With Sony's poor financial health (go look it up; the PS3 will have to be a blockbuster in order for the company to remain profitable during the next FOUR years), and Nintendo looking more and more like a dying Sega, I suspected that MS will be the last man standing in the console arena.
By the time PS3 and Nintendo's Wii have established some degree of market penetration (1 year after release?) we'll see an Xbox 360-2.
The sad truth of the matter is that MS has the financial resources to manhandle Sony (especially given Sony's miscalculations regarding the PS3's costs and schedule), and the financial resources to bury Nintendo.
I'm not happy about it, but the console market today is starting to looking like the OS market right around the time Windows 95's release. I'm scared that after huge financial outlays Sony's going to have to sell it's console division, and MS is going to be sitting there with a huge pile of cash....
I'm not sure I'm a huge fan of things like ThinkFree, but I am a huge fan of solutions which allow your organization to host various services online.
Java applet versions of NoMachine's NX, for example, give you Citrix-like experience over-the-web. Web hosted e-mail means that once you train your users the only "downtimes" you experience are connection problems.
Just because you don't want to host all your companies documents on ThinkFree.Com doesn't mean that it isn't a good idea to keep (at least one version) of all your companies documents on one system.
Thin Clients were a reality for a long time, and are still a reality in many places. Thin Client-like technologies for the web are still in their infancy, yet we have many up and coming companies with boatloads of cash putting their futures on the line with thin clients. I don't necessarily mean that the "One True (Microsoft?) Server Farm" is the answer, but there are many situations where you want to keep all your data in the same place. Security, for example, is much easier to handle when you don't have to worry about each and every employees laptop.
SuSE does a LOT of testing on its package. SuSE will patch sources if necessary to fix bugs that exist, especially in important things like the kernel, KDE, GNOME, Firefox, and binary drivers.
You can see these patches by downloading the SRPMs. The patches are included in the build process.
SuSE keeps everything up to date, automatically. I assumed that most big distros/package management schemes did something like this.
As it is, I don't have to check for updates to ANY software on my machine. It's all done by SuSE. Well, except for Cedega; I wish transgaming would setup an APT-RPM repository.
Not arguing with you, but two points you may be interested in, if you are interested up-and-coming package management.
1. Look at the "Smart Package Manager". It's surprisingly good. It uses APT repositories (among YUM, APT-RPM, ZYPP, YAST2, whatever), and is actually a good deal smarter than "apt". You can run them side-by-side, as well. Smart can be less strict about "broken" system configurations, which is quite useful. It also load balances repositories based upon response time.
2. Look at klik:// . It's similar to OS X's.app folder/application scheme. You aren't restricted to statically compiled apps either, IIRC, but most klik:// apps tend to be distributed like that. It needs a recent kernel version to really work well (FUSE support is import, IIRC.) All of the apps's settings, libraries, whatever, are contained in the "folder", and you start the "app" by double clicking the folder. You "uninstall" the app by deleting the folder. This is a good way to distribute binary-only apps like Skype.
Well, there's always klik:// , which, IMHO, one ups OS X. I say this as someone who is typing on my MacBook Pro (while laying in bed), with my PowerMac Dual 2.7Ghz sitting in the next room.
Furthermore, I think you exaggerate the problems of "dependancy hell". I run SuSE on most of my systems (including my MacBook Pro), and I don't experience RPM hell anymore. I use the "Smart Package Manager", and in recent history I haven't experienced dependancy problems, even for packages I download. Furthermore, unlike OS X, RPM or APT based system will effectively "clean up" after uninstalled applications, while in OS X you'll have crap in/Library,/Library/Application Support, $HOME/Library, and other places.
Here's the problem with Linux packages: More developers need to make statically compiled binaries with decent quality widgets! If you install an application from your distribution's online repositories, your golden. Dependancy problems are resolved automagically, and you always remain up to date. If you install a statically compiled RPM manually, you have no dependancy problems, and as long as the software complies with some freedesktop base rules you'll get mime-type configuration and program menu entries. The problem is independant Linux applications that are not statically compiled and NOT properly setup on a distribution by distribution basis. This isn't a problem that will go away, not as long as developers don't provide static packages. There's no "legislating" around this (in terms of desktop base), unless you specifiy a "base" minimum configuration, in which case you'll be excluding window managers, and other common segements of Linux users.
Really, the answer is either a) use your distribution's package management system, exclusively, or b) use statically compiled packages.
Note that Windows applications are generally statically compiled, or rely exclusively on common Microsoft runtimes. It's not so hard to build a "standard" Linux package, either, if you assume the existance of Gnome and GTK2.
Wine already works with many XP apps. Mono is can do some interesting things, as well, in terms of usage in combination with Wine.
Wine + Apple's pockets? And maybe IBM's pockets?
Booyah. Not to mention that the Wine project is getting pretty dang close to Win32. DirectX included.
MS can't make Win32 too much of a moving target, or they'll have to EOL XP. And they can't really make the API's too sophisticated, because then they'll turn off developers. The biggest problem the Wine project really has is lack of man hours, not lack of knowledge. $$ can buy man hours, and corporations with programmers familiar with Win32's internals can provide man hours in bulk.
And the EU's punishment should be fitting, as well. MS is a monopoly, by virtue of its monopoly grant of intellectual property protection on Windows, Office, and a variety of other products (both copyright and patent).
Remember that Intellectual Property (as a concept) is defined as a "limited grant of monopoly distribution rights over a concept".
The correct EU solution is to revoke MS's right to copyright. That would most likely teach them a thing or two.
Patently false, you're making a classic "soft-libertarian" error.
What's MS base its business on? Software? Windows? Office? WMV? DOC? APIs?
Let me spell that correctly for you: "Intellectual Property".
What is Copyright? What is Patent Protection?
A (limited) grant of monopoly power over a good by the government. Nothing more, nothing less. Copyright (and patent protections) are not some inalienable right. They are grants of monopoly power by the government. Period.
Microsoft is indeed a monopolist. But instead of having a monopoly on say, your slashdot comment (which you indeed do), they have monopoly power over the Windows OS, and all related IP, giving them a dominant position in the field of computing.
Don't underestimate the power of intellectual property. In this day an age, I do not understand why copyright/patent protections last more than a few years. Originally, the concept was developed to "promote the arts and sciences" on a limited basis. Indeed, monopoly is government inteference in the market; the idea being to subsidize the production of new ideas on a time-limited basis.
Now, I'm not arguing the elimination of that monopoly, but I do believe that since ideas/technologies can be disseminated and capitalized at a much faster rate than, say, in the 19th century, copyright/patent shouldn't last that long. Maybe 3-5 years.
Imagine Microsoft's position now if copyright only lasted 3 years. XP would be out of copyright (not SP2, though). Office 2001 would be out of copyright. FAT, SMB, and a variety of other MS protocols would no longer be patented protected. Think of the implications.
Microsoft is a monopolist. They hold monopolies on a variety of markets. The basis of these monopolies, however, is not their market dominance and generally back-stabbing business strategies (they're an intermediate step). The base of their monopoly is intellectual property protection, a government GRANT of monopoly, for 75 years past the death of the creator.
Please. MS never broke up a company Homer Simpson style. Every company they bought sold to them. Every company that went under lost to them.
Stacker. Caldera/Novell. IBM's OS/2 division.
Those are three examples that I can think of off the top of my head. In each of those situations MS "allied" with a company, than stabbed them behind the back. Stacker went under because of it, even though they won in court years later (after the company was gutted).
MS's strategy of "commit crime now, pay fine later after opponent is dead" works out rather well for them.
Your confusing DRM with security models, but even besides that.... consider OS X.
OS X using a unix-like security model. OS X is generally and widely considered to be easier to "manipulate" in terms of installing/removing applications that Windows.
This is not a sarcastic post. And I know a thing or two about Linux; I use it as my primary OS on my desktops, servers, and even on my MacBook Pro.
man -k doesn't seem to work well for me. man -k format gives me "nothing appropriate", as does man -k ls, man -k man, and everything else.
I checked man's man page, and it says -k "Equivalent to apropos".
I checked apropos's man page, and it says: "NAME
apropos - search the whatis database for strings
SYNOPSIS
apropos keyword...
DESCRIPTION
apropos searches a set of database files containing short descriptions
of system commands for keywords and displays the result on the standard
output.
SEE ALSO
whatis(1), man(1)."
Ok. I've RTFM. Now how do I figure out how to get this man -k thing to work? I'm not try to be sarky, but this is the first time anyone's ever told me about this, and it does seem kind of useful, if only it would work. It does not seem to work as the documentation would indicate.
Dvorak is like Nostrodmos (sp?). He sees a trend, and totally misinterprets it.
I have every belief in the world that Apple will release a Cocoa for Win32. You'll be able to build OS X applications that will run just fine on Win32 using the Cocoa framework.
There'll be some minor niggles that are resolved through an extra compile-time check on Xcode, after which you get an even MORE universal binary. Then, Xcode becomes a painless cross-platform development library, and Apple does its damndest to encourage cross-platform developers like Adobe to move to using only Xcode.
1. Article about yet-to-be-announced MS vaporware?
2. More than 50% of the comment responses are, "Go Go Gadget MSFT!"
3. Numerous replies talking about the superiority of Vista, Office 11, and IE7, even after all 3 are in beta, and the "primary" MSFT review sites (like winsupersite) say things like, "Nice, a decent upgrade, but not earth shattering....
Smells like astroturf. This article was posted as an MS fanboi wank-fest, and I suspect there may even be an MSFT plant here and there.
And yes, Slashdot is big enough (haven't you seen the tech rags quoting slashdot COMMENTS for god sakes! (even business week in the tech section)). Astroturfing blogs is a sound business/political strategy; that's why the Government wants to regulate blog political speech.
You got it right. While most people at this site are Linux fanboy's and despise anything and everything that Microsoft ever does, they continually miss the point: Lots of Linux fanbois. And yes, predicting the end of Microsoft is retarded. Microsoft is the biggest and most successful software production house in the history of the world. Depends on how you define biggest and most successful. Biggest, in terms of market cap? Most successful, in terms of profit? Then yes, Microsoft sometimes holds this honor (and sometimes IBM holds it).
Biggest, in terms of large base of code? Successful, in terms of lines of code to bug ratio? Or even Biggest, in terms of level of investment?
Than no, NASA is way ahead. Especially in the errors to lines of code written ratio.
Microsoft is a huge company. Microsoft has been tremendously successful at selling their products. Microsoft is in no danger of extinction. But that does not automatically qualify them as the "bestest" software house. The open source community projects envy through hate. Maybe. I've seen a lot of open source projects which are NOT fueled through hate. Determining motivation, however, is left as an exercise to the reader. The brightest minds in the world work for Microsoft. Bullshit. Microsoft software works for a lot of people. Generally, however, there is nothing terribly innovative coming from MSFT. Even the much vaunted MS research labs have NOTHING on IBM's labs, or SUN, or Intel. MSFT's science is nothing special; you want to find smart people? Go to NASA, or IBM's 60 year research institutions. MSFT's developments pale in comparison.
Not to mention that the MSFT pay scale is not terribly impressive anymore. Bright minds are generally attracted to big pay checks, and MSFT's minimal raise+overvalued stock option compensation scheme hasn't worked well for years (flat stock price).
Microsoft produces a lot of software. Very little of it blows away the competition on a technical level.
They produce software 24 hours a day, everyday, of every year. I don't understand why people don't get it. Microsoft's software runs the world because they are the best at what they do. Microsoft's development practices have been disasterous lately. Poor security, total inability to keep to deadlines, yearly development reorganizations. Mini-msft isn't the only MSFT employee out there disappointed with whats going on in the company. Change is needed, and not yet-another-project-restructuring where the top managers move from project to project.
Or did you think they planned the last minute rewrite of significant portions of Vista? I mean this "best" in every sense of the word, from technical innovation to business partnerships. If you're too blind to see it, you're in denial.
I vehementally disagree with your opinion that MSFT is the "best" in terms of business partnerships. I can't think of any company off the top of my head that enjoyed working with MSFT, but I can think of several "partners" that MSFT hurt, badly, including IBM, Novell, Stacker, Caldera, and Adobe. I'm sure there are many, many more.
Dealing with MSFT is like dealing with Walmart. You have the opportunity to make a lot of money, but you have to remain ready for a knife in the back.
I suggest looking up the term, "Embrace and Extend". I also humbly suggest that MSFT join the ECMA standards body currently evaluating OpenDocument for the sole purpose of derailing its approval.
Nvidia and ATI have integrated all kinds of interesting tweaks into the hardware. Things like texture compression, a variety of pixel shading tools, all kinds of optimizations.
The code to manage these extensions exists in the drivers. Many of these tweaks were licensed from other companies, and as such may NOT be licensed at all.
One particular area would be 2D Video acceleration.
When I purchased my MacBook Pro (from a retail store, (Microcenter)), it was still in the shipping box, and had a "from Shanghai" sticker on it.
I'm guess its not that people think Lenovo is bad, they just don't equate Lenovo with IBM.
It's not that Lenovo is a minus. It's that IBM is a plus. That's all. Take away the "plus", and sales go down, even if you have the exact same production process and support system.
I do think that the U.S. government should retaliate against China's "no one may own more than 49% of a Chinese company" policy. On the other hand, the macroeconomist inside me tells me that is a stupid position.
*shrug*. . . . Who knows? I do know that the Chinese domestic market is far from a fair one.
Slashdot Mirror
With Sony's poor financial health (go look it up; the PS3 will have to be a blockbuster in order for the company to remain profitable during the next FOUR years), and Nintendo looking more and more like a dying Sega, I suspected that MS will be the last man standing in the console arena.
By the time PS3 and Nintendo's Wii have established some degree of market penetration (1 year after release?) we'll see an Xbox 360-2.
The sad truth of the matter is that MS has the financial resources to manhandle Sony (especially given Sony's miscalculations regarding the PS3's costs and schedule), and the financial resources to bury Nintendo.
I'm not happy about it, but the console market today is starting to looking like the OS market right around the time Windows 95's release. I'm scared that after huge financial outlays Sony's going to have to sell it's console division, and MS is going to be sitting there with a huge pile of cash....
Impossible.
:)
Modded funny, +5. Therefore, I must be both a)correct, and b)funny.
QED
BTW; QED means, "The aformentioned was a demonstration." Proof/Demonstration of its usage shall be left as an exercise to the reader.
A normal webcam, like the highly rated iSight, which incidentally captures at 640x480?
Impossible.
:)
Microsoft has testified in court that IE cannot be separated from the "Core OS", whatever that means.
Therefore, what you say cannot be true
QED
I'm not sure I'm a huge fan of things like ThinkFree, but I am a huge fan of solutions which allow your organization to host various services online.
Java applet versions of NoMachine's NX, for example, give you Citrix-like experience over-the-web. Web hosted e-mail means that once you train your users the only "downtimes" you experience are connection problems.
Just because you don't want to host all your companies documents on ThinkFree.Com doesn't mean that it isn't a good idea to keep (at least one version) of all your companies documents on one system.
Thin Clients were a reality for a long time, and are still a reality in many places. Thin Client-like technologies for the web are still in their infancy, yet we have many up and coming companies with boatloads of cash putting their futures on the line with thin clients. I don't necessarily mean that the "One True (Microsoft?) Server Farm" is the answer, but there are many situations where you want to keep all your data in the same place. Security, for example, is much easier to handle when you don't have to worry about each and every employees laptop.
Bah. Why bother.
/silly off.
I'd rather have an external motherboard. Keep the CPU in the case, and everything else outside.
Oh, your sarcasm totally flew over my head. I had no fucking idea what I was thinking, huh? :)
Thanks for not whacking me with a big, heavy stick. Or sharp, pointed object.
B.S.
SuSE does a LOT of testing on its package. SuSE will patch sources if necessary to fix bugs that exist, especially in important things like the kernel, KDE, GNOME, Firefox, and binary drivers.
You can see these patches by downloading the SRPMs. The patches are included in the build process.
Doesn't your distro do this automagically?
SuSE keeps everything up to date, automatically. I assumed that most big distros/package management schemes did something like this.
As it is, I don't have to check for updates to ANY software on my machine. It's all done by SuSE. Well, except for Cedega; I wish transgaming would setup an APT-RPM repository.
Not arguing with you, but two points you may be interested in, if you are interested up-and-coming package management.
.app folder/application scheme. You aren't restricted to statically compiled apps either, IIRC, but most klik:// apps tend to be distributed like that. It needs a recent kernel version to really work well (FUSE support is import, IIRC.) All of the apps's settings, libraries, whatever, are contained in the "folder", and you start the "app" by double clicking the folder. You "uninstall" the app by deleting the folder. This is a good way to distribute binary-only apps like Skype.
1. Look at the "Smart Package Manager". It's surprisingly good. It uses APT repositories (among YUM, APT-RPM, ZYPP, YAST2, whatever), and is actually a good deal smarter than "apt". You can run them side-by-side, as well. Smart can be less strict about "broken" system configurations, which is quite useful. It also load balances repositories based upon response time.
2. Look at klik:// . It's similar to OS X's
Well, there's always klik:// , which, IMHO, one ups OS X. I say this as someone who is typing on my MacBook Pro (while laying in bed), with my PowerMac Dual 2.7Ghz sitting in the next room.
/Library, /Library/Application Support, $HOME/Library, and other places.
Furthermore, I think you exaggerate the problems of "dependancy hell". I run SuSE on most of my systems (including my MacBook Pro), and I don't experience RPM hell anymore. I use the "Smart Package Manager", and in recent history I haven't experienced dependancy problems, even for packages I download. Furthermore, unlike OS X, RPM or APT based system will effectively "clean up" after uninstalled applications, while in OS X you'll have crap in
Here's the problem with Linux packages: More developers need to make statically compiled binaries with decent quality widgets! If you install an application from your distribution's online repositories, your golden. Dependancy problems are resolved automagically, and you always remain up to date. If you install a statically compiled RPM manually, you have no dependancy problems, and as long as the software complies with some freedesktop base rules you'll get mime-type configuration and program menu entries. The problem is independant Linux applications that are not statically compiled and NOT properly setup on a distribution by distribution basis. This isn't a problem that will go away, not as long as developers don't provide static packages. There's no "legislating" around this (in terms of desktop base), unless you specifiy a "base" minimum configuration, in which case you'll be excluding window managers, and other common segements of Linux users.
Really, the answer is either a) use your distribution's package management system, exclusively, or b) use statically compiled packages.
Note that Windows applications are generally statically compiled, or rely exclusively on common Microsoft runtimes. It's not so hard to build a "standard" Linux package, either, if you assume the existance of Gnome and GTK2.
Not to mention that in the 4-5 years it takes for Vista to become the standard Wine can progress quickly.
Yeah, but ....
Wine already works with many XP apps. Mono is can do some interesting things, as well, in terms of usage in combination with Wine.
Wine + Apple's pockets? And maybe IBM's pockets?
Booyah. Not to mention that the Wine project is getting pretty dang close to Win32. DirectX included.
MS can't make Win32 too much of a moving target, or they'll have to EOL XP. And they can't really make the API's too sophisticated, because then they'll turn off developers. The biggest problem the Wine project really has is lack of man hours, not lack of knowledge. $$ can buy man hours, and corporations with programmers familiar with Win32's internals can provide man hours in bulk.
I agree.
And the EU's punishment should be fitting, as well. MS is a monopoly, by virtue of its monopoly grant of intellectual property protection on Windows, Office, and a variety of other products (both copyright and patent).
Remember that Intellectual Property (as a concept) is defined as a "limited grant of monopoly distribution rights over a concept".
The correct EU solution is to revoke MS's right to copyright. That would most likely teach them a thing or two.
Patently false, you're making a classic "soft-libertarian" error.
What's MS base its business on? Software? Windows? Office? WMV? DOC? APIs?
Let me spell that correctly for you: "Intellectual Property".
What is Copyright? What is Patent Protection?
A (limited) grant of monopoly power over a good by the government. Nothing more, nothing less. Copyright (and patent protections) are not some inalienable right. They are grants of monopoly power by the government. Period.
Microsoft is indeed a monopolist. But instead of having a monopoly on say, your slashdot comment (which you indeed do), they have monopoly power over the Windows OS, and all related IP, giving them a dominant position in the field of computing.
Don't underestimate the power of intellectual property. In this day an age, I do not understand why copyright/patent protections last more than a few years. Originally, the concept was developed to "promote the arts and sciences" on a limited basis. Indeed, monopoly is government inteference in the market; the idea being to subsidize the production of new ideas on a time-limited basis.
Now, I'm not arguing the elimination of that monopoly, but I do believe that since ideas/technologies can be disseminated and capitalized at a much faster rate than, say, in the 19th century, copyright/patent shouldn't last that long. Maybe 3-5 years.
Imagine Microsoft's position now if copyright only lasted 3 years. XP would be out of copyright (not SP2, though). Office 2001 would be out of copyright. FAT, SMB, and a variety of other MS protocols would no longer be patented protected. Think of the implications.
Microsoft is a monopolist. They hold monopolies on a variety of markets. The basis of these monopolies, however, is not their market dominance and generally back-stabbing business strategies (they're an intermediate step). The base of their monopoly is intellectual property protection, a government GRANT of monopoly, for 75 years past the death of the creator.
Please. MS never broke up a company Homer Simpson style. Every company they bought sold to them. Every company that went under lost to them.
Stacker. Caldera/Novell. IBM's OS/2 division.
Those are three examples that I can think of off the top of my head. In each of those situations MS "allied" with a company, than stabbed them behind the back. Stacker went under because of it, even though they won in court years later (after the company was gutted).
MS's strategy of "commit crime now, pay fine later after opponent is dead" works out rather well for them.
Your confusing DRM with security models, but even besides that.... consider OS X.
OS X using a unix-like security model. OS X is generally and widely considered to be easier to "manipulate" in terms of installing/removing applications that Windows.
This is not a sarcastic post. And I know a thing or two about Linux; I use it as my primary OS on my desktops, servers, and even on my MacBook Pro.
...
man -k doesn't seem to work well for me. man -k format gives me "nothing appropriate", as does man -k ls, man -k man, and everything else.
I checked man's man page, and it says -k "Equivalent to apropos".
I checked apropos's man page, and it says:
"NAME
apropos - search the whatis database for strings
SYNOPSIS
apropos keyword
DESCRIPTION
apropos searches a set of database files containing short descriptions
of system commands for keywords and displays the result on the standard
output.
SEE ALSO
whatis(1), man(1)."
Ok. I've RTFM. Now how do I figure out how to get this man -k thing to work? I'm not try to be sarky, but this is the first time anyone's ever told me about this, and it does seem kind of useful, if only it would work. It does not seem to work as the documentation would indicate.
He just doesn't know what he is talking about.
Dvorak is like Nostrodmos (sp?). He sees a trend, and totally misinterprets it.
I have every belief in the world that Apple will release a Cocoa for Win32. You'll be able to build OS X applications that will run just fine on Win32 using the Cocoa framework.
There'll be some minor niggles that are resolved through an extra compile-time check on Xcode, after which you get an even MORE universal binary. Then, Xcode becomes a painless cross-platform development library, and Apple does its damndest to encourage cross-platform developers like Adobe to move to using only Xcode.
1. Article about yet-to-be-announced MS vaporware?
2. More than 50% of the comment responses are, "Go Go Gadget MSFT!"
3. Numerous replies talking about the superiority of Vista, Office 11, and IE7, even after all 3 are in beta, and the "primary" MSFT review sites (like winsupersite) say things like, "Nice, a decent upgrade, but not earth shattering....
Smells like astroturf. This article was posted as an MS fanboi wank-fest, and I suspect there may even be an MSFT plant here and there.
And yes, Slashdot is big enough (haven't you seen the tech rags quoting slashdot COMMENTS for god sakes! (even business week in the tech section)). Astroturfing blogs is a sound business/political strategy; that's why the Government wants to regulate blog political speech.
Woah there, cowboy,
You got it right. While most people at this site are Linux fanboy's and despise anything and everything that Microsoft ever does, they continually miss the point:
Lots of Linux fanbois. And yes, predicting the end of Microsoft is retarded.
Microsoft is the biggest and most successful software production house in the history of the world.
Depends on how you define biggest and most successful. Biggest, in terms of market cap? Most successful, in terms of profit? Then yes, Microsoft sometimes holds this honor (and sometimes IBM holds it).
Biggest, in terms of large base of code? Successful, in terms of lines of code to bug ratio? Or even Biggest, in terms of level of investment?
Than no, NASA is way ahead. Especially in the errors to lines of code written ratio.
Microsoft is a huge company. Microsoft has been tremendously successful at selling their products. Microsoft is in no danger of extinction. But that does not automatically qualify them as the "bestest" software house.
The open source community projects envy through hate.
Maybe. I've seen a lot of open source projects which are NOT fueled through hate. Determining motivation, however, is left as an exercise to the reader.
The brightest minds in the world work for Microsoft.
Bullshit. Microsoft software works for a lot of people. Generally, however, there is nothing terribly innovative coming from MSFT. Even the much vaunted MS research labs have NOTHING on IBM's labs, or SUN, or Intel. MSFT's science is nothing special; you want to find smart people? Go to NASA, or IBM's 60 year research institutions. MSFT's developments pale in comparison.
Not to mention that the MSFT pay scale is not terribly impressive anymore. Bright minds are generally attracted to big pay checks, and MSFT's minimal raise+overvalued stock option compensation scheme hasn't worked well for years (flat stock price).
Microsoft produces a lot of software. Very little of it blows away the competition on a technical level.
They produce software 24 hours a day, everyday, of every year. I don't understand why people don't get it. Microsoft's software runs the world because they are the best at what they do.
Microsoft's development practices have been disasterous lately. Poor security, total inability to keep to deadlines, yearly development reorganizations. Mini-msft isn't the only MSFT employee out there disappointed with whats going on in the company. Change is needed, and not yet-another-project-restructuring where the top managers move from project to project.
Or did you think they planned the last minute rewrite of significant portions of Vista?
I mean this "best" in every sense of the word, from technical innovation to business partnerships. If you're too blind to see it, you're in denial.
I vehementally disagree with your opinion that MSFT is the "best" in terms of business partnerships. I can't think of any company off the top of my head that enjoyed working with MSFT, but I can think of several "partners" that MSFT hurt, badly, including IBM, Novell, Stacker, Caldera, and Adobe. I'm sure there are many, many more.
Dealing with MSFT is like dealing with Walmart. You have the opportunity to make a lot of money, but you have to remain ready for a knife in the back.
I suggest looking up the term, "Embrace and Extend". I also humbly suggest that MSFT join the ECMA standards body currently evaluating OpenDocument for the sole purpose of derailing its approval.
(zinger)
I wonder if there's an open source project for this sort of thing.
Well, the fink project is working hard at bringing the latest KDE/GNOME to OS X......
(Joke. I run both KDE/GNOME).
Most likely, its license agreements.
Nvidia and ATI have integrated all kinds of interesting tweaks into the hardware. Things like texture compression, a variety of pixel shading tools, all kinds of optimizations.
The code to manage these extensions exists in the drivers. Many of these tweaks were licensed from other companies, and as such may NOT be licensed at all.
One particular area would be 2D Video acceleration.
When I purchased my MacBook Pro (from a retail store, (Microcenter)), it was still in the shipping box, and had a "from Shanghai" sticker on it.
I'm guess its not that people think Lenovo is bad, they just don't equate Lenovo with IBM.
It's not that Lenovo is a minus. It's that IBM is a plus. That's all. Take away the "plus", and sales go down, even if you have the exact same production process and support system.
The lines between Government owned, Government supported, and Private enterprise is _very_ blurry in China.
http://www.rediff.com/money/2005/sep/15bspec.htm
I do think that the U.S. government should retaliate against China's "no one may own more than 49% of a Chinese company" policy. On the other hand, the macroeconomist inside me tells me that is a stupid position.
*shrug*. . . . Who knows? I do know that the Chinese domestic market is far from a fair one.