Wow! These are some interesting figures, however there are a number of possible explanations for them. For example, consider any IP that has been licensed from another company and incorporated into MS's products. MS can split the license fee in any way it chooses: 3 operating systems (NT, 9x, & CE) therefore they assess a one third cost to each of these systems - irrespective of volume of sales. (I know that this is a grossly simplified example, but companies do do this sort of thing. Why? Tax reasons mainly...) It is difficult to be sure without knowing how far down their P&L (or IS, depending on which country you're reading this in) Operating Profit falls.
>it's one interesting test in trying to decide Microsoft's corporate intentions>
That would be to make money!
To compare: A major motor manufacturer, in the first two years of production of one of it's newer models, was losing $1500 on each car it sold. Today, this model is the most common car I see on the roads, and is making money. I'm afraid that loss-leaders are standard business practice.
Or: Consider the business plans of 99% of the dot-com companies of a few years ago. I lost count of the number of reports I read that said something along the lines of: Currently losing $1M / year, on revenues of $50K. Projected to be in profit in 2005... They may have been right - if only they'd had the money (or the investor confidence) to last until 2005. This is not (necessarily) a bad business practice.
Finally, as to CE devices... I remember the old HP Jornada. A damn fine PDA. Best in class as far as I was concerned (I haven't got a clue about the new ones, so don't start:-)) It ran CE. It also ran into serious competition from Palm. Do you need any more reasons why CE might have stopped selling so well?
Anyway, sorry to ramble - and, seriously, thanks for the link.
>There is nothing that I can see that RedSherriff becomes resident on your machine and watches you elsewhere. It just uses cookies to provide enhanced site stats to, in this case, the beeb.>
This is not strictly true. I "discovered" RedSherriff about a year ago, when netstat indicated that I was connected to a site that I wasn't viewing. Checking other machines in work I found the same thing - there is a redsherriff.js left in the browser cache...
Now obviously I could clear the cache every time I close Explorer (Sorry to you non M$ types), but this would seriously slow down my surfing of regularly used sites (E.g. \.).
Eventually, I decided that the best thing to do is just delete all.js on a fairly regular basis, though this does not solve the problem of people "watching" you whilst you're browsing.
Just as a final point: Have you actually checked to see how many.js you pick up in 1 day? 35 on my machine at the moment. And this includes about a half dozen from this site as well (to check ad opt outs, meta-moderation etc.). Not all of this "Spyware" is a bad thing...
Slashdot Mirror
Another good resource for anyone interested in reproducing any other insane art is:
Adventures with Impossible Figures, by Bruno Ernst (0 906212 54 5)
But I have to admit, this guy takes it to the limit. Awesome!
Hmm!
I guess I should be a little more careful with what I consider humour / sarcasm.
I do actually know what ISA stands for, and what it does, and how to configure it, and how to break it too...
Not that anyone here needs to know this, but this clarification makes me feel better at least.
Sorry?
What is ISA server?
(Other than a misleading - Acceleration?)
Wow! These are some interesting figures, however there are a number of possible explanations for them. For example, consider any IP that has been licensed from another company and incorporated into MS's products. MS can split the license fee in any way it chooses: 3 operating systems (NT, 9x, & CE) therefore they assess a one third cost to each of these systems - irrespective of volume of sales.
:-)) It ran CE. It also ran into serious competition from Palm. Do you need any more reasons why CE might have stopped selling so well?
(I know that this is a grossly simplified example, but companies do do this sort of thing. Why? Tax reasons mainly...)
It is difficult to be sure without knowing how far down their P&L (or IS, depending on which country you're reading this in) Operating Profit falls.
>it's one interesting test in trying to decide Microsoft's corporate intentions>
That would be to make money!
To compare: A major motor manufacturer, in the first two years of production of one of it's newer models, was losing $1500 on each car it sold. Today, this model is the most common car I see on the roads, and is making money. I'm afraid that loss-leaders are standard business practice.
Or: Consider the business plans of 99% of the dot-com companies of a few years ago. I lost count of the number of reports I read that said something along the lines of: Currently losing $1M / year, on revenues of $50K. Projected to be in profit in 2005... They may have been right - if only they'd had the money (or the investor confidence) to last until 2005. This is not (necessarily) a bad business practice.
Finally, as to CE devices... I remember the old HP Jornada. A damn fine PDA. Best in class as far as I was concerned (I haven't got a clue about the new ones, so don't start
Anyway, sorry to ramble - and, seriously, thanks for the link.
>There is nothing that I can see that RedSherriff becomes resident on your machine and watches you elsewhere. It just uses cookies to provide enhanced site stats to, in this case, the beeb.>
.js on a fairly regular basis, though this does not solve the problem of people "watching" you whilst you're browsing.
.js you pick up in 1 day? 35 on my machine at the moment. And this includes about a half dozen from this site as well (to check ad opt outs, meta-moderation etc.). Not all of this "Spyware" is a bad thing...
This is not strictly true. I "discovered" RedSherriff about a year ago, when netstat indicated that I was connected to a site that I wasn't viewing. Checking other machines in work I found the same thing - there is a redsherriff.js left in the browser cache...
Now obviously I could clear the cache every time I close Explorer (Sorry to you non M$ types), but this would seriously slow down my surfing of regularly used sites (E.g. \.).
Eventually, I decided that the best thing to do is just delete all
Just as a final point: Have you actually checked to see how many