That's helpful, thanks. I actually live close in Mont Co MD, and I see that I can get a lib card from your fair state. I think that'll be worth a trip southbound; my own libraries apparently aren't so enlightened up here.
I would give my eyeteeth for episodes of Mission Impossible, Secret Agent/Danger Man, and the Avengers. And by "eyeteeth" I mean less than the $10/ep that it looks like Amazon wants for those old series.
Well, maybe the Avengers isn't that much at Amazon, but gee, I dunno, it seems like such a commitment. Whereas if I bought one or two, I think I'd wind up spending a lot more by Christmas.
There are a LOT of old shows that have more interest than their contemporaries, yet appear to be almost out of print or hard to find. Whereas once they're digitized they can provide a residual income for ever, even if just one a year is sold--it's not like they're taking up space on a shelf.
Although you're trolling, you're right. It will take Microsoft acting in good faith for at least as long as they've acted in bad faith for them to outlilve their rep.
Which is to say that if they started acting ethically now, they'd have to continue to do so for a decade, only gradually gaining back the trust that they've lost.
They made this bed. I don't think it bothers them as much as it bothers the apologists, they've done pretty well regardless. But it's not unreasonable to treat any action of theirs with the utmost caution, because everything they've done to this point hasn't served any interest but their own.
If it weren't for people like me you yellow cowards too afraid to risk anything - heck, afraid of life itself
I find it interesting that you are too cowardly to even use an assumed name for your post. If you believe the things you said sincerely, why do you refuse to have them associated with you?
"Partners", from Microsoft's perspective, has always just meant "learn from them so that you can do what they do better."
This is true since the mid-80s: witness Apple. They partnered until they learned enough to do it their own way, and then dominated the market. They've done it dozens of times since.
That you didn't see this coming really is your own fault. Do you think that Microsoft thinks it has "peers" in anything? No. They see themselves as the big fish in a big pond, and if you haven't been eaten yet, it's just because you're less tasty than the others. Your mere survival doesn't make you "friends."
If anyone knows this, it's Google. They've treated Microsoft as the enemy from day one, and rightly so.
Let's say Whedon needs to see $5M before he attempts online distribution.
The reported per ep cost of FireFly was $2 Mill. If that seems high to you, it apparently did to Fox as well. So for a series, you'd need more like $2Mx14 eps=$28M just to get started; maybe another 10% for profit, say $30M. If that's the average profit on such a show.
So I think that'd change your number quite a bit. $5M would make the 2 hr. pilot only. Is that worth the investment?
Uh, I believe you're trolling. If the keyboard came from Apple, you can plug the mouse into the built in USB port in every Mac keyboard since they starting supporting USB.
If you're using a PC USB keyboard with no built in hub, what can I tell you. Maybe you should replace it with a BT keyboard instead.
Unless I'm mistaken, this looks to be the end for FireWire syncing with your iPod--it already wasn't compatible with either the Shuffle (natch), but also won't sync (but will charge) the "nano".
The product spec page for this new iPod doesn't mention firewire sync capability, and it doesn't list the cable as an approved accessory. Too bad--one of the neat features of the iPod was that you could boot from it, with a FireWire connection; but I guess that's no more.
Worse, are those Mac users--among them, myself--who have 3 year old Macs with either a) FireWire or b) USB 1.1. I guess it's no new iPods for me;(
You are obviously forgetting that a great deal of OSS software is produced for Windows and other platforms, such as OS X and etc. The first three suggestions that you have have less to do with OSS, and more to do with Linux/Unix--of which OSS is a huge component, but neither requires the other.
So if they are focused 100% for Office for Win, how much focus does that leave Mac users for a product that Microsoft already sells? I guess if their engineers give the project 110%, we get that last 10% to make Office work with Exchange servers.
Music videos? Does MTV even play them anymore? Who watches videos?
I've been known to watch a Shakira video, and if it was portable think of the possibilities...
Seriously though: Who trades videos over P2P or buys video DVDs from Borders, Wal-Mart or Amazon? There is some kind of market for video on demand, albeit not music videos. You can go onto Usenet and find the.torrent links yourself. If Apple was able to secure the rights to this without leaking it is a bigger question, but if they can do for TV and movies what the iTMS did for downloadable music, you can kiss my NetFlix sub goodby. Even if it means that I need to start my download 24 hours in advance, and have less than DVD quality.
Doesn't have to be portable, either, but a box that plugs in to my TV that allows me to stream from wherever I have my computer+internet would be pretty handy--I don't think most folks have an network connection next to their TV (although they should, and I actually do).
Most users won't download a whole new browser just to try out a new Google feature.
I agree that'd be a hurdle, but Google could counter by making the populace at large aware of alternatives. How about a link to FireFox, or a Gbrowser, right on their home page? "To google" is a verb, f'r crissakes. You don't get much larger brand recognition than that, and I think that any alternative would enjoy a large "halo" from an aggressive Google endorsement. If MSFT breaks IE deliberately to stop folks from using Google Office, they just might find that they lose browser marketshare to FireFox.
They might not even realize they have to...when a site doesn't work right most users assume it's the site's fault, not the browser's.
Well, Google could fix that too easily enough. "Thank you for accessing Google Office. Unfortunately your browser is not compatible, but here's a link to one that is."
While I agree that this will take some more work than getting JavaScript done right--if this is more than a plaintext editor--I think the brand recognition that Google could lend any alternative browser could overcome this hump. Wasn't Google working on a browser, even? That might not be destined for the market but is just Plan B, but still.
I think it'd be more apt to say: this is what happens when two 800 lb. gorillas want to sit in the same spot.
I think we can expect to MSFT to either/both a) release a default browser that's not compatible with this suite eg broken Java implementation/plugin, or b) attempt to triumph over Google's search dominance, thereby starving Google of it's core income. I think both tactics will be hard for MSFT to pull off--there are increasingly popular alternatives to IE; and MSFT has already been trying to out google Google to little avail.
Could be this is just a bluff--Google offers to get out of the Office business if MSFT agrees to get out of the search business. For that to work, Google has to have a viable competitor in the Office suite space, and nobody will know if that's going to happen until the marketplace takes a look at it. And the involvement of Sun makes that less likely, although I guess they could be dry-gulched on the deal.
These could be really interesting times. I think it's hard to understate the significance of this move if Google's offer does what 90% of the Office using folks do. Then again, I don't know how many people have given up their email client in favor of Gmail; I have a Gmail account, but I only use it for select things. Most of my email still goes to my desktop. Would the availability of a web-driven Office suite and a $250 thin client ie SunRay convince me to change my computing behavior? Maybe.
Besides, who wants to be deprived of all its documentation every time DSL is down?
When that happens, I already lose email and the internet. Which means I am basically dead in the water, and may as well go home for the day. Really.
And I don't think I'm all that unusual. Without email, I'm dead anyways. Might as well conflate those needs and subsequently decrease the need for local resources.
Why the hell would I want to surf to my word processor?
You probably don't, to a desktop with a Pentium 5 Million and.75TB of RAM.
However, consider using a word processor this way on your cellphone (maybe with an attached keyboard). Oh, plus you get instant searching across 10GB of documents that you've created in the last decade, and can pull up every different version of your resume that you've created in that time period.
This isn't for the computers of today--they can run stand alone applications nicely. This is for the computers of tomorrow--that have been so miniaturized that all they are is basically a web connection with no local storage and just enough CPU to get you connected. Laptops will be a gross monstrosity, by comparison, and the only folks with desktops will be those that have more than Office computing needs--like graphic content creators.
This hurts Microsoft right where they can be hurt the most. It's worth noting that their other divisions don't make near the amount of money that Office does; and it could be argued that as Office goes, so goes the OS. If you can access an office suite from any browser, would you care as much what OS you use, be it Win, Linux, OS X, or a Google OS?
Here's some reaction to this, in no specific order:
Look for a stripped free version that will be useful for home users; perhaps Enterprise can buy a black box from google with a more featureful version that the enterprise maintains and runs on their own.
Which makes this a bad day for Citrix as well.
Expect the next version of IE to have compatibility issues with this application. Does Google respond by encouraging the use of another browser? Will that hurt the long term dominance of IE, or will users be more relunctant to give up IE than that?
Sun just became relevant again. Also, this is likely to use Java technology. That might be it for.Net.
I would expect that Google will couple this suite with a pretty decent amount of storage: search your Google Suite composed docs online as well, then get ads related to your search. Integrate with email and the other applications in the suite.
This could really be online services done right, and if anybody would do them right it'd be Google: they have the server infrastructure to support this kind of move, and few other companies do, including Microsoft. We might remember this announcement as the day the PC died in 5 years--that might be pretty forward thinking, but if this works out as well as it reasonably might, do you need more than a browser platform for average computing tasks? Particularly when your email, browser, and office docs are unified by the great need to search that body of information by the best search engine yet designed?
If there comes a point in the future where we could have machinery efficiently do all those jobs, then things can probably change.
Right. Now those people that were doing those jobs previously all starve to death. When was the last time that a robot that could do a human's job guaranteed employment of the replaced human? Answer: never.
The people that have those jobs now will have to either get smarter and do other work, or, more likely, will no longer have a place in society. That I can now get a Roomba for $200 is nice for me, and I can use the savings from having to hire a maid on luxury things like rocket ships. However, it's not so nice for the maid.
It was for no reason, because he accomplished nothing
What did you accomplish, by calling him back after he pretty clearly indicated he didn't want to be called?
You are supposed to be accomplishing something, right?
Do you think that there's a chance that he eventually turned into a sale anyways? Or is is it more likely that he'd resist doing business with Qwest at the next opportunity, regardless of the "rules".
I notice that there's a lot of ex-telespammers posting in this thread. It gives me a small joy to know that perhaps you had your livelihood interfered with because you chose to be rude as a profession.
Then you'd be using the Keychain, which comes with the OS. You can set it to unlock by default once you login; lock after a certain period; or have a different password than the login pass, requiring a manual unlock.
Are there any Java password managers that can run off a jump drive and leave no trace on the host machine?
There've been hints for how to put your Keychain on a Jump drive for your Mac--basically a symlink.
I understood OS X to be BSD based, so I'm surprised that OS X is not counted as a distribution. I'd be interested to see posted why or why not OS X can be counted as a distribution of BSD; if it quacks like a duck, it seems like it should be included in a survey of this sort.
If OS X is truly a BSD distribution, doesn't it serve BSD evangelists to recognize and promote that?
Since you've actually used Macs before, you would gain some of the advantages of Linux + have some basis of knowledge with which to support these users if you replaced their machines with Macs.
Additionally, you can continue to use Microsoft Office--like Windows, but no viruses.
The hardware would cost more than using Linux to be sure--so do it a step at a time. I would replace the Win Server with Mac OS X Server running off of a low-power Xserve or a even a nice G5 tower; then replace the workstations as they die (or with mini Macs for $500 each to reuse the monitor/keyboard). Doing it this way a) reduces the cost of the Windows Server license, as X Server doesn't have CALs; b) can continue serving to the Windows clients without a hitch, even using ACLs and Active Directory now; and c) secures the most vulnerable part of your network--the external facing--first.
I can guarantee that the downtime by converting to Linux, and OS you don't know at all, will be more expensive than the cost of the hardware of an OS that you do know.
why aren't there clustering solutions that do this as well?
Because it's a lot faster to address a local CPU than it is to send that info down the wire to a remote CPU? And because of that latency, it's a lot easier to keep 2 or more local CPUs in sync than it is to keep 2 or more remote CPUs in sync?
You need to recode because you want to work around the latency, which is severe, of working via a network cable--so you design your apps to minimize messaging between CPUs. Some apps can do this well--they don't need results from other CPUs to complete their own information.
Other applications require CPUs to work in tandem, and for each CPU to have to wait while the results are served out over GigE would suck some serious ass, even if it might be technically possible.
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If you have to ask, you can't afford it.
That's helpful, thanks. I actually live close in Mont Co MD, and I see that I can get a lib card from your fair state. I think that'll be worth a trip southbound; my own libraries apparently aren't so enlightened up here.
I would give my eyeteeth for episodes of Mission Impossible, Secret Agent/Danger Man, and the Avengers. And by "eyeteeth" I mean less than the $10/ep that it looks like Amazon wants for those old series.
Well, maybe the Avengers isn't that much at Amazon, but gee, I dunno, it seems like such a commitment. Whereas if I bought one or two, I think I'd wind up spending a lot more by Christmas.
There are a LOT of old shows that have more interest than their contemporaries, yet appear to be almost out of print or hard to find. Whereas once they're digitized they can provide a residual income for ever, even if just one a year is sold--it's not like they're taking up space on a shelf.
Although you're trolling, you're right. It will take Microsoft acting in good faith for at least as long as they've acted in bad faith for them to outlilve their rep.
Which is to say that if they started acting ethically now, they'd have to continue to do so for a decade, only gradually gaining back the trust that they've lost.
They made this bed. I don't think it bothers them as much as it bothers the apologists, they've done pretty well regardless. But it's not unreasonable to treat any action of theirs with the utmost caution, because everything they've done to this point hasn't served any interest but their own.
If it weren't for people like me you yellow cowards too afraid to risk anything - heck, afraid of life itself
I find it interesting that you are too cowardly to even use an assumed name for your post. If you believe the things you said sincerely, why do you refuse to have them associated with you?
The first "E" in "Embrace, Extend, Extinguish" is "Embrace". We are here.
"Partners", from Microsoft's perspective, has always just meant "learn from them so that you can do what they do better."
This is true since the mid-80s: witness Apple. They partnered until they learned enough to do it their own way, and then dominated the market. They've done it dozens of times since.
That you didn't see this coming really is your own fault. Do you think that Microsoft thinks it has "peers" in anything? No. They see themselves as the big fish in a big pond, and if you haven't been eaten yet, it's just because you're less tasty than the others. Your mere survival doesn't make you "friends."
If anyone knows this, it's Google. They've treated Microsoft as the enemy from day one, and rightly so.
Let's say Whedon needs to see $5M before he attempts online distribution.
The reported per ep cost of FireFly was $2 Mill. If that seems high to you, it apparently did to Fox as well. So for a series, you'd need more like $2Mx14 eps=$28M just to get started; maybe another 10% for profit, say $30M. If that's the average profit on such a show.
So I think that'd change your number quite a bit. $5M would make the 2 hr. pilot only. Is that worth the investment?
Uh, I believe you're trolling. If the keyboard came from Apple, you can plug the mouse into the built in USB port in every Mac keyboard since they starting supporting USB.
If you're using a PC USB keyboard with no built in hub, what can I tell you. Maybe you should replace it with a BT keyboard instead.
Unless I'm mistaken, this looks to be the end for FireWire syncing with your iPod--it already wasn't compatible with either the Shuffle (natch), but also won't sync (but will charge) the "nano".
The product spec page for this new iPod doesn't mention firewire sync capability, and it doesn't list the cable as an approved accessory. Too bad--one of the neat features of the iPod was that you could boot from it, with a FireWire connection; but I guess that's no more.
Worse, are those Mac users--among them, myself--who have 3 year old Macs with either a) FireWire or b) USB 1.1. I guess it's no new iPods for me ;(
You are obviously forgetting that a great deal of OSS software is produced for Windows and other platforms, such as OS X and etc. The first three suggestions that you have have less to do with OSS, and more to do with Linux/Unix--of which OSS is a huge component, but neither requires the other.
So if they are focused 100% for Office for Win, how much focus does that leave Mac users for a product that Microsoft already sells? I guess if their engineers give the project 110%, we get that last 10% to make Office work with Exchange servers.
Music videos? Does MTV even play them anymore? Who watches videos?
I've been known to watch a Shakira video, and if it was portable think of the possibilities...
Seriously though: .torrent links yourself. If Apple was able to secure the rights to this without leaking it is a bigger question, but if they can do for TV and movies what the iTMS did for downloadable music, you can kiss my NetFlix sub goodby. Even if it means that I need to start my download 24 hours in advance, and have less than DVD quality.
Who trades videos over P2P or buys video DVDs from Borders, Wal-Mart or Amazon? There is some kind of market for video on demand, albeit not music videos. You can go onto Usenet and find the
Doesn't have to be portable, either, but a box that plugs in to my TV that allows me to stream from wherever I have my computer+internet would be pretty handy--I don't think most folks have an network connection next to their TV (although they should, and I actually do).
Most users won't download a whole new browser just to try out a new Google feature.
I agree that'd be a hurdle, but Google could counter by making the populace at large aware of alternatives. How about a link to FireFox, or a Gbrowser, right on their home page? "To google" is a verb, f'r crissakes. You don't get much larger brand recognition than that, and I think that any alternative would enjoy a large "halo" from an aggressive Google endorsement. If MSFT breaks IE deliberately to stop folks from using Google Office, they just might find that they lose browser marketshare to FireFox.
They might not even realize they have to...when a site doesn't work right most users assume it's the site's fault, not the browser's.
Well, Google could fix that too easily enough. "Thank you for accessing Google Office. Unfortunately your browser is not compatible, but here's a link to one that is."
While I agree that this will take some more work than getting JavaScript done right--if this is more than a plaintext editor--I think the brand recognition that Google could lend any alternative browser could overcome this hump. Wasn't Google working on a browser, even? That might not be destined for the market but is just Plan B, but still.
I think it'd be more apt to say: this is what happens when two 800 lb. gorillas want to sit in the same spot.
I think we can expect to MSFT to either/both a) release a default browser that's not compatible with this suite eg broken Java implementation/plugin, or b) attempt to triumph over Google's search dominance, thereby starving Google of it's core income. I think both tactics will be hard for MSFT to pull off--there are increasingly popular alternatives to IE; and MSFT has already been trying to out google Google to little avail.
Could be this is just a bluff--Google offers to get out of the Office business if MSFT agrees to get out of the search business. For that to work, Google has to have a viable competitor in the Office suite space, and nobody will know if that's going to happen until the marketplace takes a look at it. And the involvement of Sun makes that less likely, although I guess they could be dry-gulched on the deal.
These could be really interesting times. I think it's hard to understate the significance of this move if Google's offer does what 90% of the Office using folks do. Then again, I don't know how many people have given up their email client in favor of Gmail; I have a Gmail account, but I only use it for select things. Most of my email still goes to my desktop. Would the availability of a web-driven Office suite and a $250 thin client ie SunRay convince me to change my computing behavior? Maybe.
Besides, who wants to be deprived of all its documentation every time DSL is down?
When that happens, I already lose email and the internet. Which means I am basically dead in the water, and may as well go home for the day. Really.
And I don't think I'm all that unusual. Without email, I'm dead anyways. Might as well conflate those needs and subsequently decrease the need for local resources.
Why the hell would I want to surf to my word processor?
You probably don't, to a desktop with a Pentium 5 Million and .75TB of RAM.
However, consider using a word processor this way on your cellphone (maybe with an attached keyboard). Oh, plus you get instant searching across 10GB of documents that you've created in the last decade, and can pull up every different version of your resume that you've created in that time period.
This isn't for the computers of today--they can run stand alone applications nicely. This is for the computers of tomorrow--that have been so miniaturized that all they are is basically a web connection with no local storage and just enough CPU to get you connected. Laptops will be a gross monstrosity, by comparison, and the only folks with desktops will be those that have more than Office computing needs--like graphic content creators.
This hurts Microsoft right where they can be hurt the most. It's worth noting that their other divisions don't make near the amount of money that Office does; and it could be argued that as Office goes, so goes the OS. If you can access an office suite from any browser, would you care as much what OS you use, be it Win, Linux, OS X, or a Google OS?
Here's some reaction to this, in no specific order:
This could really be online services done right, and if anybody would do them right it'd be Google: they have the server infrastructure to support this kind of move, and few other companies do, including Microsoft. We might remember this announcement as the day the PC died in 5 years--that might be pretty forward thinking, but if this works out as well as it reasonably might, do you need more than a browser platform for average computing tasks? Particularly when your email, browser, and office docs are unified by the great need to search that body of information by the best search engine yet designed?
If there comes a point in the future where we could have machinery efficiently do all those jobs, then things can probably change.
Right. Now those people that were doing those jobs previously all starve to death. When was the last time that a robot that could do a human's job guaranteed employment of the replaced human? Answer: never.
The people that have those jobs now will have to either get smarter and do other work, or, more likely, will no longer have a place in society. That I can now get a Roomba for $200 is nice for me, and I can use the savings from having to hire a maid on luxury things like rocket ships. However, it's not so nice for the maid.
It was for no reason, because he accomplished nothing
What did you accomplish, by calling him back after he pretty clearly indicated he didn't want to be called?
You are supposed to be accomplishing something, right?
Do you think that there's a chance that he eventually turned into a sale anyways? Or is is it more likely that he'd resist doing business with Qwest at the next opportunity, regardless of the "rules".
I notice that there's a lot of ex-telespammers posting in this thread. It gives me a small joy to know that perhaps you had your livelihood interfered with because you chose to be rude as a profession.
What if I need to recall a password on OSX
Then you'd be using the Keychain, which comes with the OS. You can set it to unlock by default once you login; lock after a certain period; or have a different password than the login pass, requiring a manual unlock.
Are there any Java password managers that can run off a jump drive and leave no trace on the host machine?
There've been hints for how to put your Keychain on a Jump drive for your Mac--basically a symlink.
I understood OS X to be BSD based, so I'm surprised that OS X is not counted as a distribution. I'd be interested to see posted why or why not OS X can be counted as a distribution of BSD; if it quacks like a duck, it seems like it should be included in a survey of this sort.
If OS X is truly a BSD distribution, doesn't it serve BSD evangelists to recognize and promote that?
Why pay for a tool that destroys your hard drive
So I can RMA it and get a replacement drive from the vendor, is why. Also faster.
Since you've actually used Macs before, you would gain some of the advantages of Linux + have some basis of knowledge with which to support these users if you replaced their machines with Macs.
Additionally, you can continue to use Microsoft Office--like Windows, but no viruses.
The hardware would cost more than using Linux to be sure--so do it a step at a time. I would replace the Win Server with Mac OS X Server running off of a low-power Xserve or a even a nice G5 tower; then replace the workstations as they die (or with mini Macs for $500 each to reuse the monitor/keyboard). Doing it this way a) reduces the cost of the Windows Server license, as X Server doesn't have CALs; b) can continue serving to the Windows clients without a hitch, even using ACLs and Active Directory now; and c) secures the most vulnerable part of your network--the external facing--first.
I can guarantee that the downtime by converting to Linux, and OS you don't know at all, will be more expensive than the cost of the hardware of an OS that you do know.
why aren't there clustering solutions that do this as well?
Because it's a lot faster to address a local CPU than it is to send that info down the wire to a remote CPU? And because of that latency, it's a lot easier to keep 2 or more local CPUs in sync than it is to keep 2 or more remote CPUs in sync?
You need to recode because you want to work around the latency, which is severe, of working via a network cable--so you design your apps to minimize messaging between CPUs. Some apps can do this well--they don't need results from other CPUs to complete their own information.
Other applications require CPUs to work in tandem, and for each CPU to have to wait while the results are served out over GigE would suck some serious ass, even if it might be technically possible.