How does Microsoft assess the needs of their consumers?
Every comment I read about copyright protection at the OS level, product activation via the web or a phone call to a central place and many other ideas MS claims to be "what the consumer wants" seems to indicate that such ideas are hated by most consumers, so how it comes that is what we want?
There you have it! Computer hubergeeks complain that nobody pay attention to their expertise about technical matters, but if the experts of other fields (architects in this instance) tell us that thinks are like this for this or that reason, then they are surely smoking something.
Get over it! KL towers are the tallest as declared by the experts in the field...
-Buy DVDs.
-Buy commercial software I don't need since 1997 (running dual boot, Linux for most stuff, W95 for a few games and Lotus97 that came free in a cover CD a couple of months ago).
-Buy pay channels to watch football (the real one with a round ball and without motorbike helmets) which is painful, but I'll not put up with it.
-Did not buy Sony digital music players trying to masquerade as MP3 players.
-Do not buy winmodems...
So it is all a matter of choice and use your power to choose.
You think you can't live without your dose of the Yankees or the Dodgers? Try it. You'll be surprised. You actualy may find that spending time with your family and friends is enjoyable after all.
I remember the first days cable and satellite TV began to be offered. The big advantage over terrestrial TV was "look you pay for the service. so no ads here".
Now we do pay for the service and get the ads any way.
Now they say "look, we do need your help, let us collect anonymous info about you". So will let them, for free.
Tomorrow they will say "look, we are collection anonymous info about you anyway, so we are going to collect now personal info, otherwise we are going to go bankrupt".
Sure there is an argument that people have the right to get paid for the work they do. On the other hand if I am contributing to some tool that is then included in the distribution, then where is my part of the cookie?
That is up to you to decide. You can make it a comercial application and restrict distribution if you so wish. Or create your own license if that make you happy.
But if you make it GPL (i.e. freely distributable ad nauseam) you are basicaly saying you don't care if you don't get part of the cookie.
Information is power. You are giving that for free. Good for you, but any information I provide, even if it is anonymously recorded, should not be taked for granted and the provider of the information (although anonymous) should be compensated.
So what's a good amount? 64meg (which costs $35)? I mean if you're going to bash an OS over $15 worth of hardware requirements.... that's just silly...
I think nobody is complaining about the cost (although $50US is 1/3 of a monthly pension in some country that should remain nameless) but about a philosophy.
It has been said that Linux and Mac users find this amount enormous, in my opinion that points to philosophy design that says "what the heck, why to optimize or make things better if I can just throw resources at the problem".
I think it is highly debatable if that is an approppriate approach to designing something...
I would give some (most perhaps) weight to achieve objectives as a team. Then the team can discuss how a certain incentive should be shared among its members.
Sorry, but you have a responsibility with society and some age checks would be welcomed.
Teenagers should not have access to everything they can get their hands into, and this should not exclude games neither in their living room or online.
If I were you I would be implementing age checking mechanisms now, no matter what.
I am completely oposed to all kinds of censorship, but I fully support guidelines provided by the goverment (preferred, after all gov. does not have an economic interest in this, right?) or the industry.
The only freedom affected is of those under 18, that require parental supervision of aproval for whatever they do anyway, so rating should not be considered as something negative, it is the small trade-off that should be payed to guard freedom of expression.
...only support a maximum savings of ~20 per user per month of use.
So saving 20/month/user? Lets make some maths:
Lets have 1000 users:
20000 US/month saved.
240000 US$/year saved.
That in Mexico City could pay the salary of 240 full time teachers for one full year, or similar amounts of policemen on the streets, just to put an example of what such a trivial amount of savings can mean.
And this is asuming a very conservative 1000 users only.
Assuming also that the cost of keeping running a workstation is the same no matter what OS one uses (I just don't know how a MS based solution could be cheaper) the cost of the software is not trivial.
A one-off MS installation including at least Windows and Office will set you back a bill of,how much, 300US$ perhaps? (I don't know because I have not bought MS stuff for some time). The Linux equivalent: zero. Multiplied by 1000.... No brainer.
And that doesn't include the loss of the ability to run the thousands of Windows only applications or the additional cost of configuring the Linux machines to support vertical market Windows applications
Now, the objective of the goverment of Mexico City is not to run thousands of Windows applications neither to provide the infrastructure for Windows based "vertical market apps" (like which ones?). They need to run the City in an efficent manner, and as the numbers you yourself put forward show, Linux & Co could mean exactly that. The particular project they are talking about is not more than a database system and for gooodeness sake, don't tell us that can't be done without MS. Even conceding that the backoffice stuff could be MS powered they still could use Linux for the users (as long as they kepp things standarized, for example using web based interfaces to the database).
Most models assume tech support and maintenance (software, hardware, etc.). Even if the numbers for hiring Linux professionals, a rare and relatively expensive breed still, are equal to that for hiring Windows trained professionals (of which decent ones are somewhat rare themselves) the savings in licensing are not horribly significant.
At at least 300$US per machine, I would call that significant. And depending on what they need to do, who knows if they could replace some back office stuff with open solutions. Other important factor is that engineering students in Mexico are obliged by law to work one year for free servicing among others, goverment dependencies. Mexico City needs a few commited good engineers (whose salaries could come from the license savings themselves) that could direct a work force of engineering university students.
Where do the alledged savings come from then?
For goodness sake! If you don't have to shell out whatever one pays for Windows and Office, and costs of ownership are similar (highly debatable given the lack of free remote admin tools in MS products) you are saving money. What else do you want?
Welcome to the real world. It used to be like that before the.com madness: one used to take responnsibility for her own carrier making choices, knocking (or kicking) in all the needed doors, building networks of friends and some times taking that not so ideal job because there was no time to wait for the "blue prince" job.
The.com insanity made computer people lazy to the degree that a lot of guys out there (many here in/. ) believe that it was a god given right to be the technology primadona (Dilbert Tm) of the new brave Internet era, and that insane salaries in companies directed by people without any management skills could not be wrong.
It was wrong, and thank goodness, it seems to be all over.
There is no real choice: if you like a device it will come with its own kind of storage and you can't do anything about it.
CompactFlash seems better (I have a Kodak camera, I get the card out and either put it in a USB reader in my desktop or in a PCMCIA adapter while away with my old 486 laptop. No problems either way, in the other hand I bought an Palmp-3 player that uses Smartmedia, I put music once and sounded great, I tried to listen to it again and was all gone. I don't know, they seem a little bit too fragile these SM thingies).
Don't include the firearm issue in the side of the bad things. One can be out at night, sometimes in pretty unsavory places, and one could get beaten but not killed.
I think 60 something people are still killed with firearms in the UK per year. How many are killed per year in other places?
Back to computing, this is good among an score of very bad ideas and legislation.
This is the typical irresponsible.com attitude."We got burnt, so what, we had fun!".
If we needed one more example of how shaky the fundations of the e-economy are, the previous message should convince even the most rabid pro.com-bussiness model that the model is wrong.
A company that is bullshiting clients and having fun in spite of going burst is just an insult to real entrepreneurs that know that the responsibility of starting a company goes beyond of providing fun to the owners.
The frightening thing is that he will do it all over again...
Anyone that has made benchmarking knows that the only meaningful benchmarking is the one that gives you an idea about how your application or something as similar as posible will perform.
You can tweak the OS, the hardware, etc to increase your benchmark points.
In real life I have still to find somebody with extensive working experience in different platforms that prefers Windows to other OSs (UNIX in general) for heavy, scalable infrastructure tasks.
But that is me, other people will believe benchmarks to their own peril.
Well, where not Christians the Inquisition guys?
The Aprtheid bigots even had their own Christain Church.
Mussolini & Co and Hitler & Co were Christians, mind you.
The Spaniards that cleansed the Americas from most native people, enslaving the few ones left, were also "concerned christians".
The English (or British, whatever) that exterminated native population in Tasmania, Maoris in NZ and almost did it in Australis, were also Christians.
The Mad Cow Disease was ironic.
There you are, no need to eat babies, reality is as bad....
Finally somebody came with a simple explanation of what all the fuss is about. I hope you guys mod up the previous poster, because his/her explanation is as clear as water: monopolies do dumping, and the IE saga is proof of it!
It is late.
I am legaly blind.
I have arthritis.
English is my 5th language (not joking).
I have a Masters degree in computing, unfortunately was entirely made in a different language to English...
So I think it is unlikely I would take one of those blue collar jobs you are offering (which would be an honor, but I am not skilled for that kind of work).
I am sick tired of the term PC to imply something silly or stupid.
Fact: you are harming yourself and others around you when you smoke. You are addicted, and that is a sickness according to all doctors around the World.
Tha is not PC, is just reality. You can pretend otherwise, your lungs will remind you in due time how wrong you are.
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I hope that when they recommend that no PC should have no MS product inside it we remain all sooo happy....
How does Microsoft assess the needs of their consumers?
Every comment I read about copyright protection at the OS level, product activation via the web or a phone call to a central place and many other ideas MS claims to be "what the consumer wants" seems to indicate that such ideas are hated by most consumers, so how it comes that is what we want?
There you have it! Computer hubergeeks complain that nobody pay attention to their expertise about technical matters, but if the experts of other fields (architects in this instance) tell us that thinks are like this for this or that reason, then they are surely smoking something.
Get over it! KL towers are the tallest as declared by the experts in the field...
Agreed!
I don't:
-Buy DVDs.
-Buy commercial software I don't need since 1997 (running dual boot, Linux for most stuff, W95 for a few games and Lotus97 that came free in a cover CD a couple of months ago).
-Buy pay channels to watch football (the real one with a round ball and without motorbike helmets) which is painful, but I'll not put up with it.
-Did not buy Sony digital music players trying to masquerade as MP3 players.
-Do not buy winmodems...
So it is all a matter of choice and use your power to choose.
You think you can't live without your dose of the Yankees or the Dodgers? Try it. You'll be surprised. You actualy may find that spending time with your family and friends is enjoyable after all.
Lets see, WinCE stuff (or whatever they call it today) costs around 400 or 500 US$, a nice, not too expensive lappy costs 1500 US$.
This thing costs 2KUS$..... Me no entiende.
Compensation is not necesarily money. What about a little discount in the service?
I remember the first days cable and satellite TV began to be offered. The big advantage over terrestrial TV was "look you pay for the service. so no ads here".
Now we do pay for the service and get the ads any way.
Now they say "look, we do need your help, let us collect anonymous info about you". So will let them, for free.
Tomorrow they will say "look, we are collection anonymous info about you anyway, so we are going to collect now personal info, otherwise we are going to go bankrupt".
So, where is it all going to stop?
... you just provided information, your opinion, for free.
....
Absolutely, but I get compensated with the informations others provide and with the promise of being able to mod down everybody one day
Sure there is an argument that people have the right to get paid for the work they do. On the other hand if I am contributing to some tool that is then included in the distribution, then where is my part of the cookie?
That is up to you to decide. You can make it a comercial application and restrict distribution if you so wish. Or create your own license if that make you happy.
But if you make it GPL (i.e. freely distributable ad nauseam) you are basicaly saying you don't care if you don't get part of the cookie.
Information is power. You are giving that for free. Good for you, but any information I provide, even if it is anonymously recorded, should not be taked for granted and the provider of the information (although anonymous) should be compensated.
So what's a good amount? 64meg (which costs $35)? I mean if you're going to bash an OS over $15 worth of hardware requirements.... that's just silly...
I think nobody is complaining about the cost (although $50US is 1/3 of a monthly pension in some country that should remain nameless) but about a philosophy.
It has been said that Linux and Mac users find this amount enormous, in my opinion that points to philosophy design that says "what the heck, why to optimize or make things better if I can just throw resources at the problem".
I think it is highly debatable if that is an approppriate approach to designing something...
I would give some (most perhaps) weight to achieve objectives as a team. Then the team can discuss how a certain incentive should be shared among its members.
Sorry, but you have a responsibility with society and some age checks would be welcomed.
Teenagers should not have access to everything they can get their hands into, and this should not exclude games neither in their living room or online.
If I were you I would be implementing age checking mechanisms now, no matter what.
I am completely oposed to all kinds of censorship, but I fully support guidelines provided by the goverment (preferred, after all gov. does not have an economic interest in this, right?) or the industry.
The only freedom affected is of those under 18, that require parental supervision of aproval for whatever they do anyway, so rating should not be considered as something negative, it is the small trade-off that should be payed to guard freedom of expression.
...only support a maximum savings of ~20 per user per month of use.
,how much, 300US$ perhaps? (I don't know because I have not bought MS stuff for some time). The Linux equivalent: zero. Multiplied by 1000.... No brainer.
So saving 20/month/user? Lets make some maths:
Lets have 1000 users:
20000 US/month saved.
240000 US$/year saved.
That in Mexico City could pay the salary of 240 full time teachers for one full year, or similar amounts of policemen on the streets, just to put an example of what such a trivial amount of savings can mean.
And this is asuming a very conservative 1000 users only.
Assuming also that the cost of keeping running a workstation is the same no matter what OS one uses (I just don't know how a MS based solution could be cheaper) the cost of the software is not trivial.
A one-off MS installation including at least Windows and Office will set you back a bill of
And that doesn't include the loss of the ability to run the thousands of Windows only applications or the additional cost of configuring the Linux machines to support vertical market Windows applications
Now, the objective of the goverment of Mexico City is not to run thousands of Windows applications neither to provide the infrastructure for Windows based "vertical market apps" (like which ones?). They need to run the City in an efficent manner, and as the numbers you yourself put forward show, Linux & Co could mean exactly that. The particular project they are talking about is not more than a database system and for gooodeness sake, don't tell us that can't be done without MS. Even conceding that the backoffice stuff could be MS powered they still could use Linux for the users (as long as they kepp things standarized, for example using web based interfaces to the database).
Most models assume tech support and maintenance (software, hardware, etc.). Even if the numbers for hiring Linux professionals, a rare and relatively expensive breed still, are equal to that for hiring Windows trained professionals (of which decent ones are somewhat rare themselves) the savings in licensing are not horribly significant.
At at least 300$US per machine, I would call that significant. And depending on what they need to do, who knows if they could replace some back office stuff with open solutions. Other important factor is that engineering students in Mexico are obliged by law to work one year for free servicing among others, goverment dependencies. Mexico City needs a few commited good engineers (whose salaries could come from the license savings themselves) that could direct a work force of engineering university students.
Where do the alledged savings come from then?
For goodness sake! If you don't have to shell out whatever one pays for Windows and Office, and costs of ownership are similar (highly debatable given the lack of free remote admin tools in MS products) you are saving money. What else do you want?
Welcome to the real world. It used to be like that before the .com madness: one used to take responnsibility for her own carrier making choices, knocking (or kicking) in all the needed doors, building networks of friends and some times taking that not so ideal job because there was no time to wait for the "blue prince" job.
.com insanity made computer people lazy to the degree that a lot of guys out there (many here in /. ) believe that it was a god given right to be the technology primadona (Dilbert Tm) of the new brave Internet era, and that insane salaries in companies directed by people without any management skills could not be wrong.
The
It was wrong, and thank goodness, it seems to be all over.
There is no real choice: if you like a device it will come with its own kind of storage and you can't do anything about it.
CompactFlash seems better (I have a Kodak camera, I get the card out and either put it in a USB reader in my desktop or in a PCMCIA adapter while away with my old 486 laptop. No problems either way, in the other hand I bought an Palmp-3 player that uses Smartmedia, I put music once and sounded great, I tried to listen to it again and was all gone. I don't know, they seem a little bit too fragile these SM thingies).
Don't include the firearm issue in the side of the bad things. One can be out at night, sometimes in pretty unsavory places, and one could get beaten but not killed.
I think 60 something people are still killed with firearms in the UK per year. How many are killed per year in other places?
Back to computing, this is good among an score of very bad ideas and legislation.
This is the typical irresponsible .com attitude."We got burnt, so what, we had fun!".
.com-bussiness model that the model is wrong.
If we needed one more example of how shaky the fundations of the e-economy are, the previous message should convince even the most rabid pro
A company that is bullshiting clients and having fun in spite of going burst is just an insult to real entrepreneurs that know that the responsibility of starting a company goes beyond of providing fun to the owners.
The frightening thing is that he will do it all over again...
Anyone that has made benchmarking knows that the only meaningful benchmarking is the one that gives you an idea about how your application or something as similar as posible will perform.
You can tweak the OS, the hardware, etc to increase your benchmark points.
In real life I have still to find somebody with extensive working experience in different platforms that prefers Windows to other OSs (UNIX in general) for heavy, scalable infrastructure tasks.
But that is me, other people will believe benchmarks to their own peril.
Well, where not Christians the Inquisition guys?
The Aprtheid bigots even had their own Christain Church.
Mussolini & Co and Hitler & Co were Christians, mind you.
The Spaniards that cleansed the Americas from most native people, enslaving the few ones left, were also "concerned christians".
The English (or British, whatever) that exterminated native population in Tasmania, Maoris in NZ and almost did it in Australis, were also Christians.
The Mad Cow Disease was ironic.
There you are, no need to eat babies, reality is as bad....
Finally somebody came with a simple explanation of what all the fuss is about. I hope you guys mod up the previous poster, because his/her explanation is as clear as water: monopolies do dumping, and the IE saga is proof of it!
So now you have a nice toy machine.
Good for you, it was about time.
Now, repeat 100 times: Windows does not scale. Again: Windows does not scale.
Good, you have been educated.
It is late. ...
...
I am legaly blind.
I have arthritis.
English is my 5th language (not joking).
I have a Masters degree in computing, unfortunately was entirely made in a different language to English
So I think it is unlikely I would take one of those blue collar jobs you are offering (which would be an honor, but I am not skilled for that kind of work).
Argh! You are an AC! Time wasted
I am sick tired of the term PC to imply something silly or stupid.
Fact: you are harming yourself and others around you when you smoke. You are addicted, and that is a sickness according to all doctors around the World.
Tha is not PC, is just reality. You can pretend otherwise, your lungs will remind you in due time how wrong you are.