Storm troopers did not use lasers, they used blasters. According to Lucas tradition, a blaster fires a beam of highly charged particles -- not just photons -- gleamed from an excited gas focused by a crystal. Due to their excited state, these particles release photons as they travel, which is why you can see the blast in air and why it moves significantly slower than the speed of light. The innaccuracies in firing a blaster are generally due to the quality of the focusing crystal; a Stormtrooper's blaster carbine uses a larger but less pure crystal prone to cracks and imperfections which increase during extended use.
This is one of the reasons why I like Lucas' original fantasy, by the way: the Imperial stormtroopers used cutrate gear right and left because they were considered expendable. That seems very realistic to me.
Modded funny, but this is something I never got about sci fi. Why are they sighting lasre shots with radar/imaging/whatever? This is inherently inaccurate and very inefficient. If you want a laser that can never miss its target, use a dual intensity laser. Paint your target with a weak laser point, then when you pull the trigger, you dump all the charge from your capacitors into one really hot beam. Since you're using the same lenses and equipment for sighting as you use for firing, what you see is what you kill. A sort of red-hot-death version of an SLR Camera.
But then again, that would take all the fun out of being able to "dodge" lasers.
How's that an oxymoron? An oxymoron is a combination of two or more incongruous terms. Even if you don't like rap, there's undoubtedly one or two MCs you would place in higher regard than the others. If you can't find contrast in two works of art, you aren't looking at the subject objectively, in which case you're not really in a position to forge a cogent critique.
I dislike country music. My favorite country musician is Woodie Guthrie.
Oh. Even more interesting, the 100,000,000th song is available for free on the remix artist's website as a non-DRM MP3. Which I guess means that the convenience of iTunes interface was worth more than the music itself!
Well, it means that Apple has proven to the world that legal, restricted, downloadable music is economically viable. It illustrates that people are willing to pay for what's essentially a bunch of bits.
Which means computers have found a way to revolutionize content delivery while maintaining respect for copyrights.
That's pretty good news for those of us who like media, and also like computers, even if we're not fans of Apple.
Oh, and the vocals on that cut are by MF Doom, the remix by Dangermouse.
Incidentally, that song is available for FREE as an no-DRM MP3 on Dangermouse's website. HA! I'd chastise the guy for paying for what's already free, but he did get a new powerbook, ipod, and 10,000 songs out the deal.
Which is a good thing. If re-ripping results in a loss of quality, then it isn't the "pure digital copy" that the DMCA was set up to prevent. You get your fair use, man, and it doesn't step on the copyright owner's toes.
It's win-win. And if you're going to whine about the quality of digital music at that point, maybe you should just shut up and go buy a turntable or a nice 200 disk SACD jukebox. For the MOST of us, 128 kbit AAC -> CD -> 320 kbit MP3 is good enough to make complaints trivial.
Your argument assumes that copyright violation is not analogous to stealing physical property because you aren't depriving the copyright holder of physical property.
This is true. However: your assumption that this makes copyright violation somehow "ok" is just plain wrong. Copyright exists to protect the commercial viability of creative works. Giving away somebody's content for free may not deprive them of physical property but certainly destroys its viability by eliminating a potential demand. Thus, it is illegal. Whether or not you would have bought the album had you not copied it is irrelevant.
It's true that not everybody who downloads a record would have bought it anyway. It's also true that some people will download a record and still buy it. But neither of these facts excuses the downloader. If it did, this assertion would break down to "copying should be free because it's easy and non destructive." I think the majority of Americans would disagree with that, not because we're brainwashed by the RIAA, but because we realize that if WE made something people liked, we'd want to get paid for it. The promise that, "hey, somebody might not download it for free, you can make money off them" is empty, overly optimistic and liable to drive cd prices even higher as it creates a chaotic market in which potential numbers are much harder to predict.
After all, it's not like albums are "scarce," as you're claiming. They're everywhere. Albums are expensive because that's what they cost because that's what companies charge for them. Record labels, as well as the majority of record sales outlets, have decided to opt for high margins over high volume, sensible since volume sales have been steadily decreasing as the numbers of available records increase (more choices in the same market implies that fewer people will select a particular choice, which raises the cost of production and decrease the profits of an individual CD or download). Economics doesn't work like your high school teacher taught you: supply and demand don't push prices, prices and demand push the supply. Call that "artificial scarcity" if you like, but I'd call it "efficient production."
The reason Microsoft is integrating code from SCO is that SCO Unix is a powerful x86 UNIX that's also certified by the Open group and unencumbered by the "viral licensing" of the GPL. For a commercial product hoping to replace UN*X systems, these two features are immensely more important than the number of features the utilities provide.
I've always found it amusing how much Microsoft likes to claim the GPL is dangerous while providing a product (SFU) full of GPL'd utilities
Actually, this is exactly what they aren't doing. Just because a clone of a program is available under the GPL doesn't mean the original is under the GPL too. MS is using SCO code to avoid having to open their own code, which is what their problem with the GPL was in the first place.
Besides, if you really want to compile less or gcc or nano or whatever on your own machines, you'll still be able to.
No, but it'll integrate the versatile GNU FUD, which allows people with less than 3% of the market to predict the imminent demise of a company netting $2 billion in profits per quarter.
It looks like the 100,000,000th song was an electronic track from Zero 7 featuring (uncredited, unfortunately) my absolute favorite rapper, MF Doom.
It kind of highlights the good and bad of iTunes. Good: this is a remix off an EP I can't find on Amazon, I've never heard it before and I wanted it, clicked buy and for $3 it was mine right away, no shipping, and here's a nice image of the band along with a detailed description of their music in general. Bad: this album never ONCE came up when I did searched for MF Doom in the past and there's no liner notes, no way for me to tell who that masked man is if I liked the flow and wanted to hear more of it.
iTunes still offers a more convenient browsing, sampling and delivery system than any other way to purchase music, if you can get over the (largely irrelevant) fact that it's a DRM wrapped 128 kbit AAC. I say largely irrelevant, because none of these (compressed audio, DRM or the fact that it's got DRM) affect your ability to hear or purchase the music, which is what I want to do. I know I'm not buying perfect CD quality audio -- but then again, buying a CD these days could mean copy-protected audio with no personal backup or mixology rights. The way I listen to music, that's far less acceptable than DRM or compression.
Incidentally, I bought $45 worth of music last night at 1:00, hoping to "snipe" the 100,000,000th song. Didn't work, but I did end up with some awesome Dylan albums I didn't already own, each of which would be $16-$18 at Borders.
I disagree. I often see counterpoints moderated as well as the "group think" posts. In fact, I don't buy in to the group philosophy and often play devil's advocate myself and am surprised when I see anti-OSS, anti-libertarian, pro-copyright, pro-patent or (gasp) pro-Microsoft posts I've made modded quite high. In fact, I've had several modded down to -1, and then modded back up again.
Which is why I like Slashdot. It's a good mix of well thought out critical posts and repetetive bandwagon posts. There are some great minds in here. Also, many optimistic idiots.
Why should programs I close on PPC just hang around in the background until I run out of memory and kill them through Start/Settings/System/Memory/Running Programs?
Because Pocket PC applications take a long time to load and most people won't have more than four or five of them? The PocketPC was designed to operate like an appliance. Hardware buttons perform functions, they don't merely open programs. You can't have that kind of insant-on interface if you're loading programs all the time on a machine with a slowish processor and bus -- so, to make the whole machine faster for the 95% of users who don't need 32 meg of free ram, they moved the functionaity to close programs. With my Tosh 64 meg PPC, I could load every program I had at the same time and still have a few meg of leg room.
Still, for you power users who want to free up memory you'll never need for whatever masochistic reason, there are about thirty or forty third party tools which make it easy to close programs.
As for the "crippled compilers" and "tedius UI programming," you are probably doing something wrong. I've found the Embedded tools to be fantastic, the compilers very effective (and, I should point out, easy to swap out for Intel's or Motorola's if you wanted) and the device emulation pretty accurate. My biggest beef with PPC is not the programming, nor the device UI, but ActiveSync, which is slow, buggy garbage.
Ahem. A monopoly is a company that has attained the majority of the market in a segment of the economy and uses its position as the market leader to supress potential competitors.
The RIAA is not a company, they don't sell products -- it's an independent organization created by the 5 major record labels and many independents to protect their shared interests. And last I checked, 5 companies is significantly more than the 1 company required for a "monopoly."
Furthermore, they're not exactly doing anything anti-competetive, at least nothing effective. The last dozen or so CDs I bought at my local record shop were all independent artists with no influence on the RIAA. The shop, incidentally, is owned by TransWorld and closely tied to Ticketmaster and ClearChannel -- but they have no problem selling me non RIAA-cds, and for less money ($10-15). Price fixing collusion is bad, but by definition collusion requires two companies...so it can't be monopolistic, and it's not anti-competetive because LOTS of artists sell their albums in stores and online for WAY less than the average CD cost reported by the RIAA.
The "problem" with RIAA cd prices isn't that they are anti-competition, but that the RIAA members know they have music you want, and they know they can charge a lot for it and still make money. So that's what they do. Kind of unfair, but not illegal, not anti-competetive, and not monopolistic.
This is specious reasoning. Soft drink vendors certainly do field complaints when their product goes bad (which it does, I've bought flat or off-taste Coke before). Furthermore, viruses and annoyances occur regardless of who writes the software -- and the main reason Microsoft software seems more susceptible are the same reasons it's so popular: Microsoft has chosen to make it easy for third parties to extend the functionality of their programs with a minimum of user interaction. Blaming them for that is like me blaming Volkswagen GmbH for the high cost of replacement suspension parts when the whole reason I bought the car was the responsive ride.
In light of the internet and its preponderence of people trying to make a quick buck exploiting users' gulibility, Microsoft needs to rethink their devotion to usability over security. Everybody realizes this. But to become "bitter" over it is silly -- if you buy a window, and somebody breaks it, you need to buy a better grade of window. They don't owe you a new window.
Microsoft already employees a number of Indian workers. The problem is, you can't outsource innovation, which is what Microsoft needs. For a company like IBM that isn't innovating anyway, just solving problems with stock solutions, outsourcing works.
Windows OS/Server Office Development Tool Sales Some hardware (mice, keyboards, etc)
Maybe you should look things up before you guess. The data's out there. Microsoft breaks down their revenues in their freely available quarterly report, and hardware isn't even on the list. On the other hand, their Home and Entertainment business (xbox and gaming) brought in $530M (which isn't bad -- if they can keep this up for another year, they've made back the $2 billion you claim they "lost" on the venture), the MSN service brought in $591M and their custom services division brought in $153M. These would all be considered very "real" revenues to just about any other company.
Another way to look at is that Microsoft has permitted many people to use computers who have never used them before. More people have bought a computer because it had Windows on it than all the other operating systems in history combined. This results in resellers selling more systems than they ever would have otherwise.
Can a distributor make more money selling a PC with Linux that they can selling one that has Windows? No. They have to sell Linux PCs for less money and they don't sell as many. So why would they be bitter at Microsoft's anti-competetive practices? Annoyed, maybe. Dismayed, surely. But you can not be mad at the reason you are making money. This is like a soda machine company mad at Coke for not letting them sell Ghetto Cola.
Finally, Dell and other manufacturers aren't moving TO Linux. This implies you expect to see the majority of sales come from Linux machines at some point in the future. They're offering it where demanded -- but it is not heavily demanded, and may never outstrip Microsoft's OS.
I think it anything, Balmer's document proves Microsoft WON'T be sealing their doom. They have realized the pressures they face now and are shifting to counter them. They're the boxer going back to the gym after winning the title, making sure they won't get soft.
So maybe, once products reach a certain maturity level and sales have dropped off to the point that support costs outweigh sales, they should be open sourced.
A development model that plans on handing over the keys to users at a certain point is an interesting twist on both the traditional model and OSS. You'll get a bunch of early adopters willing to pay for features. And you would attract those who will only use OSS because they want assurance against your company's collapse.
This model has already been used on such commercial cum open products as Netscape and RealPlayer. But it wasn't PLANNED. If I could call potential customers and tell them that, in five years or if my company goes under, they'd have a "trust" in place to give them the source and they could to hire someone else to maintatin and extend my software, they would be very interested -- turnover is a deadly problem in my industry.
Incidentally, if you're willing to wait 6 months after the release of a new Apple OS, you can usually get it for half price. You can get the previous release for even less (just saw 10.2 for $20). Or get four of your friends together and buy a "family" license (5 licenses with one DVD for $250 or so).
This is quite a contrast to Windows -- the Windows 2000 Upgrade is still in the $190 range 4 years later.
If you don't like it, keep 10.2. This isn't a forced upgrade. Besides Quartz Extreme, there haven't been any earth shattering interface changes since 10.1, and only a few increases since 10.2. Shit, I still compile with compatibility to version 10.0, just in case somebody's still running that three year old OS. Most commercial software is 10.1+ (though many free and shareware tools assume you have 10.2).
New machines get the newest OS. Everybody else can buy it as an upgrade if they like. Where's the problem here? If you aren't willing to pay $130 for a fully 64 bit version of the MacOS with a few extra features, don't pay it.
Slashdot Mirror
Storm troopers did not use lasers, they used blasters. According to Lucas tradition, a blaster fires a beam of highly charged particles -- not just photons -- gleamed from an excited gas focused by a crystal. Due to their excited state, these particles release photons as they travel, which is why you can see the blast in air and why it moves significantly slower than the speed of light. The innaccuracies in firing a blaster are generally due to the quality of the focusing crystal; a Stormtrooper's blaster carbine uses a larger but less pure crystal prone to cracks and imperfections which increase during extended use.
This is one of the reasons why I like Lucas' original fantasy, by the way: the Imperial stormtroopers used cutrate gear right and left because they were considered expendable. That seems very realistic to me.
Oh, and don't forget the always popular straw man argument.
Modded funny, but this is something I never got about sci fi. Why are they sighting lasre shots with radar/imaging/whatever? This is inherently inaccurate and very inefficient. If you want a laser that can never miss its target, use a dual intensity laser. Paint your target with a weak laser point, then when you pull the trigger, you dump all the charge from your capacitors into one really hot beam. Since you're using the same lenses and equipment for sighting as you use for firing, what you see is what you kill. A sort of red-hot-death version of an SLR Camera.
But then again, that would take all the fun out of being able to "dodge" lasers.
How's that an oxymoron? An oxymoron is a combination of two or more incongruous terms. Even if you don't like rap, there's undoubtedly one or two MCs you would place in higher regard than the others. If you can't find contrast in two works of art, you aren't looking at the subject objectively, in which case you're not really in a position to forge a cogent critique.
I dislike country music. My favorite country musician is Woodie Guthrie.
Oh. Even more interesting, the 100,000,000th song is available for free on the remix artist's website as a non-DRM MP3. Which I guess means that the convenience of iTunes interface was worth more than the music itself!
Well, it means that Apple has proven to the world that legal, restricted, downloadable music is economically viable. It illustrates that people are willing to pay for what's essentially a bunch of bits.
Which means computers have found a way to revolutionize content delivery while maintaining respect for copyrights.
That's pretty good news for those of us who like media, and also like computers, even if we're not fans of Apple.
Oh, and the vocals on that cut are by MF Doom, the remix by Dangermouse.
Incidentally, that song is available for FREE as an no-DRM MP3 on Dangermouse's website. HA! I'd chastise the guy for paying for what's already free, but he did get a new powerbook, ipod, and 10,000 songs out the deal.
Which is a good thing. If re-ripping results in a loss of quality, then it isn't the "pure digital copy" that the DMCA was set up to prevent. You get your fair use, man, and it doesn't step on the copyright owner's toes.
It's win-win. And if you're going to whine about the quality of digital music at that point, maybe you should just shut up and go buy a turntable or a nice 200 disk SACD jukebox. For the MOST of us, 128 kbit AAC -> CD -> 320 kbit MP3 is good enough to make complaints trivial.
Your argument assumes that copyright violation is not analogous to stealing physical property because you aren't depriving the copyright holder of physical property.
This is true. However: your assumption that this makes copyright violation somehow "ok" is just plain wrong. Copyright exists to protect the commercial viability of creative works. Giving away somebody's content for free may not deprive them of physical property but certainly destroys its viability by eliminating a potential demand. Thus, it is illegal. Whether or not you would have bought the album had you not copied it is irrelevant.
It's true that not everybody who downloads a record would have bought it anyway. It's also true that some people will download a record and still buy it. But neither of these facts excuses the downloader. If it did, this assertion would break down to "copying should be free because it's easy and non destructive." I think the majority of Americans would disagree with that, not because we're brainwashed by the RIAA, but because we realize that if WE made something people liked, we'd want to get paid for it. The promise that, "hey, somebody might not download it for free, you can make money off them" is empty, overly optimistic and liable to drive cd prices even higher as it creates a chaotic market in which potential numbers are much harder to predict.
After all, it's not like albums are "scarce," as you're claiming. They're everywhere. Albums are expensive because that's what they cost because that's what companies charge for them. Record labels, as well as the majority of record sales outlets, have decided to opt for high margins over high volume, sensible since volume sales have been steadily decreasing as the numbers of available records increase (more choices in the same market implies that fewer people will select a particular choice, which raises the cost of production and decrease the profits of an individual CD or download). Economics doesn't work like your high school teacher taught you: supply and demand don't push prices, prices and demand push the supply. Call that "artificial scarcity" if you like, but I'd call it "efficient production."
The reason Microsoft is integrating code from SCO is that SCO Unix is a powerful x86 UNIX that's also certified by the Open group and unencumbered by the "viral licensing" of the GPL. For a commercial product hoping to replace UN*X systems, these two features are immensely more important than the number of features the utilities provide.
I've always found it amusing how much Microsoft likes to claim the GPL is dangerous while providing a product (SFU) full of GPL'd utilities
Actually, this is exactly what they aren't doing. Just because a clone of a program is available under the GPL doesn't mean the original is under the GPL too. MS is using SCO code to avoid having to open their own code, which is what their problem with the GPL was in the first place.
Besides, if you really want to compile less or gcc or nano or whatever on your own machines, you'll still be able to.
No, but it'll integrate the versatile GNU FUD, which allows people with less than 3% of the market to predict the imminent demise of a company netting $2 billion in profits per quarter.
Pish. You can't counter assumption with facts -- you'll set a deadly precedent.
Instead, try anecdotes that don't prove anything other than how dorky your friends are.. That's the slashdot way.
It looks like the 100,000,000th song was an electronic track from Zero 7 featuring (uncredited, unfortunately) my absolute favorite rapper, MF Doom.
It kind of highlights the good and bad of iTunes. Good: this is a remix off an EP I can't find on Amazon, I've never heard it before and I wanted it, clicked buy and for $3 it was mine right away, no shipping, and here's a nice image of the band along with a detailed description of their music in general. Bad: this album never ONCE came up when I did searched for MF Doom in the past and there's no liner notes, no way for me to tell who that masked man is if I liked the flow and wanted to hear more of it.
iTunes still offers a more convenient browsing, sampling and delivery system than any other way to purchase music, if you can get over the (largely irrelevant) fact that it's a DRM wrapped 128 kbit AAC. I say largely irrelevant, because none of these (compressed audio, DRM or the fact that it's got DRM) affect your ability to hear or purchase the music, which is what I want to do. I know I'm not buying perfect CD quality audio -- but then again, buying a CD these days could mean copy-protected audio with no personal backup or mixology rights. The way I listen to music, that's far less acceptable than DRM or compression.
Incidentally, I bought $45 worth of music last night at 1:00, hoping to "snipe" the 100,000,000th song. Didn't work, but I did end up with some awesome Dylan albums I didn't already own, each of which would be $16-$18 at Borders.
I disagree. I often see counterpoints moderated as well as the "group think" posts. In fact, I don't buy in to the group philosophy and often play devil's advocate myself and am surprised when I see anti-OSS, anti-libertarian, pro-copyright, pro-patent or (gasp) pro-Microsoft posts I've made modded quite high. In fact, I've had several modded down to -1, and then modded back up again.
Which is why I like Slashdot. It's a good mix of well thought out critical posts and repetetive bandwagon posts. There are some great minds in here. Also, many optimistic idiots.
Why should programs I close on PPC just hang around in the background until I run out of memory and kill them through Start/Settings/System/Memory/Running Programs?
Because Pocket PC applications take a long time to load and most people won't have more than four or five of them? The PocketPC was designed to operate like an appliance. Hardware buttons perform functions, they don't merely open programs. You can't have that kind of insant-on interface if you're loading programs all the time on a machine with a slowish processor and bus -- so, to make the whole machine faster for the 95% of users who don't need 32 meg of free ram, they moved the functionaity to close programs. With my Tosh 64 meg PPC, I could load every program I had at the same time and still have a few meg of leg room.
Still, for you power users who want to free up memory you'll never need for whatever masochistic reason, there are about thirty or forty third party tools which make it easy to close programs.
As for the "crippled compilers" and "tedius UI programming," you are probably doing something wrong. I've found the Embedded tools to be fantastic, the compilers very effective (and, I should point out, easy to swap out for Intel's or Motorola's if you wanted) and the device emulation pretty accurate. My biggest beef with PPC is not the programming, nor the device UI, but ActiveSync, which is slow, buggy garbage.
Ahem. A monopoly is a company that has attained the majority of the market in a segment of the economy and uses its position as the market leader to supress potential competitors.
The RIAA is not a company, they don't sell products -- it's an independent organization created by the 5 major record labels and many independents to protect their shared interests. And last I checked, 5 companies is significantly more than the 1 company required for a "monopoly."
Furthermore, they're not exactly doing anything anti-competetive, at least nothing effective. The last dozen or so CDs I bought at my local record shop were all independent artists with no influence on the RIAA. The shop, incidentally, is owned by TransWorld and closely tied to Ticketmaster and ClearChannel -- but they have no problem selling me non RIAA-cds, and for less money ($10-15). Price fixing collusion is bad, but by definition collusion requires two companies...so it can't be monopolistic, and it's not anti-competetive because LOTS of artists sell their albums in stores and online for WAY less than the average CD cost reported by the RIAA.
The "problem" with RIAA cd prices isn't that they are anti-competition, but that the RIAA members know they have music you want, and they know they can charge a lot for it and still make money. So that's what they do. Kind of unfair, but not illegal, not anti-competetive, and not monopolistic.
Nice joke and all. But it's not accurate.
This is specious reasoning. Soft drink vendors certainly do field complaints when their product goes bad (which it does, I've bought flat or off-taste Coke before). Furthermore, viruses and annoyances occur regardless of who writes the software -- and the main reason Microsoft software seems more susceptible are the same reasons it's so popular: Microsoft has chosen to make it easy for third parties to extend the functionality of their programs with a minimum of user interaction. Blaming them for that is like me blaming Volkswagen GmbH for the high cost of replacement suspension parts when the whole reason I bought the car was the responsive ride.
In light of the internet and its preponderence of people trying to make a quick buck exploiting users' gulibility, Microsoft needs to rethink their devotion to usability over security. Everybody realizes this. But to become "bitter" over it is silly -- if you buy a window, and somebody breaks it, you need to buy a better grade of window. They don't owe you a new window.
Microsoft already employees a number of Indian workers. The problem is, you can't outsource innovation, which is what Microsoft needs. For a company like IBM that isn't innovating anyway, just solving problems with stock solutions, outsourcing works.
So far, they have 4 sources of real revenue:
Windows OS/Server
Office
Development Tool Sales
Some hardware (mice, keyboards, etc)
Maybe you should look things up before you guess. The data's out there. Microsoft breaks down their revenues in their freely available quarterly report, and hardware isn't even on the list. On the other hand, their Home and Entertainment business (xbox and gaming) brought in $530M (which isn't bad -- if they can keep this up for another year, they've made back the $2 billion you claim they "lost" on the venture), the MSN service brought in $591M and their custom services division brought in $153M. These would all be considered very "real" revenues to just about any other company.
This is one way to look at it.
Another way to look at is that Microsoft has permitted many people to use computers who have never used them before. More people have bought a computer because it had Windows on it than all the other operating systems in history combined. This results in resellers selling more systems than they ever would have otherwise.
Can a distributor make more money selling a PC with Linux that they can selling one that has Windows? No. They have to sell Linux PCs for less money and they don't sell as many. So why would they be bitter at Microsoft's anti-competetive practices? Annoyed, maybe. Dismayed, surely. But you can not be mad at the reason you are making money. This is like a soda machine company mad at Coke for not letting them sell Ghetto Cola.
Finally, Dell and other manufacturers aren't moving TO Linux. This implies you expect to see the majority of sales come from Linux machines at some point in the future. They're offering it where demanded -- but it is not heavily demanded, and may never outstrip Microsoft's OS.
I think it anything, Balmer's document proves Microsoft WON'T be sealing their doom. They have realized the pressures they face now and are shifting to counter them. They're the boxer going back to the gym after winning the title, making sure they won't get soft.
So maybe, once products reach a certain maturity level and sales have dropped off to the point that support costs outweigh sales, they should be open sourced.
A development model that plans on handing over the keys to users at a certain point is an interesting twist on both the traditional model and OSS. You'll get a bunch of early adopters willing to pay for features. And you would attract those who will only use OSS because they want assurance against your company's collapse.
This model has already been used on such commercial cum open products as Netscape and RealPlayer. But it wasn't PLANNED. If I could call potential customers and tell them that, in five years or if my company goes under, they'd have a "trust" in place to give them the source and they could to hire someone else to maintatin and extend my software, they would be very interested -- turnover is a deadly problem in my industry.
The joke with Duke Nukem Forever was that it will be done "when it's ready."
That joke does not work on Longhorn, which was promised for 2006 and is right on target for 2006.
If you're mad at anything, get mad at the release date slip for Yukon.
I'm of the opinion that NOBODY can make a really good groupware application. They all suck. Evolution, Notes, Outlook, Entourage...
Incidentally, if you're willing to wait 6 months after the release of a new Apple OS, you can usually get it for half price. You can get the previous release for even less (just saw 10.2 for $20). Or get four of your friends together and buy a "family" license (5 licenses with one DVD for $250 or so).
This is quite a contrast to Windows -- the Windows 2000 Upgrade is still in the $190 range 4 years later.
If you don't like it, keep 10.2. This isn't a forced upgrade. Besides Quartz Extreme, there haven't been any earth shattering interface changes since 10.1, and only a few increases since 10.2. Shit, I still compile with compatibility to version 10.0, just in case somebody's still running that three year old OS. Most commercial software is 10.1+ (though many free and shareware tools assume you have 10.2).
New machines get the newest OS. Everybody else can buy it as an upgrade if they like. Where's the problem here? If you aren't willing to pay $130 for a fully 64 bit version of the MacOS with a few extra features, don't pay it.