"And the MS OS is going to be displaced eventually by a free, open-source OS, if only because an OS is a commodity, and the price of a commodity product approaches the marginal cost to produce another copy."
You are confusing cause and effect. If for profit-based OS's are totally replaced with cost-free ones, than OS's will become a commodity, but they are obviously not ones now.
Note that the economic argument has nothing to do with open or closed, just with cost. Being a commodity has nothing to do with being open or closed.
"The political repercussions of hitting Microsoft like this are FAR greater than most Europeans on here apparently imagine."
I'll bet that most people making the argument here that the EU could nationalize MS are Americans (like myself). We are more comfortable with cowboy diplomacy that the Europeans (IMHO).
"I think that right now with the US gov. trying hard to keep the global legal system together to fight terrorism, is a bad time to expect the US courts to refuse a valid extradition request."
How can the US reputation for ignoring the rest of the world's opinion be any worse than it is already?
In any case, the US would not likely consider it a "valid extradition request" to prosecute an American executive for failing to follow an EU command.
"The EU could just forcibly Open Source everything that Microsoft-Europe has on the spot, and Microsoft would become a completely ephemeral entity as far as the EU was concerned"
What are they going to do? Send EU troups to Redmond to steal the source code?
"In C you can "see" every single clock cycle in your program."
I see what you're saying, but I think talking about clock cycles can be misleading. The number of clock cycles consumed for a particular section of code is not consistent on most modern computing platforms due to interrupts, caches, etc.
That's why platforms like the PC aren't really appropriate for hardcore real-time software.
"You presented examples of appliances that don't exist in the main living areas of the home. I've already covered this."
Yes, you've already changed your orginal argument that said nothing about "main living areas".
"Of course you don't consider Macs easier."
So, you don't see any logical inconsistency between stating that "Everyone acknowledges" that the Mac is easier and the quote above? If everyone acknowledges something then nobody can have the opposite opinion. I don't believe you're stupid, so I'll conclude that you are just sloppy in making arguments.
"You want to go on, or admit you were wrong?"
Wrong about what? I've stated that my appliances are ugly boxes, that you've provided no evidence that Macs are better than PC's and that you've altered your argument after I found a flaw in the original. All true.
First you said appliances in the home. After I presented counter-examples you've restricted the discussion to the living room. I don't really consider TV's to be an appliance, but mine is just another ugly box.
"Macs are still easier. Everyone acknowledges this."
Come on. It's like shooting fish in a barrel. I don't acknowledge that the Mac is easier. What part of "everyone" don't you understand?
Well, if you have sold your Apple stock and made a tidy profit, congratulations. If you haven't, the jury is still out on your stock market skills.
My point was that Dell is making more profit than Apple. I haven't checked it, so I might be wrong. I just assumed that in general there's a relationship between relative market share and relative profit.
"As in, something that isn't a big, ugly, biege box. An iMac G5 looks like a true home appliance that fits in with your home."
Let's see. I have a refrigerator that is a big, ugly, white box. I have a washer and dryer that are big, ugly, white boxes. I have a dishwasher that is a big ugly, white box. What was your point again about home appliances?
"I think it's pretty much conventional wisdom that Macs are much less frustrating than Windows."
I don't see how the experience of less than 5% of computers users translates into "conventional wisdom".
"Computers can not only be objects that look like they belong in a home, but they can be easy to use as well."
I don't understand what you mean by "objects that look they belong in a home"? I have lots of objects in my home and I don't see any great similarity between them. Again, it sounds like you're judging other people based on your own personal asthetics.
"Right now, computing is a frustrating experience for a lot of people. Needless to say, the vast majority of those people are using Windows on Intel-based computers."
Needless to say, the above quote doesn't prove that these people will be any less frustrated using a Mac.
You haven't provided enough information for anyone to draw a conlusion since you didn't say how many total shares there were outstanding.
In any case, profits obtained by an individual investor based on lucky timing have nothing to do with a companies profit. Many people made a ton of money on dot-com stocks of companies that never saw a dime of profit.
The implication being that you do. Perhaps you aren't giving other people enough credit and giving yourself too much.
Who elected these guys the king of hackers?
on
Return of the Mac
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· Score: 1
"These guys are not the graphic designers and grandmas who were buying Macs at Apple's low point in the mid 1990s. They're about as hardcore OS hackers as you can get."
Since when have "OS hackers" risen to the top of the computing food chain? I bet they don't even use assembly language.
Most PC users don't care about style, they care about price/performance. It's silly to assume that a company like Dell can't afford to hire industrial designers just as good as any who work for Apple. There's just no ROI in doing it because Apple is "cool" and Dell isn't.
It just turns out that being "cool" is less profitable in the personal computer market.
It's not amazing at all. The EU is simply responding to lobbying by competitors of MS.
The goal of most those competitors was certainly not to benefit consumers in Europe, or even to compete more effectively there. The goal was to get MS to pay them off for dropping their participation in the EU case. In most cases the goal was achieved. The chance at a big payday was enough to justify all the money they spend lobbying the EU.
The anti-patent crowd would have to spend a lot more money on lobbying since their efforts could have a negative impact on the bottom line of many companies including some in the EU. Unlike MS competitors, they have no way of getting the money back.
Slashdot Mirror
tkrotchko: "Mr. President, Jules Verne's book is Science Fiction"
Bush: "Who's Jules Verne?"
"If the EU grants immunity (and maybe a big amount of Euros) to whoever gives them the code, I'm sure they could get their hands on it."
So you think the EU is going to support thieves in order to fight against a monopoly? I don't think you give them enough credit.
"And the MS OS is going to be displaced eventually by a free, open-source OS, if only because an OS is a commodity, and the price of a commodity product approaches the marginal cost to produce another copy."
You are confusing cause and effect. If for profit-based OS's are totally replaced with cost-free ones, than OS's will become a commodity, but they are obviously not ones now.
Note that the economic argument has nothing to do with open or closed, just with cost. Being a commodity has nothing to do with being open or closed.
I doubt that MS's entire code-base is rambling around Europe, or that the EU would know who has it. Feel free to provide some evidence.
"The shareholders who own Microsoft would have Microsoft's entire board fired for an act like that."
Wow, you have a very idealisitic view of how public corporations work in the US.
"No one but Microsoft makes money off of selling Windows."
This is neither true nor particularly relevent. Retail stores make a cut when selling Windows. Computer makers make money indirectly from it.
But the more important factor is the use of Windows by customers. Changing OS's on a large scale is very expensive and disruptive.
I'm not claiming that Europe would panic, only that your argument is weak.
"The political repercussions of hitting Microsoft like this are FAR greater than most Europeans on here apparently imagine."
I'll bet that most people making the argument here that the EU could nationalize MS are Americans (like myself). We are more comfortable with cowboy diplomacy that the Europeans (IMHO).
"I think that right now with the US gov. trying hard to keep the global legal system together to fight terrorism, is a bad time to expect the US courts to refuse a valid extradition request."
How can the US reputation for ignoring the rest of the world's opinion be any worse than it is already?
In any case, the US would not likely consider it a "valid extradition request" to prosecute an American executive for failing to follow an EU command.
"The banks in Switzerland that hold their money?"
Switzerland is not part of the EU"
"You can't violate a country's laws, get caught, and decide to go home instead of facing the penalties. Even US courts would recognize that."
Actually the US has thumbed its nose at international law in the past on much more important matters than keeping Real Networks in business.
The idea that the US government is going to deport an American executive for violating a sanction that is inconsistent with its own IP laws is absurd.
"The EU could just forcibly Open Source everything that Microsoft-Europe has on the spot, and Microsoft would become a completely ephemeral entity as far as the EU was concerned"
What are they going to do? Send EU troups to Redmond to steal the source code?
"In C you can "see" every single clock cycle in your program."
I see what you're saying, but I think talking about clock cycles can be misleading. The number of clock cycles consumed for a particular section of code is not consistent on most modern computing platforms due to interrupts, caches, etc.
That's why platforms like the PC aren't really appropriate for hardcore real-time software.
I can see we're getting nowhere, so I'll stop wasting my time and yours.
"You presented examples of appliances that don't exist in the main living areas of the home. I've already covered this."
Yes, you've already changed your orginal argument that said nothing about "main living areas".
"Of course you don't consider Macs easier."
So, you don't see any logical inconsistency between stating that "Everyone acknowledges" that the Mac is easier and the quote above? If everyone acknowledges something then nobody can have the opposite opinion. I don't believe you're stupid, so I'll conclude that you are just sloppy in making arguments.
"You want to go on, or admit you were wrong?"
Wrong about what? I've stated that my appliances are ugly boxes, that you've provided no evidence that Macs are better than PC's and that you've altered your argument after I found a flaw in the original. All true.
First you said appliances in the home. After I presented counter-examples you've restricted the discussion to the living room. I don't really consider TV's to be an appliance, but mine is just another ugly box.
"Macs are still easier. Everyone acknowledges this."
Come on. It's like shooting fish in a barrel. I don't acknowledge that the Mac is easier. What part of "everyone" don't you understand?
Well, if you have sold your Apple stock and made a tidy profit, congratulations. If you haven't, the jury is still out on your stock market skills.
My point was that Dell is making more profit than Apple. I haven't checked it, so I might be wrong. I just assumed that in general there's a relationship between relative market share and relative profit.
"As in, something that isn't a big, ugly, biege box. An iMac G5 looks like a true home appliance that fits in with your home."
Let's see. I have a refrigerator that is a big, ugly, white box. I have a washer and dryer that are big, ugly, white boxes. I have a dishwasher that is a big ugly, white box. What was your point again about home appliances?
"I think it's pretty much conventional wisdom that Macs are much less frustrating than Windows."
I don't see how the experience of less than 5% of computers users translates into "conventional wisdom".
"Computers can not only be objects that look like they belong in a home, but they can be easy to use as well."
I don't understand what you mean by "objects that look they belong in a home"? I have lots of objects in my home and I don't see any great similarity between them. Again, it sounds like you're judging other people based on your own personal asthetics.
"Right now, computing is a frustrating experience for a lot of people. Needless to say, the vast majority of those people are using Windows on Intel-based computers."
Needless to say, the above quote doesn't prove that these people will be any less frustrated using a Mac.
That should have been "company's".
You haven't provided enough information for anyone to draw a conlusion since you didn't say how many total shares there were outstanding.
In any case, profits obtained by an individual investor based on lucky timing have nothing to do with a companies profit. Many people made a ton of money on dot-com stocks of companies that never saw a dime of profit.
"Most users don't know any better."
The implication being that you do. Perhaps you aren't giving other people enough credit and giving yourself too much.
"These guys are not the graphic designers and grandmas who were buying Macs at Apple's low point in the mid 1990s. They're about as hardcore OS hackers as you can get."
Since when have "OS hackers" risen to the top of the computing food chain? I bet they don't even use assembly language.
Most PC users don't care about style, they care about price/performance. It's silly to assume that a company like Dell can't afford to hire industrial designers just as good as any who work for Apple. There's just no ROI in doing it because Apple is "cool" and Dell isn't.
It just turns out that being "cool" is less profitable in the personal computer market.
It's not amazing at all. The EU is simply responding to lobbying by competitors of MS.
The goal of most those competitors was certainly not to benefit consumers in Europe, or even to compete more effectively there. The goal was to get MS to pay them off for dropping their participation in the EU case. In most cases the goal was achieved. The chance at a big payday was enough to justify all the money they spend lobbying the EU.
The anti-patent crowd would have to spend a lot more money on lobbying since their efforts could have a negative impact on the bottom line of many companies including some in the EU. Unlike MS competitors, they have no way of getting the money back.
of something as complex as a PDA, try something really simple like AI.
"What size is int again?"
Thousands (if not millions) of C programs have been ported to platforms with different sizes of int's without any problem.
Here's my question to you: What is the size of the tiniest JVM that can run any Java program and how much RAM does it require to run?
A platform that can't host the JVM can't run any Java programs and thus Java has zero portability on those systems.
Remember the original claim was the Java is the most portable language in the history of computing, not just the last ten years or so.