I was going to say that might not be a good idea since it would destroy the layout of many web sites and negatively affect others. Then I realized that the use of 1x1 images is probably pretty low (since they're normally 'stretched' when used as page layout devices) So, yeah, you've got a decent idea there:)
But I wonder if there's a way to filter on the the contents of the SRC tag value, and avoiding the minor risk of upsetting someone's page layout.
Thanks for the reply; hopefully you get modded up:)
IANABP (I am not a business person:), my knowledge is solely from observation and reading random business over the years. The 10% figure on MS came from a Newswork article a few weeks back, and they specifically commented on that being largely due to management overhead. But they could well be wrong. (or my memory serves me poorly)
Your comments about good reasons for "bigger is better" are right on. There are some clear advantages that I didn't get into (both for good and for ill). Though, I've read a few articles over the years questioning the true benefits of mergers. They suggested that in the case of corporate mergers, there really was no benefit and sometimes harm was done overall to a companies efficiency.
I actually pretty optimistic about the MS breakup. But anecdotal evidence on the AT&T aftermath suggests there was a time of noticably greater hassle for the average consumer. Perhaps that's not really the case; I was too young at the time to remember. If it was though, an MS breakup could be a headache for a while for consumers.
Regardless, your clarification was helpful and gave me some more thoughts to store away for future analyses:) I think we both agree that companies don't generally think that "smaller is better" (with exceptions such as the Palm spinoff), and really don't forced "break-ups". Rather, companies think "bigger is better", and in a way, desire to be a monopoly, even though that is not in society's best interests overall.
Now a closing question: You state that a monopoly is bad for the economy, and I agree with that. But does a monopoly hurt itself, realistically? Or, more precisely, does the owner/CEO of a monopoly reduce his long-term earnings by having a monopoly? Would Bill Gates be worth more in the long run if MS had played "fair"? Would Standard & Oil's founder (Carnegie?) have had greater wealth if the company hadn't become a monopoly? Or would the company have then been put down by someone else, who would become a monopoly?
I suspect that monopolies are often better for the founder, even if bad for everyone else. But, I don't really know.
1) Conventional business wisdom clearly shows the belief that "bigger is better" - hence, the non-stop mergers: Daimler-Chrysler, AT&T-@Home (or whatever), RJ Renolds-Nabisco, etc. Clearly, CEOs and shareholders do not believe that breaking companies up is better, otherwise these mergers would not be approve, but rather, companies would be spinning parts off.
2) The total valuation on two MS companies (assuming a split-up) is ballpark 10% less than it's current valuation. The decrease is because management infrastructure must be duplicated for the two companies. Redundant costs increase with more sub-corps, hence the lower valuation.
3) You note AT&T as an example of a good breakup. While it may be good for the consumer in the long run, (1) shows that AT&T think that monopoly was better business. Moreover, everyone forgets the phone chaos that lasted upwards of close to 10 years after the breakup. Talking to my parents reminded me that long-distance phone issues were *more* difficult following the break-up than before. Now, it's nice having mucho cheaper rates and such, but that didn't happen overnight.
I believe a breakup of MS is justified and would be a good thing in the long run. But I must admit that the computer industry might experience significant chaos, a major slump, and tech-life as a whole may be a pain for several years afterward.
I remember going to a friend's house, setting his Atari 800 to load a game from the *tape drive*, and then going outside to play for 30-45 minutes while it loaded. Often we'd come back it, and find that it had failed. Repeat.
That's what's wrong with kids these days, they're not forced to play outside while their games load.
(In best Granpa Simpson voice: And that's the way we liked it!)
I agree. I have fond memories of old console games and some arcade games. And part of the fun is the elegant simplicity. That's why I play minesweeper, Tetris, and solitaire from time to time. Easy fun that doesn't require hours of time, save games, etc.
That type of fun is still available via the new consoles. I've got an N64, and have found a few games that have that elegant simplicity:
Killer Instinct Gold (fighting game, easy to play, hard to master)
1080 - awesome game. Super simple game play, but fairly deep. Always something new to master
Mario 64 - truly a great sequel to all the previous Marios. The same simplicity, running and jumping, but now in 3D
Wetrix - A spiritual descendent of Tetris, in 3D. The mechanics are simple. The game is brutally hard! Great for a quickie gaming fix.
"I mean, gaming today, you don't get any of the nifty hand injuries or mental dilusions"
Ahhh...I remember fondly the "Intellivision-thumb" syndrome:) That later became "Nintendo-thumb"
But you can still experience it today! Recently, I spent a long weekend with a couple friends, my N64, and some games, and was really pushing some "N64-thumb" at times:) The real difference is that, as a kid, I could kill 8-20 hours gaming. As an adult [sic] I can't do that, with has the side effect of letting my thumbs remain healthy.
I was being sarcastically flippant about the simple little modification Napster needs to do. It could very well be difficult.
But that's not my problem. Their business plan seems to be laid on the backs of musicians and their copyrighted works. That's not a good thing. So if Napster wants to stay in business, at the very least, they need to figure out a way to significantly reduce the piracy being accomplished with their "business"
"there's nothing wrong with obtaining an mp3 of something you have on cd already. " I've seen that argument made. But, as we saw with MP3.com, there is something wrong with it. (well, at least with MP3 keeping those recordings on hand)
Realistically, if you have the computer & bandwidth to d/l MP3's, then you obviously can get a CD ripper (there are free ones) to convert your CDs to MP3s yourself.
The "I'm downloading music I already own" position seems pretty thin.
"Is this company just so chock-full of idiocy that they jumped into a product with no viable method of making money? "
Doesn't that question apply to every dot-com in existence? We're a dot-com, We don't need no stinkin' revenues!!
Reminds me of the old SNL skit about the bank whose primary service is making change. Bring a dollar, and they'll give 20 nickels, or 10 dimes, whatever you need. How do they make money? From volume!:)
"However, you cannot blame the service for the actions of its users. That's debatable.
Regardless, Napster could just filter and stop transmission of copyrighted works via their system (unless they have permission to distribute the works).
What's the problem? Oh wait - they'd go out of business since no one would use them to pirat^h^h^h^h^h share music anymore. Boy, that's a problem.
In the document, the RIAA states that organizations and artists in the industry are working on online distribution methods, and that "The unchallenged evidence clearly showed that the record company plaintiffs have spent vast sums and years of effort preparing to develop legitimate commercial acceptance by consumers to pay for digital downloads of music."
The RIAA would argue that the/.'ers are the ones who "just don't get it.":)
I thought that was very interesting though. Because the judge in Diamond v. RIAA held that the computer and hard drive are not digital audio recorder, Diamond was in the clear, and exempt from the home recording act.
But because the home recording act doesn't apply to computers, Napster can't claim the home recording act as a defense! It's ironic that the RIAA is using its loss as a defense (as stated before), but also that Napster, "little guy v. RIAA" is being harmed by precedent from another "little guy v. RIAA" case.
I wonder, will be complain about how the courts are being consistent now that it hurts their Napster cause? (as opposed to the randomness of the WIPO rulings?)
Consider - if the Napster case had before Diamonds, and won, portable MP3 players might very well be *illegal* (if the stance of computers-as-recorders were reversed)! Interesting...
Here is the text from p11 of the PDF:
In RIAA v. Diamond Multimedia Systems, Inc., 180 F.3d 1072, 1074-1075 (9th Cir. 1999), this Court squarely held that "[u]nder the plain meaning of the [AHRA's] definition of digital audio recording devices, computers (and their hard drives) are not digital audio recording devices..."
Diamond also held that MP3 files contained on computer hard drives are not "digital musical recordings." 180 F.3d at 1076-77. Thus, under Diamond, a computer is not a covered device, and a copy made by one Napster user of an MP3 file residing on another Napster user's computer hard drive is not a copy of a "digital musical recording," and is not covered by Section 1008. 17 U.S.C. 1001(4)(A).
Something else just came to mind Quoting: "Touretzky [said] if the DeCSS source code were banned, the only way to prevent that knowledge from being transmitted would be to ban it in all its forms... even on t-shirts and hidden in image files - all of these would have to be banned because the source code is easily retrievable from all of them."
Again, see my point 1) how is this different with the current situation - it is illegal to reproduce copyrighted works without the holder's permission.
I can rewrite the quote as, "Someone [said] if the calvin & Hobbes comics were banned, the only way to prevent that knowledge from being transmitted would be to ban it in all its forms... even on t-shirts and hidden in image files - all of these would have to be banned because the pictures are so easily retrievable from all of them."
That's the present situation. Maybe I'm missing something critical, but it seems the arguments are pretty hollow.
While I enjoy the humor and chutzpah behind the T-shirt, this notion of "if it can be on a t-shirt, then it's free-speech" seems a bit off.
1) I could print copyrighted works on a t-shirt. It's "free speech" but it's still not legal without the copyright holder's permission
2) If someone were to break an NDA and, say, print Intel's trace diagram for their super-secret next gen processor, I don't think "it's free speech -- see it's on a T-shirt" would fly.
3) Indecency laws (as others have pointed out)
Just because it's "free speech" doesn't make it legal.
At first, I was truly amazed to see that the cells survived.
Then I noted that they were exposed for only 10 min. with a 1000-fold reduction.
So, assuming exponential decay - that is, the number of microbes killed is proportional to the number in the colony - and solving
Q[t] = Qo Exp[r t] Qo = initial amount of microbes r = rate of death t = time Q = number of microbes at time t
Using Q[0]=Qo & Q[600] = Qo/1000 the rate r is found: r = -Log[1000/600] ~= -0.011.
Solve Q[t] = Qo/2 the half life is found: t ~= 60 sec.
So then, class, what have we learned?:) Well, if the population drops by half every minute in space, that doesn't bode well for any realistic transit (i.e. Earth to Mars). After one week (604800 sec) , the population drops to 10^(-3024) of it's starting value. That is too say, after a week it will all be dead.
Granted, this is extremely simplified with gross assumptions. Still, it looks like there are real troubles for "Microbes In Space".
I was wondering what was up with Tom and his hardware. Both PlanetHardware and SharkyExtreme (who was subtly dissed by Tom) got it running and put up bunches of benchmarks. Neither one reported problems, special motherboards, or other such things. I see now that AnandTech has a review as well.
As another poster suggested, did Tom get a bum chip, or did all the other sites gloss over very real limitations?
Well, I see horrible bad things about the USPS and there new idea are well stated at this point:)
I'd like to give a different perspective: 1) Maybe the USPS is inefficient, etc. Still, I can throw a letter in the mail with a 33 cent stamp here in NY and it will get to CA in less than a week. That's pretty cool. Despite the nay-sayers, I have found the mail to be *extremely* reliable over the years.
2) This email service could be quite handy for keeping in contact with old friends. If a reverse lookup is possible, then perhaps I can take their USPS email and convert it their mailing address and send them that Christmas card, or wedding present, etc. Or the other way - it's pretty hard still to find email addy's on the 'net. Perhaps I can take their physical address and convert it to email and send a quick note to an old college roommate. Basically, it could add one more method for finding friends & family.
3) Oh no! crazy wackos could now use our emails to mailbomb our houses and prank call us!!!! Uhh... They can do that anyway. There is this terrible, public database with *everyone's* address and phone number!!!! It's the (gasp) PHONE BOOK!!!!! If someone wants to harass random people, they can just grab a name/address/number from the phone books (you can get them for all cities at major libraries; or go on line) and then send them bombs or threats or whatever. I suppose for the psychos too cheap to spring for the stamp this will be great, but otherwise it's not giving much that they didn't already have.
Yes, there are some serious issues to address, but in all this idea has some great potential benefits. As a society, nearly everyone has a mailing address, and almost everyone has a phone. Computers are still relatively expensive, difficult to use, and hard to maintain. Email for everyone is still a ways off. This may help provide that service to those who might not otherwise be able to get it.
Not really - it will suck money from the developers to pay for their lawyers. The legal-fees : cash-available ratio for MS is essentially zero while for spare-time developers, it's essentially infinite.
Non-profit small guys getting sued by MS will almost certainly not phase MS and put the other guys out of business.
It'd be like punching a brick wall - the wall won't notice, and you'll have a broken hand.
"Oh, and don't forget that you need to buy a DOS. "
huh? You don't need to buy DOS separately. Win95 and 98 full install do just that - full install. I had forgotten that the $90 was upgrade. Full I think is ~$130. Nonetheless, given the total system cost and games over a period of time, it's not outlandish. People spend that much for a N64 or PS1 just to be able to spend $50-$60 per game to play them.
As for networking windows - Using an average retail kit, I was able to setup simple 2 PC LAN in a couple of hours, with no major headaches. It was really quite easy. I have no doubt that it could have been a nightmare, but it wasn't. And from I've read, installing Linux can be easy and can be a nightmare. Again - if you can install Linux, I have little doubt you could install win98, and even network it.
All in all, needing Win98 to play games is not a significant obstacle if you've already got an intel/amd-based PC.
Slashdot Mirror
I was going to say that might not be a good idea since it would destroy the layout of many web sites and negatively affect others. Then I realized that the use of 1x1 images is probably pretty low (since they're normally 'stretched' when used as page layout devices) So, yeah, you've got a decent idea there :)
But I wonder if there's a way to filter on the the contents of the SRC tag value, and avoiding the minor risk of upsetting someone's page layout.
Ah yes - I keep confusing who bought what in those various transactions the past few years.
thanks.
Thanks for the reply; hopefully you get modded up :)
:), my knowledge is solely from observation and reading random business over the years. The 10% figure on MS came from a Newswork article a few weeks back, and they specifically commented on that being largely due to management overhead. But they could well be wrong. (or my memory serves me poorly)
:) I think we both agree that companies don't generally think that "smaller is better" (with exceptions such as the Palm spinoff), and really don't forced "break-ups". Rather, companies think "bigger is better", and in a way, desire to be a monopoly, even though that is not in society's best interests overall.
IANABP (I am not a business person
Your comments about good reasons for "bigger is better" are right on. There are some clear advantages that I didn't get into (both for good and for ill). Though, I've read a few articles over the years questioning the true benefits of mergers. They suggested that in the case of corporate mergers, there really was no benefit and sometimes harm was done overall to a companies efficiency.
I actually pretty optimistic about the MS breakup. But anecdotal evidence on the AT&T aftermath suggests there was a time of noticably greater hassle for the average consumer. Perhaps that's not really the case; I was too young at the time to remember. If it was though, an MS breakup could be a headache for a while for consumers.
Regardless, your clarification was helpful and gave me some more thoughts to store away for future analyses
Now a closing question: You state that a monopoly is bad for the economy, and I agree with that. But does a monopoly hurt itself, realistically? Or, more precisely, does the owner/CEO of a monopoly reduce his long-term earnings by having a monopoly? Would Bill Gates be worth more in the long run if MS had played "fair"? Would Standard & Oil's founder (Carnegie?) have had greater wealth if the company hadn't become a monopoly? Or would the company have then been put down by someone else, who would become a monopoly?
I suspect that monopolies are often better for the founder, even if bad for everyone else. But, I don't really know.
I don't think your reasoning is correct.
1) Conventional business wisdom clearly shows the belief that "bigger is better" - hence, the non-stop mergers: Daimler-Chrysler, AT&T-@Home (or whatever), RJ Renolds-Nabisco, etc. Clearly, CEOs and shareholders do not believe that breaking companies up is better, otherwise these mergers would not be approve, but rather, companies would be spinning parts off.
2) The total valuation on two MS companies (assuming a split-up) is ballpark 10% less than it's current valuation. The decrease is because management infrastructure must be duplicated for the two companies. Redundant costs increase with more sub-corps, hence the lower valuation.
3) You note AT&T as an example of a good breakup. While it may be good for the consumer in the long run, (1) shows that AT&T think that monopoly was better business. Moreover, everyone forgets the phone chaos that lasted upwards of close to 10 years after the breakup. Talking to my parents reminded me that long-distance phone issues were *more* difficult following the break-up than before. Now, it's nice having mucho cheaper rates and such, but that didn't happen overnight.
I believe a breakup of MS is justified and would be a good thing in the long run. But I must admit that the computer industry might experience significant chaos, a major slump, and tech-life as a whole may be a pain for several years afterward.
Amen brother! :)
Seeing that ECA appear on the screen always gave me a good feeling
I nominate M.U.L.E as the best multiplayer game ever made! Well, maybe second best. Archon might be the best :)
I wasted so much time playing those games as a kid with my best friend. I can still hear the M.U.L.E. theme song in my head if I concentrate.
Welcome to the Planet Irata. We hope you enjoy your stay.
I remember going to a friend's house, setting his Atari 800 to load a game from the *tape drive*, and then going outside to play for 30-45 minutes while it loaded. Often we'd come back it, and find that it had failed. Repeat.
That's what's wrong with kids these days, they're not forced to play outside while their games load.
(In best Granpa Simpson voice: And that's the way we liked it!)
I agree. I have fond memories of old console games and some arcade games. And part of the fun is the elegant simplicity. That's why I play minesweeper, Tetris, and solitaire from time to time. Easy fun that doesn't require hours of time, save games, etc.
That type of fun is still available via the new consoles. I've got an N64, and have found a few games that have that elegant simplicity:
Killer Instinct Gold (fighting game, easy to play, hard to master)
1080 - awesome game. Super simple game play, but fairly deep. Always something new to master
Mario 64 - truly a great sequel to all the previous Marios. The same simplicity, running and jumping, but now in 3D
Wetrix - A spiritual descendent of Tetris, in 3D. The mechanics are simple. The game is brutally hard! Great for a quickie gaming fix.
"I mean, gaming today, you don't get any of the nifty hand injuries or mental dilusions"
:) That later became "Nintendo-thumb"
:) The real difference is that, as a kid, I could kill 8-20 hours gaming. As an adult [sic] I can't do that, with has the side effect of letting my thumbs remain healthy.
Ahhh...I remember fondly the "Intellivision-thumb" syndrome
But you can still experience it today! Recently, I spent a long weekend with a couple friends, my N64, and some games, and was really pushing some "N64-thumb" at times
I was being sarcastically flippant about the simple little modification Napster needs to do. It could very well be difficult.
But that's not my problem. Their business plan seems to be laid on the backs of musicians and their copyrighted works. That's not a good thing. So if Napster wants to stay in business, at the very least, they need to figure out a way to significantly reduce the piracy being accomplished with their "business"
"there's nothing wrong with obtaining an mp3 of something you have on cd already. "
I've seen that argument made. But, as we saw with MP3.com, there is something wrong with it. (well, at least with MP3 keeping those recordings on hand)
Realistically, if you have the computer & bandwidth to d/l MP3's, then you obviously can get a CD ripper (there are free ones) to convert your CDs to MP3s yourself.
The "I'm downloading music I already own" position seems pretty thin.
"Is this company just so chock-full of idiocy that they jumped into a product with no viable method of making money? "
:)
Doesn't that question apply to every dot-com in existence? We're a dot-com, We don't need no stinkin' revenues!!
Reminds me of the old SNL skit about the bank whose primary service is making change. Bring a dollar, and they'll give 20 nickels, or 10 dimes, whatever you need. How do they make money? From volume!
"However, you cannot blame the service for the actions of its users. That's debatable.
Regardless, Napster could just filter and stop transmission of copyrighted works via their system (unless they have permission to distribute the works).
What's the problem? Oh wait - they'd go out of business since no one would use them to pirat^h^h^h^h^h share music anymore. Boy, that's a problem.
In the document, the RIAA states that organizations and artists in the industry are working on online distribution methods, and that "The unchallenged evidence clearly showed that the record company plaintiffs have spent vast sums and years of effort preparing to develop legitimate commercial acceptance by consumers to pay for digital downloads of music."
/.'ers are the ones who "just don't get it." :)
The RIAA would argue that the
I thought that was very interesting though. Because the judge in Diamond v. RIAA held that the computer and hard drive are not digital audio recorder, Diamond was in the clear, and exempt from the home recording act.
But because the home recording act doesn't apply to computers, Napster can't claim the home recording act as a defense! It's ironic that the RIAA is using its loss as a defense (as stated before), but also that Napster, "little guy v. RIAA" is being harmed by precedent from another "little guy v. RIAA" case.
I wonder, will be complain about how the courts are being consistent now that it hurts their Napster cause? (as opposed to the randomness of the WIPO rulings?)
Consider - if the Napster case had before Diamonds, and won, portable MP3 players might very well be *illegal* (if the stance of computers-as-recorders were reversed)! Interesting...
Here is the text from p11 of the PDF:
In RIAA v. Diamond Multimedia Systems, Inc., 180 F.3d 1072, 1074-1075 (9th Cir. 1999), this Court squarely held that "[u]nder the plain meaning of the [AHRA's] definition of digital audio recording devices, computers (and their hard drives) are not digital audio recording devices..."
Diamond also held that MP3 files contained on computer hard drives are not "digital musical
recordings." 180 F.3d at 1076-77. Thus, under Diamond, a computer is not a covered device,
and a copy made by one Napster user of an MP3 file residing on another Napster user's computer
hard drive is not a copy of a "digital musical recording," and is not covered by Section 1008. 17
U.S.C. 1001(4)(A).
Something else just came to mind ... even on t-shirts and hidden in image files - all of these would have to be banned because the source code is easily retrievable from all of them."
... even on t-shirts and hidden in image files - all of these would have to be banned because the pictures are so easily retrievable from all of them."
Quoting:
"Touretzky [said] if the DeCSS source code were banned, the only way to prevent that knowledge from being transmitted would be to ban it in all its forms
Again, see my point 1) how is this different with the current situation - it is illegal to reproduce copyrighted works without the holder's permission.
I can rewrite the quote as,
"Someone [said] if the calvin & Hobbes comics were banned, the only way to prevent that knowledge from being transmitted would be to ban it in all its forms
That's the present situation. Maybe I'm missing something critical, but it seems the arguments are pretty hollow.
While I enjoy the humor and chutzpah behind the T-shirt, this notion of "if it can be on a t-shirt, then it's free-speech" seems a bit off.
1) I could print copyrighted works on a t-shirt. It's "free speech" but it's still not legal without the copyright holder's permission
2) If someone were to break an NDA and, say, print Intel's trace diagram for their super-secret next gen processor, I don't think "it's free speech -- see it's on a T-shirt" would fly.
3) Indecency laws (as others have pointed out)
Just because it's "free speech" doesn't make it legal.
FiringSquad has also got a review today, and they eve *overclocked* it to about 1.24GHz. So yes, Tom probably got a bad part.
At first, I was truly amazed to see that the cells survived.
:)
Then I noted that they were exposed for only 10 min. with a 1000-fold reduction.
So, assuming exponential decay - that is, the number of microbes killed is proportional to the number in the colony - and solving
Q[t] = Qo Exp[r t]
Qo = initial amount of microbes
r = rate of death
t = time
Q = number of microbes at time t
Using Q[0]=Qo & Q[600] = Qo/1000 the rate r is found:
r = -Log[1000/600] ~= -0.011.
Solve Q[t] = Qo/2 the half life is found:
t ~= 60 sec.
So then, class, what have we learned?
Well, if the population drops by half every minute in space, that doesn't bode well for any realistic transit (i.e. Earth to Mars). After one week (604800 sec) , the population drops to 10^(-3024) of it's starting value. That is too say, after a week it will all be dead.
Granted, this is extremely simplified with gross assumptions. Still, it looks like there are real troubles for "Microbes In Space".
I was wondering what was up with Tom and his hardware. Both PlanetHardware and SharkyExtreme (who was subtly dissed by Tom) got it running and put up bunches of benchmarks. Neither one reported problems, special motherboards, or other such things. I see now that AnandTech has a review as well.
As another poster suggested, did Tom get a bum chip, or did all the other sites gloss over very real limitations?
Well, I see horrible bad things about the USPS and there new idea are well stated at this point :)
I'd like to give a different perspective:
1) Maybe the USPS is inefficient, etc. Still, I can throw a letter in the mail with a 33 cent stamp here in NY and it will get to CA in less than a week. That's pretty cool. Despite the nay-sayers, I have found the mail to be *extremely* reliable over the years.
2) This email service could be quite handy for keeping in contact with old friends. If a reverse lookup is possible, then perhaps I can take their USPS email and convert it their mailing address and send them that Christmas card, or wedding present, etc. Or the other way - it's pretty hard still to find email addy's on the 'net. Perhaps I can take their physical address and convert it to email and send a quick note to an old college roommate. Basically, it could add one more method for finding friends & family.
3) Oh no! crazy wackos could now use our emails to mailbomb our houses and prank call us!!!! Uhh... They can do that anyway. There is this terrible, public database with *everyone's* address and phone number!!!! It's the (gasp) PHONE BOOK!!!!! If someone wants to harass random people, they can just grab a name/address/number from the phone books (you can get them for all cities at major libraries; or go on line) and then send them bombs or threats or whatever. I suppose for the psychos too cheap to spring for the stamp this will be great, but otherwise it's not giving much that they didn't already have.
Yes, there are some serious issues to address, but in all this idea has some great potential benefits. As a society, nearly everyone has a mailing address, and almost everyone has a phone. Computers are still relatively expensive, difficult to use, and hard to maintain. Email for everyone is still a ways off. This may help provide that service to those who might not otherwise be able to get it.
Not really - it will suck money from the developers to pay for their lawyers. The legal-fees : cash-available ratio for MS is essentially zero while for spare-time developers, it's essentially infinite.
Non-profit small guys getting sued by MS will almost certainly not phase MS and put the other guys out of business.
It'd be like punching a brick wall - the wall won't notice, and you'll have a broken hand.
*cough* X-Box *cough*
:)
Oh wait, you want it for *free*. Sorry, can't help you there
Ahh... that was probably it. My friend has since found the manual, so maybe I'll give it another go later on.
"Oh, and don't forget that you need to buy a DOS. "
huh? You don't need to buy DOS separately. Win95 and 98 full install do just that - full install. I had forgotten that the $90 was upgrade. Full I think is ~$130. Nonetheless, given the total system cost and games over a period of time, it's not outlandish. People spend that much for a N64 or PS1 just to be able to spend $50-$60 per game to play them.
As for networking windows - Using an average retail kit, I was able to setup simple 2 PC LAN in a couple of hours, with no major headaches. It was really quite easy. I have no doubt that it could have been a nightmare, but it wasn't. And from I've read, installing Linux can be easy and can be a nightmare. Again - if you can install Linux, I have little doubt you could install win98, and even network it.
All in all, needing Win98 to play games is not a significant obstacle if you've already got an intel/amd-based PC.