Rocket science isn't so sure, and risking the life of a customer is bad business. Even if the customer signs a form, and well knows he may die, people will still be pissed I bet. I know people who work at the Space Center (a lot of people actually, I live about a mile from the gate to the space center), and most of them say the are amazed at the number of successful launches.
As opposed to, say, taking your family on the Oregon Trail in hopes of a better life, with a 70% survival rate? Or stowing away on a merchant ship hoping you won't starve to death on the way to America (assuming it doesn't sink), because you certainly are going to starve to death if you stay in Ireland (my n-great-grandfather in fact)? Or driving on a high-speed motorway (75,000 fatalities/year in the USA alone)?
Yeah, life is real safe. No use taking risks just for fun and adventure - better to die in a nursing home at age 99!
Saw a tidbit in Aviation Week & Space Technology last week: NASA has been fighing the idea of space tourism with every erg of its strength. No one knows the exact reasoning, but they are utterly opposed to anyone buying a ride to the ISS.
When Lance and his handlers first started getting cold feet over his ride with the Russians, NASA suddenly realized that without a tourist on board the RSA might not have enough cash on hand to launch the mission! So they quietly dropped their opposition.
Wonder what is going to happen now that Mr. Lance has checked out? Not being able to fund a resupply mission is a bit of bad news I would think. Maybe they could send 4 or 5 Progress instead and see if any hit.
I'm no big fan of Microsoft, but does anyone else find it disturbing that a nation state is "ordering" development of software that it knows will directly compete with that provided by the private sector (aka, MS Office, Corel, etc.)?
Generally speaking, national governments do not want to be dependent on sources outside their control for critical infrastructure.
When I worked in an industry that supplied steel makers with key components, most countries had a limit of the percentage of those components that could be imported. Once your reached that limit (say 40%) you were required to build a factory in that country to continue as a supplier.
Now, classical economists and super-free-traders will argue that such behaviour is inefficient and non-rational. And indeed, those policies are one of the reasons there is such a glut of capacity in the steel industry. But no country wants to be caught in a conflict and have its source of key {stuff} choked off. The same thing is playing out in military aircraft.
So perhaps the German government doesn't want to be held in thrall to a US supplier.
Your post is a bit troll-ish but you raise some points worth considering.
I suspect that there is a market for a strong Exchange 5.5 replacement. There are a lot of midsized organizations out there (50-1000 people) who are running Exchange 5.5 and often NT 4 domains. They don't want to upgrade Exchange, because full implementation of Exchange 2000 requires Active Directory. And they are either satisfied with Novell eDirectory (NDS), or they just don't want Active Directory and the complexity it brings. And that is not to mention the Licensing 6.0 issues.
So, many of these sites are looking at Samba and other Open Source solutions when NT 4 goes off support. But the problem is not NT Server - it is Exchange. How do you replace that? Most sites only make light use of the groupware features, but they do make SOME use - particularly the calendar.
So, if an Open Source product is developed that can replace the core functionality of Exchange 5.5, I think you would see quite a bit of demand.
Calendaring is the one add-on application that all Exchange sites use. It must be usable, well-thought -out, and provide full multi-calendar/multi-site functionality.
You can't shield against EMP with a conductor unless it completely encloses the entire system. A communication tower MUST have cables going to unsheilded equipment. Shielding communication equipment would cause the equipment to malfunction, and I didn't see a giant copper shield around the towers in the pictures.
Yeah, those guys at Bell Labs and Bell Systems Engineering were real boneheads. I doubt they had any understanding of EMP, despite having designed the only working anit-ballistic missle system and having done extensive work in the effects of the warheads of those missles. Nor did they know the first thing about the effects of magnetic fields and radiation on telephone systems - they just managed to build a worldwide voice network over the course of 100 years. Yep, a bunch of nincompoops wasting their time.
IE's already in place, and it works very, very well, and the components are well documented. I'm seeing *many* shrinkwrap programs coming out now that DO use IE as a framework. Quickbooks Pro 2002, for example, is built on IE.
What was that quote attributed to Lenin? "The capitalists will sell us the rope we use to hang them"? It amazes me when I see independent software developers build their products on Microsoft tools when Microsoft has already announced their intention to attack that market in the future!
A good example here is midrange ERP systems. Vendors are embracing Microsoft tools including.Net and IE. Of course, Microsoft acquired Great Plains and has already stated that it plans to "embrace" 90% of the functionality of the ERP products. Yet there the ISVs go, paying for the privilage of using the tools that will make them obsolete.
It makes Microsoft's statements in the antitrust trial that its competitors were just too stupid to keep up seem more believable.
I guess there are lots of other features by now but these are the ones that were implemented 5+ years ago and still aren't implemented in the US. I find it truly weird that I have complete control over an account and I can handle all sorts of transactions in my home country that is thousands of miles away but I still have to walk over to my local bank that is just 3 miles away every now and then.
Essentially all of those services are available from US banks and the larger merchants. You can live your financial life on-line if you choose to do so, and the banks are pushing their customers in that direction.
Why are USians resisting that push? Simple: they aren't stupid. In the US there is common law, written law, and precedents stretching back to colonial times that grant reasonable levels of protection to consumers when they engage in paper based transactions. If I give you a paper check, you and I both have certain rights and duties, and we know where we stand if something goes wrong.
There are no such protections for electronic transactions. None. Nada. Zero. And the big boys want the little suckers, I mean people, to go all electronic. Care to guess why?
Federal govt. has governed everything related to banking or investing with an iron grip... one that tightens over time and strangles innovation.
Actually, the federal government's "iron grip" has been loosening every year since the passage of the Glass-Seagal Act in 1932, leading up to the big "banking deregulation" of a couple of years ago.
The result of that deregulation is of course the current shipwrecks of Citicorp and others, who once the leash was off decided it was OK to lie, cheat, and allow other to steal their stockholders' money (e.g. by giving it to Enron).
There is a reason that the federal government regulated banking in the first place: moral hazard is implicit in banking operations, and the amounts of money that get processed are an irresistable magnet for those of weak character.
Except its just a piece of software they are dealing with, with many (better and cheaper) alternatives, and not something which is life and death.
Corporations live and die too. And along with them their executives' salaries, stock options, and perks.
Not the equivalent of Rwanda to be sure. However, each human being lives in his own "bubble world". I have seen people risk death rather than be embarrassed; I imagine to a CxO the thought of losing his place of privilage is unbearable.
I don't get it. If I moved from n to 1 on the list of a vendor's customers, why wouldn't I see increased leverage with my vendor?
You are living on a space station. You purchase your oxygen from the largest oxygen vendor. He is in fact the only one big enough to supply the needs of the majority of those souls you are responsible for. You are also the oxygen vendor's largest customer.
What happens if you get into a dispute with the oxygen vendor and threaten to cut off your purchases? If worse comes to worst and you do stop buying from him, he might go bankrupt. On the other hand he might not - there are a lot of people who need to breathe. You on the other hand will certainly die.
That's the problem the OEMs face when dealing with Microsoft.
That's one of the funniest posting I have read in a while! Thanks.
But... you are being naive if you think the list you describe in your parody doesn't exist. I have been in meetings (not in the computer industry, but the principle is the same) where such things are discussed. Every successful business does indeed do that sort of thing. Given the threat that Linux poses to Microsoft's revenue stream, it would be foolish of them not to hold such discussions.
Initially this is what Hasbro wanted to do. I have no doubt about that. However that is not what they ended up doing. The Axis&Allies stuff is nchanged.
Um, could I point you to Third Reich or Squad Leader? Even Tactics II for that matter. Admittedly the market for those games may well have been dead anyway. Still, reissuing Diplomacy and Axis and Allies doesn't really make up for the 300 or so other titles on AH's backlist that are now gone forever.
Have to disagree a bit. Hasbro's business model is to find a successful game company, buy it, keep their 5 most successful products and kill the rest, then dumb down the 5 products to a 4th grade level and release them in boxes with primary colors and lots of graphics.
In the case of a company like Avalon Hill, which made dozens of complex games for adults, this means that essentially the entire product line gets chopped. Which is exactly what happened to AH.
The husband of a friend of mine was a toy designer. I remember talking to him once when he was near tears: he had seen one company destroyed by Hasbro, had quit and moved to another company, only to have two more toy companies suffer the same Hasbro-Borg fate. He was getting tired of moving and running out of good companies to work for; he doubted there would be any high quality toys on the market when Hasbro got finished (seen any Goloob Action Fleet lately?)
Microsoft products are just as well architected as any other product on the market - but for goodness sakes they are bigger than most applications on the market.
I think part of the problem with Microsoft is that the people who work there have never actually used competing products in the real world (which would be consistent with Bill Gates' statement in 1998 or thereabouts that he only hires people younger than 25).
Consider the above statement. Then go back to 1994 and set up three corporate LANs: one with Microsoft Lan Manager 2.x, one with Novell 3.11, and one with Vines. Use them intensively in a large, multi-site corporate environment for 6 months. Then tell me again that Microsoft's products are "just as well architected" as others on the market???
The point being that the LAN problem (to take one example) had already been solved by 199x. Microsoft ignored everything that had already been done and created its own "standard", which was decidedly inferior to the competition.
what's the point? does everything have to be iSomething nowadays?
Agreed. Nor have I ever understood the difference between a "Storage Area Network" and a "pre-packaged Novell file server with all permissons set to RWX", except that the SAN is priced 10 times higher!
Instead our recommendations focus on ways to increase the competitive advantage of our clients, some of the time that competitive advantage is reached through harnessing a new business model or a new way to organize around the work that needs to be done.
Well, I have lived through five "transformations"": one driven by BCG, two by Accenture (actually AC), one by McKinsey, and one by Mercer. And when I say "lived through", I mean at the receiving end, not from the executive suite. Let us just say that there are slightly more cynical views of the way management consultants operate than the one you posted!
BCG is one of the classic management strategy consulting organizations. Typically that type of consultant comes in and recommends that you fire all your current technology people and replace whatever you have (Unix, AS/400, Novell) with the most expensive and complex products on the market (later they will recommend that you outsource everything to one of their "partners").
For the last 10 years the "most expensive and complicated" option has been Microsoft, and that is what the consultants have pushed.
Why would BCG be involved in Linux???? There is no percentage in it for them - or is there? Help me understand here.
They all emulate the same basic look and feel. My question is, is there any project of the same calibre (of would be soon), that does a native look and feel (modern and cool, like in movies) for Linux/BSD's ?
Sure, I'll get right on it. Could you just take a minute to define what the new look and feel should be?
The fundamental problem in UI design is that since the "ah ha!" insight that created the WIMP interface and the desktop metaphor, there hasn't been another key insight or breakthrough. Having once seen an actual Star workstation in action I can attest that a Star user wouldn't have any difficulty using the current Mac or Windows interface - they are fundamentally the same. Everyone agrees that we need something better than the W95 desktop - its just that no one can figure out what that is.
Hehehehe arrest manufacturers, you do realize that almost all appliance manufacturing goes on in either China or Tiawan, right?
Dude, the secretary to the President of the United States was detained by Customs for bringing more than 5 Beanie Babies (tm) into the United States from Canada in her luggage on board Air Force One (during the Clinton Admin). Do you think the powers that be would hesitate for a New York minute to slam the sales and marketing reps of those offshore mfgs into prison?
Problem is, the interests of Microsoft, HP, and Samsung are in much closer alignment with the interests of the RIAA and MPAA than they are with the interests of Joe Consumer.
Particularly Microsoft - now that the growth if off the PC rose, they desperately need new revenue streams to replace the upgrade treadmill.
It seems as though the businesses that do this sort of thing are suffering from wishful thinking. The DIV/X vs. DVD fiasco should have taught companies that you can't take away what consumers already have;
Sure you can; you just mandate it by law and arrest any major manufacturer who designs/sells such devices. That won't stop the dedicated hacker, but it will stop 99.995% of the total population.
If you can tie such a requirement into the "War on Terrorism" or the "War on Drugs", so much the better. "Oh Mr. Senator, Al Quida is using TiVo to trasmit coded messages across the Internet! We need DRM laws right away!"
I would guess that this product is intended to fail. When no one buys it, the RIAA and MPAA will go to Congress and plead that such technology must be required on all audio/video devices, since the feckless consumer won't agree to handcuff himself to the viewing chair.
Privatize the city water system, and you get cleaner water cheaper. End the city's monopoly on cable TV providers, and you get competition.
That's funny. Every city I have lived in with privitized water system has had far worse service than city owned. And when cable providers were deregulated, they jacked up the price and cut the quality of service significantly.
The economics of utilities with large capital costs and large captive populations were worked out in the 1880s. The conclusion then was that either a government owned utility, or a highly regulated private monopoly, was the best solution. I don't know of any fundamental law of economics that has changed since then.
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Yeah, life is real safe. No use taking risks just for fun and adventure - better to die in a nursing home at age 99!
sPh
When Lance and his handlers first started getting cold feet over his ride with the Russians, NASA suddenly realized that without a tourist on board the RSA might not have enough cash on hand to launch the mission! So they quietly dropped their opposition.
Wonder what is going to happen now that Mr. Lance has checked out? Not being able to fund a resupply mission is a bit of bad news I would think. Maybe they could send 4 or 5 Progress instead and see if any hit.
sPh
When I worked in an industry that supplied steel makers with key components, most countries had a limit of the percentage of those components that could be imported. Once your reached that limit (say 40%) you were required to build a factory in that country to continue as a supplier.
Now, classical economists and super-free-traders will argue that such behaviour is inefficient and non-rational. And indeed, those policies are one of the reasons there is such a glut of capacity in the steel industry. But no country wants to be caught in a conflict and have its source of key {stuff} choked off. The same thing is playing out in military aircraft.
So perhaps the German government doesn't want to be held in thrall to a US supplier.
sPh
Your post is a bit troll-ish but you raise some points worth considering.
I suspect that there is a market for a strong Exchange 5.5 replacement. There are a lot of midsized organizations out there (50-1000 people) who are running Exchange 5.5 and often NT 4 domains. They don't want to upgrade Exchange, because full implementation of Exchange 2000 requires Active Directory. And they are either satisfied with Novell eDirectory (NDS), or they just don't want Active Directory and the complexity it brings. And that is not to mention the Licensing 6.0 issues.
So, many of these sites are looking at Samba and other Open Source solutions when NT 4 goes off support. But the problem is not NT Server - it is Exchange. How do you replace that? Most sites only make light use of the groupware features, but they do make SOME use - particularly the calendar.
So, if an Open Source product is developed that can replace the core functionality of Exchange 5.5, I think you would see quite a bit of demand.
sPh
Calendaring is the one add-on application that all Exchange sites use. It must be usable, well-thought -out, and provide full multi-calendar/multi-site functionality.
If they manange that - say goodbye to Exchange.
sPh
sPh
A good example here is midrange ERP systems. Vendors are embracing Microsoft tools including .Net and IE. Of course, Microsoft acquired Great Plains and has already stated that it plans to "embrace" 90% of the functionality of the ERP products. Yet there the ISVs go, paying for the privilage of using the tools that will make them obsolete.
It makes Microsoft's statements in the antitrust trial that its competitors were just too stupid to keep up seem more believable.
sPh
Why are USians resisting that push? Simple: they aren't stupid. In the US there is common law, written law, and precedents stretching back to colonial times that grant reasonable levels of protection to consumers when they engage in paper based transactions. If I give you a paper check, you and I both have certain rights and duties, and we know where we stand if something goes wrong.
There are no such protections for electronic transactions. None. Nada. Zero. And the big boys want the little suckers, I mean people, to go all electronic. Care to guess why?
sPh
The result of that deregulation is of course the current shipwrecks of Citicorp and others, who once the leash was off decided it was OK to lie, cheat, and allow other to steal their stockholders' money (e.g. by giving it to Enron).
There is a reason that the federal government regulated banking in the first place: moral hazard is implicit in banking operations, and the amounts of money that get processed are an irresistable magnet for those of weak character.
sPh
Not the equivalent of Rwanda to be sure. However, each human being lives in his own "bubble world". I have seen people risk death rather than be embarrassed; I imagine to a CxO the thought of losing his place of privilage is unbearable.
sPh
What happens if you get into a dispute with the oxygen vendor and threaten to cut off your purchases? If worse comes to worst and you do stop buying from him, he might go bankrupt. On the other hand he might not - there are a lot of people who need to breathe. You on the other hand will certainly die.
That's the problem the OEMs face when dealing with Microsoft.
sPh
But... you are being naive if you think the list you describe in your parody doesn't exist. I have been in meetings (not in the computer industry, but the principle is the same) where such things are discussed. Every successful business does indeed do that sort of thing. Given the threat that Linux poses to Microsoft's revenue stream, it would be foolish of them not to hold such discussions.
sPh
sPh
In the case of a company like Avalon Hill, which made dozens of complex games for adults, this means that essentially the entire product line gets chopped. Which is exactly what happened to AH.
The husband of a friend of mine was a toy designer. I remember talking to him once when he was near tears: he had seen one company destroyed by Hasbro, had quit and moved to another company, only to have two more toy companies suffer the same Hasbro-Borg fate. He was getting tired of moving and running out of good companies to work for; he doubted there would be any high quality toys on the market when Hasbro got finished (seen any Goloob Action Fleet lately?)
sPh
Consider the above statement. Then go back to 1994 and set up three corporate LANs: one with Microsoft Lan Manager 2.x, one with Novell 3.11, and one with Vines. Use them intensively in a large, multi-site corporate environment for 6 months. Then tell me again that Microsoft's products are "just as well architected" as others on the market???
The point being that the LAN problem (to take one example) had already been solved by 199x. Microsoft ignored everything that had already been done and created its own "standard", which was decidedly inferior to the competition.
sPh
You suspect wrong, dude. I have been cutting through marketroid speak for more than 20 years.
sPh
sPh
sPh
For the last 10 years the "most expensive and complicated" option has been Microsoft, and that is what the consultants have pushed.
Why would BCG be involved in Linux???? There is no percentage in it for them - or is there? Help me understand here.
sPh
The fundamental problem in UI design is that since the "ah ha!" insight that created the WIMP interface and the desktop metaphor, there hasn't been another key insight or breakthrough. Having once seen an actual Star workstation in action I can attest that a Star user wouldn't have any difficulty using the current Mac or Windows interface - they are fundamentally the same. Everyone agrees that we need something better than the W95 desktop - its just that no one can figure out what that is.
sPh
sPh
Particularly Microsoft - now that the growth if off the PC rose, they desperately need new revenue streams to replace the upgrade treadmill.
sPh
If you can tie such a requirement into the "War on Terrorism" or the "War on Drugs", so much the better. "Oh Mr. Senator, Al Quida is using TiVo to trasmit coded messages across the Internet! We need DRM laws right away!"
sPh
sPh
The economics of utilities with large capital costs and large captive populations were worked out in the 1880s. The conclusion then was that either a government owned utility, or a highly regulated private monopoly, was the best solution. I don't know of any fundamental law of economics that has changed since then.
sPh