Office is the cash cow, and they have done their best to eliminate viable competition.
I can understand how they've done their best to eliminate the competition with regards to browsers and operating systems... but Office??
Does anyone have any actual details on what they did with Office that was so anticompetitive?
Propiatory document formats as a reason don't cut it, other manufacturers use that sort of thing (insert any non-MS package under the sun here) - the only reason it's so widespread is because of the massive take up of Word at a time when the competition was, quite frankly, rubbish.
But I've never read anything about them exercising anti-competitive behavours with word - more that the entire world and his dog have become so entrenched with the.doc format, that MS don't need to actually do anything.
Well if it is, it doesn't make you look any more intelligent by quoting his little unprovable bits and saying 'please sir, can I have some more?'
Actually I asked if I could see some facts to back up his assertions. It's all very well saying MS is dragging the industry behind, but unless you've got credible sources then it's pure speculation. Give me facts, good solid facts.
So, yea, congratulations, you've made yourself look like a bumbling idiot for picking only the parts of the post you disliked and putting them on the chopping block, while ignornig the point.
Go read his post again. I quoted EVERYTHING. That was the ENTIRE post. I didn't dislike the post, I just wanted some facts.
I don't dispute that MS is a bad thing - but when people start making claims that they drag the industry back then they need to quote some sources otherwise people will just bash it as mindless FUD.
If you can cite a source that backs up your comments, you'll find people are very ready to believe you more. It's all very well screaming "MS is eeeeeevil" till you're blue in the face - but it doesn't exactly help change peoples minds.
Eeeewww, formatting your hard disk when you visit an evil web page, as described in a previous alert, won't cause damage to personal files? For most people, that is about 90% of computer users, who store everything in the 'My Documents' folder, this IE exploit will cause a lot of data loss.
(I normally don't bother with replying to AC's because they generally never get the point I'm making, but I'm bored...)
Theres a subtle difference between an exploit that can do a lot of harm and an exploit out there that is doing a lot of harm.
One has the potential to harm you, the other is actually harming you. Until Joe Blow experiences the latter, he's just going to discount it as someone elses problem and carry on as normal.
People don't move to something because, firstly it's something different and many people are happy to stick with something comfortable. Secondly many people don't see the point in downloading something that they already have installed ("it works for me, why do I need anything else?" mentality) and finally, for many people they never experience the nasty possible ill-effects of these security alerts.
Sure, plenty of people were hit by Code Red but it never really affected them. Sure it affected their computer, but as far as their documents were concerned - there was no change.
Until we see a security alert that does cause damage to personal files and does roam rampant in the wild, the average Joe Blow user doesn't give a toss whether or not there 6 or 6000 security alerts.
So if you're using a Windows box, I've got to assume one of three things is happening:
You forgot one:
4. You've never ever been affected in any way by one of these exploits.
I'm willing to bet that a very very very large percentage of people who run windows never ever experience one of the exploits listed in bugtraq.
Yes, it may be illogical thinking, but if Joe Blow has never had any of these "scary hacker type things" happen to him, why should he bother installing a different browser?
Is there an emulator to run Palm OS apps on PocketPC?
Yes and no. There is a product called PocketNow, however the author no longer works on the product and sold it to some commercial company. It also only emulated black and white Palms.
You might be able to find it somewhere to download, if you do, then this is what it'll look like.
Given that yet another manufacturer has released yet another PPC, can anyone speculate why there is this rash of companies eager to jump on the PPC bandwagon but only Sony who are with Palm?
(yes, I know there is Handera and Handspring, but one has pretty much vanished and the other is doing smartphones)
How did Microsoft manage to attract all these companies and Palm fail rather miserably? What is MS doing that Palm isn't?
Imagine if a company called Penguin Soft created a console that is very similar to what Xbox is. The console is entirely based on Linux. Exact same specs like the Xbox but run Linux instead. Would you still hate it? I don't think so... you would be praising it as the best invention ever! A huge Linux success!
Actually there was such a console called the Indrema. It ran Linux, the geeks loved it.
However the games were practically non-existant and this wasn't significantly offset by the fact it ran Linux.
Yes, shocking as it might be to some readers, the average console player doesn't give a toss about the OS under the hood. They didn't give a toss about the Indrema either and it sank into the depths of console obscurity.
$49.99 which includes one year or service. How much after the year is up?? Sounds like ms trying to "trick" people again, like they did with the $300 rebate at retail stores if you sign up for 3 years of MSN
Oh boy, reality check time. Take a look around you at every other company in the market place. This is a standard marketing approach - give out a service at a reduced rate, get people to use it and find out that they really like it and then, when the time is up, ask them to pay a "proper" price for it.
This is not some trick. The details are all there, you get the chance to try something for a reduced rate - you're not forced to continue after the year.
Accept that you're getting it at a reduced rate, use it and if you like it then consider whether or not the asking price is worthwhile. If it is, pay it. If it isn't, don't.
Even if you don't, you've had a years worth of online gaming on the cheap.
Re:Very interesting, but I still don't understand.
on
The Economics of Spam
·
· Score: 5, Informative
...who actually reads the emails ? Even if I was so oblivious that I didn't filter my emails, I would never dream of supporting the spammer. Even if I accidently read a spam and then amazingly found the product/service interesting, I would not respond to anything in the spam.
Last time I commented on this, I got accused by some idiot of being a troll. Interestingly enough it was still modded to 5 and considered "Insightful".
The biggest problem with spam is... the response rates. That is users who actually are dumb enough to open up the email and then reply to it.
If everyone in the whole world suddenly got a clue (and it won't happen) then the response rate for junk emails would be nothing, nada, zip, 0 people and 0%.
Exactly how long would a spamming organisation be able to stay in business if they couldn't even guarantee that in a 6 million mailout, they could not get one sale?
With a response rate as low as 0.002%, do they expect that the people that install and run spam filters are the most likely to respond to spam ?
No, because if you've installed it yourself you're too tech savvy and very very unlikely to buy anything from them. They're gunning for the uneducated masses. Those that do reply.
A 0.002% response rate for 3 million emails is 6 thousand responses. Despite the low percentage, that bold figure is enough for many unscrupulus companies to go "hell yeah!".
Email spamming is quick, cheap and it's easy. So quick, so cheap and so easy that it's seen as worthwhile even if you only get 50 responses. Until that number drops to 1 or 2 then we'll all have to look at other ways of stopping the menace.
Ms. Betterly says she follows a lot of the rules laid out by most of the state laws: She doesn't forge or falsify the message headers; she doesn't use a third-party company's Internet address or domain name unknowingly; she lets people opt out or unsubscribe to future mailings. Still, she doesn't put a specific label ("ADV" for advertisement) at the beginning of her subject lines, which some state laws require.
Ms. Betterly says she refuses to send e-mails about adult fare, because it "disgraces society." She won't take jobs from clients selling products she doesn't think are legitimate. And she only sends bulk e-mails to people who have indicated at some time that they want to hear more about certain products or offers.
So I've been reading about how in the UK everyone is using bluetooth enabled devices. This device becomes a perfect example of a "why do we need this?" product.
Uhhhh, no. That is, I'm afriad, a bit of a fallacy. Yes, we have bluetooth phones here (and the odd headset - which costs a fortune and makes you look an idiot, hence low take up) but if you think we're all using these devices then I'm afriad you're wrong.
At the moment there are two Nokia phones (7650 and 6310i), one SonyEricsson and probably two others of other makes. This isn't much.
I actually have a theory that Bluetooh won't really start to take off in the UK until Nokia starts supporting it on every single phone.
At the moment they're only putting it into high end mobile phones. Out of the 9 phones they've announced 3 have bluetooth. Whilst this might not sound that bad, one of those is a 3G phone, one of those is a communicator and the other is their top of the range model.
Granted I don't expect the new budget 2110 to have it, but considering the chips are cheap, available and low power - it would make more sense to stick them into all phones.
After all, text messaging didn't become popular by being put on only the most expensive phones. Yes, there was interoperability issues too, but if you want people to use new technology, you can't price it out of the range of the masses.
MacOS Classic works around that problem by using
a V shaped buffer zone. If you move your mouse
to the right within a certain angle, the submenu
doesn't change.
MS used an inferior workaround. Submenus open with
a delay, and you have to select them slowly or they
won't open at all.
The reason for this is that during the many studies and research that Microsoft did into user interfaces it found that users did not like the fact that the sub-menu option appeared immediately. They actually found it less intimidating when it appeared after a second or two.
It also reduces screen clutter. As you move up a set of menus, their sub-menu doesn't appear until you come to rest on the option you want, rather than all the sub-menus popping open and then closing again as you move. Having all these sub-menus flashing about tended to unsettle users.
Having said all that, there is a registry setting that can increase or decrease this to any number of milliseconds you want. I've no idea where it is, but I do remember TweekUI allowing you to change it.
Whilst the author makes some good points, there are plenty of flaws in his reasoning.
Fortunately, technology has improved since the 1970s. We have the power, in today's computers, to pick a sensible name for a document, and to save it to a person's desktop as soon as she begins typing, just like a piece of paper in real life. We also have the ability to save changes to that document every couple of minutes (or, perhaps, every paragraph) without any user intervention.
Yes we do, but for starters a computer is a tool. You tell the computer what to do, the computer does not tell you. Sure we have autosave, but any sensible application auto-saves to a different filename so that if you decide to abandon your changes, you can just quit, not save and revert back to your original format. If you quit a document, you'd still have to agree. What happens when you do want to commit those changes to your file but you don't want to quit? You have to "save".
Fortunately, technology has improved since 1984. We have the power, in today's computers, to run more than one program at once, and to load programs in less than five seconds.
Here the author obviously hasn't used a PocketPC. With the PPC its very very easy not to close applications. What happens? The system slows down to a crawl as it tried to run 5 or 6 different applications. Again, this is the user being in control of the computer. I want the ability to close applications when I'm not using them. That is my decision, not the computers. It's the desktop analogy. Once i've finished with a book, I put it away because otherwise my desk gets cluttered. I don't leave it out because otherwise my desk gets full and working becomes a problem. Sure, we could get around this by having the PC unload or suspend applications that aren't used in a while - but how does it decide? Just because I've not typed something into Word for the past 30 minutes doesn't mean that I'm not using it. You'd get to the point where the cleverness of the OS/Application was causing me more hassle as it tried to be helpful and suspend stuff for me.
Fortunately, technology has improved since 1984. We have the power, in today's computers, to run more than one program at once, and to run the file manager all the time. We can open documents from the file manager without quitting all other programs first, and we can save copies of documents (if necessary) by dragging them into folders in the file manager.
What about if the application is taking over the whole of the desktop? I'll have to minimise and then drag. Having said that though RISCOS (I think, the one on the Archimedes) used to allow that. You hit Save and the icon appeared for you to drag somewhere. Best thing was that you could drag from one application into another to have it load in there. Neat. But very wierd.
As for inode stuff, sounds neat. But I know so little about that type of thing, I wouldn't even know it's feasible.
So in short, some good ideas, but some of them just aren't practical or possible and would end up being a bigger annoyance than it currently is.
Re:Situation in other countires?
on
Cable TV A La Carte?
·
· Score: 4, Interesting
What are the cable deals like for Slashdot readers outside of the US?
Well, in the UK, you've got Cable (NTL or Telewest generally) or if you want Digital, you have Sky and Freeview (used to be called OnDigital then ITV Digital then bust).
Freeview is in its unfancy and is basically free stuff. I also know very little about it.
Sky on the other hand has tonnes of packages. In short, all the decent channels (IMO) are spread about several packages. Which means that if you want all of them you have to pay the premium rate and get 55 other really rubbish ones.
AFAIK there is no way to pick and chose your cable products too. You just have to pick a bundle and put up with the rubbish ones that come with it.
TCO battle between Linux and Windows
on
Halloween VII
·
· Score: 3, Insightful
In the short term, then, Microsoft should avoid criticizing OSS and Linux directly, continue to develop and aim to eventually win the TCO argument
(snip)
{So they're going to try to beat us up on total cost of ownership! Well, it was all pretty sane up to that point; it's nice to know our opponents are still smoking crack about some key issues.
Whilst Windows will never be cheaper than Linux it could be argued that it can have a lower TCO if you make the assumption that a persons time is worth something.
In other words, if I have to set something up and it takes 4 mouse-clicks under Windows and 2 hours under Linux (extreme I know, but bear with me), then they could claim (rightly so) that their OS has saved my organisation money by making me more productive. Its the whole "Windows is easier!" mantra.
Of course, OSS will catch up, but they want it to always play catch up and then this is another point MS can use in their favour.
I could be totally wrong, but I'm pretty sure that they have a perfectly sensible reason for stating that they could beat TCO. Considering ESR wasn't actually in that review, he has no idea what was discussed or the finer points around it and therefore would be a tad premature to dismiss it as them "smoking crack".
It's not an entirely professional suggestion to make either. Makes him sound like a spotty faced 15 year old.
It's a small thing, but my biggest complaint about these p2p programs is that the user interface just sucks.
Sure, it's useable, but it's horrific. Kazaa's is aweful, eDonkey's just blows and WinMX, urgh, don't get me started.
Admitially I never really investigated Gnutella after trying the original Nullsoft version. The UI was ok, if a little plain, but the time it took to hook up to a bunch of stable nodes, the slow download time and frequency of dropped downloads just put me off.
So really, all i'm asking is that whilst you're concentrating on making an excellent protocol, please don't employ a 7 year old with a crayon to do the UI. Hell, I'd happily help out on an OSS project, however I can't use VC++ to save my life and most people wouldn't like submissions on Visual Basic frm's - i'll probably end up standing on the sidelines shouting but having no-one listen.
There are a few examples of technically inferior applications that do better than others simply because their UI is clean, consistent and works. Lets have that, please!
I guess that's been proven wrong by now... linux is free and better yet they have only a marginal share of the desktop
Better in what sense?
Better user inteface?
Better consistency?
Easier to set up and configure?
Better help files?
Small reality check for you, Linux on the desktop is not better for the average user.
Yes, it's more stable, and it's more secure and it's free but even the more hard-core Linux zealots would be hard pressed to claim that your average-joe-blow user think Linux on the desktop is better.
can anyone remember the last time they actually came up with something innovative ? All they do is examine markets, pick one with only one large competitor and rewrite the software in an inferior way.
Why does it matter if they've innovated or not? So what if they're picking a market with only one competitor?
Competition is always a good thing, it doesn't help to have only one company sitting around getting complacent and failing to drive forward their product.
Of course, if the MS product really is inferior, then it won't sell.
(ignoring Windows and IE, because we all know how that became popular)
but I find.pdf files a *major* ballache. I often find the computer I'm on doesn't support loading them so I have to go and install some v.slow and large application to load them.
I had this issue too on a laptop at the weekend. Thankfully I was connected to the internet so I just plugged the URL into google and it provided an option to convert it to HTML.
Of course, it's not exactly the best conversion in the world, but at least you can read what is in the file.
The biggest problem I can see for Palm is that the world and his dog is expecting what OS 6 will deliver today.
By the time they actually get around to delivering it, the goalposts will have changed (by the likes of Symbian and Microsoft) and Palm will have to play catch up again.
On a side note, releasing the Tungstun W (phone one) with OS 4 was a monumentally stupid thing to do. If they're going to commit to OS 5, then they should do immediately - not release two new phones with one running the old OS.
Go to OS 5. Don't look back. Encourage developers to code for OS 5, encourage users who want the power to upgrade. If they're going to release a trickle of OS 4 PDA's then developers will just stick to OS 4.
Oh yes, and the Tungstun slidely thing is silly. I'm going to have to spend my entire time opening and retracting it as I use grafitti a lot - which means it'll break quickly. We need to see sexy and desirable PDA's come onto the market to persuade people to upgrade. This one doesn't (maybe Sony will)... and for god's sake, even with the low memory requirements of apps, 32 meg is peanuts! Your apps may be smaller than PPC's, but the size of your data is going to be the same.
On a final note, I wonder if OS 6 will actually appear. OS 5 could be make-or-break for Palm. If there is no interest (after all, it doesn't *look* any different and thats what Joe Blow will see) then it'll hurt them very very badly.
On the 26th September I was at the Mobile Choice Awards (big telecoms do where they eat and drink a lot and pat each other on the back for winning such awards as "best UK NOP", "best customer service" etc) and I met several people from Pogo (have their business cards to prove it).
Naturally being from a NOP myself, they were eager to show their product. I can assure you that the Pogo hasn't been vapourware for at least 6 months (they've been selling in Carphone Warehouse for ages).
In fact, they're already released an updated version of the software.
I'm not going into the specifications because someone else can probably do it better than me, but in short it's flash based running on a custom OS with a very pretty interface. It's main problem (for me) is that it's too big and bulky.
However, I can't see my company selling their products through the distribution channels since the US arm sells something made by their closest rivals.
Slashdot Mirror
I can understand how they've done their best to eliminate the competition with regards to browsers and operating systems ... but Office??
Does anyone have any actual details on what they did with Office that was so anticompetitive?
Propiatory document formats as a reason don't cut it, other manufacturers use that sort of thing (insert any non-MS package under the sun here) - the only reason it's so widespread is because of the massive take up of Word at a time when the competition was, quite frankly, rubbish.
But I've never read anything about them exercising anti-competitive behavours with word - more that the entire world and his dog have become so entrenched with the .doc format, that MS don't need to actually do anything.
Actually I asked if I could see some facts to back up his assertions. It's all very well saying MS is dragging the industry behind, but unless you've got credible sources then it's pure speculation. Give me facts, good solid facts.
So, yea, congratulations, you've made yourself look like a bumbling idiot for picking only the parts of the post you disliked and putting them on the chopping block, while ignornig the point.
Go read his post again. I quoted EVERYTHING. That was the ENTIRE post. I didn't dislike the post, I just wanted some facts.
I don't dispute that MS is a bad thing - but when people start making claims that they drag the industry back then they need to quote some sources otherwise people will just bash it as mindless FUD.
If you can cite a source that backs up your comments, you'll find people are very ready to believe you more. It's all very well screaming "MS is eeeeeevil" till you're blue in the face - but it doesn't exactly help change peoples minds.
Can I have a credible source for this? I'm interested to read it.
Rather than trying to catch up, they've been trying to hold everyone else back.
And one for this too?
It's time for them to get out of the way and stop hindering economic growth in the IT sector.
Oh go on, give us one for this too whilst you're at it.
Or is this just plain and pure FUD?
(I normally don't bother with replying to AC's because they generally never get the point I'm making, but I'm bored...)
Theres a subtle difference between an exploit that can do a lot of harm and an exploit out there that is doing a lot of harm.
One has the potential to harm you, the other is actually harming you. Until Joe Blow experiences the latter, he's just going to discount it as someone elses problem and carry on as normal.
People don't move to something because, firstly it's something different and many people are happy to stick with something comfortable. Secondly many people don't see the point in downloading something that they already have installed ("it works for me, why do I need anything else?" mentality) and finally, for many people they never experience the nasty possible ill-effects of these security alerts.
Sure, plenty of people were hit by Code Red but it never really affected them. Sure it affected their computer, but as far as their documents were concerned - there was no change.
Until we see a security alert that does cause damage to personal files and does roam rampant in the wild, the average Joe Blow user doesn't give a toss whether or not there 6 or 6000 security alerts.
You forgot one:
4. You've never ever been affected in any way by one of these exploits.
I'm willing to bet that a very very very large percentage of people who run windows never ever experience one of the exploits listed in bugtraq.
Yes, it may be illogical thinking, but if Joe Blow has never had any of these "scary hacker type things" happen to him, why should he bother installing a different browser?
Yes and no. There is a product called PocketNow, however the author no longer works on the product and sold it to some commercial company. It also only emulated black and white Palms.
You might be able to find it somewhere to download, if you do, then this is what it'll look like.
(yes, I know there is Handera and Handspring, but one has pretty much vanished and the other is doing smartphones)
How did Microsoft manage to attract all these companies and Palm fail rather miserably? What is MS doing that Palm isn't?
Actually there was such a console called the Indrema. It ran Linux, the geeks loved it.
However the games were practically non-existant and this wasn't significantly offset by the fact it ran Linux.
Yes, shocking as it might be to some readers, the average console player doesn't give a toss about the OS under the hood. They didn't give a toss about the Indrema either and it sank into the depths of console obscurity.
Oh boy, reality check time. Take a look around you at every other company in the market place. This is a standard marketing approach - give out a service at a reduced rate, get people to use it and find out that they really like it and then, when the time is up, ask them to pay a "proper" price for it.
This is not some trick. The details are all there, you get the chance to try something for a reduced rate - you're not forced to continue after the year.
Accept that you're getting it at a reduced rate, use it and if you like it then consider whether or not the asking price is worthwhile. If it is, pay it. If it isn't, don't.
Even if you don't, you've had a years worth of online gaming on the cheap.
Last time I commented on this, I got accused by some idiot of being a troll. Interestingly enough it was still modded to 5 and considered "Insightful".
The biggest problem with spam is ... the response rates. That is users who actually are dumb enough to open up the email and then reply to it.
If everyone in the whole world suddenly got a clue (and it won't happen) then the response rate for junk emails would be nothing, nada, zip, 0 people and 0%.
Exactly how long would a spamming organisation be able to stay in business if they couldn't even guarantee that in a 6 million mailout, they could not get one sale?
With a response rate as low as 0.002%, do they expect that the people that install and run spam filters are the most likely to respond to spam ?
No, because if you've installed it yourself you're too tech savvy and very very unlikely to buy anything from them. They're gunning for the uneducated masses. Those that do reply.
A 0.002% response rate for 3 million emails is 6 thousand responses. Despite the low percentage, that bold figure is enough for many unscrupulus companies to go "hell yeah!".
Email spamming is quick, cheap and it's easy. So quick, so cheap and so easy that it's seen as worthwhile even if you only get 50 responses. Until that number drops to 1 or 2 then we'll all have to look at other ways of stopping the menace.
Ms. Betterly says she refuses to send e-mails about adult fare, because it "disgraces society." She won't take jobs from clients selling products she doesn't think are legitimate. And she only sends bulk e-mails to people who have indicated at some time that they want to hear more about certain products or offers.
So, in short, she's not a "real" spammer at all.
Uhhhh, no. That is, I'm afriad, a bit of a fallacy. Yes, we have bluetooth phones here (and the odd headset - which costs a fortune and makes you look an idiot, hence low take up) but if you think we're all using these devices then I'm afriad you're wrong.
At the moment there are two Nokia phones (7650 and 6310i), one SonyEricsson and probably two others of other makes. This isn't much.
I actually have a theory that Bluetooh won't really start to take off in the UK until Nokia starts supporting it on every single phone.
At the moment they're only putting it into high end mobile phones. Out of the 9 phones they've announced 3 have bluetooth. Whilst this might not sound that bad, one of those is a 3G phone, one of those is a communicator and the other is their top of the range model.
Granted I don't expect the new budget 2110 to have it, but considering the chips are cheap, available and low power - it would make more sense to stick them into all phones.
After all, text messaging didn't become popular by being put on only the most expensive phones. Yes, there was interoperability issues too, but if you want people to use new technology, you can't price it out of the range of the masses.
The reason for this is that during the many studies and research that Microsoft did into user interfaces it found that users did not like the fact that the sub-menu option appeared immediately. They actually found it less intimidating when it appeared after a second or two.
It also reduces screen clutter. As you move up a set of menus, their sub-menu doesn't appear until you come to rest on the option you want, rather than all the sub-menus popping open and then closing again as you move. Having all these sub-menus flashing about tended to unsettle users.
Having said all that, there is a registry setting that can increase or decrease this to any number of milliseconds you want. I've no idea where it is, but I do remember TweekUI allowing you to change it.
Fortunately, technology has improved since the 1970s. We have the power, in today's computers, to pick a sensible name for a document, and to save it to a person's desktop as soon as she begins typing, just like a piece of paper in real life. We also have the ability to save changes to that document every couple of minutes (or, perhaps, every paragraph) without any user intervention.
Yes we do, but for starters a computer is a tool. You tell the computer what to do, the computer does not tell you. Sure we have autosave, but any sensible application auto-saves to a different filename so that if you decide to abandon your changes, you can just quit, not save and revert back to your original format. If you quit a document, you'd still have to agree. What happens when you do want to commit those changes to your file but you don't want to quit? You have to "save".
Fortunately, technology has improved since 1984. We have the power, in today's computers, to run more than one program at once, and to load programs in less than five seconds.
Here the author obviously hasn't used a PocketPC. With the PPC its very very easy not to close applications. What happens? The system slows down to a crawl as it tried to run 5 or 6 different applications. Again, this is the user being in control of the computer. I want the ability to close applications when I'm not using them. That is my decision, not the computers. It's the desktop analogy. Once i've finished with a book, I put it away because otherwise my desk gets cluttered. I don't leave it out because otherwise my desk gets full and working becomes a problem. Sure, we could get around this by having the PC unload or suspend applications that aren't used in a while - but how does it decide? Just because I've not typed something into Word for the past 30 minutes doesn't mean that I'm not using it. You'd get to the point where the cleverness of the OS/Application was causing me more hassle as it tried to be helpful and suspend stuff for me.
Fortunately, technology has improved since 1984. We have the power, in today's computers, to run more than one program at once, and to run the file manager all the time. We can open documents from the file manager without quitting all other programs first, and we can save copies of documents (if necessary) by dragging them into folders in the file manager.
What about if the application is taking over the whole of the desktop? I'll have to minimise and then drag. Having said that though RISCOS (I think, the one on the Archimedes) used to allow that. You hit Save and the icon appeared for you to drag somewhere. Best thing was that you could drag from one application into another to have it load in there. Neat. But very wierd.
As for inode stuff, sounds neat. But I know so little about that type of thing, I wouldn't even know it's feasible.
So in short, some good ideas, but some of them just aren't practical or possible and would end up being a bigger annoyance than it currently is.
Well, in the UK, you've got Cable (NTL or Telewest generally) or if you want Digital, you have Sky and Freeview (used to be called OnDigital then ITV Digital then bust).
Freeview is in its unfancy and is basically free stuff. I also know very little about it.
Sky on the other hand has tonnes of packages. In short, all the decent channels (IMO) are spread about several packages. Which means that if you want all of them you have to pay the premium rate and get 55 other really rubbish ones.
AFAIK there is no way to pick and chose your cable products too. You just have to pick a bundle and put up with the rubbish ones that come with it.
(snip)
{So they're going to try to beat us up on total cost of ownership! Well, it was all pretty sane up to that point; it's nice to know our opponents are still smoking crack about some key issues.
Whilst Windows will never be cheaper than Linux it could be argued that it can have a lower TCO if you make the assumption that a persons time is worth something.
In other words, if I have to set something up and it takes 4 mouse-clicks under Windows and 2 hours under Linux (extreme I know, but bear with me), then they could claim (rightly so) that their OS has saved my organisation money by making me more productive. Its the whole "Windows is easier!" mantra.
Of course, OSS will catch up, but they want it to always play catch up and then this is another point MS can use in their favour.
I could be totally wrong, but I'm pretty sure that they have a perfectly sensible reason for stating that they could beat TCO. Considering ESR wasn't actually in that review, he has no idea what was discussed or the finer points around it and therefore would be a tad premature to dismiss it as them "smoking crack".
It's not an entirely professional suggestion to make either. Makes him sound like a spotty faced 15 year old.
Sure, it's useable, but it's horrific. Kazaa's is aweful, eDonkey's just blows and WinMX, urgh, don't get me started.
Admitially I never really investigated Gnutella after trying the original Nullsoft version. The UI was ok, if a little plain, but the time it took to hook up to a bunch of stable nodes, the slow download time and frequency of dropped downloads just put me off.
So really, all i'm asking is that whilst you're concentrating on making an excellent protocol, please don't employ a 7 year old with a crayon to do the UI. Hell, I'd happily help out on an OSS project, however I can't use VC++ to save my life and most people wouldn't like submissions on Visual Basic frm's - i'll probably end up standing on the sidelines shouting but having no-one listen.
There are a few examples of technically inferior applications that do better than others simply because their UI is clean, consistent and works. Lets have that, please!
Better in what sense?
Small reality check for you, Linux on the desktop is not better for the average user.
Yes, it's more stable, and it's more secure and it's free but even the more hard-core Linux zealots would be hard pressed to claim that your average-joe-blow user think Linux on the desktop is better.
Why does it matter if they've innovated or not? So what if they're picking a market with only one competitor?
Competition is always a good thing, it doesn't help to have only one company sitting around getting complacent and failing to drive forward their product.
Of course, if the MS product really is inferior, then it won't sell.
(ignoring Windows and IE, because we all know how that became popular)
I had this issue too on a laptop at the weekend. Thankfully I was connected to the internet so I just plugged the URL into google and it provided an option to convert it to HTML.
Of course, it's not exactly the best conversion in the world, but at least you can read what is in the file.
5:30pm, 8 pints of lager, one dodgy kebab and a chance to yet again make a piss poor attempt to chat the attractive barmaid up.
Well you did ask!
Which, unlike Microsoft's effort, isn't free.
So it's either pay for the OS and get free automated updates. Or don't pay for the OS and pay for automated updates.
By the time they actually get around to delivering it, the goalposts will have changed (by the likes of Symbian and Microsoft) and Palm will have to play catch up again.
On a side note, releasing the Tungstun W (phone one) with OS 4 was a monumentally stupid thing to do. If they're going to commit to OS 5, then they should do immediately - not release two new phones with one running the old OS.
Go to OS 5. Don't look back. Encourage developers to code for OS 5, encourage users who want the power to upgrade. If they're going to release a trickle of OS 4 PDA's then developers will just stick to OS 4.
Oh yes, and the Tungstun slidely thing is silly. I'm going to have to spend my entire time opening and retracting it as I use grafitti a lot - which means it'll break quickly. We need to see sexy and desirable PDA's come onto the market to persuade people to upgrade. This one doesn't (maybe Sony will) ... and for god's sake, even with the low memory requirements of apps, 32 meg is peanuts! Your apps may be smaller than PPC's, but the size of your data is going to be the same.
On a final note, I wonder if OS 6 will actually appear. OS 5 could be make-or-break for Palm. If there is no interest (after all, it doesn't *look* any different and thats what Joe Blow will see) then it'll hurt them very very badly.
On the 26th September I was at the Mobile Choice Awards (big telecoms do where they eat and drink a lot and pat each other on the back for winning such awards as "best UK NOP", "best customer service" etc) and I met several people from Pogo (have their business cards to prove it).
Naturally being from a NOP myself, they were eager to show their product. I can assure you that the Pogo hasn't been vapourware for at least 6 months (they've been selling in Carphone Warehouse for ages).
In fact, they're already released an updated version of the software.
I'm not going into the specifications because someone else can probably do it better than me, but in short it's flash based running on a custom OS with a very pretty interface. It's main problem (for me) is that it's too big and bulky.
However, I can't see my company selling their products through the distribution channels since the US arm sells something made by their closest rivals.
But, Pogo hasn't been vapourware for 6 months.