The fact that my above remarks generated +6 and -5 mods (so far) indicates that this is a seriously debatable thing... these unions.
My comments above are largely based on the negative aspects of unions. There are positive aspects as well. Some unions work.
Still, my experience of unions (My father in a metalworkers union in South Africa, my fiance as a teacher in Toronto) is such that I have little faith in them.
As a classic example, the school support staff in Toronto recently went on strike for four weeks for an 8% increase over 2 years. 4 weeks is nearly 11% of their income for a year. Thus, it will take years for the increase to cover the lost income during the strike, if ever. Where is the logic in that?
I agree with other posters that the unions have had an important role to play in the past, but their relevance is rapidly diminishing.
I believe that the power of the union is not so much in "collective bargaining", but rather through it's tight grip on the balls of the employers. It is no surprise that the forces most credited to the mechanisation and implementation of technology at mines, industries, and other manufacturing centres in South Africa is without doubt the unions.
It is ironic that the forces designed to protect jobs, income, and people is the force which is reducing the availability of jobs in South Africe.
Here in Toronto the unions have managed to bring industry to a near halt simply by having the schools closed. It was estimated that on some days, nearly a quarter of the workforce was required to make alternative plans for their children, often at excessive direct cost or through having to take leave to care for children.
This is pure blackmail, and should not be tolerated.
As for the lack of unions, it is apparent that the teachers at private schools generally are better paid, are better rewarded for excellence, and never go on strike. As a parent, I would have to considder the welfare of my child by considdering a private education. As a teacher, If I was good, I would be better to move to the private sector as well.
Unions have had a strong negative impact recently in toronto. Next up are the nurses and EMS unions.
Again, the benefits of unionship are marginal at best, and at worst very destructive.
Life is a long, hard road, and many lessons are learned on the way (My grandfather told me this....). In his terminology, this story would be described as school fees. School fees are the price you pay for an education.
The education in this context, is not that it is bad or wrong to sell yourself or your sould to your job, the real lesson is that you should be more careful about who you sell your life to. There are jobs which are worth giving up your life for. Speak to Nuns. Speak to pop-stars.
Still, the lesson is that you need just reward, or the consequences are school-fees.
It is a great thing to see a person who is sold out to a good cause. It is OK to love your spouse, OK to love your kids, yet, for those with neither, it should be OK to love you job equally.
they protect those of us who love our jobs from ourselves
Sorry for the brutality, but Bullshit.
Unions are a collective bargaining force. They are paid to make sure that the average member is happy. Unions do not allow for the reward of those people who excel, and do not allow for the (easy) removal of those who do not. Unions protect the job, not the person.
Without unions, those people who are excellent at their jobs would be better rewarded for it. Thos people who are poor at their jobs would be encouraged in to a new vocation which would perhaps be better in the long run.
Unions do nothing more than enforce mediocrity.
Never underestimate a person's ability to vote with their feet.
I have worked for SAP "partners" in the UK, and I am fully aware of their strategies.
The bottom line is that SAP and most other large packages are very stable in the sense that there is not much new developpment. Their strength is in their perceived stability.
The drawback is that the model is not very flexible. SAP would never admit it, but their modules are based on "best practices", and very few businesses actually have bast practices.
Thus, to get SAP installed, it needs about 50% customisation of the code, and 50% customisation of the business. Neither of these are cheap.
Now, SAP really makes it's money on the installation, and not on the actual software. For an installation, they get to throw a number of consultants, and a number of ABAB programmers at the client, all substantially marked up. They talk in riddles alternating between MBA style management consulting, and at very basic ABAB concepts. Neither of these are in the real reach of the customer, and the customer is bent / masaged / coerced to fit the SAP mould.
Although I am biased, and am rather cynical, I believe that the above holds an element of truth.
The short answer to your question is that SAP will not tell you the proce of the product because:
The software is licensed on a scale related to the customer's size, support requirements and status.
SAP will have a licensing structure which is often significantly discounted, but not all discounts are equal. They do not want their customers to be able to easily price shop.
The bulk of the money comes in through implementation through customisation / consultancy. This is, if SAP is successful, performed on a time and materials basis, and thus the costs rapidly escalate.
Competition is quite fierce with people like Oracle, and price quoting is a bad thing if your business sales pitch is based on reputation and goodwill, not a "good bargain".
SAP will drain every penny they can get, and the price is really an Arm and a Leg (literally if you count the staff turnover generated by job redundancy and change stress, as well as scape-goatism).
Basically, be prepared to pay more than you bargained for, whatever you are quoted.
Having got used to the HHKB, including changing the left meta key to another Fn key, I can get around the Alt-Fn-Ctrl issues just fine (one fingure manages the alt and left meta key together). As I say, I became quite comfortable with the keyboard, and especially liked the close proximity of the Esc key.
The problems I had was moving to other machines (like going in to the server room and wiping a shutdown message by mistake using Caps-Lock d instead of Ctrl-D. Or getting a "`" when I want to hit escape. These things all become bugging. It simply was more inconvenient and productivity destroying to have to change my "mental state" when using keyboards on different machines, than to conform to the norm. I still maintain a trackball at my workstation though.
In response to your last comment, I suggest that you re-read my original post. I am afraid that you got the situation reversed. I have Caps-D problems when I am NOT at the HHKB, thus, I was perfectly adjusted to the HHKB.
This is just a note to hallmark.... "I was the first person to think about introducing a line of sympathy cards for those who are victims of dot-bomb syndromes, and related demises."
... It is a big jump from going from the article's text to key escrow.
It is in the interests of many people/organisations to use encryption. Further, systems like Gnutella do more than just music / mp3 / copyrighted material transfers. The problem is in proving the content of the transfer, rather than the fat that the transfer occurred. Further, much of the sting of these "interested parties" disappears outside the USofA.
Let's face it, PGP is equally capable of transferring sensitive / copyrighted material as Gnutella, Freenet, etc.
Still, the point is that there is no link between the article and key escrow. Tha article only points out that the RIAA, and others are looking at alternative "Napster's".
Kudos to IBM. This is bound to be a bit controvercial, but I believe that IBM is the most socially open of all the closed software houses. They have stated their intentions, and have clearly started a concerted effort to deliver. They are enthusiastic Linux supporters.
Most of the components of their Suite have been released before in individual parcels, but the real news here is the delivery mechanism. Bundling them together with an installer is the key point. If there is an easier to use installer for packages, including remote distribution of packages, this is a GOOD THING.
The other newsworthy piece I get from the links is the inclusion of server hosted applications. These have been available for a while in Unix environments with remote X servers, but this brings the actual processing to the client, and reduces server load while at the same time allowing for central software control.
As an administrator, this is attractive.
As a side note, this just re-inforces Linux in it's role as a server rather than a desktop.
Regardless, Trackballs are always in the same place, require far less movement to get accross the screen, are much more precise and accurate, and never get "lost" on the desk. Further, there is no need for a mousepad, and there is less risk of injury. Problem with some trackballs, the same as mice, is that some are right/left hand incompatible.
I am thr proud owner of a Happy Hacker keyboard. I must admit that got used to it in a hurry, and my productivity in most activities increased.
Unfortunately, not everyone has a HHKB, and moving from one machine to another introduced huge amounts of frustration. The unix commandline became a pain, vi is a nighmare with me regularly trying to hit ctrl-D to go down a page, but instead hit CAPS-LOCK then D and effectively delete to end of line. Issues like this are a serious drawback.
Bottom line is that I have retired my HHKB, and endure the less ergonomic but more standard full keyboards.
If you work in a closed system where you have only one computer, or all your computers have the same keyboard, then go for it. Otherwise, it may become too comfortable, and then yu will not be able to smoothly interface with other keyboards.
A further example is that I have a laptop with a UK Layout keyboard, and my desktop has a US Layout. I have hat fo install a US keyboard on the laptop otherwise I go mad with @ instead of ".
The story suggests that the healing solution is through redundancy. This is a relatively easy method for "self healing". Mainframes have done it for years, the issue is to get the OS to understand what's happening.
The benefits are that when something breaks, you can be alerted to it, and fix it without downtime. The drawback is that you need to buy at least two complete computers for every functioning one.
The article is misleading in a way, because it suggests that the computers really are self "healing", yet, the article says "backup systems that kick in whenever the server senses a problem". Who to believe?
If you want uptime, get redundancy. Compaq is even offering hotswap PCI cards now. Things are really cool. All we need is the operating system to be as advanced as the hardware. It does not help when your NT machine needs to reboot when you change the IP address.
My understanding of the process is that the nanotubes form in very hot furnaces by passing lasers and high current electric arcs through the carbon vapour in the furnace. This is not an easy process, and essentially requires that these transistors are individually manufactured.
This is by no means a commertially viable process.... yet. Don't hold your breath.
My sorry pathetic whine is that for every dot.bomb, there is a story of a dot.fortune.
Why can I not be one of the.fortune people. What am I doing wrong. Perhaps it is the late nights and heavy coffee days. It seems that REAL WORK does not really pay off like it used to.
While leasing does have many benefits, the leasing decision is never a 100% win. Leased items are never yours.
In the company I work in, there are two types of programs. Thouse bought, and those custome built. The bought items could be leased (and for good reasons). The custom software could never be leased because no company has created them. The closest the company could come to leasing the custom software is to oursources the development and maintenance of that software. Still, because that company created that software, they control it. By leasing software, you lose control.
Another example of where leasing is inconvenient is as follows: our company still has some 16bit applications running on win95. For better or worse, this is the case. Now, for whatever reason (and I am not a programmer involved with this application), the C compilers we have in our 32bit environments will compile the 16 bit application, but it will not work. To compile the aplication, we need to do it on a win3.1 machine, and it will then run happily on other 32bit platforms (through to NT4 that we know of). This puts us in a business which is using decade old software. No company would maintain that other than ourselves.
Bottom line: whatever reasons there are to lease software, there are still reasons to outright own it.
As a sailor, I can see some major issues with solar sail travel...
1. The further you are from the sun, the less force is exerted on the sails, until the forces from other stars/suns outweighs the force of our sun. Remembering that our sun is relatively small, this will not necessarily be at the midpoint between solar systems.
2. Travelling towards the sun is difficult and requires some sort of "tacking" process.
3. Travelling in any direction other than away from the sun requires a centerboard and rudder for maintaining a direction. Both these systems rely on resistance. In space there is no resistance. There sill need to be something to exert force away from the sun to keep the correct heading.
4. Sun-spots change the intensity of the solar winds, creating 'gusts'. Gusts will be difficult to control.
My understanding is that solar-wind is best considered as only part of a spacial travel system. Combining solar-winds with other power mecnahinsms. From what I can see, there is only one direction the vessel can travel, and that will be determined by the release time from the earth, and the velocity at releas. After that, the only form of control is to change the "sail area" by either reducing sail size, or by changing orientation. Neither of these processes change direction, only speed.
Thus, for useful travel, an intersection trajectory must be set at the beginning of the flight, and then the speed of the craft must be carefully managed so that the destination point and the craft intersect at the correct time.
On the whole this is a good thing for everyone in the world. Supply/demand relationships are well understood, and everyone is aware that price manipulation affects both. Essentially, Consumers (both retail and corportate) have been getting substantially "Discounted" software from Microsoft through either incorrect, or blatantly fraudulent licensing. Now that Microsoft is turning screws, this is affecting the real price, and thus changing the supply / demand process. Alaska Airlines is a classic example of a Demand drop.
Microsoft has probably done it's maths, and figured that the increase in revenue will outweigh the drop in demand. What is of interest to me, and it is my prediction, that like Alaska Airlines, more companies will innovate and find "work-arounds". This process will reduce dependancy on Microsoft, and will fuel a process of "divorce" from Microsoft. The big word for this is that Microsoft is "disenfranchising" it's customers.
The good news for everyone else is better, more interesting jobs outside of Redmond. I am one of those people.
Anyway, my advice to Microsoft customers, "Count your pennies".
Well, I commented on the new Handspring a couple of days ago, and pondered what was really so good with it. Now, on the other hand, I can see great strides in innovation with this device. Unfortunately there is no price I can see.
The benefits I see here are primarily for existing Sony product users. I am keen on the Sony digital camera's, and have been tempted by the Vaio. So, having a common memory stick access accross the brands is a great thing. Obviosly the biggest benefit is with the interoperability, and the great storage benefit of the memory stick.
It is a shame that the memory stick is so propriatory, yet I have yet to see palms with Compact flash / PCMCIA type add-ons for additional storage. Thus, Sony is truly innovating.
I have always been a fan of the PalmOS devices. I still use my PalmIII after three years. Handspring is a good machine too.
Yet, this new "Edge" is simply not that much better.... here is a link to a handspring hosted comparison table. It shows that the Vx is smaller and lighter. Where the Edge is better is only because it has the latest software (which can be upgraded on the Vx anyway), has a microphone, the "springboard" (which I have never seen used...) and has a blinking light...;-)
In many countries, marriage is a contract... picture it, a non-compete clause. Even better, a no-moonlighting clause. It is not something which I would agree to under any circumstances, unless it provided me with a better income while I was NOT working... then I would considder the deal, jeez, who wouldn't. Basically, I can be bought.
Slashdot Mirror
The fact that my above remarks generated +6 and -5 mods (so far) indicates that this is a seriously debatable thing ... these unions.
My comments above are largely based on the negative aspects of unions. There are positive aspects as well. Some unions work.
Still, my experience of unions (My father in a metalworkers union in South Africa, my fiance as a teacher in Toronto) is such that I have little faith in them.
As a classic example, the school support staff in Toronto recently went on strike for four weeks for an 8% increase over 2 years. 4 weeks is nearly 11% of their income for a year. Thus, it will take years for the increase to cover the lost income during the strike, if ever. Where is the logic in that?
I agree with other posters that the unions have had an important role to play in the past, but their relevance is rapidly diminishing.
I believe that the power of the union is not so much in "collective bargaining", but rather through it's tight grip on the balls of the employers. It is no surprise that the forces most credited to the mechanisation and implementation of technology at mines, industries, and other manufacturing centres in South Africa is without doubt the unions.
It is ironic that the forces designed to protect jobs, income, and people is the force which is reducing the availability of jobs in South Africe.
Here in Toronto the unions have managed to bring industry to a near halt simply by having the schools closed. It was estimated that on some days, nearly a quarter of the workforce was required to make alternative plans for their children, often at excessive direct cost or through having to take leave to care for children.
This is pure blackmail, and should not be tolerated.
As for the lack of unions, it is apparent that the teachers at private schools generally are better paid, are better rewarded for excellence, and never go on strike. As a parent, I would have to considder the welfare of my child by considdering a private education. As a teacher, If I was good, I would be better to move to the private sector as well.
Unions have had a strong negative impact recently in toronto. Next up are the nurses and EMS unions.
Again, the benefits of unionship are marginal at best, and at worst very destructive.
Life is a long, hard road, and many lessons are learned on the way (My grandfather told me this....). In his terminology, this story would be described as school fees. School fees are the price you pay for an education.
The education in this context, is not that it is bad or wrong to sell yourself or your sould to your job, the real lesson is that you should be more careful about who you sell your life to. There are jobs which are worth giving up your life for. Speak to Nuns. Speak to pop-stars.
Still, the lesson is that you need just reward, or the consequences are school-fees.
It is a great thing to see a person who is sold out to a good cause. It is OK to love your spouse, OK to love your kids, yet, for those with neither, it should be OK to love you job equally.
Sorry for the brutality, but Bullshit.
Unions are a collective bargaining force. They are paid to make sure that the average member is happy. Unions do not allow for the reward of those people who excel, and do not allow for the (easy) removal of those who do not. Unions protect the job, not the person.
Without unions, those people who are excellent at their jobs would be better rewarded for it. Thos people who are poor at their jobs would be encouraged in to a new vocation which would perhaps be better in the long run.
Unions do nothing more than enforce mediocrity.
Never underestimate a person's ability to vote with their feet.
The bottom line is that SAP and most other large packages are very stable in the sense that there is not much new developpment. Their strength is in their perceived stability.
The drawback is that the model is not very flexible. SAP would never admit it, but their modules are based on "best practices", and very few businesses actually have bast practices.
Thus, to get SAP installed, it needs about 50% customisation of the code, and 50% customisation of the business. Neither of these are cheap.
Now, SAP really makes it's money on the installation, and not on the actual software. For an installation, they get to throw a number of consultants, and a number of ABAB programmers at the client, all substantially marked up. They talk in riddles alternating between MBA style management consulting, and at very basic ABAB concepts. Neither of these are in the real reach of the customer, and the customer is bent / masaged / coerced to fit the SAP mould.
Although I am biased, and am rather cynical, I believe that the above holds an element of truth.
The short answer to your question is that SAP will not tell you the proce of the product because:
- The software is licensed on a scale related to the customer's size, support requirements and status.
- SAP will have a licensing structure which is often significantly discounted, but not all discounts are equal. They do not want their customers to be able to easily price shop.
- The bulk of the money comes in through implementation through customisation / consultancy. This is, if SAP is successful, performed on a time and materials basis, and thus the costs rapidly escalate.
- Competition is quite fierce with people like Oracle, and price quoting is a bad thing if your business sales pitch is based on reputation and goodwill, not a "good bargain".
- SAP will drain every penny they can get, and the price is really an Arm and a Leg (literally if you count the staff turnover generated by job redundancy and change stress, as well as scape-goatism).
Basically, be prepared to pay more than you bargained for, whatever you are quoted.I figure this requires a response.
Having got used to the HHKB, including changing the left meta key to another Fn key, I can get around the Alt-Fn-Ctrl issues just fine (one fingure manages the alt and left meta key together). As I say, I became quite comfortable with the keyboard, and especially liked the close proximity of the Esc key.
The problems I had was moving to other machines (like going in to the server room and wiping a shutdown message by mistake using Caps-Lock d instead of Ctrl-D. Or getting a "`" when I want to hit escape. These things all become bugging. It simply was more inconvenient and productivity destroying to have to change my "mental state" when using keyboards on different machines, than to conform to the norm. I still maintain a trackball at my workstation though.
In response to your last comment, I suggest that you re-read my original post. I am afraid that you got the situation reversed. I have Caps-D problems when I am NOT at the HHKB, thus, I was perfectly adjusted to the HHKB.
This is just a note to hallmark.... "I was the first person to think about introducing a line of sympathy cards for those who are victims of dot-bomb syndromes, and related demises."
How about:
Sorry to hear your job...
... was not all it was hacked up to be.
Enjoy "The Road Ahead."
Whu get thousands of answers from others when you could have used Google?
If Dongles will be REQUIRED for MP3's etc, it will not be surprising if the gender gap increases in the future with regards to technology.
... It is a big jump from going from the article's text to key escrow.
It is in the interests of many people/organisations to use encryption. Further, systems like Gnutella do more than just music / mp3 / copyrighted material transfers. The problem is in proving the content of the transfer, rather than the fat that the transfer occurred. Further, much of the sting of these "interested parties" disappears outside the USofA.
Let's face it, PGP is equally capable of transferring sensitive / copyrighted material as Gnutella, Freenet, etc.
Still, the point is that there is no link between the article and key escrow. Tha article only points out that the RIAA, and others are looking at alternative "Napster's".
Now, if FreeNet had Linux clients....
Kudos to IBM. This is bound to be a bit controvercial, but I believe that IBM is the most socially open of all the closed software houses. They have stated their intentions, and have clearly started a concerted effort to deliver. They are enthusiastic Linux supporters.
Most of the components of their Suite have been released before in individual parcels, but the real news here is the delivery mechanism. Bundling them together with an installer is the key point. If there is an easier to use installer for packages, including remote distribution of packages, this is a GOOD THING.
The other newsworthy piece I get from the links is the inclusion of server hosted applications. These have been available for a while in Unix environments with remote X servers, but this brings the actual processing to the client, and reduces server load while at the same time allowing for central software control.
As an administrator, this is attractive.
As a side note, this just re-inforces Linux in it's role as a server rather than a desktop.
Regardless, Trackballs are always in the same place, require far less movement to get accross the screen, are much more precise and accurate, and never get "lost" on the desk. Further, there is no need for a mousepad, and there is less risk of injury. Problem with some trackballs, the same as mice, is that some are right/left hand incompatible.
I am thr proud owner of a Happy Hacker keyboard. I must admit that got used to it in a hurry, and my productivity in most activities increased.
Unfortunately, not everyone has a HHKB, and moving from one machine to another introduced huge amounts of frustration. The unix commandline became a pain, vi is a nighmare with me regularly trying to hit ctrl-D to go down a page, but instead hit CAPS-LOCK then D and effectively delete to end of line. Issues like this are a serious drawback.
Bottom line is that I have retired my HHKB, and endure the less ergonomic but more standard full keyboards.
If you work in a closed system where you have only one computer, or all your computers have the same keyboard, then go for it. Otherwise, it may become too comfortable, and then yu will not be able to smoothly interface with other keyboards.
A further example is that I have a laptop with a UK Layout keyboard, and my desktop has a US Layout. I have hat fo install a US keyboard on the laptop otherwise I go mad with @ instead of ".
The story suggests that the healing solution is through redundancy. This is a relatively easy method for "self healing". Mainframes have done it for years, the issue is to get the OS to understand what's happening.
The benefits are that when something breaks, you can be alerted to it, and fix it without downtime. The drawback is that you need to buy at least two complete computers for every functioning one.
The article is misleading in a way, because it suggests that the computers really are self "healing", yet, the article says "backup systems that kick in whenever the server senses a problem". Who to believe?
If you want uptime, get redundancy. Compaq is even offering hotswap PCI cards now. Things are really cool. All we need is the operating system to be as advanced as the hardware. It does not help when your NT machine needs to reboot when you change the IP address.
Computers ARE self healing, if you considder that the operators/technicians are actually part of the computer "System".
My understanding of the process is that the nanotubes form in very hot furnaces by passing lasers and high current electric arcs through the carbon vapour in the furnace. This is not an easy process, and essentially requires that these transistors are individually manufactured.
This is by no means a commertially viable process.... yet. Don't hold your breath.
.. that losing your marbles could become a verys serious affair...
My sorry pathetic whine is that for every dot.bomb, there is a story of a dot.fortune.
.fortune people. What am I doing wrong. Perhaps it is the late nights and heavy coffee days. It seems that REAL WORK does not really pay off like it used to.
Why can I not be one of the
While leasing does have many benefits, the leasing decision is never a 100% win. Leased items are never yours.
In the company I work in, there are two types of programs. Thouse bought, and those custome built. The bought items could be leased (and for good reasons). The custom software could never be leased because no company has created them. The closest the company could come to leasing the custom software is to oursources the development and maintenance of that software. Still, because that company created that software, they control it. By leasing software, you lose control.
Another example of where leasing is inconvenient is as follows: our company still has some 16bit applications running on win95. For better or worse, this is the case. Now, for whatever reason (and I am not a programmer involved with this application), the C compilers we have in our 32bit environments will compile the 16 bit application, but it will not work. To compile the aplication, we need to do it on a win3.1 machine, and it will then run happily on other 32bit platforms (through to NT4 that we know of). This puts us in a business which is using decade old software. No company would maintain that other than ourselves.
Bottom line: whatever reasons there are to lease software, there are still reasons to outright own it.
As a sailor, I can see some major issues with solar sail travel...
1. The further you are from the sun, the less force is exerted on the sails, until the forces from other stars/suns outweighs the force of our sun. Remembering that our sun is relatively small, this will not necessarily be at the midpoint between solar systems.
2. Travelling towards the sun is difficult and requires some sort of "tacking" process.
3. Travelling in any direction other than away from the sun requires a centerboard and rudder for maintaining a direction. Both these systems rely on resistance. In space there is no resistance. There sill need to be something to exert force away from the sun to keep the correct heading.
4. Sun-spots change the intensity of the solar winds, creating 'gusts'. Gusts will be difficult to control.
My understanding is that solar-wind is best considered as only part of a spacial travel system. Combining solar-winds with other power mecnahinsms. From what I can see, there is only one direction the vessel can travel, and that will be determined by the release time from the earth, and the velocity at releas. After that, the only form of control is to change the "sail area" by either reducing sail size, or by changing orientation. Neither of these processes change direction, only speed.
Thus, for useful travel, an intersection trajectory must be set at the beginning of the flight, and then the speed of the craft must be carefully managed so that the destination point and the craft intersect at the correct time.
On the whole this is a good thing for everyone in the world. Supply/demand relationships are well understood, and everyone is aware that price manipulation affects both. Essentially, Consumers (both retail and corportate) have been getting substantially "Discounted" software from Microsoft through either incorrect, or blatantly fraudulent licensing. Now that Microsoft is turning screws, this is affecting the real price, and thus changing the supply / demand process. Alaska Airlines is a classic example of a Demand drop.
Microsoft has probably done it's maths, and figured that the increase in revenue will outweigh the drop in demand. What is of interest to me, and it is my prediction, that like Alaska Airlines, more companies will innovate and find "work-arounds". This process will reduce dependancy on Microsoft, and will fuel a process of "divorce" from Microsoft. The big word for this is that Microsoft is "disenfranchising" it's customers.
The good news for everyone else is better, more interesting jobs outside of Redmond. I am one of those people.
Anyway, my advice to Microsoft customers, "Count your pennies".
...marketers then ....
"Our ads are sooo good that people should be paying to see them, not to avoid them."
Well, I commented on the new Handspring a couple of days ago, and pondered what was really so good with it. Now, on the other hand, I can see great strides in innovation with this device. Unfortunately there is no price I can see.
The benefits I see here are primarily for existing Sony product users. I am keen on the Sony digital camera's, and have been tempted by the Vaio. So, having a common memory stick access accross the brands is a great thing. Obviosly the biggest benefit is with the interoperability, and the great storage benefit of the memory stick.
It is a shame that the memory stick is so propriatory, yet I have yet to see palms with Compact flash / PCMCIA type add-ons for additional storage. Thus, Sony is truly innovating.
Go get 'em, Sony.
My theory is that the .NET is a "good idea". Now what Microsoft needs is a "good platform". Thus, the need to use more than MS as an OS.
Yet, this new "Edge" is simply not that much better .... here is a link to a handspring hosted comparison table. It shows that the Vx is smaller and lighter. Where the Edge is better is only because it has the latest software (which can be upgraded on the Vx anyway), has a microphone, the "springboard" (which I have never seen used...) and has a blinking light ... ;-)
Really, Visor Edge is playing catch up still.
In many countries, marriage is a contract... picture it, a non-compete clause. Even better, a no-moonlighting clause. It is not something which I would agree to under any circumstances, unless it provided me with a better income while I was NOT working ... then I would considder the deal, jeez, who wouldn't. Basically, I can be bought.
gus