> You can't replace MS Office, a desktop app, with OpenOffice.org, a f***ing website.
Yes you can. Due to trademark issues the formal name of the product IS OpenOffice.org or OO.o for short. The.org is really part of the name. Yes it is a bit silly, but that's lawyers for you.
Cut your costs on licensing. Get ALL of the decison makers together and get them to put out a 100% unified front. Announce a total conversion to open source for the 2011-2012 year so as to be plausible. Then wait for your Microsoft rep to show up and offer the incentives. Take them.
Now you are a hero to everyone in the university who is in on the con you just pulled. This will be useful to you as you slowly do the real conversion.
The other easy win is to cut the costs to your students. Office and Blackboard.Mandate ODF for any document that crosses the barrier between the school and the students. This relieves them of the requirement to obtain Office and YOU the cost of buying that big site license out of the student fees that is the real reason the students get those low low prices in the bookstore.
You of course continue to offer Office Student at the regular student rates for those who want it because your Microsoft rep is sniffing around. You also be sure to have OpenOffice.org 3.1 DVDs hanging at the register for $5. Be fuzzy about just where those came from, but heck in this economy it sure does save the students money. It's just too popular to pull off the counter.
Blackboard is a never ending cause of cross platform pain (at least it was a couple of years ago) so ditch it. It not being a Microsoft product you can probably get away with it while running the con above. You tell them that will be your token (picked because it IS no visible) conversion to be able to 'claim victory' on your previous grandious project.
After this step students should be able to use whatever the heck they want. Many will probably be using netbooks in this down economy, thus they can buy the really cheap Linux ones. The college bookstore can be encouraged to stock with this in mind. Linux and open source would then be in a position to bubble up.
> Gee. I was quite certain that ECMA was the gatekeeper..
Right.... ECMA is where crooks and liars go to get an official looking stamp put their turd sandwiches. And even the ISO proved to be corruptable by the huge sacks of cash Microsoft can toss around.
Your argument fails. Samba allows interoperability only. If Microsoft attacks it it hurts Microsoft. No same person would be installing Samba on a Linux/Unix or Mac network. Samba only exists because Microsoft's own products were too locked to support any cross platform standards. If Mono is kept to just allowing.net content to display in a browser plugin Microsoft won't attack; since that would again hurt them in that web delevopers would opt for Flash or Java to have cross platform support.
But let Miguel rewrite GNOME as a Mono project and they have a wonderful opportunity to cause mischief. First off they have an opportunity to collect a per install royalty to license their patents, a wet dream they have nursed for years. SCO v everybody else was a trial balloon to see if such a scheme was likely to fly in the courts. Second, as the gatekeepers of.net and C# they can ensure mono plays a never ending game of follow the leader.. into fresh patent tarpits.
Sorry, I will never trust Microsoft enough to put them in a position to control a key technology. So that means there is no discussing the issue as far as I'm concerned. There is NO rational basis to argue. I don't trust em.
And I don't trust the judgement of anyone who isn't themselves suspicious of Microsoft and Miguel's motives.
Mono is a trap if it is allowed to be deployed beyond a browser plugin to support.net content in the browser. Come the day my current distro of choice loses any finctionality when removing the mono packges I'll be running something different as soon as bittorrent can supply me a new install image. Again, that position is 100% non-negotiable. I have used binary drivers in the past, bought closed source apps and committed many 'sins' against the Church of GNU but this is one case where compromise simply isn't possible. They want us dead, you can't compromise with that.
> I ended up back on Windows. Why? I'd rather pay for something that works REALLY easily > than get something for free I needed to devote hours to making work like I wanted.
Whatever dude. I never managed to get Windows to 'just work.' even on a preload and I don't know anyone else who has either. Because something always manages to get hosed or infested and forces a reinstall. When something goes wrong on Windows you can't fix it other than by a reload. If it has worked for you, thats great.
Yes installing Linux is hard, but so is installing Windows and getting everything sorted out. We now have the option of preloads though. Try one sometime. Just do your homework because some of the preloads have been craptastic, which is where the tales of high returns came from. A 'preload' that doesn't even support the built in webcam is just pathetic. I'd probably return a turd like that too.
This isn't Wikipedia. But I did post a link in another reply in this topic. It is really there, XP Home or Vista Home Basic adds $50 and Vista Business/XP Pro adds $90.
At long last customers are going to see Windows presented alongside competing products with a pricetag on each. Yes at $50 upcharge most will opt for Windows. But a few will be willing to take a chance and if they have a good experience people around them will see and a few more will be willing to take that chance when they buy, etc. It's how the Penguin gets from 0.8% to 5% over the next couple of years.
The fun will start when the Penguin catches up to Apple and takes it's place as the official 'token competition.' Except we ain't going to jack our prices and refuse to even sell products in major market segments to keep our share of the market in single digits as Apple has historically done. We ain't aiming to be nobody's token competition, we want World Domination!
> Microsoft can't offer Windows for free until it loses it's monopoly.
Why? They happen to be the absolute LAST vendor trying to sell a PC operating system. So who would they be accused of competing unfairly against? Sun/Solaris? RedHat? Ubuntu? Apple doesn't really count since they only sell hardware/software bundles. OS/2 is long since in the grave and NOBODY gives a crap about SCO/UNIXWare.
If they strongarm OEMs to preload Windows instead of competing systems it would be an anti-trust problem whether they sell it or give it away.
> The article says preinstalled Win XP is about $34 worth of the price of a new computer, > and $34 is close enough to zero that I'd say that we're essentially already in that regime.
Not even. XP only goes for that price if you meet the netbook hardware profile. 10.1" max display, a cap on CPU speed, etc. In other words machines that RETAIL for $300-$500 have a component with an OEM cost of $34 making it the most expensive single component in a fair number of netbooks.
The only way to get XP on a desktop now is pay for Vista Business which comes with upgrade rights to XP. And Vista doesn't go for $34 in any version sold in the first world. Windows 7 is proposing to peddle Starter on netbooks in the first world, an idea that will go over like a lead balloon. They will end up selling a slightly reduced function XP Home for about what they are getting for XP on netbooks or be forced to keep XP available. Either way expect all hell to break loose.
> If things get rough Microsoft can drop the price to $20 and nobody will care either way.
That works up to a point. But $0.01 is a world apart from $0.00 and once you are doing free the arguments against Free become few and the advantages are many.
> 1) MS does not get nearly as much revenue from a copy of Windows as it does from a copy of Office.
More precisely, the take from Windows is destined to trend towards zero. Netbooks are only part of the problem. The only barrier to sub $200 desktops is the price of an OEM copy of Vista. You never want to be "the only barrier" when talking about opening up a new lower price tier, especially in a down economy because all the pressure is on vendors to find a way around the barrier and gain an advantage over the chumps who didn't. Especially small hungry vendors looking to take a chunk out of Dell, HP, etc. Of course exactly the same argument will eventually be made about Office, SQL Server and all the rest. The existence of Open Source drives per unit pricing towards zero.
But for the short term the origional article has a point, Windows revenue is nice but it's ability to drive the larger revenue streams is more important.
Once HP broke the unwritten rule and displayed multiple operating systems in the same dropdown menu, with prices beside each option, the was cast. Windows will soon be going for near $0.
> 2) People are turning away from Windows because they do not like to pay for Windows, at > least on the business desktop or in the server room.
Not exactly. It is the difficulty of maintaining the per copy licensing in a virtual world that is also a problem. But price is a factor, as noted above. So long as people either thought Windows was "free" in that it was an invisible and non-negotiable part of the price of buying a PC the price wasn't an issue. That is no longer true.
> 3) Windows will need to be free(gratis) in order to keep market share.
It won't have to be zero instantly but the price must be very low and heading towards zero. When a PC was $2,000 the cost of DOS/Windows was easilly borne. As the price plummets to where Windows is easilly the most expensive component it becomes an unstable situation. The smart thing would be for Microsoft to get ahead of the curve and try to control the process.
> 4) Windows needs market share so that MS can sell apps. (Why? They can't make > apps for other operating systems?)
With the sole exception of Office for the Mac they have zero record of doing it successfully. That has to scare the piss out of em.
> 5) The author can't see why MS will make Windows free(gratis) without also making it > free(libre). (What? Where on earth did that come from?)
Ask Sun. They did it a good five years too late and look at em. Microsoft could learn from that mistake.
My advice to Microsoft would be to submit to what must be and doing so while there is time to control the process. Don't do it all at once, attack the biggest problems first.
Stage One: Shared Source. Us RMS Pure types often forget that source code can be published under a normal copyright. So publish the source to Windows, stick it in the standard MSDN stuff. This gives developers many of the advantages of working on Linux, they can Use The Source when the published docs disagree with the actual code. Move all development to a public repo, available only to MSDN subscribers of course. This lets them see the direction the code is going, download development snapshots, etc. Accept contributions of code, but only with a copyright assignment. Be sure to loudly credit outside contributors.
Binaries wouldn't change much, but discount slightly reduced function copies ruthlessly to keep the netbook and budget PC markets from slipping away. 70% market share on netbooks is a disaster in the making.
Stage Two: Release free binaries. Not Free mind you, just free copies for 'non-commercial use', then free but unsupported (service contracts and per incident support available) when the OEM market demanded the move.
Stage Three: GPL. Move the source to the GPL (or other strong copyleft license) keeping the requirement for copyright assignment on contributions. This allows a more fun
> Newsflash: I've already seen several netbooks (Intel/Windows) for free with a mobile service plan.
Yes. Limited promotions on gold plated service plans.
I'm talking about volume sales. Stacks in the mall cell phone booth. The Symbian alliance proved the cell handset makers and carriers understand the death awaiting them in Microsoft's embrace. They won't make that mistake. A few of the stupid ones will, but as an industry I just don't see it. The trap is just too obvious. NOBODY has ever been close to Micorosft and lived with the sole exception of Intel and they both need each other too badly to stray from their marriage too far, although Intel is really slumming around with the penguins lately. I think they would like to find a way out... but there ins't one. Linux doesn't need x86.
Nothing in a current Linux distro requires the GPL3, especially not Linux itself which is forever frozen at GPLv2. If your reasoning were correct handset makers would be shovelling BSD into phones instead of Linux. They are finally 'getting it'. The GPL really does work better for EVERYBODY because it forces a level playing field and thus avoids the Tragedy of the Commons problem BSD has. Companies trying to directly SELL the fruits of Free Software prefer the BSD license but handset makers are selling hardware and see a bigger ooportunity if the software evolves at GPL speed AND stays compatible across hardware vendors.
Look to Microsoft for an example, hundreds of hardware vendors flourished under their rule for a long time before their monopoly began to chafe. This time they don't plan to make the same mistake, instead the software running on their hardware will mostly be a commons that will allow them to mostly forget about the software and do what they do best, build and market hardware.
Try looking at the Nokia tablets. ARM processors, Flash enabled Mozilla based browser in the new one, Opera + Flash in the older ones. Adn it is an official closed source Flash Player plugin. It might only be Flash 7 but I suspect a firm order for a million or two licenses from Nokia or Broadcom would motivate Adobe's code monkeys to get to work porting Flash 10. Flash on ARM isn't a free download ya know, it's a per unit licensed product.
> I'm sure you're right about the Wintel cohort putting all their collective muscle into > stopping anything like that from happening though.
Which is why the MIPS based units designed and pushed by Chinese only vendors aren't getting anywhere after almost a year of units being available to buy in bulk. The ARM efforts have several advantages. First they are faster, better tech. They can probably really do HD video and a Flash player is known to exist for ARM so a full browser experience is possible. More important is several Western/US chipmakers see a multi-billion dollar opportunity if they can leverage smartphone chips up a notch to compete in the netbook space. Broadcom, TI, Nokia, etc aren't exactly on the same playing field with Intel and Microsoft but they have enough marketing muscle and existing presence in the retail channels to avoid being locked totally out of the store shelves. Now imagine what happens when these vendors who already have good relationships with the cell carriers pitch bundling deals. Imagine the fireworks should AT&T offer up a free ARM netbook with a service plan.
All that has ever been needed to blow the Windows monopoly to smitheens is for a critical mass of customers to realize they can survive without Windows/Office. Putting tens of millions of ARM+Linux netbooks in the field just might do the trick. No Windows wouldn't vanish but their ability to command monopoly prices would be forever smashed and that would end their cash cow, without which they would lack the ability to cause much mischief.
> Following the pattern they've always followed, that means it will actually sell for $800.
Nope, it is already showing up for preorder at or below the MSRP.
> If Asus had actually followed through on their original plans to deliver > these things at low prices, we'd be seeing the imminent death of Microsoft.
Don't look to ASUS for that. The origional EEE was a joint venture with Intel and seeing as they are introducing the first product with this new chip they are still bound to em. To really cut the price is going to require ARM based products.
Which means the low end is going to be left to others. Coby was showing product at CES with $139 MSRP but it is believed to be the older MIPS stuff. Be patient, if somebody can get a product designed that doesn't suck, built in quantity and fight the fierce resistance Intel and Microsoft will throw up to block the normal retail channels.... Xmas '09 will redefine what people think of a laptop/netbook. Just don't look for it in Best Buy.
> I refuse to purchase a new laptop/netbook unless it has the clit mouse.
Well Sony has one..... Along with some other neat features. But it also ships with Vista and starts at about $1000 which is pretty much out of the netbook catagory.
> Also, the touch pad wastes too much realestate.
Duh! Which is why I'm shocked that precisely zero netbooks makers have managed to figure out something so blindingly obvious. Take the Sony form factor, scale it up just a bit to cut price a little and get a little more room for a better keyboard and it would be the perfect netbook. And of course lose Vista. I'd prefer a penguin inside but XP Home and 100% hardware compatibility with Linux out of the box only gets ya a couple of demerits in my book since I probably won't like whatever distro they ship anyway.
Odd named hosts often have a meaning once you are clued in on the naming scheme. First off it really helps to give hosts on the network a NAME not just a number. You could just skip DNS if you are going to number em. A well thought out naming scheme helps. If you do it right the name gives you a rough idea what it does and still allows some fun in naming.
If I see a tree themed hostname I instantly know it is one of the machines in a patron lab. Flowers are staff hosts and mythological beings are in the server room. Yes machines in a lab could just be numbered but ya could also name yer cats Cat 1, Cat 2, Cat 3, etc.
> Gates almost got it right with his small school....
Nope. If by 'small schools' it means hooking up with a known crackpot like Ayers any plan to improve education is doomed to be an epic fail. Gates failed to perform the most basic due diligence by checking out Ayers' track record. Something I doubt he would have done while still in the business world but I'm sure he was pressured into in the 'non-profit' world because in that world it is all politics and even Gates can't rock the boat too much.
Hint: It wasn't just Palin and Hannity sounding the alarm on Ayers. Ayers and Obama pissed away over $150 million on a similar 'small schools' type political activism project and had to issue a final report saying they had achieved no statistically meaningful results. Not even Bill Gates can fix a process that broken. Of course they consider the CAC a success in that it funneled $150 million to political supporters and resulted in several politicians with ties to the project gaining higher office, most notably BHO himself.
And Ayers was and still is a terrorist. It's the reason he holds a tenured position, being a terrorist has a certain revolutionary cache in certain pseudo intellectual circles. By his own words he planted bombs in civilian targets intended to bring about political change by inciting fear in the general population. That is the textbook definition of terrorist so if the word means a damned thing it has to apply to Ayers and that bitch (Dohrn) of his. Also by his own words he repents nothing and refuses to forswear future violent action of a similar nature. Therefore was and IS a terrorist.
> But there's a difference between fantasy and science fiction: scifi tries to "explore the human > condition", while fantasy tries to entertain.
You couldn't be more wrong. The line between Sci-Fi and Fantasy is simply that Sci-Fi makes an attempt to ask "what if" while constrained by the limit that what is proposed COULD possibly be while Fantasy disposes of that limitation. Both should 'explore the human condition' AND 'entertain' if they hope to find success. Lord of the Rings is most certainly fantasy yet asks quite a few questions about the larger moral issues concerning duty, loyalty, power and it's abuse, etc. Meanwhile lots of Sci-Fi doesn't, getting too lost in the tech to remember to relate it back to people and how it might impact US. And then there is the stuff that calls itself Sci-Fi and is just fantasy tarted up with spaceships and rayguns. (I'm looking at you Mr. Lucas.)
Note that you have to give a historical qualifier with my rather strict Sci-Fi definition. If it COULD be when written it counts even if we later learn it couldn't. And it helps to be rather generous and even allow a few things in teh name of artistic license. If the story is ABOUT FTL travel the author is obliged to be exploring a new proposal in that area and talk a bit about the science. But if that isn't what the story is about ya have to let em get away with the usual handwaving about warp|hyperspace|wormholes|etc so they can get on with their story. Because it is still a little early to say FTL is 100% impossible and without it a while bunch of stories aren't possible to tell.
> Just look at how they dominate the malware industry. And nobody is better at herding bots.
That is one good example. They have lots of skilled people in a hellhole economy. And sending hard currency they don't have (mostly because of corrupt politicians like Putin it must be said) to buy stuff they could do themselves with labor so underutilized they accept the low returns of the malware industry out of desperation is do dumb even Putin gets it.
And I can totally understand why they wouldn't want a Dell. If they want Chinese made crap they have China's number, why would they want to cut the US in on the action just to get a Dell sticker on the box?
> NBC in my area has 3 subchannels: NBC, Weather, and Universal Sports. > The main one is still 1080i though.
Oh yea, they are still claiming that. But it is recompressed and thus crap. Do the math. The weather feed wouldn't hurt a lot, it's slow moving and highly compressable, plus the audio can be a low quality mono stream. That sports feed though is going to suck up at least half of the available bits to provide a good HD stream. Sports is the absolute worst, it is usually realtime (no precompression with exotic multi-pass encoding) and has a lot of motion. If Universal Sports is only offered in SD it will still suck out it's full 1/6 of the available bits to offer a good picture.
> Not to say you won't see "some" extra SD channels, but your suggestion seems like > an expensive way to make less money.
The problem is that as soon as you do a second subchannel you just kissed full HD bye bye. I'm in flyover country where the stations probably aren't as tech savy but here are the plans of some of the stations in the area, just the ones I happen to get the primary on cable and thus see their digital pitches.
KPLC TV, NBC on main and a local news/weather feed on an alternate
KBMT TV, ABC on main and NBC on an alternate
KLTL TV, LPB (Louisiana Public Broadcasting) is running LPB on.0 and already planning on adding alternate programming 'soon'.
KLFY TV, CBS on main, no announced plans for sub channels... yet
KALB TB, NBC on main, no announced plans for sub channels... yet
KVHP TV, FOX on main, no announced plans for sub channels... yet
Already 50% can't or soon won't broadcast full HD and we haven't done the cutover yet.
> They really should have allocated a few KHz for a backup *analog* audio channel in the ATSC broadcast standard.
I thought of that too. But then I thought about it a little more and understood why it was a bad idea. How in the heck would you sync the two? Doubt any two converter boxes have the same delay, just factoring in the correct delay in the encoding stage would be a total PITA and tnen what do you do when you are sending six feeds, as most stations will be doing a year from now? Just doesn't work.
Which of course is the big lie behind this whole HD conversion scam. As soon as analog is safely dead expect every network affiliate to multiplex six SD signals instead of one HD. ABC stations will carry the whole house of mouse experience. ABC, ABC Family, Disney Channel, ESPN, etc. NBC will do the whole NBC/Universal package with MSNBC, USA, etc. Because they will be able to sell a lot of local commercials. They already have dedicated outside advertising sales reps, solid production facilities, it just makes too much sense to leverage that to sell onto six channels instead of only one.
Then they will make the HD feeds available to the local cable company, while becoming mini SD cable systems themselves servicing those who can't afford cable. Cable will be for HD and 'over the air digital HDTV' will quickly become 'digital SD'. The war will start when the local affiliate who is broadcasting ESPN locally and inserting commercials tries to get that feed carried on the local cable instead of the generic one where the cable company gets that privledge.
> Starter is basically the version you ask for if your going to replace with Linux.
Or even replace it with a pirated copy of Windows. Anything but actually use it. Starter has totally arbitrary limits like a maximum number of apps you can have running at once. And that's after they strip out pretty much every feature they can think of, the stuff that might actually make Windows of some value compared to a random Linux distro.
(Ok, of value to those who don't understand or don't care about issues like Freedom.)
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> You can't replace MS Office, a desktop app, with OpenOffice.org, a f***ing website.
Yes you can. Due to trademark issues the formal name of the product IS OpenOffice.org or OO.o for short. The .org is really part of the name. Yes it is a bit silly, but that's lawyers for you.
Go for the two easy wins first.
Cut your costs on licensing. Get ALL of the decison makers together and get them to put out a 100% unified front. Announce a total conversion to open source for the 2011-2012 year so as to be plausible. Then wait for your Microsoft rep to show up and offer the incentives. Take them.
Now you are a hero to everyone in the university who is in on the con you just pulled. This will be useful to you as you slowly do the real conversion.
The other easy win is to cut the costs to your students. Office and Blackboard.Mandate ODF for any document that crosses the barrier between the school and the students. This relieves them of the requirement to obtain Office and YOU the cost of buying that big site license out of the student fees that is the real reason the students get those low low prices in the bookstore.
You of course continue to offer Office Student at the regular student rates for those who want it because your Microsoft rep is sniffing around. You also be sure to have OpenOffice.org 3.1 DVDs hanging at the register for $5. Be fuzzy about just where those came from, but heck in this economy it sure does save the students money. It's just too popular to pull off the counter.
Blackboard is a never ending cause of cross platform pain (at least it was a couple of years ago) so ditch it. It not being a Microsoft product you can probably get away with it while running the con above. You tell them that will be your token (picked because it IS no visible) conversion to be able to 'claim victory' on your previous grandious project.
After this step students should be able to use whatever the heck they want. Many will probably be using netbooks in this down economy, thus they can buy the really cheap Linux ones. The college bookstore can be encouraged to stock with this in mind. Linux and open source would then be in a position to bubble up.
> Gee. I was quite certain that ECMA was the gatekeeper..
Right.... ECMA is where crooks and liars go to get an official looking stamp put their turd sandwiches. And even the ISO proved to be corruptable by the huge sacks of cash Microsoft can toss around.
> But they're going to go after Mono, right?
Your argument fails. Samba allows interoperability only. If Microsoft attacks it it hurts Microsoft. No same person would be installing Samba on a Linux/Unix or Mac network. Samba only exists because Microsoft's own products were too locked to support any cross platform standards. If Mono is kept to just allowing .net content to display in a browser plugin Microsoft won't attack; since that would again hurt them in that web delevopers would opt for Flash or Java to have cross platform support.
But let Miguel rewrite GNOME as a Mono project and they have a wonderful opportunity to cause mischief. First off they have an opportunity to collect a per install royalty to license their patents, a wet dream they have nursed for years. SCO v everybody else was a trial balloon to see if such a scheme was likely to fly in the courts. Second, as the gatekeepers of .net and C# they can ensure mono plays a never ending game of follow the leader.. into fresh patent tarpits.
Sorry, I will never trust Microsoft enough to put them in a position to control a key technology. So that means there is no discussing the issue as far as I'm concerned. There is NO rational basis to argue. I don't trust em.
And I don't trust the judgement of anyone who isn't themselves suspicious of Microsoft and Miguel's motives.
Mono is a trap if it is allowed to be deployed beyond a browser plugin to support .net content in the browser. Come the day my current distro of choice loses any finctionality when removing the mono packges I'll be running something different as soon as bittorrent can supply me a new install image. Again, that position is 100% non-negotiable. I have used binary drivers in the past, bought closed source apps and committed many 'sins' against the Church of GNU but this is one case where compromise simply isn't possible. They want us dead, you can't compromise with that.
> I ended up back on Windows. Why? I'd rather pay for something that works REALLY easily
> than get something for free I needed to devote hours to making work like I wanted.
Whatever dude. I never managed to get Windows to 'just work.' even on a preload and I don't know anyone else who has either. Because something always manages to get hosed or infested and forces a reinstall. When something goes wrong on Windows you can't fix it other than by a reload. If it has worked for you, thats great.
Yes installing Linux is hard, but so is installing Windows and getting everything sorted out. We now have the option of preloads though. Try one sometime. Just do your homework because some of the preloads have been craptastic, which is where the tales of high returns came from. A 'preload' that doesn't even support the built in webcam is just pathetic. I'd probably return a turd like that too.
> [citation needed]
This isn't Wikipedia. But I did post a link in another reply in this topic. It is really there, XP Home or Vista Home Basic adds $50 and Vista Business/XP Pro adds $90.
At long last customers are going to see Windows presented alongside competing products with a pricetag on each. Yes at $50 upcharge most will opt for Windows. But a few will be willing to take a chance and if they have a good experience people around them will see and a few more will be willing to take that chance when they buy, etc. It's how the Penguin gets from 0.8% to 5% over the next couple of years.
The fun will start when the Penguin catches up to Apple and takes it's place as the official 'token competition.' Except we ain't going to jack our prices and refuse to even sell products in major market segments to keep our share of the market in single digits as Apple has historically done. We ain't aiming to be nobody's token competition, we want World Domination!
> Microsoft can't offer Windows for free until it loses it's monopoly.
Why? They happen to be the absolute LAST vendor trying to sell a PC operating system. So who would they be accused of competing unfairly against? Sun/Solaris? Red Hat? Ubuntu? Apple doesn't really count since they only sell hardware/software bundles. OS/2 is long since in the grave and NOBODY gives a crap about SCO/UNIXWare.
If they strongarm OEMs to preload Windows instead of competing systems it would be an anti-trust problem whether they sell it or give it away.
> The article says preinstalled Win XP is about $34 worth of the price of a new computer,
> and $34 is close enough to zero that I'd say that we're essentially already in that regime.
Not even. XP only goes for that price if you meet the netbook hardware profile. 10.1" max display, a cap on CPU speed, etc. In other words machines that RETAIL for $300-$500 have a component with an OEM cost of $34 making it the most expensive single component in a fair number of netbooks.
The only way to get XP on a desktop now is pay for Vista Business which comes with upgrade rights to XP. And Vista doesn't go for $34 in any version sold in the first world. Windows 7 is proposing to peddle Starter on netbooks in the first world, an idea that will go over like a lead balloon. They will end up selling a slightly reduced function XP Home for about what they are getting for XP on netbooks or be forced to keep XP available. Either way expect all hell to break loose.
> Most people don't "buy" Windows. They buy a PC and it just happens to be installed.
True enough. But OEMs buy Windows. It is the most expensive part in low end units.
> Until they're aware that they're paying for it then it makes no difference whether or not it's free.
Which finally is happening. HP broke the unwritten rule and have multiple operating systems in a dropdown box with prices beside each one.
HP Mini 2140
> If things get rough Microsoft can drop the price to $20 and nobody will care either way.
That works up to a point. But $0.01 is a world apart from $0.00 and once you are doing free the arguments against Free become few and the advantages are many.
> 1) MS does not get nearly as much revenue from a copy of Windows as it does from a copy of Office.
More precisely, the take from Windows is destined to trend towards zero. Netbooks are only part of the problem. The only barrier to sub $200 desktops is the price of an OEM copy of Vista. You never want to be "the only barrier" when talking about opening up a new lower price tier, especially in a down economy because all the pressure is on vendors to find a way around the barrier and gain an advantage over the chumps who didn't. Especially small hungry vendors looking to take a chunk out of Dell, HP, etc. Of course exactly the same argument will eventually be made about Office, SQL Server and all the rest. The existence of Open Source drives per unit pricing towards zero.
But for the short term the origional article has a point, Windows revenue is nice but it's ability to drive the larger revenue streams is more important.
Once HP broke the unwritten rule and displayed multiple operating systems in the same dropdown menu, with prices beside each option, the was cast. Windows will soon be going for near $0.
> 2) People are turning away from Windows because they do not like to pay for Windows, at
> least on the business desktop or in the server room.
Not exactly. It is the difficulty of maintaining the per copy licensing in a virtual world that is also a problem. But price is a factor, as noted above. So long as people either thought Windows was "free" in that it was an invisible and non-negotiable part of the price of buying a PC the price wasn't an issue. That is no longer true.
> 3) Windows will need to be free(gratis) in order to keep market share.
It won't have to be zero instantly but the price must be very low and heading towards zero. When a PC was $2,000 the cost of DOS/Windows was easilly borne. As the price plummets to where Windows is easilly the most expensive component it becomes an unstable situation. The smart thing would be for Microsoft to get ahead of the curve and try to control the process.
> 4) Windows needs market share so that MS can sell apps. (Why? They can't make
> apps for other operating systems?)
With the sole exception of Office for the Mac they have zero record of doing it successfully. That has to scare the piss out of em.
> 5) The author can't see why MS will make Windows free(gratis) without also making it
> free(libre). (What? Where on earth did that come from?)
Ask Sun. They did it a good five years too late and look at em. Microsoft could learn from that mistake.
My advice to Microsoft would be to submit to what must be and doing so while there is time to control the process. Don't do it all at once, attack the biggest problems first.
Stage One: Shared Source. Us RMS Pure types often forget that source code can be published under a normal copyright. So publish the source to Windows, stick it in the standard MSDN stuff. This gives developers many of the advantages of working on Linux, they can Use The Source when the published docs disagree with the actual code. Move all development to a public repo, available only to MSDN subscribers of course. This lets them see the direction the code is going, download development snapshots, etc. Accept contributions of code, but only with a copyright assignment. Be sure to loudly credit outside contributors.
Binaries wouldn't change much, but discount slightly reduced function copies ruthlessly to keep the netbook and budget PC markets from slipping away. 70% market share on netbooks is a disaster in the making.
Stage Two: Release free binaries. Not Free mind you, just free copies for 'non-commercial use', then free but unsupported (service contracts and per incident support available) when the OEM market demanded the move.
Stage Three: GPL. Move the source to the GPL (or other strong copyleft license) keeping the requirement for copyright assignment on contributions. This allows a more fun
> Newsflash: I've already seen several netbooks (Intel/Windows) for free with a mobile service plan.
Yes. Limited promotions on gold plated service plans.
I'm talking about volume sales. Stacks in the mall cell phone booth. The Symbian alliance proved the cell handset makers and carriers understand the death awaiting them in Microsoft's embrace. They won't make that mistake. A few of the stupid ones will, but as an industry I just don't see it. The trap is just too obvious. NOBODY has ever been close to Micorosft and lived with the sole exception of Intel and they both need each other too badly to stray from their marriage too far, although Intel is really slumming around with the penguins lately. I think they would like to find a way out... but there ins't one. Linux doesn't need x86.
> Still much to learn, you have. Read up on GPL3.
Nothing in a current Linux distro requires the GPL3, especially not Linux itself which is forever frozen at GPLv2. If your reasoning were correct handset makers would be shovelling BSD into phones instead of Linux. They are finally 'getting it'. The GPL really does work better for EVERYBODY because it forces a level playing field and thus avoids the Tragedy of the Commons problem BSD has. Companies trying to directly SELL the fruits of Free Software prefer the BSD license but handset makers are selling hardware and see a bigger ooportunity if the software evolves at GPL speed AND stays compatible across hardware vendors.
Look to Microsoft for an example, hundreds of hardware vendors flourished under their rule for a long time before their monopoly began to chafe. This time they don't plan to make the same mistake, instead the software running on their hardware will mostly be a commons that will allow them to mostly forget about the software and do what they do best, build and market hardware.
> Show me the flash player for Linux on ARM.
Try looking at the Nokia tablets. ARM processors, Flash enabled Mozilla based browser in the new one, Opera + Flash in the older ones. Adn it is an official closed source Flash Player plugin. It might only be Flash 7 but I suspect a firm order for a million or two licenses from Nokia or Broadcom would motivate Adobe's code monkeys to get to work porting Flash 10. Flash on ARM isn't a free download ya know, it's a per unit licensed product.
> I'm sure you're right about the Wintel cohort putting all their collective muscle into
> stopping anything like that from happening though.
Which is why the MIPS based units designed and pushed by Chinese only vendors aren't getting anywhere after almost a year of units being available to buy in bulk. The ARM efforts have several advantages. First they are faster, better tech. They can probably really do HD video and a Flash player is known to exist for ARM so a full browser experience is possible. More important is several Western/US chipmakers see a multi-billion dollar opportunity if they can leverage smartphone chips up a notch to compete in the netbook space. Broadcom, TI, Nokia, etc aren't exactly on the same playing field with Intel and Microsoft but they have enough marketing muscle and existing presence in the retail channels to avoid being locked totally out of the store shelves. Now imagine what happens when these vendors who already have good relationships with the cell carriers pitch bundling deals. Imagine the fireworks should AT&T offer up a free ARM netbook with a service plan.
All that has ever been needed to blow the Windows monopoly to smitheens is for a critical mass of customers to realize they can survive without Windows/Office. Putting tens of millions of ARM+Linux netbooks in the field just might do the trick. No Windows wouldn't vanish but their ability to command monopoly prices would be forever smashed and that would end their cash cow, without which they would lack the ability to cause much mischief.
> Following the pattern they've always followed, that means it will actually sell for $800.
Nope, it is already showing up for preorder at or below the MSRP.
> If Asus had actually followed through on their original plans to deliver
> these things at low prices, we'd be seeing the imminent death of Microsoft.
Don't look to ASUS for that. The origional EEE was a joint venture with Intel and seeing as they are introducing the first product with this new chip they are still bound to em. To really cut the price is going to require ARM based products.
Which means the low end is going to be left to others. Coby was showing product at CES with $139 MSRP but it is believed to be the older MIPS stuff. Be patient, if somebody can get a product designed that doesn't suck, built in quantity and fight the fierce resistance Intel and Microsoft will throw up to block the normal retail channels.... Xmas '09 will redefine what people think of a laptop/netbook. Just don't look for it in Best Buy.
> I refuse to purchase a new laptop/netbook unless it has the clit mouse.
Well Sony has one..... Along with some other neat features. But it also ships with Vista and starts at about $1000 which is pretty much out of the netbook catagory.
> Also, the touch pad wastes too much realestate.
Duh! Which is why I'm shocked that precisely zero netbooks makers have managed to figure out something so blindingly obvious. Take the Sony form factor, scale it up just a bit to cut price a little and get a little more room for a better keyboard and it would be the perfect netbook. And of course lose Vista. I'd prefer a penguin inside but XP Home and 100% hardware compatibility with Linux out of the box only gets ya a couple of demerits in my book since I probably won't like whatever distro they ship anyway.
Odd named hosts often have a meaning once you are clued in on the naming scheme. First off it really helps to give hosts on the network a NAME not just a number. You could just skip DNS if you are going to number em. A well thought out naming scheme helps. If you do it right the name gives you a rough idea what it does and still allows some fun in naming.
If I see a tree themed hostname I instantly know it is one of the machines in a patron lab. Flowers are staff hosts and mythological beings are in the server room. Yes machines in a lab could just be numbered but ya could also name yer cats Cat 1, Cat 2, Cat 3, etc.
> Gates almost got it right with his small school....
Nope. If by 'small schools' it means hooking up with a known crackpot like Ayers any plan to improve education is doomed to be an epic fail. Gates failed to perform the most basic due diligence by checking out Ayers' track record. Something I doubt he would have done while still in the business world but I'm sure he was pressured into in the 'non-profit' world because in that world it is all politics and even Gates can't rock the boat too much.
Hint: It wasn't just Palin and Hannity sounding the alarm on Ayers. Ayers and Obama pissed away over $150 million on a similar 'small schools' type political activism project and had to issue a final report saying they had achieved no statistically meaningful results. Not even Bill Gates can fix a process that broken. Of course they consider the CAC a success in that it funneled $150 million to political supporters and resulted in several politicians with ties to the project gaining higher office, most notably BHO himself.
And Ayers was and still is a terrorist. It's the reason he holds a tenured position, being a terrorist has a certain revolutionary cache in certain pseudo intellectual circles. By his own words he planted bombs in civilian targets intended to bring about political change by inciting fear in the general population. That is the textbook definition of terrorist so if the word means a damned thing it has to apply to Ayers and that bitch (Dohrn) of his. Also by his own words he repents nothing and refuses to forswear future violent action of a similar nature. Therefore was and IS a terrorist.
> But there's a difference between fantasy and science fiction: scifi tries to "explore the human
> condition", while fantasy tries to entertain.
You couldn't be more wrong. The line between Sci-Fi and Fantasy is simply that Sci-Fi makes an attempt to ask "what if" while constrained by the limit that what is proposed COULD possibly be while Fantasy disposes of that limitation. Both should 'explore the human condition' AND 'entertain' if they hope to find success. Lord of the Rings is most certainly fantasy yet asks quite a few questions about the larger moral issues concerning duty, loyalty, power and it's abuse, etc. Meanwhile lots of Sci-Fi doesn't, getting too lost in the tech to remember to relate it back to people and how it might impact US. And then there is the stuff that calls itself Sci-Fi and is just fantasy tarted up with spaceships and rayguns. (I'm looking at you Mr. Lucas.)
Note that you have to give a historical qualifier with my rather strict Sci-Fi definition. If it COULD be when written it counts even if we later learn it couldn't. And it helps to be rather generous and even allow a few things in teh name of artistic license. If the story is ABOUT FTL travel the author is obliged to be exploring a new proposal in that area and talk a bit about the science. But if that isn't what the story is about ya have to let em get away with the usual handwaving about warp|hyperspace|wormholes|etc so they can get on with their story. Because it is still a little early to say FTL is 100% impossible and without it a while bunch of stories aren't possible to tell.
> Just look at how they dominate the malware industry. And nobody is better at herding bots.
That is one good example. They have lots of skilled people in a hellhole economy. And sending hard currency they don't have (mostly because of corrupt politicians like Putin it must be said) to buy stuff they could do themselves with labor so underutilized they accept the low returns of the malware industry out of desperation is do dumb even Putin gets it.
And I can totally understand why they wouldn't want a Dell. If they want Chinese made crap they have China's number, why would they want to cut the US in on the action just to get a Dell sticker on the box?
> NBC in my area has 3 subchannels: NBC, Weather, and Universal Sports.
> The main one is still 1080i though.
Oh yea, they are still claiming that. But it is recompressed and thus crap. Do the math. The weather feed wouldn't hurt a lot, it's slow moving and highly compressable, plus the audio can be a low quality mono stream. That sports feed though is going to suck up at least half of the available bits to provide a good HD stream. Sports is the absolute worst, it is usually realtime (no precompression with exotic multi-pass encoding) and has a lot of motion. If Universal Sports is only offered in SD it will still suck out it's full 1/6 of the available bits to offer a good picture.
> Not to say you won't see "some" extra SD channels, but your suggestion seems like
> an expensive way to make less money.
The problem is that as soon as you do a second subchannel you just kissed full HD bye bye. I'm in flyover country where the stations probably aren't as tech savy but here are the plans of some of the stations in the area, just the ones I happen to get the primary on cable and thus see their digital pitches.
KPLC TV, NBC on main and a local news/weather feed on an alternate
KBMT TV, ABC on main and NBC on an alternate
KLTL TV, LPB (Louisiana Public Broadcasting) is running LPB on .0 and already planning on adding alternate programming 'soon'.
KLFY TV, CBS on main, no announced plans for sub channels... yet
KALB TB, NBC on main, no announced plans for sub channels... yet
KVHP TV, FOX on main, no announced plans for sub channels... yet
Already 50% can't or soon won't broadcast full HD and we haven't done the cutover yet.
> They really should have allocated a few KHz for a backup *analog* audio channel in the ATSC broadcast standard.
I thought of that too. But then I thought about it a little more and understood why it was a bad idea. How in the heck would you sync the two? Doubt any two converter boxes have the same delay, just factoring in the correct delay in the encoding stage would be a total PITA and tnen what do you do when you are sending six feeds, as most stations will be doing a year from now? Just doesn't work.
Which of course is the big lie behind this whole HD conversion scam. As soon as analog is safely dead expect every network affiliate to multiplex six SD signals instead of one HD. ABC stations will carry the whole house of mouse experience. ABC, ABC Family, Disney Channel, ESPN, etc. NBC will do the whole NBC/Universal package with MSNBC, USA, etc. Because they will be able to sell a lot of local commercials. They already have dedicated outside advertising sales reps, solid production facilities, it just makes too much sense to leverage that to sell onto six channels instead of only one.
Then they will make the HD feeds available to the local cable company, while becoming mini SD cable systems themselves servicing those who can't afford cable. Cable will be for HD and 'over the air digital HDTV' will quickly become 'digital SD'. The war will start when the local affiliate who is broadcasting ESPN locally and inserting commercials tries to get that feed carried on the local cable instead of the generic one where the cable company gets that privledge.
> Starter is basically the version you ask for if your going to replace with Linux.
Or even replace it with a pirated copy of Windows. Anything but actually use it. Starter has totally arbitrary limits like a maximum number of apps you can have running at once. And that's after they strip out pretty much every feature they can think of, the stuff that might actually make Windows of some value compared to a random Linux distro.
(Ok, of value to those who don't understand or don't care about issues like Freedom.)