Re:Too many fronts for Microsoft
on
Gates on Google
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· Score: 1
The battle is being fought on too many fronts. All of these companies that are succeeding in competing with Microsoft are succeeding because they're trying to do one thing well.
That is correct. Deserves the Insightful mod.
But: Microsoft has no choice. The domination of the IT industry through the desktop operating system won't last forever. Windows and Office are massive cash cows now, but it won't last forever.
Bill is looking at the long term. Microsoft are trying as many fronts as they can because they desperate want to break out of their box. They know that if they don't their fate is tied to the fate of the PC. When it eventually delines in importance (already happening), so will they.
Now that fuel costs are through the roof, Europe will HAVE to subsidize the A380 in order to keep ticket costs down.
You are confused. Airbus (subsidies legal) builds A380s and sells them to airlines (subsidies illegal). The airlines have to buy their own fuel at market prices.
Gyms, beauty parlours, private double beds and an in-flight casino will feature on Virgin Atlantic's giant Airbus A380 planes when it starts flying them in three years' time, the airline's half-owner Richard Branson said. "Since you have gaming and you have private double beds maybe there are two ways of getting lucky on a Virgin plane," entrepreneur Branson told reporters in France.
Announcing Virgin's plans for the double-decker jet to be unveiled later on Tuesday in Toulouse, France, Branson said a gym and gambling area offering blackjack and roulette would be available to economy and business class passengers.
Virgin Atlantic, which already offers seats which convert into double beds on some of its existing aircraft, plans to install 35 private double beds on each A380.
Makes me wonder though, why not offer a sleeping seat choice at ticket time? Pack them in like train cars where you can sit cross leg or stretch out flat.
The inside of the A380 is entirely modular. Just carrying 100 (wealthy) passengers each with a private cabin is absolutely feasible if the demand apears from the customers (i.e. the airlines)
Concorde is gone, there is no option to cross the Atlantic quickly these days. At least some of those former passengers will be prepared to pay Concorde-like rates to do it in some comfort.
The funniest thing about "horrible British food" jokes is it's always Americans, of all people, that make them.
Coming from French or the Italians it would just be standard "my country is better than yours". But from Americans? Americans! The country whose major contribution to world cuisine is the supersize portion?
The problem is that people who bitch about copyright (i mean total abolition kinda folks) don't produce anything. So saying that they can't copyright won't really affect them.
Reply to each item with a cost to fix, including the cost of addressing other problems you introduce.
The reasonable stuff that you can realistically do should have a reasonable cost attached.
The stuff you really don't want to get into, just say that requires $10 million to build a brand new datacentre. If you take this approach, even the most Pointy-Headed of Bosses can be brought around to your way of thinking.
E) Big corporations like to deal with single suppliers as much as possible.
As a CPU agnostic I normally get to sit back and enjoy these flamewars. But I have a serious question: What Slashdot reader cares what Dell's purchasing decisions are? None of those points apply to the geek market.
There is already water in the datacentre where I work. The site is a converted leisure centre, and has a water-sprinkler fire system. The first whiff of smoke in that place and the entire server room is toast. A Halon system is regarded as too expensive. Seriously.
If you ever meet someone with an "Australian" accent ask them if they come from NZ if they do they will be pleased you noticed the difference and if not who worries about upsetting Australians.
You know that works for Americans and Canadians, too.
The only real stickler is the amount of actual collaboration that'd have to go into making sure all of the EU went along with this plan
That part wouldn't be a problem. Trade and Competition policy are EC competencies. IOW, the Commission has already been given the authority to act and doesn't need permission from the member states.
Do European countries have a counterpart to the takings clause of the U.S. Bill of Rights?
The European counterpart to the US Bill of Rights is the European Convention on Human Rights.
Unfortunately for Microsoft, in the EU human rights apply only to humans and not corporations. Microsoft's European shareholders may have a case, but not Microsoft.
or plotted to detonate a radiological dirty bomb in downtown Chicago.
And how do you know that? Because the President said so? To hold somebody indefinitely he just needs to mutter the word "terrorist" to the press? What kind of trial is that?
What's to stop them doing the same thing to you next week?
No, no, no. You can't retrospectively withdraw GPL licensing. If Bill inherits the rights to some code and then declares it's no longer licensed by the GPL everybody who received a GPL'd copy right up until that point still has a valid license. Only the new recipients (if any) get the new license. Everyone who ever had a GPL'd copy is still legit. And so are all its derived works.
There is no real mechanism for an author to withdraw GPL'd code from the public once it's out there. We are in no danger when authors change their mind (it does happen), and we are in no danger if somebody awkward inherits the rights.
Let's say one of those dead dudes' brother... [snipped]... sells the rights to that little bit of the linux kernel to Bill.
OK. And then what?
Linus has to get someone to strip out the code that Bill now has a claim to
OK. Shouldn't take long.
So what else? You mean that's it? That's all? That's your doomsday scenario?
If you pick a piece of the kernel code at random it's probably a driver, hardly a doomsday scenario. Even if we lucked out and lost a critical component like the scheduler, there are any number of competing implementations that have either been discarded or never made it into the official kernel. It's not like we'd be starting from scratch.
All that so-called "wasted effort" on competing implementations that Slashdotters piss-and-moan about is actually genetic diversity that helps guarantee Open Source software's long term survival.
Slashdot Mirror
The battle is being fought on too many fronts. All of these companies that are succeeding in competing with Microsoft are succeeding because they're trying to do one thing well.
That is correct. Deserves the Insightful mod.
But: Microsoft has no choice. The domination of the IT industry through the desktop operating system won't last forever. Windows and Office are massive cash cows now, but it won't last forever.
Bill is looking at the long term. Microsoft are trying as many fronts as they can because they desperate want to break out of their box. They know that if they don't their fate is tied to the fate of the PC. When it eventually delines in importance (already happening), so will they.
Yes, most new businesses fail in the first year. New businesses is where VCs put their money. It's a very risky game.
It's not quite the same extreme point on the risk-return graph as, say, playing the lottery but it is going in the same direction.
Google for "Hidden Web". There's some stats out there that say there's at least three times the size of the known web hidden away.
But if it's hidden what good will Googling do?
Now that fuel costs are through the roof, Europe will HAVE to subsidize the A380 in order to keep ticket costs down.
You are confused. Airbus (subsidies legal) builds A380s and sells them to airlines (subsidies illegal). The airlines have to buy their own fuel at market prices.
Here's a link: Virgin eyes gyms, casino, double beds on A380 jets
Gyms, beauty parlours, private double beds and an in-flight casino will feature on Virgin Atlantic's giant Airbus A380 planes when it starts flying them in three years' time, the airline's half-owner Richard Branson said.
"Since you have gaming and you have private double beds maybe there are two ways of getting lucky on a Virgin plane," entrepreneur Branson told reporters in France.
Announcing Virgin's plans for the double-decker jet to be unveiled later on Tuesday in Toulouse, France, Branson said a gym and gambling area offering blackjack and roulette would be available to economy and business class passengers.
Virgin Atlantic, which already offers seats which convert into double beds on some of its existing aircraft, plans to install 35 private double beds on each A380.
Makes me wonder though, why not offer a sleeping seat choice at ticket time?
Pack them in like train cars where you can sit cross leg or stretch out flat.
The inside of the A380 is entirely modular. Just carrying 100 (wealthy) passengers each with a private cabin is absolutely feasible if the demand apears from the customers (i.e. the airlines)
Concorde is gone, there is no option to cross the Atlantic quickly these days. At least some of those former passengers will be prepared to pay Concorde-like rates to do it in some comfort.
No, no, no! We aren't discussing facts, this is the cultural stereotypes corner.
The funniest thing about "horrible British food" jokes is it's always Americans, of all people, that make them.
Coming from French or the Italians it would just be standard "my country is better than yours". But from Americans? Americans! The country whose major contribution to world cuisine is the supersize portion?
Who says Americans don't appreciate irony?
The problem is that people who bitch about copyright (i mean total abolition kinda folks) don't produce anything. So saying that they can't copyright won't really affect them.
Counter-example in two words: Richard Stallman
From TFA:
54% of the finanicial industry has or is planning to use Linux in 2005.
More than 50% of blades are running Linux.
IBM alone made a billion out of Linux last year.
The Linux industry is currently worth $15 billion, and will be worth $35 billion by 2008.
Only Microsoft thinks the GPL is bad for business.
You can't make as much money with open source software as you can with closed source software.
That all depends on whether you sell software or buy it. If you are not a software salesman, your bottom line will be better with open source.
Making profit is a good thing.
Let's all nail shutters over our windows to make the power company more profitable.
Isn't everything we do inherently natural?
You can redefine "man-made" to be a subset of "natural" if you want, rather than an opposite as the previous poster's context suggested.
It's not a very useful contribution, because you still need an opposite for "man-made" to make any sense of this discussion.
What word would *you* use?
Reply to each item with a cost to fix, including the cost of addressing other problems you introduce.
The reasonable stuff that you can realistically do should have a reasonable cost attached.
The stuff you really don't want to get into, just say that requires $10 million to build a brand new datacentre. If you take this approach, even the most Pointy-Headed of Bosses can be brought around to your way of thinking.
There's no such thing as geniunely solid numbers, all web-traffic figures are contorted gee-whiz stats.
E) Big corporations like to deal with single suppliers as much as possible.
As a CPU agnostic I normally get to sit back and enjoy these flamewars. But I have a serious question: What Slashdot reader cares what Dell's purchasing decisions are? None of those points apply to the geek market.
Electrons move between 0.6 and 0.9 times the speed of light.
You're talking about the electric current. The actual electrons don't move much, we're talking millimetres per second (and in the opposite direction).
There is already water in the datacentre where I work. The site is a converted leisure centre, and has a water-sprinkler fire system. The first whiff of smoke in that place and the entire server room is toast. A Halon system is regarded as too expensive. Seriously.
If you ever meet someone with an "Australian" accent ask them if they come from NZ if they do they will be pleased you noticed the difference and if not who worries about upsetting Australians.
You know that works for Americans and Canadians, too.
Firstly, it's just the European armies and police. It's not like they're worth anything.
Don't forget Poland.
The only real stickler is the amount of actual collaboration that'd have to go into making sure all of the EU went along with this plan
That part wouldn't be a problem. Trade and Competition policy are EC competencies. IOW, the Commission has already been given the authority to act and doesn't need permission from the member states.
Do European countries have a counterpart to the takings clause of the U.S. Bill of Rights?
The European counterpart to the US Bill of Rights is the European Convention on Human Rights.
Unfortunately for Microsoft, in the EU human rights apply only to humans and not corporations. Microsoft's European shareholders may have a case, but not Microsoft.
A woman needs a man like dried-up, bitter, twisted, stinking fish needs a bicycle.
or plotted to detonate a radiological dirty bomb in downtown Chicago.
And how do you know that? Because the President said so? To hold somebody indefinitely he just needs to mutter the word "terrorist" to the press? What kind of trial is that?
What's to stop them doing the same thing to you next week?
(ans: nothing)
No, no, no. You can't retrospectively withdraw GPL licensing. If Bill inherits the rights to some code and then declares it's no longer licensed by the GPL everybody who received a GPL'd copy right up until that point still has a valid license. Only the new recipients (if any) get the new license. Everyone who ever had a GPL'd copy is still legit. And so are all its derived works.
There is no real mechanism for an author to withdraw GPL'd code from the public once it's out there. We are in no danger when authors change their mind (it does happen), and we are in no danger if somebody awkward inherits the rights.
Let's say one of those dead dudes' brother ... [snipped] ... sells the rights to that little bit of the linux kernel to Bill.
OK. And then what?
Linus has to get someone to strip out the code that Bill now has a claim to
OK. Shouldn't take long.
So what else? You mean that's it? That's all? That's your doomsday scenario?
If you pick a piece of the kernel code at random it's probably a driver, hardly a doomsday scenario. Even if we lucked out and lost a critical component like the scheduler, there are any number of competing implementations that have either been discarded or never made it into the official kernel. It's not like we'd be starting from scratch.
All that so-called "wasted effort" on competing implementations that Slashdotters piss-and-moan about is actually genetic diversity that helps guarantee Open Source software's long term survival.