the researchers of the article forgot to mention that radiation from the monitors can affect your eyes and therefore your eyesight.
I presume you are referring to stray radiation in bands such as X-Ray, Microwave, RF, and Ultraviolet rather than visible light radiation? (Obviously, visible light is what you want.) To which I can only point out that LCDs do not leak stray radiation like CRTs do. In fact, they're about as radioactively quiet as you can make a display device. So you can go ahead and play Red Steel on your 50 inch HDTV without any worry or concern. The bad radiation boogeyman isn't going to hurt you.
I think you misunderstand my statement. I don't mean innovate new services like YouTube, I mean innovate new business models to take advantage of new paradigms like YouTube. The world around a business changes. Unless businesses adapt, they'll fail when others meet the challenge instead.
I agree wholeheartedly about doing things in a legal way. But that doesn't mean that the whole world does. Heck, YouTube does not intend to be a haven for copyright infringement (you'd think its limitations would work against such infringement) but it ended up getting misused and abused by many, many people. When that happens, it suggests that a change is in the air. You had better catch up, or you'll get left behind.
I agree. Which is why you won't catch me uploading anything that belongs to them. Unfortuantely, not everyone is so observant of copyright law. Which means that many, many, many people will look for outlets through which they can share clips they think are funny or cool; irrespective of the copyrights held by the owners of that content.
Minor amounts of infringement are something that one can protect against. But when it's widespread, it quickly becomes impossible to contain. If it's not YouTube that acts as the vehicle, it will be someone else. So it's better to change your business model to take advantage of the new market forces rather than hiring more (expensive) lawyers.
No, you are correct. Which is why I think YouTube will ultimately win the case. The judge will find that YouTube is a common carrier, and makes every reasonable effort to handle takedowns as they receive them. Viacom will walk away in a fit of rage, and possibly implode on their way out.
10 years ago, the music industry became aware of a little thing called "MP3s". They offered the potential of distributing music through online channels. But rather than embrace it as a new business outlet, fraught with exciting new opportunities and possibilities, the music industry tried to squash it. Before they knew it, Napster was created. So they quashed that. Then GNUTella was created and they could quash that. Then Kazza, and BitTorrent, and Limewire, and so on and so forth.
In the end, the music industry could not put the genie back in the bottle. It was only the introduction of iTunes that saved them from imploding.
I see a lot of parallels here. While YouTube videos may seem like a bad idea for the old distribution models, they are increasing the amount of exposure that many shows are getting. Comedy Central's hosts have been getting more famous by the day, thanks to YouTube, and CBS has managed to promote personalities like Craig Ferguson by releasing videos themselves. I can respect Loudback's position on this, but there's simply no room for stalling the market. The forces in action WILL demand a way, whether YouTube is the vehicle or not. It's better to embrace them than it is to fight them.
If you'll excuse the overused term, it's time to innovate!
Software patents aren't the problem. They're a serious issue unto themselves (mostly because the Patent Office's own procedures are never followed) but the real issue is with the managers in the companies. No one sees technology as a good way to smooth and streamline their internal operations. If that happens, it's mostly a byproduct of whatever work is being done on the customer-facing portion of the business.
The fact that you can build a smooth process internally to automate a great number of expensive processes (not to mention reduce the body count) tends to blow by the decision makers. They only think about it when they absolutely need something NOW. Which tends to result in a mess of Microsoft Access and Visual Basic "applications". Which they think is okay, because they don't realize the tremendous maintenece costs they're committing to.
There honestly needs to be a bit more focus on developing strategies for using technology in business. Those strategies should then be taught as part of the MBA programs. They may not really "get" it, but at least they'll understand that using X technology has Y consequences and that you need to rely on trustworthy staff to find the best tradeoff.
Simple Question: Can you prove or disprove the existence of an entity that lives outside of our Universe? Especially if we posit that this entity created our Universe, and therefore is able to externally tweak the shape of our Universe as he so desires?
The only answer is a simple: No. It cannot be proven or disproven.
If such a being exists, then we are in a closed system and cannot observe him through the laws of our Universe. He would be invisible to us, yet omnipresent in the machinations around us.
We humans appear to be hardwired to believe in the existence of a higher power. Was it really an accident? Or does this being actually communicate to us through his creation? That is a question that science is ill-suited to answer. Attempting to apply scientific rigor to the question produces the equivalent of a divide-by-zero: There is no answer. Science can only say that inside our Universe, the laws of nature work according to these provable models. It cannot provide answers to things that go beyond that system.
scientists who actually believe in the importance of certain ceremonies and are certain about the whole virgin birth, afterlife et al aspects of certain religions are doing a disservice to themselves and their creed by not applying their personal beliefs to the same standards they apply to their professional ones.
Who suggests that they don't? A scientist can apply rigorous thinking to a choice in religion, that would appear to show a correlation between events x and y to lead to conclusion z. Yet if put into a statistical model, it would disappear as if it were merely noise as related to the laws of our Universe. Subjective weightings (like the importance of a particular event) cannot to used to weight a scientific model, because the weightings are subjective.
The question to consider is, are these events with seeming importance to the individual being:
a) Cherry-picked for their positive, desirable, or otherwise expected outcome. b) An individual interpretation of events based on the psychology of the individual. c) The result of the Universe's Creator managing the configuration of the Universe to show "know[ledge of] the desires of the heart"?
A and B are possibilties that science can consider (though it would be incredibly difficult to "prove" them in a mathematical sense), while c is simply an answer that goes beyond the laws of which science can observe, test, and prove.
Granted, there are some things that science may be able to prove if testable circumstances were to present themselves. For example, the Virgin Birth. It's incredibly difficult to prove from where we stand today, but it was at some time provable. Of course, there's no guarantee that if such an event was proven beyond a shadow of a doubt, that it would prove the existence of a being external to our Universe. Would it show that the Universe had been tampered with in a wholly inappropriate fashion, or would it show nothing more than a biological anomoly? i.e. A mutation or some sort of accidental fertilization?
Again, it wouldn't prove or disprove the existence of an entity external to our Universe. It would merely raise the same tired question of: Is it merely the product of a Universe run by chance, or is the Creator of that Universe again leaving his mark?
If this were true, theh why is it that religious people get all excited every time a TV special claims to have found the "real" Noah's Ark? Or why does their heart rise in their chest when some National Geographic special says that the Shroud of Turin really does date back to the first century CE?
Proving either of these, only proves that history as recorded in the Bible actually happened. It's not sufficient to prove that God exists. There are plenty of "secular" historians who believe that a "Noah's Ark" of sorts may have existed. Only that the extent of the flooding (and perhaps even the whole "saving the animals" thing) was exaggerated.
If researchers were to find bones in an ossuary that had DNA that could be proven to match the DNA of Jesus of Nazareth, would religious people say "Oh, we don't care about that. Our faith is not in the domain of science." Not a chance.
Actually, I'm not really sure what it would prove? Most historians agree that Jesus existed. A few fringe groups suggest that he was a fictious entity for promoting early Christiantiy, but the mainline thinking is that he was really here.
What you need to be asking is: Was he the Son of God? Now there's the rub.:-)
The issue is that they believe something which is not indicated by empirical testing. So again, it seems to me that claiming to be a scientist when you believe something unprovable is, if not hypocritical, at least inconsistent.
As long as one recognizes that their religious beliefs are not supportable by empirical evidence (which is a no-brainer) and do not attempt to force those beliefs into their scientific work, there is no conflict.
You seem to think that the scientific process should consume those who use it. I couldn't disagree with you more. It is just a tool, not a religion in of itself. A tool, I might add, that was developed by the very "hypocrites" you decry.
It seems to me that accepting anything on blind faith is pretty much the antithesis of science.
1. Religion deals with matters that science cannot prove or disprove. Thus being a scientist and being religious are not in conflict with one another.
2. "Blind faith" is a term that gets (incorrectly) thrown around a lot*. Many people become religious because of some form of evidence presented to them. Evidence that usually speaks to someone on a personal level. Thus those who believe in a religion, believe that they are following something. Whether they are misinterpreting the events around them is a matter for another forum.
* From a Biblical perspective, the Bible states that "Faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen." (Hebrews 11:1) A dissection of the meaning can be found here.
He used the analogy that they were like bubbles in the water. Ok, where did the water come from?
I haven't read the article yet, but the concept that the matter in the universe popped out of nothing is not a new one to the scientific community. As I recall, there was some discussion about space-time itself being bundled up incredibly tight, with no matter to speak of. The Universe as we know it came into existence when space-time expanded. Sadly, it's been a while since I looked into that theory, so I'm not really up on it. But it at would least appear to fit with the known 4 Dimensional geometry of the Universe.
I'm curious to know if Hawking is picking up on that same theory, or if this is in some way different.
The Internet is a "medium customarily used for software interchange". Especially since the customary medium for obtaining drivers and software updates is now the manufacturer's website.
It wouldn't have been so bad if Crichton hadn't managed to (single handedly, I might add) take Deus ex machina to a whole new level. It's so bad that if you look up Deus ex machina in the dictionary, it says "See: Andromeda Strain". (I'm only half joking. Look it up on Wikipedia.)
Crichton has written many other books that are of far more interest. Don't waste your time on AS.
b) Accompany it with a written offer, valid for at least three years, to give any third party, for a charge no more than your cost of physically performing source distribution, a complete machine-readable copy of the corresponding source code, to be distributed under the terms of Sections 1 and 2 above on a medium customarily used for software interchange
Why are so many "body builder" types so dumb then?
They're not "dumb", but they're also not necessarily the intellectual type. From what I've seen, the reason for that is that your intellectual spends too much time in an introverted state to worry about the world around them. Regular exercise is not engaging to their internal senses, so they tend to find it "boring". The more extroverted types get their engagement from the world around them, and thus find pleasure in physical activity.
Doesn't sound like you've used Wordperfect Office though since it is by no means lousy.
You have got to be kidding me. The Wordperfect that was distributed for free with new computers was that horrendous amalgamation of DOS keyboard functionality with Windows buttons all over creation. It was terrible from a usability standpoint, and was only liked by the die hards because they were trained on how to use Wordperfect before MS Office came along.
(I probably have the old WP discs lying around somewhere.)
X3 is not a bad version, but it's also not being distributed for free.
For the average user, any office suite would theoretically do.
Just because it has the functionality, does not mean that the user knows how or wants to learn how to make it do it. The interface must be acceptable to the user, or they'll go right back to the competitor.
As for Open Office being competitive with MS Office, for me that would only apply to the word processing program.
You forgot spreadsheets. The two combined make up the bulk of Office Suite work. Which they work very well for.
I find the Open Office presentation program still inferior to MS Office.
I've found it to be more than acceptable for home use (you don't exactly make a lot of presentations in a home setting), but I agree that it's less than ideal for business use. However, that's not really an issue when the choice is between Microsoft Works and OpenOffice.
3. You may opt to apply the terms of the ordinary GNU General Public License instead of this License to a given copy of the Library.
Just call it GPLed software and point them to OpenOffice.org. If you get buy-in from the OOo folks ahead of time (which at a guess wouldn't be much of a problem), then Dell would be free and clear in not providing any source code themselves.
The only reason why OOo is LGPLed is to allow for easy linking to its libraries and the creation of commercial packages based on the suite. It's not really a library, so it's a bit silly to apply additional library terms in all cases.
Dell did come preinstalled with Wordperfect Office. No one used that either.
Throwing out the name of another really crappy office suite in no way proves your point. WordPerfect was included because it was lousy. It was an attempt to convince customer that they get an Office Suite for free, but if they want the good stuff they should upgrade to MS Office.
OOo is currently on a very competitive level with MS Office. That is why Dell will not include it. People would use it, which would cut into the profits from Microsoft Office sales. Are we clear now?
You're completely missing the potential that Microsoft pays Dell to include Works on each machine as cheap advertising for Office.
Am I? You're saying that getting a large cut of each Office sale is not "payment" enough?
Step 1: Offer up "Microsoft Works" suite at little or no cost to the manufacturer. Step 2: Downplay the effectiveness of Works in favor of the expensive Microsoft Office Suite. Step 3: Thereby convince the consumer to upgrade. Step 4: Profit!!!
(For you Slashdot purists, you can add "Step 3.5: ???".)
I think you're overestimating the need for Microsoft to further intervene. The system is already well configured for both Microsoft and Dell to make over a hundred dollars in profit off of each MS Office sale. In the world of retail, that's a LOT of profit.
I remember when StarOffice was installed by default on eMachines computers. No one used it.
FWIW, StarOffice 5.2 was a POS with some decent technology hidden inside it monolithic interface. Its usability was utterly terrible, and was more of a chore to use than a pleasure. The work done by OpenOffice has changed all that. OOo is often just as pleasent to use, sometimes moreso than Microsoft Office is. It hasn't been growing in popularity quite as fast as FireFox has, but OOo installations are definitely becoming common.
If you preinstalled OpenOffice, I guarantee you that most of those customers would use OOo rather than pirating Microsoft Office.
I just went to Dell's site and scoped out their offerings. Even in a $359 package, Microsoft Works is "included in [the] price". That package does not include Microsoft Word. To get Word, you have to upgrade to a $79 Works Suite. Obviously, Dell could offer OpenOffice as an alternative to their default Works package and pocket the difference.
Of course, I have a sneaky suspicion that the minimal Works package is an attempt to get users to purchase Microsoft Word at a minimum. They probably hope to convince consumers to purchase Microsoft Office Professional "because they might need it". Obviously, having a full office suite available at no charge might cut into those profits. Especially since OOo has a much better reputation than the WordPerfect, Claris Works, and Lotus Suite products that PC producers used to bundle. So they're relying on Microsoft to provide the (if you'll excuse the colorful language) "shitty" office suite to convince consumers to upgrade.
could it be because everyone uses Office and it's proprietary formats?
Yet they offer the incompatible (and amusingly named) Microsoft Works package. If they can offer Microsoft Works by default, why can't they offer OpenOffice as an option?
I believe that is the point the author is trying to make.
If you're a third party developer what possible incentive do you have for limiting yourself to only 1/3 of the market?
That's a rather simplistic economic model, there. If you actually want to make money, you have to project your sales based on the number of consoles. Which means (for the moment) that the marketshare sits like this (approx. numbers):
XBox 360: 62.0% PS3: 9.1% Wii: 28.8%
(Numbers may not add up to exactly 100% because of rounding.)
From those figures alone, it would make the most sense to target the XBox 360. You get almost 2/3rds of the market with an exclusive! Which is why many publishers are doing exactly that. The games that used to be PS3-exclusive are quickly showing up on the 360.
Of course, that model is pretty simplisitic itself. It's good for games that can be quickly ported to take advantage of the current market situation. For anything that's in development right now, you'd want to do projections based on their current sales rates. Which, if they hold true, will have the Wii surpassing the 360's market share before fall, and the PS3 continuing to limp along. Which means at the end of 2007, you'll be seeing a pretty even split of the market between the 360 and the Wii; making either one a good choice for developing for.
If the current sales rates continue, Nintendo could own upwards of 2/3rds of the market by mid-to-late 2008. Which would leave only one good choice in the market for game makers.
The only reason why developers don't follow models like these is that projections != reality. Issues like Sony's "Home" announcement can impact the sales (and thus marketshare) of a console. What the developers are trying to do is divine that clear leader that they can make money from. The rest simply won't matter, or will get licensed out to a porting company for net of no real risk to the original developer.
Slashdot Mirror
Doh! That was a typo. It was supposed to say, "couldn't". Bad keyboard, bad!
I presume you are referring to stray radiation in bands such as X-Ray, Microwave, RF, and Ultraviolet rather than visible light radiation? (Obviously, visible light is what you want.) To which I can only point out that LCDs do not leak stray radiation like CRTs do. In fact, they're about as radioactively quiet as you can make a display device. So you can go ahead and play Red Steel on your 50 inch HDTV without any worry or concern. The bad radiation boogeyman isn't going to hurt you.
I think you misunderstand my statement. I don't mean innovate new services like YouTube, I mean innovate new business models to take advantage of new paradigms like YouTube. The world around a business changes. Unless businesses adapt, they'll fail when others meet the challenge instead.
I agree wholeheartedly about doing things in a legal way. But that doesn't mean that the whole world does. Heck, YouTube does not intend to be a haven for copyright infringement (you'd think its limitations would work against such infringement) but it ended up getting misused and abused by many, many people. When that happens, it suggests that a change is in the air. You had better catch up, or you'll get left behind.
I agree. Which is why you won't catch me uploading anything that belongs to them. Unfortuantely, not everyone is so observant of copyright law. Which means that many, many, many people will look for outlets through which they can share clips they think are funny or cool; irrespective of the copyrights held by the owners of that content.
Minor amounts of infringement are something that one can protect against. But when it's widespread, it quickly becomes impossible to contain. If it's not YouTube that acts as the vehicle, it will be someone else. So it's better to change your business model to take advantage of the new market forces rather than hiring more (expensive) lawyers.
No, you are correct. Which is why I think YouTube will ultimately win the case. The judge will find that YouTube is a common carrier, and makes every reasonable effort to handle takedowns as they receive them. Viacom will walk away in a fit of rage, and possibly implode on their way out.
10 years ago, the music industry became aware of a little thing called "MP3s". They offered the potential of distributing music through online channels. But rather than embrace it as a new business outlet, fraught with exciting new opportunities and possibilities, the music industry tried to squash it. Before they knew it, Napster was created. So they quashed that. Then GNUTella was created and they could quash that. Then Kazza, and BitTorrent, and Limewire, and so on and so forth.
In the end, the music industry could not put the genie back in the bottle. It was only the introduction of iTunes that saved them from imploding.
I see a lot of parallels here. While YouTube videos may seem like a bad idea for the old distribution models, they are increasing the amount of exposure that many shows are getting. Comedy Central's hosts have been getting more famous by the day, thanks to YouTube, and CBS has managed to promote personalities like Craig Ferguson by releasing videos themselves. I can respect Loudback's position on this, but there's simply no room for stalling the market. The forces in action WILL demand a way, whether YouTube is the vehicle or not. It's better to embrace them than it is to fight them.
If you'll excuse the overused term, it's time to innovate!
Leave me out of this.
Software patents aren't the problem. They're a serious issue unto themselves (mostly because the Patent Office's own procedures are never followed) but the real issue is with the managers in the companies. No one sees technology as a good way to smooth and streamline their internal operations. If that happens, it's mostly a byproduct of whatever work is being done on the customer-facing portion of the business.
The fact that you can build a smooth process internally to automate a great number of expensive processes (not to mention reduce the body count) tends to blow by the decision makers. They only think about it when they absolutely need something NOW. Which tends to result in a mess of Microsoft Access and Visual Basic "applications". Which they think is okay, because they don't realize the tremendous maintenece costs they're committing to.
There honestly needs to be a bit more focus on developing strategies for using technology in business. Those strategies should then be taught as part of the MBA programs. They may not really "get" it, but at least they'll understand that using X technology has Y consequences and that you need to rely on trustworthy staff to find the best tradeoff.
The only answer is a simple: No. It cannot be proven or disproven.
If such a being exists, then we are in a closed system and cannot observe him through the laws of our Universe. He would be invisible to us, yet omnipresent in the machinations around us.
We humans appear to be hardwired to believe in the existence of a higher power. Was it really an accident? Or does this being actually communicate to us through his creation? That is a question that science is ill-suited to answer. Attempting to apply scientific rigor to the question produces the equivalent of a divide-by-zero: There is no answer. Science can only say that inside our Universe, the laws of nature work according to these provable models. It cannot provide answers to things that go beyond that system.
Who suggests that they don't? A scientist can apply rigorous thinking to a choice in religion, that would appear to show a correlation between events x and y to lead to conclusion z. Yet if put into a statistical model, it would disappear as if it were merely noise as related to the laws of our Universe. Subjective weightings (like the importance of a particular event) cannot to used to weight a scientific model, because the weightings are subjective.
The question to consider is, are these events with seeming importance to the individual being:
a) Cherry-picked for their positive, desirable, or otherwise expected outcome.
b) An individual interpretation of events based on the psychology of the individual.
c) The result of the Universe's Creator managing the configuration of the Universe to show "know[ledge of] the desires of the heart"?
A and B are possibilties that science can consider (though it would be incredibly difficult to "prove" them in a mathematical sense), while c is simply an answer that goes beyond the laws of which science can observe, test, and prove.
Granted, there are some things that science may be able to prove if testable circumstances were to present themselves. For example, the Virgin Birth. It's incredibly difficult to prove from where we stand today, but it was at some time provable. Of course, there's no guarantee that if such an event was proven beyond a shadow of a doubt, that it would prove the existence of a being external to our Universe. Would it show that the Universe had been tampered with in a wholly inappropriate fashion, or would it show nothing more than a biological anomoly? i.e. A mutation or some sort of accidental fertilization?
Again, it wouldn't prove or disprove the existence of an entity external to our Universe. It would merely raise the same tired question of: Is it merely the product of a Universe run by chance, or is the Creator of that Universe again leaving his mark?
Proving either of these, only proves that history as recorded in the Bible actually happened. It's not sufficient to prove that God exists. There are plenty of "secular" historians who believe that a "Noah's Ark" of sorts may have existed. Only that the extent of the flooding (and perhaps even the whole "saving the animals" thing) was exaggerated.
Actually, I'm not really sure what it would prove? Most historians agree that Jesus existed. A few fringe groups suggest that he was a fictious entity for promoting early Christiantiy, but the mainline thinking is that he was really here.
What you need to be asking is: Was he the Son of God? Now there's the rub.
As long as one recognizes that their religious beliefs are not supportable by empirical evidence (which is a no-brainer) and do not attempt to force those beliefs into their scientific work, there is no conflict.
You seem to think that the scientific process should consume those who use it. I couldn't disagree with you more. It is just a tool, not a religion in of itself. A tool, I might add, that was developed by the very "hypocrites" you decry.
1. Religion deals with matters that science cannot prove or disprove. Thus being a scientist and being religious are not in conflict with one another.
2. "Blind faith" is a term that gets (incorrectly) thrown around a lot*. Many people become religious because of some form of evidence presented to them. Evidence that usually speaks to someone on a personal level. Thus those who believe in a religion, believe that they are following something. Whether they are misinterpreting the events around them is a matter for another forum.
* From a Biblical perspective, the Bible states that "Faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen." (Hebrews 11:1) A dissection of the meaning can be found here.
I haven't read the article yet, but the concept that the matter in the universe popped out of nothing is not a new one to the scientific community. As I recall, there was some discussion about space-time itself being bundled up incredibly tight, with no matter to speak of. The Universe as we know it came into existence when space-time expanded. Sadly, it's been a while since I looked into that theory, so I'm not really up on it. But it at would least appear to fit with the known 4 Dimensional geometry of the Universe.
I'm curious to know if Hawking is picking up on that same theory, or if this is in some way different.
The Internet is a "medium customarily used for software interchange". Especially since the customary medium for obtaining drivers and software updates is now the manufacturer's website.
Worst. Book. Ever.
It wouldn't have been so bad if Crichton hadn't managed to (single handedly, I might add) take Deus ex machina to a whole new level. It's so bad that if you look up Deus ex machina in the dictionary, it says "See: Andromeda Strain". (I'm only half joking. Look it up on Wikipedia.)
Crichton has written many other books that are of far more interest. Don't waste your time on AS.
Dear customer, the source code for OpenOffice can be downloaded at no charge by clicking on http://www.openoffice.org/XXXXX/ooo_2.4.7.tgz. We appreciated your business.
All done.
They're not "dumb", but they're also not necessarily the intellectual type. From what I've seen, the reason for that is that your intellectual spends too much time in an introverted state to worry about the world around them. Regular exercise is not engaging to their internal senses, so they tend to find it "boring". The more extroverted types get their engagement from the world around them, and thus find pleasure in physical activity.
You have got to be kidding me. The Wordperfect that was distributed for free with new computers was that horrendous amalgamation of DOS keyboard functionality with Windows buttons all over creation. It was terrible from a usability standpoint, and was only liked by the die hards because they were trained on how to use Wordperfect before MS Office came along.
(I probably have the old WP discs lying around somewhere.)
X3 is not a bad version, but it's also not being distributed for free.
Just because it has the functionality, does not mean that the user knows how or wants to learn how to make it do it. The interface must be acceptable to the user, or they'll go right back to the competitor.
You forgot spreadsheets. The two combined make up the bulk of Office Suite work. Which they work very well for.
I've found it to be more than acceptable for home use (you don't exactly make a lot of presentations in a home setting), but I agree that it's less than ideal for business use. However, that's not really an issue when the choice is between Microsoft Works and OpenOffice.
Just call it GPLed software and point them to OpenOffice.org. If you get buy-in from the OOo folks ahead of time (which at a guess wouldn't be much of a problem), then Dell would be free and clear in not providing any source code themselves.
The only reason why OOo is LGPLed is to allow for easy linking to its libraries and the creation of commercial packages based on the suite. It's not really a library, so it's a bit silly to apply additional library terms in all cases.
Throwing out the name of another really crappy office suite in no way proves your point. WordPerfect was included because it was lousy. It was an attempt to convince customer that they get an Office Suite for free, but if they want the good stuff they should upgrade to MS Office.
OOo is currently on a very competitive level with MS Office. That is why Dell will not include it. People would use it, which would cut into the profits from Microsoft Office sales. Are we clear now?
Am I? You're saying that getting a large cut of each Office sale is not "payment" enough?
Step 1: Offer up "Microsoft Works" suite at little or no cost to the manufacturer.
Step 2: Downplay the effectiveness of Works in favor of the expensive Microsoft Office Suite.
Step 3: Thereby convince the consumer to upgrade.
Step 4: Profit!!!
(For you Slashdot purists, you can add "Step 3.5: ???".)
I think you're overestimating the need for Microsoft to further intervene. The system is already well configured for both Microsoft and Dell to make over a hundred dollars in profit off of each MS Office sale. In the world of retail, that's a LOT of profit.
FWIW, StarOffice 5.2 was a POS with some decent technology hidden inside it monolithic interface. Its usability was utterly terrible, and was more of a chore to use than a pleasure. The work done by OpenOffice has changed all that. OOo is often just as pleasent to use, sometimes moreso than Microsoft Office is. It hasn't been growing in popularity quite as fast as FireFox has, but OOo installations are definitely becoming common.
If you preinstalled OpenOffice, I guarantee you that most of those customers would use OOo rather than pirating Microsoft Office.
I just went to Dell's site and scoped out their offerings. Even in a $359 package, Microsoft Works is "included in [the] price". That package does not include Microsoft Word. To get Word, you have to upgrade to a $79 Works Suite. Obviously, Dell could offer OpenOffice as an alternative to their default Works package and pocket the difference.
Of course, I have a sneaky suspicion that the minimal Works package is an attempt to get users to purchase Microsoft Word at a minimum. They probably hope to convince consumers to purchase Microsoft Office Professional "because they might need it". Obviously, having a full office suite available at no charge might cut into those profits. Especially since OOo has a much better reputation than the WordPerfect, Claris Works, and Lotus Suite products that PC producers used to bundle. So they're relying on Microsoft to provide the (if you'll excuse the colorful language) "shitty" office suite to convince consumers to upgrade.
Yet they offer the incompatible (and amusingly named) Microsoft Works package. If they can offer Microsoft Works by default, why can't they offer OpenOffice as an option?
I believe that is the point the author is trying to make.
That's a rather simplistic economic model, there. If you actually want to make money, you have to project your sales based on the number of consoles. Which means (for the moment) that the marketshare sits like this (approx. numbers):
XBox 360: 62.0%
PS3: 9.1%
Wii: 28.8%
(Numbers may not add up to exactly 100% because of rounding.)
From those figures alone, it would make the most sense to target the XBox 360. You get almost 2/3rds of the market with an exclusive! Which is why many publishers are doing exactly that. The games that used to be PS3-exclusive are quickly showing up on the 360.
Of course, that model is pretty simplisitic itself. It's good for games that can be quickly ported to take advantage of the current market situation. For anything that's in development right now, you'd want to do projections based on their current sales rates. Which, if they hold true, will have the Wii surpassing the 360's market share before fall, and the PS3 continuing to limp along. Which means at the end of 2007, you'll be seeing a pretty even split of the market between the 360 and the Wii; making either one a good choice for developing for.
If the current sales rates continue, Nintendo could own upwards of 2/3rds of the market by mid-to-late 2008. Which would leave only one good choice in the market for game makers.
The only reason why developers don't follow models like these is that projections != reality. Issues like Sony's "Home" announcement can impact the sales (and thus marketshare) of a console. What the developers are trying to do is divine that clear leader that they can make money from. The rest simply won't matter, or will get licensed out to a porting company for net of no real risk to the original developer.