I'm sorry this is off-topic, I was already heading this direction. But I have never (I'm a developer with 6+ years in the field) needed support on any of my software with exception of Allaire's Cold Fusion Application Server. The support I recieved for that was never charged because they all ended up being bugs on their end (the early 3.x days of CF were pretty bad). However, for Access 97, MSSQL 7, MSSQL2000, WinNT3.51, NT4.0 (SP1-6) 2K (SP1-2, Desktop, Server, Enterprise), Visual Studio (6,.NET), ASP (2.x, 3.x,.NET), PHP (4.x), Perl (5.x), RH Linux (7,8), and Apache (even on Windows at one point!) I have never once needed or paid for services or support. However, I've paid nice licensing fees to MS for their software, but the creators of the OSS software essentially invested into our IT department for free. I guess I just don't understand why you'd want to give something of monetary value to a business for free. I can understand if it's for individuals (the community), non profit orgs, and educational institutions (which should be the underwriters of OSS IMHO), but not for businesses.
I don't think it's much of a setback. It's more simple business. While the "who's got the bigger..." comparisons can be fun, it's not always profitable to have the fastest chip on the block. During these economic times especially, it's much more important to deliver a very fast CPU at a very good price. Very few people need a 2.8Ghz Athlon right now, and simple business dictates that there's no reason to be producing them yet. AMD has refocused on future platforms that will be released to sectors who A) actually need the performance and B) have the cash to pay for the performance. By the time the 64bit platform makes it to the desktop, the general consumer may have software that actually needs the extra performance. For now though, the sub 2ghz Athlons at sub $100 prices are more then adequate.
Are you serious? AMD may not be able to lose that much quarter after quarter, but you have to remember that this is a bad economy. Also, and this applies to all of you newbie investors as well, IT'S ONLY ONE QUARTER! One bad quarter after many good quarters is not the end of a company. Also consider that AMD's total assets are around 5.5billion. Not whole lot, but not a little either. Finally, Net Earnings, which is way more important then revenue, have been almost neck in neck throughout 2001, with Intel riding stronger throught the economic downturn. The bottom line? Intel spends a lot more per $ profit.
AMD is riding it's success on it's proven superior technology. Sure, Intel has the cash to sell undersell their products, but AMD doesn't take as big of a hit because their production process is so much cheaper. Although the P4's have become a lot better, the Athlon is still a superior chip. I think that the 64bit sector will welcome either player, considering that niether one has a dominant position to start in. It's almost an even playing field for AMD, and I think this will attribute to more success, not a demise.
and hope companies who profit from MySQL do support the company and the product's development
Why hope? Just charge them. I don't understand this. We talk about free (as in beer) software, and then we hope someone donates. It proves that software costs money to make, and that most software should be commercial. Why not write free (as in speech) software and charge for a commercial license to use the software.
Again, you're adding your biased perspective to the quote. I said the exact same thing that you did, just without the rhetoric. In order for MS to profit (they are a business, you know), it would require a change in the legal framework. That's what I said. It's not a threat, it's a fact. If there's no laws protecting their product, they'll lose money on it. Sony, OTOH, is actually selling well in Australia, so they have the volume to make up for the loss incurred by mod chips.
(I paraphrase slightly) "change the law or we'll.."
This is NOT a slight paraphrase to say the least. And of course, all the posts here are riding off of this very emotionally charged phrase. It's no secret that the XBOX is doing horribly down under, and MS is just saying that it may not make economic sense to sell their product their due to the current laws regarding their product. Of course, making MS sound like the Big Bully Yet Again makes for a lot more banner hits.
One day, when we get rid of all the evil corporates, Australia will be the perfect place to live.
Accept that you won't be able to buy certain games because the government will be banning them (read: GTA1, GTA2, GTA3, BMX XXX, etc.). Oh, and the citizens are disarmed so the government is doing as they please with regards to freedom of choice and speech.
I appreciate your point, which is why I mentioned that MS should be punished for their strong-armed licensing agreements with Dell et.al. Remember though that the market MS manipulated was the x86 market, not the entire personal computer market. They also only did this with a fraction of the market. The largest segment (mom 'n' pa's, NewEgg's, etc.) was also not affected. This doesn't make what MS did right, but it makes it hard to say that they manipulated the entire market.
I personally believe that this wouldn't have made a huge impact in the market. Many got the chance to try out BeOS, Linux, and MacOS. They all sucked, except for Mac's which weren't the best in a corporate environment or for multi-purpose use. Apple was king for a point in time, and licensing agreements had nothing to do with MS nocking Apple down because Apple doesn't even compete on x86 hardware. BeOS was cute, but I couldn't even get TCP/IP working on a ubiqutous 3Com 905b. Those of us into the music industry loved how BeOS catered to our needs - even to the point that some hardware multitrack recording systems started using it. But it just wasn't enough to convince a lot of us who were doing just fine with Pro Tools on a Mac. Linux was a joke on the desktop. Trust me, in '99 my "developers cube" shared with 4 dev's had a Linux workstation (RH/Gnome) that I used for developing most of our Perl and PHP. Quite frankly, NT4 (our primary desktops) was a much better desktop, and I thought NT4 was lousy! Once Win2K came out, Linux was further behind. Linux is now catching up, but it's still not ready for the Dell's of this world.
My point is, MS should be punished and regulated so once Linux catches up in the desktop world it can fairly compete in the x86 market. However, MacOSX has already caught up, and surpassed in some ways. It's also selling better than ever. All Apple needs to do now is work on the cost of hardware, which has gotten a lot better as of late - especially when comparing the quality of their hardware. As far as BeOS goes, the end users of this world could have cared less. For those of us that did care, we did try it, and very few of us actually used it.
Which is exactly why I think the DOJ needs to back off (maybe aside from the strong-armed OEM agreements issue). Let's face it, if the competition didn't suck, MS wouldn't have gotten ahead. And quite frankly, the competition did suck. What choice did I have 5 years ago? MacOS? Sorry, I do more then Photoshop on my box (gross exaggeration but you get the point). Netscape? Sorry, IE (and later Opera) had it beat. Linux? As good as it's gotten recently it was nowhere near ready for the desktop 5 years ago (and still has a ways to go IMHO). Corel Wordperfect? Hah! BeOS? Even if Dell could've dual booted no one would have used it.
So, now as the DOJ is still dinking around with "remedies", the market is correcting itself (read: the competition got competitive). Apple now has MacOSX, killer hardware, and is the first company to get Unix to the masses. They've done more innovating in the last few years then they've done since their first GUI (IMHO). Opera has gotten leaps and bounds better, and they are now the premier mobile browser and they've gained a lot of popularity (particularly in Europe). Open Office and Corel Office are OK, but they're gaining on MS.
Competition has been restored by the market, not by the millions wasted by our government to "punish" MS.
I don't really like Open Office. It's okay, but it doesn't touch MS Office IMHO. FYI I use OO exclusively because I refuse to put software on my computer that, in combination with Outlook, allows people access to my machine. However, I use MS Office at work and I have to say I just like it a lot more. I used to be a Word Perfect guy, esp. back in the DOS days (pre sellout, pre other sellout, wasn't there 3 sellouts?!). Then I used Corel's when they first took over, and I realized that MS Office was far ahead.
Opera still doesn't render quite as well as Mozilla, nor does it support proper pop-up blocking (although I'm kind of against this feature anyway). In Opera, you block ALL popups, whereas in Mozilla, you can block Onload and OnUnloads only, which is nice for sites that use it legitimately (eg: game sites that popup a screenshot window). Other then this, Opera is by far the best browser on the planet. It's extremely fast, extremely small, has a great UI, and is reasonably priced (*gasp*, pay for software?!!?). However, the rendering issues are just big enough to keep me with IE. However, the way IE has been "improving" lately leads me to believe that Opera can catch up with it's next major release.
This is a great point. I personally agree that removing pop-ups or banners is unethical at best. If you don't want the ads don't visit the site. However, it becomes more tricky when your device can't properly display the ad. It's kind of like saying that not displaying a flash ad on FreeBSD is illegal, accept that there is no version of flash for FreeBSD (AFAIK). If there's no reasonable way to display a banner ad on a cellphone (the side scrolling would be rediculous), then I think it's legit for the browser to remove it.
The last mention of this not only painted MS as the big bully that shut these guys down, but was also filled with posts about MS's crappy business plan that required strong anti-piracy|theft tactics. When we do our homework and realize that Nintendo and Sony were also involved, we easily ignore the fact that we spent 100's of posts bashing MS for "strong-armed" tactics. Why aren't we bashing the other two companies left and right?
I'm sorry, but I've read a few of your posts and I need to correct you. Although a business may choose to provide a service to the public, it does not (and should not) follow the same regulations that a public service (eg: government) does. Government websites should be regulated so that they have every possible accessibility feature available. However, if boeing.com desides that simple ALT tags is as far as they go, then so be it. If they want to show a flash movie about the new JSF, then that's their business. Sure, they'll lose all of us who don't have flash, and those of us who can't see well, but it's their decision how they spend their money.
Zooming in using Opera perserves the formatting of a website. There are solutions to many problems, I just hope that the government doesn't ever force them on us, and that people who need the solutions look for them instead of expecting others to accomodate them.
I also recall several years ago, someone sued to get Playboy on tape.
I think this is absolutely rediculous. Why would I, a person who can not see, insist on resorting to a medium that does not naturally accomodate my disability. I really hope that Playboy won the case. Blind people can't read magazines, and Deaf people can't listen to music. I'm all for adding accessibility to public places, but I liken this to suing a car company for not making a blind-friendly user interface.
Ummm--those are the things a company would have to do to "plug the analog hole".
Not necessarily. I've already explained the solution, and just because you can't think up of other solutions doesn't mean that they don't exist.
First, you argue at length that Microsoft's DRM restrictions amount to nothing and leave users the choice, then you yourself point out that Microsoft is likely goig to restrict even operations that involve copying non-DRM content into a non-DRM format.
All I was saying is that the RIAA doesn't want non-DRM mode, but MS is giving it to us. Just because MS is cooperating doesn't mean they are the RIAA's Yes Men. However, The analog hole is still plugged because in non-DRM mode I can't even play my DRM protected music through my analog speakers. No contradiciton here. RIAA!=Microsoft.
IMHO the only liability ebay has is to investigate your claim, deam it true, and give you the address of the seller so that you can sue them. I think we need to stop shoving our legal responsibilities onto someone else.
No, I'm not making a pro-MS spin. Claiming that Microsoft is going to cooperate and "close the analog hole" implies that there is no choice to stay away from MS technology. When the EFF* interviewed MS regarding Palladium, they made it very clear that the user had the ultimate control. It's in MS's best interests for users to be empowered anway.
In fact, most likely, there will be very little you will be able to do in any non-DRM mode: most media players, video input, and audio input drivers will likely refuse to work.
Again, please show me the facts supporting this theory. You should also reword your statement, "in speculation...", not "in fact", because there is no factual basis for your speculation (or, at least none presented).
Non-DRM mode will not be useless because DRM protected material will not work in this mode. So, if the RIAA only releases "secure" music, then it has nothing to worry about. Once the cat is out of the bag (eg: someone cracks the DRM and makes an "insecure" mp3), then and only then can someone play it in "insecure" mode.
I'll agree that the RIAA doesn't want Non-DRM mode, but come on - this means that I can't even make an Mp3 of a CD that _I_ created (yes, I am a musician. Drum 'n' Bass and Trance if you're interested). Quite frankly, DRM is the best thing that could happen to the industry. It will be so cumbersom that people will stop buying the crap that the RIAA puts out and finally look towards the independant artists who release their material on MP3, OGG, or "insecure" WMA's.
Whatever you say - I'll believe it when I see it. I have a hard time believing that esp. since I have friends who've worked on Halo and tell me it's 3-4 games b4 the break even point. I know they're not "official", but until you can give me a link to a reputable report I'm not going to trust some AC claiming he saw it on Tech TV.
In the next release of Windows you will be able to boot into "trusted" or "DRM enabled" mode, or into "insecure" or "normal please don't infringe on my rights" mode.
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I'm sorry this is off-topic, I was already heading this direction. But I have never (I'm a developer with 6+ years in the field) needed support on any of my software with exception of Allaire's Cold Fusion Application Server. The support I recieved for that was never charged because they all ended up being bugs on their end (the early 3.x days of CF were pretty bad). However, for Access 97, MSSQL 7, MSSQL2000, WinNT3.51, NT4.0 (SP1-6) 2K (SP1-2, Desktop, Server, Enterprise), Visual Studio (6,.NET), ASP (2.x, 3.x, .NET), PHP (4.x), Perl (5.x), RH Linux (7,8), and Apache (even on Windows at one point!) I have never once needed or paid for services or support. However, I've paid nice licensing fees to MS for their software, but the creators of the OSS software essentially invested into our IT department for free. I guess I just don't understand why you'd want to give something of monetary value to a business for free. I can understand if it's for individuals (the community), non profit orgs, and educational institutions (which should be the underwriters of OSS IMHO), but not for businesses.
I don't think it's much of a setback. It's more simple business. While the "who's got the bigger ..." comparisons can be fun, it's not always profitable to have the fastest chip on the block. During these economic times especially, it's much more important to deliver a very fast CPU at a very good price. Very few people need a 2.8Ghz Athlon right now, and simple business dictates that there's no reason to be producing them yet. AMD has refocused on future platforms that will be released to sectors who A) actually need the performance and B) have the cash to pay for the performance. By the time the 64bit platform makes it to the desktop, the general consumer may have software that actually needs the extra performance. For now though, the sub 2ghz Athlons at sub $100 prices are more then adequate.
Are you serious? AMD may not be able to lose that much quarter after quarter, but you have to remember that this is a bad economy. Also, and this applies to all of you newbie investors as well, IT'S ONLY ONE QUARTER! One bad quarter after many good quarters is not the end of a company. Also consider that AMD's total assets are around 5.5billion. Not whole lot, but not a little either. Finally, Net Earnings, which is way more important then revenue, have been almost neck in neck throughout 2001, with Intel riding stronger throught the economic downturn. The bottom line? Intel spends a lot more per $ profit.
AMD is riding it's success on it's proven superior technology. Sure, Intel has the cash to sell undersell their products, but AMD doesn't take as big of a hit because their production process is so much cheaper. Although the P4's have become a lot better, the Athlon is still a superior chip. I think that the 64bit sector will welcome either player, considering that niether one has a dominant position to start in. It's almost an even playing field for AMD, and I think this will attribute to more success, not a demise.
and hope companies who profit from MySQL do support the company and the product's development
Why hope? Just charge them. I don't understand this. We talk about free (as in beer) software, and then we hope someone donates. It proves that software costs money to make, and that most software should be commercial. Why not write free (as in speech) software and charge for a commercial license to use the software.
This is not shocking due to some basic differencews between the US and South Korea.
You forgot:
3) South Korea is smaller then the average US state and therefore very easy to wire for broadband.
Again, you're adding your biased perspective to the quote. I said the exact same thing that you did, just without the rhetoric. In order for MS to profit (they are a business, you know), it would require a change in the legal framework. That's what I said. It's not a threat, it's a fact. If there's no laws protecting their product, they'll lose money on it. Sony, OTOH, is actually selling well in Australia, so they have the volume to make up for the loss incurred by mod chips.
(I paraphrase slightly) "change the law or we'll .."
This is NOT a slight paraphrase to say the least. And of course, all the posts here are riding off of this very emotionally charged phrase. It's no secret that the XBOX is doing horribly down under, and MS is just saying that it may not make economic sense to sell their product their due to the current laws regarding their product. Of course, making MS sound like the Big Bully Yet Again makes for a lot more banner hits.
One day, when we get rid of all the evil corporates, Australia will be the perfect place to live.
Accept that you won't be able to buy certain games because the government will be banning them (read: GTA1, GTA2, GTA3, BMX XXX, etc.). Oh, and the citizens are disarmed so the government is doing as they please with regards to freedom of choice and speech.
I appreciate your point, which is why I mentioned that MS should be punished for their strong-armed licensing agreements with Dell et.al. Remember though that the market MS manipulated was the x86 market, not the entire personal computer market. They also only did this with a fraction of the market. The largest segment (mom 'n' pa's, NewEgg's, etc.) was also not affected. This doesn't make what MS did right, but it makes it hard to say that they manipulated the entire market.
I personally believe that this wouldn't have made a huge impact in the market. Many got the chance to try out BeOS, Linux, and MacOS. They all sucked, except for Mac's which weren't the best in a corporate environment or for multi-purpose use. Apple was king for a point in time, and licensing agreements had nothing to do with MS nocking Apple down because Apple doesn't even compete on x86 hardware. BeOS was cute, but I couldn't even get TCP/IP working on a ubiqutous 3Com 905b. Those of us into the music industry loved how BeOS catered to our needs - even to the point that some hardware multitrack recording systems started using it. But it just wasn't enough to convince a lot of us who were doing just fine with Pro Tools on a Mac. Linux was a joke on the desktop. Trust me, in '99 my "developers cube" shared with 4 dev's had a Linux workstation (RH/Gnome) that I used for developing most of our Perl and PHP. Quite frankly, NT4 (our primary desktops) was a much better desktop, and I thought NT4 was lousy! Once Win2K came out, Linux was further behind. Linux is now catching up, but it's still not ready for the Dell's of this world.
My point is, MS should be punished and regulated so once Linux catches up in the desktop world it can fairly compete in the x86 market. However, MacOSX has already caught up, and surpassed in some ways. It's also selling better than ever. All Apple needs to do now is work on the cost of hardware, which has gotten a lot better as of late - especially when comparing the quality of their hardware. As far as BeOS goes, the end users of this world could have cared less. For those of us that did care, we did try it, and very few of us actually used it.
Open markets are self-correcting.
Which is exactly why I think the DOJ needs to back off (maybe aside from the strong-armed OEM agreements issue). Let's face it, if the competition didn't suck, MS wouldn't have gotten ahead. And quite frankly, the competition did suck. What choice did I have 5 years ago? MacOS? Sorry, I do more then Photoshop on my box (gross exaggeration but you get the point). Netscape? Sorry, IE (and later Opera) had it beat. Linux? As good as it's gotten recently it was nowhere near ready for the desktop 5 years ago (and still has a ways to go IMHO). Corel Wordperfect? Hah! BeOS? Even if Dell could've dual booted no one would have used it.
So, now as the DOJ is still dinking around with "remedies", the market is correcting itself (read: the competition got competitive). Apple now has MacOSX, killer hardware, and is the first company to get Unix to the masses. They've done more innovating in the last few years then they've done since their first GUI (IMHO). Opera has gotten leaps and bounds better, and they are now the premier mobile browser and they've gained a lot of popularity (particularly in Europe). Open Office and Corel Office are OK, but they're gaining on MS.
Competition has been restored by the market, not by the millions wasted by our government to "punish" MS.
I don't really like Open Office. It's okay, but it doesn't touch MS Office IMHO. FYI I use OO exclusively because I refuse to put software on my computer that, in combination with Outlook, allows people access to my machine. However, I use MS Office at work and I have to say I just like it a lot more. I used to be a Word Perfect guy, esp. back in the DOS days (pre sellout, pre other sellout, wasn't there 3 sellouts?!). Then I used Corel's when they first took over, and I realized that MS Office was far ahead.
Opera still doesn't render quite as well as Mozilla, nor does it support proper pop-up blocking (although I'm kind of against this feature anyway). In Opera, you block ALL popups, whereas in Mozilla, you can block Onload and OnUnloads only, which is nice for sites that use it legitimately (eg: game sites that popup a screenshot window). Other then this, Opera is by far the best browser on the planet. It's extremely fast, extremely small, has a great UI, and is reasonably priced (*gasp*, pay for software?!!?). However, the rendering issues are just big enough to keep me with IE. However, the way IE has been "improving" lately leads me to believe that Opera can catch up with it's next major release.
This is a great point. I personally agree that removing pop-ups or banners is unethical at best. If you don't want the ads don't visit the site. However, it becomes more tricky when your device can't properly display the ad. It's kind of like saying that not displaying a flash ad on FreeBSD is illegal, accept that there is no version of flash for FreeBSD (AFAIK). If there's no reasonable way to display a banner ad on a cellphone (the side scrolling would be rediculous), then I think it's legit for the browser to remove it.
The last mention of this not only painted MS as the big bully that shut these guys down, but was also filled with posts about MS's crappy business plan that required strong anti-piracy|theft tactics. When we do our homework and realize that Nintendo and Sony were also involved, we easily ignore the fact that we spent 100's of posts bashing MS for "strong-armed" tactics. Why aren't we bashing the other two companies left and right?
Right, but the argument is flawed because ethnic minorities, religious minorities, etc. don't need special treatment. A blind or deaf person does.
I'm sorry, but I've read a few of your posts and I need to correct you. Although a business may choose to provide a service to the public, it does not (and should not) follow the same regulations that a public service (eg: government) does. Government websites should be regulated so that they have every possible accessibility feature available. However, if boeing.com desides that simple ALT tags is as far as they go, then so be it. If they want to show a flash movie about the new JSF, then that's their business. Sure, they'll lose all of us who don't have flash, and those of us who can't see well, but it's their decision how they spend their money.
I hope you realized that you just compared Blacks to disabled people. Very poor comparison - even though that's probably not what you intended.
Zooming in using Opera perserves the formatting of a website. There are solutions to many problems, I just hope that the government doesn't ever force them on us, and that people who need the solutions look for them instead of expecting others to accomodate them.
I also recall several years ago, someone sued to get Playboy on tape.
I think this is absolutely rediculous. Why would I, a person who can not see, insist on resorting to a medium that does not naturally accomodate my disability. I really hope that Playboy won the case. Blind people can't read magazines, and Deaf people can't listen to music. I'm all for adding accessibility to public places, but I liken this to suing a car company for not making a blind-friendly user interface.
Not to mention all the movies they sell with nudity in them.
Ummm--those are the things a company would have to do to "plug the analog hole".
Not necessarily. I've already explained the solution, and just because you can't think up of other solutions doesn't mean that they don't exist.
First, you argue at length that Microsoft's DRM restrictions amount to nothing and leave users the choice, then you yourself point out that Microsoft is likely goig to restrict even operations that involve copying non-DRM content into a non-DRM format.
All I was saying is that the RIAA doesn't want non-DRM mode, but MS is giving it to us. Just because MS is cooperating doesn't mean they are the RIAA's Yes Men. However, The analog hole is still plugged because in non-DRM mode I can't even play my DRM protected music through my analog speakers. No contradiciton here. RIAA!=Microsoft.
IMHO the only liability ebay has is to investigate your claim, deam it true, and give you the address of the seller so that you can sue them. I think we need to stop shoving our legal responsibilities onto someone else.
No, I'm not making a pro-MS spin. Claiming that Microsoft is going to cooperate and "close the analog hole" implies that there is no choice to stay away from MS technology. When the EFF* interviewed MS regarding Palladium, they made it very clear that the user had the ultimate control. It's in MS's best interests for users to be empowered anway.
In fact, most likely, there will be very little you will be able to do in any non-DRM mode: most media players, video input, and audio input drivers will likely refuse to work.
Again, please show me the facts supporting this theory. You should also reword your statement, "in speculation...", not "in fact", because there is no factual basis for your speculation (or, at least none presented).
Non-DRM mode will not be useless because DRM protected material will not work in this mode. So, if the RIAA only releases "secure" music, then it has nothing to worry about. Once the cat is out of the bag (eg: someone cracks the DRM and makes an "insecure" mp3), then and only then can someone play it in "insecure" mode.
I'll agree that the RIAA doesn't want Non-DRM mode, but come on - this means that I can't even make an Mp3 of a CD that _I_ created (yes, I am a musician. Drum 'n' Bass and Trance if you're interested). Quite frankly, DRM is the best thing that could happen to the industry. It will be so cumbersom that people will stop buying the crap that the RIAA puts out and finally look towards the independant artists who release their material on MP3, OGG, or "insecure" WMA's.
Whatever you say - I'll believe it when I see it. I have a hard time believing that esp. since I have friends who've worked on Halo and tell me it's 3-4 games b4 the break even point. I know they're not "official", but until you can give me a link to a reputable report I'm not going to trust some AC claiming he saw it on Tech TV.
In the next release of Windows you will be able to boot into "trusted" or "DRM enabled" mode, or into "insecure" or "normal please don't infringe on my rights" mode.