but all new programs would use / and so we would finally get rid of that unnesssesary compatibility problem.
Also Apple is running MacOSX which of course uses "/" as seperator for quite a while now, and VMS is decaying.
We are in the usual situation: A standard with only Microsoft being different for no good reason.
And yes, most programming languages use a \ as an escape character, if by `most' you mean C.
Even if it were so, C# (which is from Microsoft in case you forgot) also uses it. So does VisualBasic.
And Java, PHP, Perl, Python, Almost all assemblers, etc.
Erlang was never embraced by Microsoft.
Maybe you can come up with some Microsoft-language that did not use the backslash for masking?
The point is: There is the "Windows world" and there is "everybody else".
The "Windows world" is built around one vendor that deliberately does everything different to introduce incompatibilities. Example: What's with the backslash as directory seperator? It's just moronic because most programming languages use the backslash as a masking character. Microsoft deliberately used the backslash to be different.
Actually XBox sales were only about half of what Microsoft expected. But all of the sudden this dysmal failure has been turned into a big success by the marketing department.
I do think it's Microsoft's refusal to support OpenDocument is just making their problems even bigger. Let say f the state government sends some document to school system. Now receiver has to install OpenOffice to open that document instead of just using Word.
Exactly. And because OpenOffice is available for free, it's a workable solution.
Just imagine the reverse situation: Receiver has to buy a 200$ license to view the document. That's just insane. The only reason there is no outrage is because most already have MS Office.
However that will change, especially in Massachusets. If out need OpenOffice anyway, a couple of people/companies will start to wonder wether they really need 2 office suites...
Every time MS puts out a report that Windows TCO is lower, everyone here dismisses it as propaganda. What about this time? IBM has a substantial investment in Linux and I noticed that their own AIX wasn't used as an example.
It all depends wether it works with the experience.
In my experience, almost all webhosters are offering cheaper Linux-servers than Windows-servers.
Doesn't matter who is administering the servers, Linux is cheaper.
So IBM's study is confirming what I see and experience in real life, while Microsoft's studies are contradicting it. Also Microsoft's studies are really nonsense, in one study, they compared a dual-Xeon Windows-box with a Linux-mainframe (No, I'm not kidding, a MAINFRAME!!).
Actually most black africans have an average IQ of 70 and 59 is merely 11 points below that, so it's not that bad.
The figures for blacks in the US are different because of interbreeding (just look at Powell or Rice) and the blacks in the US are pretty much black-white mulattes, so they score about 85. In South Africa, pure blacks score also about 70 while "colored" (= mixed white/black) also score 86.
Maybe it's because we've been treated as the lesser of two human beings for centuries.
At least in the european societies, that just isn't true for at least 2000 years.
If a ship sunk, who got to the lifeboats? "women and children first"
During the centuries, women were treated differently as men - that's true - however they weren't ever treated as "a lesser human", quite to the contrary, a women's life was regarded to be worthy a lot more than the life of a man.
Actually if you look at suicide rates, it seems that women were never as unhappy as today.
But I don't think we should go teaching something we can't prove
Good idea.
Stop teaching about God, the wonders of Jesus and all the other nonsense.
that each one of those random chances was random and not influenced in any way
That cannot be proven. Equally you could demand that casinos should be declared religious temples because we cannot prove that the roulette-wheel was not influenced in any non-random way.
In fact, evolution has been observed and proven hundreds of times (both in the laboratory with species with fast reproductive cycles and in the field with pretty much any species).
ID, on the other hand was only created to include "God" in the theory. ID doesn't make any predictions, ID doesn't explain anything, ID isn't falsifiable (and it thus isn't scientific to begin with) and ID doesn't get as any new knowledge whatsoever. ID is worthless both in a scientifical and financial way.
Evolution on the other hand has helped us a lot in understanding (and fighting) viruses and diseases. Genetics is largely built upon it. The theory of evolution promoted science and allowed great achievements.
How long could the Chinese economy stay (relatively) stable, if they didn't sell anything?
Nonsense.
The Chinese have an enormous trade surplus.
In simple terms that means they give away more stuff than they receive - even simpler it could be said they are doing charity (because the dollar-bonds they buy are worthless anyway)
The Chinese can (AND WILL) use the surplus to "remain stable" - ie for their own people instead of Americans - as soon as a real economic crisis is there. That way the Chinese are able to raise the standard of living of their people pretty fast and pretty easily.
The Americans however will see a massive decline in standard of living when trade slows.
Will you dam linux people get your asses together already and make linux has friendly and as easy to use as windows? Get the dam thing out there to the AVERAGE people... Show them a new world.
Will you nice people finally realize that SuSE and Mandrake have been friendly and easy for years already and that it is not friendlyness or easiness that is stopping Linux, it is only lack of applications.
It will take about 5 years until government-centric applications will be there.
Then companies will start adopting it on the desktop and after another 5 years many accountant-software, etc. will be available on Linux.
Then (and unfortunately not earlier) the masses will start to run at home what they run at work and games (yes, I mean games that are not 3d-shooters), etc. will pop up for Linux.
It will happen, but it will take at least 10 years, probably 15 years, maybe even 20.
Unfortunately, this isn't the last 420000 years, because the last 60 years are missing. We currently have 370 ppm CO2, but the scale goes only to 325 ppm.
This is exactly the current problem with scince: All the evidence is there, it's just not presented clearly enough.
I've seen hundreds of grahps with rising CO2 concentration in the last century and hundreds of graphs with varying CO2 concentration in the last thousands of years.
At the casual look, it looks like we are just in such a variation and everything is fine.
However, I've so far never seen a graph that actually shows clearly that we are currently at the highest CO2 concentration EVER.
The PS3 is released in 2006, so it will be 7 years old in 2013, which is reasonable for a console's lifetime. (Except for Microsoft's, which life only 4 years)
Slashdot Mirror
Anyway.
Let's try it really simple, step-by-step:
If you sell a product, let's say a table, there is intended use and non-intended use. Non-intendet use of a table is cracking your skull open by falling onto a sharp corner.
So what will you request next? Everybody who sells tables with sharp corners to get sued?
I think you meant "throw more time/chairs/money/people at it"
Wrong, they had great succes with NT selling it as "runs on cheap hardware".
That was the only real advantage NT had and Microsoft knew that well. And it worked, Windows/PC is often so much cheaper than Unix/proprietary that it's also better, despite the shortcomings.
Linux changed all that.
Now Microsoft sounds like a Unix-vendor: "But TCO is lower"
Microsoft biggest selling-point ("good enough but cheaper") isn't working anymore.
I don't think so.
The big business secret of Microsoft was to capitalize on other companies work. PC-vendors make only razor-thin margins to put out cheap hardware which made DOS/PC a lot cheaper and often also a lot better (because when you are "good enough", cheaper is the same as better) than Apple or Unix or Amiga.
The only serous previous challenger was OS/2 which had 2 big problems: The biggest problem was that it was made by IBM and no PC-maker in their right mind would use an OS made by the competition. The second problem was that despite the popular myth that "good compatibility killed the OS/2 platform", the reverse was true and while Win16 compatibility was OK, Win32 compatibility sucked.
Linux also has the latter problem, however it comes with a whole slew of advantages: It runs on the same hardware, it is cheap and it's available from many vendors.
So Linux will take away markets where it is "good enough" and little backwards-compatibility is needed. For example Novell said they would concentrate on call-centers to sell SUSE Linux to. And I see no reason why they shouldn't be able to do it - Linux can do everything that is needed (call centers don't need any Win32-games and MS Office) and is cheaper.
A similar situation is seen at governmental computers: With Linux offering the additional advantage of being able to be 100% supported internally, makes it great for governments outside the US. Even if Linux is twice as expensive, half of the expenses come back as tax-dollars, that's what makes it so great for governments. Anyway, of course there is still the problem of backwards-compatibility, that's why pioneers like Munich will take a couple of years to do the switch. However, once the software is ported to Linux, other cities and governments can do the switch much faster and easier. While Munich and a handful of other governments won't do much harm for Microsoft's bottom line, the NEXT round, when Win2K becomes unsupported, will already hurt them a lot.
It will certainly take a very long time (there will never be a "year" of the desktop, it's more like a decade or even 2 decades) but one market after another will go to Linux and Microsoft can't really do anything about it.
But you are correct, I've used a completely wrong phrase: Japan got the best price because XBox1 was such a huge dissapointment there, which I think nobody can deny - even Microsoft.
For example, assume manager A and manager B.
Manager A sais: "Your products suck and we want to switch to Linux"
Manager B sais: "Windows is such a fine great product"
Who will get the better price?
Essentially Japan is getting better prices because in Japan XBox1 made Microsoft even more losses than everywhere else.
Linus said that, not Reiser.
There are 2 main points where energy is wasted:
1. Badly insulated houses
2. People driving bigger cars than they should.
Everything else is just noise. And that includes all computers, CD-players and videogames in the whole world.
Yeah, but that they ate fish is a lot more debatable (why not small dinosaurs? Eagles for example hunt for land animals all the time. Why not plants? A couple of birds eat plants.) and that they were more fuel-efficient is really pushing it...
XBox tanked big.
And with PS3 coming out *later* than XBox360, XBox360 will only be the "hot new console" for about 6 months - and PS3 will be "hot new" for several years. Together with BluRay, more controllers and support for 2 screens, I guess Microsoft will not post any sales expectations because this time it will be even worse.
If it isn't, why does Windows support some hybrid backward-forward slash file serparator? (Sometimes you can use / as directory separator, too)
The reason is Microsoft wants software with "/" to work on Windows, but they do not want Windows-software with a backslash to work anywhere else.
Yeah, I know for you Windows-fans, that's just great. For everybody else it's just a moronic decision that costs millions of wasted hours every year for the whole industry.
Microsoft could have made the switch any time when it was clear that / will be used all around the Internet - it would have cost them NOTHING since they already supported / - All they should have done was show / in Explorer and "depricate" \ - everything would still work with both forward and backslash but all new programs would use / and so we would finally get rid of that unnesssesary compatibility problem.
Also Apple is running MacOSX which of course uses "/" as seperator for quite a while now, and VMS is decaying.
We are in the usual situation: A standard with only Microsoft being different for no good reason.
And yes, most programming languages use a \ as an escape character, if by `most' you mean C.
Even if it were so, C# (which is from Microsoft in case you forgot) also uses it. So does VisualBasic.
And Java, PHP, Perl, Python, Almost all assemblers, etc.
Erlang was never embraced by Microsoft.
Maybe you can come up with some Microsoft-language that did not use the backslash for masking?
The "Windows world" is built around one vendor that deliberately does everything different to introduce incompatibilities. Example: What's with the backslash as directory seperator? It's just moronic because most programming languages use the backslash as a masking character. Microsoft deliberately used the backslash to be different.
Of course that creates problems.
Wrong, they sold less than half as many as expected, at least during the first year - after that Microsoft stopped posting sales expectations.
Actually XBox sales were only about half of what Microsoft expected. But all of the sudden this dysmal failure has been turned into a big success by the marketing department.
I've read somewhere that Sony spent about a billion for marketing during the PS2-launch.
Given that Microsoft spent about half a billion, this sounds reasonable.
Exactly. And because OpenOffice is available for free, it's a workable solution.
Just imagine the reverse situation: Receiver has to buy a 200$ license to view the document. That's just insane. The only reason there is no outrage is because most already have MS Office.
However that will change, especially in Massachusets. If out need OpenOffice anyway, a couple of people/companies will start to wonder wether they really need 2 office suites...
It all depends wether it works with the experience.
In my experience, almost all webhosters are offering cheaper Linux-servers than Windows-servers.
Doesn't matter who is administering the servers, Linux is cheaper.
So IBM's study is confirming what I see and experience in real life, while Microsoft's studies are contradicting it. Also Microsoft's studies are really nonsense, in one study, they compared a dual-Xeon Windows-box with a Linux-mainframe (No, I'm not kidding, a MAINFRAME!!).
Sorry, but I can't take such studies seriously.
The figures for blacks in the US are different because of interbreeding (just look at Powell or Rice) and the blacks in the US are pretty much black-white mulattes, so they score about 85. In South Africa, pure blacks score also about 70 while "colored" (= mixed white/black) also score 86.
At least in the european societies, that just isn't true for at least 2000 years.
If a ship sunk, who got to the lifeboats? "women and children first"
During the centuries, women were treated differently as men - that's true - however they weren't ever treated as "a lesser human", quite to the contrary, a women's life was regarded to be worthy a lot more than the life of a man.
Actually if you look at suicide rates, it seems that women were never as unhappy as today.
He will have to come up with some damn good evidence if he wants to convince me of such ideas.
He did came up with some damn good evidence, unfortunately you are not even willing to read it.
Good idea.
Stop teaching about God, the wonders of Jesus and all the other nonsense.
that each one of those random chances was random and not influenced in any way
That cannot be proven. Equally you could demand that casinos should be declared religious temples because we cannot prove that the roulette-wheel was not influenced in any non-random way.
In fact, evolution has been observed and proven hundreds of times (both in the laboratory with species with fast reproductive cycles and in the field with pretty much any species).
ID, on the other hand was only created to include "God" in the theory. ID doesn't make any predictions, ID doesn't explain anything, ID isn't falsifiable (and it thus isn't scientific to begin with) and ID doesn't get as any new knowledge whatsoever. ID is worthless both in a scientifical and financial way.
Evolution on the other hand has helped us a lot in understanding (and fighting) viruses and diseases. Genetics is largely built upon it. The theory of evolution promoted science and allowed great achievements.
Nonsense.
The Chinese have an enormous trade surplus.
In simple terms that means they give away more stuff than they receive - even simpler it could be said they are doing charity (because the dollar-bonds they buy are worthless anyway)
The Chinese can (AND WILL) use the surplus to "remain stable" - ie for their own people instead of Americans - as soon as a real economic crisis is there. That way the Chinese are able to raise the standard of living of their people pretty fast and pretty easily.
The Americans however will see a massive decline in standard of living when trade slows.
Will you nice people finally realize that SuSE and Mandrake have been friendly and easy for years already and that it is not friendlyness or easiness that is stopping Linux, it is only lack of applications.
It will take about 5 years until government-centric applications will be there.
Then companies will start adopting it on the desktop and after another 5 years many accountant-software, etc. will be available on Linux.
Then (and unfortunately not earlier) the masses will start to run at home what they run at work and games (yes, I mean games that are not 3d-shooters), etc. will pop up for Linux.
It will happen, but it will take at least 10 years, probably 15 years, maybe even 20.
Unfortunately, this isn't the last 420000 years, because the last 60 years are missing. We currently have 370 ppm CO2, but the scale goes only to 325 ppm.
This is exactly the current problem with scince: All the evidence is there, it's just not presented clearly enough.
I've seen hundreds of grahps with rising CO2 concentration in the last century and hundreds of graphs with varying CO2 concentration in the last thousands of years.
At the casual look, it looks like we are just in such a variation and everything is fine.
However, I've so far never seen a graph that actually shows clearly that we are currently at the highest CO2 concentration EVER.
Baldur's Gate 1 (circa 1998): 500 megabytes
Baldur's Gate 2 (circa 2000): 1.2 gigs
NeverWinter Nights (Circa 2002): 2.1 gigs
Knights of the Old Republic (2003): 4.0 gigs
2005: 8 GB
2007: 16 GB
2009: 32 GB
2011: 64 GB
2013: 128 GB
The PS3 is released in 2006, so it will be 7 years old in 2013, which is reasonable for a console's lifetime. (Except for Microsoft's, which life only 4 years)