Don't get too excited. All an electric car does is moves the power generation from the inside of your car to a powerplant outside your city, which probably produces more pollution by burning coal. Better car performance is cool, but this doesn't have any environmental benefits.
Oh, shut the FUCK UP. Every time an electric car article comes up on/., ten posers have to remind us that 'it doesn't have any environmental benefits.' Well, if the the damn NC Department of Education would adopt electric buses, I wouldn't have to choke every morning when the school bus comes to pick up my neighbor's child (anyone else here notice how buses are the dirtiest, nastiest vehicles on the roads next to logging trucks?). For me, that would be an 'environmental benefit.' Maybe we could have just the one stand of trees around the power plant in a city killed by noxious fumes instead of all of them.
And how about noise, jackass. Every electric I've ever heard ran at a quiet hum, compared to the rattle put out by the average unmaintained fossil fuel spewing junk heap that most people drive around in.
And what about future possibilities? The future promise cheaper, more efficient PV cells that could be integrated into an electric car so that there will be an advantage to letting my PV covered vehicle sit in that hot parking lot all day. I may only get half a charge before quitting time, but it would be a free fill-up. How would a convential vehicle take advantage of all that 0-emissions sunlight?
So take your tired arguments and go find someone who hasn't heard it. Maybe they'll listen to you.
You seem to be confusing ease of use with ease of learning.
If it is a program I rarely use, ease of learning and ease of use are exactly the same thing. Why do I need to memorize and remember complex commands for something that I will rarely do?
The point isn't that the PC as we know it is still popular, it's that the market is no longer profitable.
Oh, bullshit. Complete and total hogwash. The PC industry is extremely profitable. The problem is that companies such as Intel, Dell, etc. got used to 50 percent profit margins during the late 80s. Getting by on what a normal company would get (10 to 20), seems like bankruptcy to them now.
How much profit do you think a printer makes? My brother-in-law ran a printing company for years. It's generally considered a good year if you have anything left over after paying employees and all the rest of the bills. Do you see any lack of printers?
Someone will always be there to make money from me when I want to buy a PC. Even if it is some guy working out of a garage.
I agree that in the computer savvy world micro$oft products are not known as the best, though I wouldn't use the discription mediocre just that there are better solutions. However for the rest of the people out there, so many of them only know of micro$oft products or the ones that know of others actually think that micro$oft is the best solution.
And this situation has grown from their monopoly power. If M$ were not so efficient at killing any competitor before they've had a chance to make a name for themselves, people would have heard of alternatives. If the sale of office software was not tied to the sale of PCs, people would comparison shop and know of alternatives. The fact that they are a monopoly enables them to lock out choices before the consumer has a chance to decide for themselves, and in that vacuum call themselves 'good'. This is harm to the consumer.
BTW, it's not my definition.
Whose definition is it? If you've got a link I'd like to see it, mainly 'cause you mentioned that "First, a monopolist must be able to..." and I'd like to see what some of the other definitions are.
Microsoft explains, "A monopoly, by definition, is a company that has the ability to restrict entry by new firms and unilaterally control prices."... "Microsoft can do neither (Allbritton)."
M$ claim they can do neither, but they restricted Netscape, DR-DOS, and OS/2 from entering various aspects of PC markets. (Before you claim they all hung themselves, remember exclusive tying deals and bought out developers all paid for with monopoly monies.) As soon as competitors are out of the way, M$ charges whatever they please. Why has the price of the OS increased even though every cost in the computing world tanks?
This link has a little more on the definition of a monopoly, as well as attributing the last quote to Gates in testimony before Congress. This article defines monopoly as holding more than 70 percent of the market (but that definition is no fun because it doesn't leave room for argument, regardless of the fact that it is the legally correct one 8*). The article also explains some of the exclusivity deals that M$ had to choke off Netscape.
This link claims that M$ would have to have no competitors at all in order to be considered a monopoly. Obvious proof that the ability to publish in a college newspaper does not immediately imply that one has a clue.
This link calls the court find of M$ monopoly power "...a legal no-brainer, once you accepted the government's narrow definition of the relevant market..."
But reliability is a lot more than just how reliable the software itself is, it's also support networks that are in place, how quickly patches are released, how promptly response is over known issues and those other aspects.
No it is not. A reliable car does not mean a car that the shop can repair quickly. It means a car that does not have to be put in the shop to begin with.
Then there is also that I don't need to go to micro$oft directly,
Which you can't do without paying out the nose. M$ doesn't even support their own products unless you are a very large customer. They shove nearly all problems off onto hardware vendors. The 'knowledge base' is a cheap hack that nearly every OS has in one form or another. What I find impressive is that they can get away with such a large knowledge base. Keep in mind, each entry implies something not working in the OS. Something that in most cases is a bug found by the customer after they have paid for a working product.
when I as a consumer purchase software, part of the reason I am paying that price is the expected support I will recieve
But with M$, you are not paying them for support, because they won't give you any with the purchase of the product. You are paying in order to play on the monopolist field, because that is where everyone else is playing. It's easier to pay the monopolist and just get along, than it is to buck the trend. If someone puts up a sign pointing to another green/flatter/bigger field, M$ will put up a wall to keep anyone from seeing the sign. The few people that are playing on the better field will not be able to convince many to come with them, because 'that isn't where the big game is'.
The problem is, the big game will never be able to move if M$ is allowed to put up a wall every time someone puts up a sign pointing to the next field. To say that software is reliable because a lot of people can fix it is, and that's all we have anyway, probably isn't the best argument.
So by your narrow definition there, porsche has a monopoly on the car market, because they charge more than the majority of their competitors??
The price of a Porsche is not out of line from other luxury sports vehicles. The company charges more because they offer more. Sun can charge more for their OS/hardware because they sell reliablility with it. Microsoft is widely regarded as a producer of mediocre products in a commodity market. And yet they still are able to price their products independant of market forces.
I was asked to sign a NDA that would have put me out of commission for 3yrs. I had been working at the company for about 9 months. My condition was that 3yrs salary at my starting rate be put in a trust fund.
As to the judgement, a deeper issue that you don't mention is that antitrust law itself is a tangled mess of subjective criteria to begin with. Monopoly is a concept solid enough to be fairly useful in economics, but not quite solid enough to be objectively definable in law.
Here, you are wrong. The definition of a monopoly is quite well defined by laws and by precedence. First, a monopolist must be able to have the power to set prices far above what a competitive market would command. Seeing as how nearly every other competitor in the x86 OS market is giving their software away, and yet MS can still charge $200US, I would say they have a monopoly.
1. Before MS came along, computers were unaffordable. Now we all reap the benefits of a computer in every home.
What does MS have to do with the current drop in RAM prices? Did they enable the AMD and other cheap processor makers? Considering that the price of the OS is the only component of the PC that has RISEN in the past ten years, just how do you attribute the price drop to MS?
On a related note, how do you attribute the price drop in MAINFRAME computer prices to MS?
2. MS have consistently brought down prices - they cut prices in the spreadsheet market; they are producing software that is cheaper than what was their before. And they're still doing it. MS Sql Server, which is at least on a par with Oracle, is much cheaper than it, and thus benefits consumers that way.
This is good?! The courts have a name for this. It's called DUMPING. Let me explain. A big company comes into town. Just for shits and giggles, we'll call this company Wal-Mart. Through much fanfare, they advertise ridiculously low prices which they tell everyone they can offer because they 'buy and sell in volume' (ie, we lose money on each widget, but we make it up in volume). Small-fry local competitors can't compete, and within the year they have all shut-down. Wal-Mart then discovers, to their incredulous suprise, that their superstore in the middle of rural nowhere isn't making money. Their solution is either:
1) Raise prices. Usually above what the small-fry guy was charging because there is so much corporate overhead to cover.
2) Close the store and make the people travel an additional 40 miles to the next town (where there is only a Wal-Mart since they've also locked out all the competition there.)
Either way, the customer ends up with crappier products at the same or worse price, worse service since the minimum wage checkout person who used to have his own store really couldn't care less if the wheels fall off you kids bike, and no one to complain to (as if Wal-Mart gives a damn what one customer thinks, unless that customer is a radio talk show host.)
I know that I'm responding to a troll, an ignoramus or a fool, as evidenced by your claim that SQL Server is anywhere close to being on par with Oracle.
3. Believe it or not, Microsoft actually do produce good software.
More troll/ignoramus/fool evidence. Define good. (Hint: "I can write a letter before the system crashes," is not it.)
4. Microsoft have benefitted the US economy. It really has. Compared with the UK, for instance, the strength of the US IT industry is vast - and much of this strength is due to Microsoft.
Because of it or in spite of it?
5. Nearly all opposition to MS comes from jealous competitors. Netscape have been beaten fair-and-square by MS, for instance - just compare Netscape 6 with MSIE, for instance.
I'm not an MS competitor. I've just used their products as well as others. I choose to oppose MS because I'm consistently appalled by the fact that even though competitors offer superior performance, they are consistently shut out by monopolistic practises. It's not just Netscape either. Can you say DR-DOS, just to name one?
Strangling distribution channels with monopolistic threats is not 'fair-and-square'. Illegal tying and dumping are not 'fair-and-square'. Comparing
1)a product that didn't receive proper development funding because cash flow was cut by monopolistic practise of a competitor
2)a product that was over funded by the monopolistic competitor with monies derived from other monopolized sources in order to attempt to hide that harm is being done to the consumer
is not a fair comparison.
whereas the truth is that Microsoft produce damn fine software
I think I've done a very good job of avoiding personal attack and refuting your presumptions with facts and logic. On this point, however, I'm completely at a loss to dam up the rising tide within me that must say:
The truth is, sir, that you are a clueless shithead. Please do not confuse other people until you have removed your head from your ass.
You are very, very confused as to how numbers are stored in a binary system..9999 will not be stored with 4 digits (.9999). It will be stored as a binary mantissa and a binary exponent, not as 4 characters. The problem lies in that the mantissa can only carry so much precision. Think of it this way:
For number greater than 1:
0000 = 0
0001 = 1
0010 = 2
0011 = 3
0100 = 4
etc.
For numbers less than 1:
1000 =.5
0100 =.25
1100 =.75
0010 =.125
etc.
I'm working off of very vague memories here (10 years since I had this in class), but I believe the IA32 architecture has 80 bit floats, with some portion allocated for the mantissa and the rest for the exponent.
Re:I think we'd have more important problems
on
Rebooting The World?
·
· Score: 5
That's right, Man!!
I may be a tech geek, but I'm also 230 all-American pounds of twisted steel and sex appeal. If it all ended tomorrow I would run butt-wild naked, kill you all for food and mate with your women. Then I would make me a 733t machine from beach sand that I purify over the campfire that I start from rubbing two sticks together. Doping. We don't need no stinking doping. I would just make up a new type of PN just using leaves from an oak tree or something, just like they do on all those Star Trek episodes. Tech geeks are 733t I say, especially us suave, muscled, manly type.
For the clueless: doping in the process of adding specific amounts of certain impurities to purified silicon in order for it to be a semi-conductor. It's also the process of adding impurities to the human body in order to get fucked-up, but that is a different post.
Saying that if thieves must exist, then they should exist in large numbers and that they should all look alike is not the same as saying that their activities should be legal. The first situation allows the public to arm themselves and be wary of the fraudulent. The second gives the fraudulent free reign.
Buying a computer should not be based on trust, and this is exactly one point covered in my previous post. Buying a computer should be based on a contract, whether explicitly signed or through common business laws. Fraud should always be illegal, and once the transaction is no longer based on trust, purchasing from the big or small would be less of an issue.
Suppose YOU had a time machine and got stuck in some medieval time. Would you survive more than a day? What of your advanced technical knowledge would be of any use to you without the advance tools that you honestly couldn't replicate? Would you live like a king or a beggar?
For instance, if I was thrown in the past, I feel that I could live comfortably if I could improve the life and health of a king and his court. Perhaps by building a plumbing or central heating system for his castle. But this always begs the question of where would I get pipes, pumps and ventilation ducts. I usually end up feeling dumber that I like, so I quit thinking about it.
As to the question at hand. The truth is that much of the problems with legacy systems would be reproduced if we had to start from ground zero. How would we produce a transistor without the knowledge and equipment to produce a diode? Once we have the equipment set up to produce transistors and diodes, how quickly do we abandon a machine full of discreet transistor and diodes which is used to make integrated circuits? The problem with legacy systems is not a technological one. It is an economic one, much related to the problem of do you remodel a building or tear down the old and build it new.
Wow, someone on/. that actually knows something from real life experience. I'm to understand that your reclusive group is scheduled to be classified as an endangered species.
But now that you have popped up. May I presume to ask a question? (Well, I guess I will since I already have.)
I thought that any damage to cartilage caused it to calcify into bone after a long period of painful tenderness. I'm a wrestler, thereby being very familiar with cauliflower ear. For those who don't know, a painful condition whereby the cartilage of the ear becomes tender and inflamed after being pounded upon by a competitor (also developed from talking on the phone too much). Older wrestlers tend to have knobby, hard ear lobes.
How do you put new cartilage in without causing damage and the corresponding calcification?
There's a common misconception about fraud victims: that they somewhow deserved what they got, because they were themselves greedy and bought an idea that was too good to be true. But that's just false. No victim is responsible for his own suffering. We all owe each other a duty to prevent victimhood whenever and wherever we find it.
No I don't think that is a misconception. Most frauds use quick/easy money as bait, and they are generally quite obviously bullshit to anyone who will stop a minute to think. Two simple questions expose nearly any fraud:
1) Where are they making their money?
2) What makes me so special?
People who refuse to slow down enough to ponder these questions before jumping for the vanishing money are below contempt in their greed.
Fools and their money are soon parted. -Ben Franklin
Fraud victims are usually poor and hopeless.
I find the idea that anyone in the western world is hopeless to be ludicrous. Left with limited options? Yes. Hopeless? Bullshit! The two are not equivalent. If nothing else it is bonehead easy to get a factory job that will pay for schooling. I know. I was a 21yr old truck driver who lost his liscense with a new wife and a new baby. I worked bagging groceries as a second job until I got a job that would pay for schooling. Now I count myself amoung some of the highest paid professionals in the world. My former position is usually what is held up as 'hopeless'. Hell, the worst that I could have done was to hold my $10 hour factory job, ad infinitum.
They're the same type who play state-sanctioned lotteries (why we tolerate those, I'll never understand) because they have no other source of hope. They're trying to scrape themselves a living, and along comes a wolf who fleeces them. That's a bad thing. That much is clear.
And the wolf would be toothless if the fools would stop and think for a moment. But consider nature for a moment. The more predators there are, the more wary herbivores become. Evolution will even provide the hunted with additional defences to protect them from becoming prey.
Now apply it to this situation. The more people get taken, the more wary they will become of being taken again. People will begin to read contracts and question the terms thereof. People will question what they are told by politicians. The online frauds are small potatoes compared to those proferred by the like of Republican Party, the Democrats, M$ and AOL, IMNSHO. People agree to abominable terms in contracts from large companies all the time because they feel comfortable that someone else is looking after them. People believe that their politicians don't lie to them because the other party is watching (except that the other party is also lying so they agree not to call each other on it). It's gotten to the point where large companies feel like they can have customers sign anything with imputence(sp?). Unfortunately, some of the companies are so large and control so much of so many markets that their terms must be accepted in order to operate effectively in society. A power they derive from the fact that so many do not question the contract terms.
Down with the coddling. Let people be taken until they learn to be a little shrewd about thier business dealings. Fools don't deserve their money, and people will quickly learn to question what they are told and not to be foolish. It will make for a much better society all around once everyone looks out for themselves.
The trouble with analyzing fiction is that it is all made up. You can just say anything you want.
Death Star II was constructed from unknown materials. Specifically, the density of the materials was unknown.
Asteroids such as caused the Cretaceous-Tertiary extinction on Earth are not simply hanging in orbit and then drop. They impact while moving at celestial speeds. Death Star II would have started it's descent at nearly zero velocity compared to an asteroid. Depending upon the materials used, inertial mass may have been low enough that the atmosphere would slow even multi-kilometer wide pieces to the point that secondary disasters such as global earthquakes and nuclear winter would not occur. Think what would happend if DSII were constructed of cardboard. Pieces would hit the air and then sort of float to the ground. Yeah, it would be a big mess, but not something that could destroy a world.
Microsoft got to where they are today through two things - a comination of ruthless business tactics and complete incompetance on the part of potential competitors.
How about adding in network effects? Where did blind luck fall in your analysis? BTW, a small competitor forced out of business by a monopoly's misleading marketing (ie, bald-face lying) and blackballing those who wish to do business with him can not be considered incompetent.
If there are half a dozen different types of system, each with their own way of doing things, then people are either going to have to be trained for each one, or lose out on potential employment at offices using an OS they don't know.
Or, OSs will standardize on a set of fairly standard widgets. You would not need training on Jack's OS, because it would look just like Jane's OS. Most of the GUI 'innovation' in the last 20 years has consisted almost exclusively of adding more buttons that are 'prettier'. Adding a new 'feature' in a multi-OS world would mean that you would have to make its purpose obvious and simple, else no one would use it. Compare this to the current situation of adding buttons for buttons sake.
There is also another scenario that you ignore. In a multi-OS world, the use of the OS would be considered before the purchase. No more 'nobody ever got fired for buying $$$$'. Each purchase would require thought, and the OS would fit the purpose. Why does there need to be a graphical interface in the kernel of a mail server which has remote administration? Nobody knows and nobody cares, becasue 'nobody ever got fired for buying Microsoft.'
Furthermore, single vendors will not be able to leech off of the economy by forcing unnecessary upgrade cycles. A multi-OS world would force open data formats (remember what forced ASCII on the world), which would allow companies to keep there profits instead of re-investing in software to do the same thing as their current software, except in a different data format.
So, in sum, a multi-OS situation will not 'damage the economy'? It would enhance the economy. It will allow true innovation and force an openess of formats that will slow leeches like Microsoft from sucking the life-blood from nearly every company in the western world.
becomes even less useful to me and my modem. Say what you will about/., at least they use frames and text intelligently enough to create a nice interface that loads well over a modem. Most 'news' sites think they are publishing a glossy magazine, repleat with a ton of bandwidth wasting garbage graphics.
Or, maybe, he was bitching because he could not get the senators drunk while bribing them, requireing him to put a lot more money in the pot of for the same amount of 'education' (as defined by M$).
Or, maybe, he's bitching because he can't get recruits drunk before having them sign NDA/NCA with ridiculous terms.
Or, he's just a whiney fraternity reject who wants to stay smashed, and he's pissed that the politicos in Utah don't worship at his feat like they did in Florida.
Question: Why the hell would the senators be falling all over themselves to meet with this guy any more than any other constituent? If he has something to say, bring it up at a BUSINESS CONFERENCE where everyone can consider any proposals put forth. There is no valid public reason for politicos to meet with the richest merchants in secret back rooms. If Mister CEO has something important to say, say it in public, or write the senator a letter like the rest of us.
Your car exhaust bothers me and is bad for my health. Ban it.
Done. In NC you have to take your car in yearly for inspection. Part of that inspection is now emissions testing. I just wish they would apply the same standards to school buses and logging trucks.
Your loud talking in public interupts my thoughts, which negatively effects my well-being. Stop it.
Done. Lots of ordinances are in place to control noise levels.
Your barbeque polutes the atmosphere and poses a serious health risk to others. Please refrain from cooking outdoors.
Done. In most cities, if your barbeque gets to big the local fire department will make it smaller for you.
When you wash your car in the driveway it drains polluted water into my aquifer. Stop washing your car.
Done (sortof). Many controls are place on what can be included in cleaners.
Your grocery bags are filling my landfill. Please find another way to transport your food.
Done. Many grocery stores encourage the use of reusable cloth grocery bags and recycling of the plastic kind.
What else could I help you with.
I used to chew tobacco. I would tell smokers that I was more polite than they, since I didn't force others to share my pleasure; furthermore, if they didn't cease sharing their tobacco smoke with me I would kindly commence to share my tobacco juice with them.
Wow, you just may end up getting my money after all.
Look, here is my wish list, and where I think most of the vendors are missing out on marketing the strength of Linux/Unix to the whole SOHO market.
I don't want to be stuck at a desk at home. I need a lot of power sometimes, but rarely. I want to be able to access my high speed connection no matter where I'm at. Sometimes I want to carry a little work with me when I go out of town. I want my wife and kids to be able to use the computer resources, too, and they want the same things that I do.
What I want is a decent multi-processor server (couple of Celeron 500, 256MB is plenty), with two or three of the cheapest laptops I can get, wirelessly networked. The server handles the printer and the Net connection and runs all the apps. The laptop is just a display device. When in the network, all it does is provide a login screen then pulls everything else from the server. A utility would provide synchronization of my home directory when I wanted to leave the network, then the notebook would run under its own power.
This is possible to do now, but the hassles of setting everything up to run together is a BIG hassle. I am willing to pay a premium if someone has already configured the system to handle all of this. But just a 'laptop with Linux' is covered pretty well by several HOWTOs. Futhermore, this isn't something to be marketed in pieces. This is an $3000 to $4000 integrated home computing solution. I just set it down power up the components, add a few users, and away I go. It would require your own customized distribution. It would require that you actually choose one text editor to include instead of dumping 10 on the disk. It would require that you test that the system does what an average SOHO user would want to do with a computer with out them having to download hundreds of megs of compressed source code. It would require that you do a lot of hand holding. It would require that you build a very large safe to hold all the money that people like me would send to you.
where are you going to get these parts
.
.
.
for less than $2300 ???
Well,...? How about here. There's a lot of other places, but this one was easy to find. Sure, it doesn't come with my choice of Linux distribution or StarOffice, but, guess what, I can get those for FREE!!
HEH, cool choice. I've got a QuadCab. My two boys love it, too. Dodge may not have been first with the 4door truck, but that Nissan thing doesn't have shit for leg room in the back seat.
Unfortunately, that doesn't do anything to improve the value proposition of your notebooks. Gateway is in the midwest, too. Their Solo 1150 has MSRP starting at $899.
Slashdot Mirror
Don't get too excited. All an electric car does is moves the power generation from the inside of your car to a powerplant outside your city, which probably produces more pollution by burning coal. Better car performance is cool, but this doesn't have any environmental benefits.
/., ten posers have to remind us that 'it doesn't have any environmental benefits.' Well, if the the damn NC Department of Education would adopt electric buses, I wouldn't have to choke every morning when the school bus comes to pick up my neighbor's child (anyone else here notice how buses are the dirtiest, nastiest vehicles on the roads next to logging trucks?). For me, that would be an 'environmental benefit.' Maybe we could have just the one stand of trees around the power plant in a city killed by noxious fumes instead of all of them.
Oh, shut the FUCK UP. Every time an electric car article comes up on
And how about noise, jackass. Every electric I've ever heard ran at a quiet hum, compared to the rattle put out by the average unmaintained fossil fuel spewing junk heap that most people drive around in.
And what about future possibilities? The future promise cheaper, more efficient PV cells that could be integrated into an electric car so that there will be an advantage to letting my PV covered vehicle sit in that hot parking lot all day. I may only get half a charge before quitting time, but it would be a free fill-up. How would a convential vehicle take advantage of all that 0-emissions sunlight?
So take your tired arguments and go find someone who hasn't heard it. Maybe they'll listen to you.
But how will a sterile anything ever produce sterile offspring?
You seem to be confusing ease of use with ease of learning.
If it is a program I rarely use, ease of learning and ease of use are exactly the same thing. Why do I need to memorize and remember complex commands for something that I will rarely do?
The point isn't that the PC as we know it is still popular, it's that the market is no longer profitable.
Oh, bullshit. Complete and total hogwash. The PC industry is extremely profitable. The problem is that companies such as Intel, Dell, etc. got used to 50 percent profit margins during the late 80s. Getting by on what a normal company would get (10 to 20), seems like bankruptcy to them now.
How much profit do you think a printer makes? My brother-in-law ran a printing company for years. It's generally considered a good year if you have anything left over after paying employees and all the rest of the bills. Do you see any lack of printers?
Someone will always be there to make money from me when I want to buy a PC. Even if it is some guy working out of a garage.
I agree that in the computer savvy world micro$oft products are not known as the best, though I wouldn't use the discription mediocre just that there are better solutions. However for the rest of the people out there, so many of them only know of micro$oft products or the ones that know of others actually think that micro$oft is the best solution.
..." and I'd like to see what some of the other definitions are.
... "Microsoft can do neither (Allbritton)."
And this situation has grown from their monopoly power. If M$ were not so efficient at killing any competitor before they've had a chance to make a name for themselves, people would have heard of alternatives. If the sale of office software was not tied to the sale of PCs, people would comparison shop and know of alternatives. The fact that they are a monopoly enables them to lock out choices before the consumer has a chance to decide for themselves, and in that vacuum call themselves 'good'. This is harm to the consumer.
BTW, it's not my definition.
Whose definition is it? If you've got a link I'd like to see it, mainly 'cause you mentioned that "First, a monopolist must be able to
This link has a quote from M$:
Microsoft explains, "A monopoly, by definition, is a company that has the ability to restrict entry by new firms and unilaterally control prices."
M$ claim they can do neither, but they restricted Netscape, DR-DOS, and OS/2 from entering various aspects of PC markets. (Before you claim they all hung themselves, remember exclusive tying deals and bought out developers all paid for with monopoly monies.) As soon as competitors are out of the way, M$ charges whatever they please. Why has the price of the OS increased even though every cost in the computing world tanks?
This link has a little more on the definition of a monopoly, as well as attributing the last quote to Gates in testimony before Congress. This article defines monopoly as holding more than 70 percent of the market (but that definition is no fun because it doesn't leave room for argument, regardless of the fact that it is the legally correct one 8*). The article also explains some of the exclusivity deals that M$ had to choke off Netscape.
This link claims that M$ would have to have no competitors at all in order to be considered a monopoly. Obvious proof that the ability to publish in a college newspaper does not immediately imply that one has a clue.
This link calls the court find of M$ monopoly power "...a legal no-brainer, once you accepted the government's narrow definition of the relevant market..."
But reliability is a lot more than just how reliable the software itself is, it's also support networks that are in place, how quickly patches are released, how promptly response is over known issues and those other aspects.
No it is not. A reliable car does not mean a car that the shop can repair quickly. It means a car that does not have to be put in the shop to begin with.
Then there is also that I don't need to go to micro$oft directly,
Which you can't do without paying out the nose. M$ doesn't even support their own products unless you are a very large customer. They shove nearly all problems off onto hardware vendors. The 'knowledge base' is a cheap hack that nearly every OS has in one form or another. What I find impressive is that they can get away with such a large knowledge base. Keep in mind, each entry implies something not working in the OS. Something that in most cases is a bug found by the customer after they have paid for a working product.
when I as a consumer purchase software, part of the reason I am paying that price is the expected support I will recieve
But with M$, you are not paying them for support, because they won't give you any with the purchase of the product. You are paying in order to play on the monopolist field, because that is where everyone else is playing. It's easier to pay the monopolist and just get along, than it is to buck the trend. If someone puts up a sign pointing to another green/flatter/bigger field, M$ will put up a wall to keep anyone from seeing the sign. The few people that are playing on the better field will not be able to convince many to come with them, because 'that isn't where the big game is'.
The problem is, the big game will never be able to move if M$ is allowed to put up a wall every time someone puts up a sign pointing to the next field. To say that software is reliable because a lot of people can fix it is, and that's all we have anyway, probably isn't the best argument.
So by your narrow definition there, porsche has a monopoly on the car market, because they charge more than the majority of their competitors??
The price of a Porsche is not out of line from other luxury sports vehicles. The company charges more because they offer more. Sun can charge more for their OS/hardware because they sell reliablility with it. Microsoft is widely regarded as a producer of mediocre products in a commodity market. And yet they still are able to price their products independant of market forces.
BTW, it's not my definition.
I was asked to sign a NDA that would have put me out of commission for 3yrs. I had been working at the company for about 9 months. My condition was that 3yrs salary at my starting rate be put in a trust fund.
I was given leave soon thereafter.
As to the judgement, a deeper issue that you don't mention is that antitrust law itself is a tangled mess of subjective criteria to begin with. Monopoly is a concept solid enough to be fairly useful in economics, but not quite solid enough to be objectively definable in law.
Here, you are wrong. The definition of a monopoly is quite well defined by laws and by precedence. First, a monopolist must be able to have the power to set prices far above what a competitive market would command. Seeing as how nearly every other competitor in the x86 OS market is giving their software away, and yet MS can still charge $200US, I would say they have a monopoly.
Good try at subtle FUD, though.
1. Before MS came along, computers were unaffordable. Now we all reap the benefits of a computer in every home.
What does MS have to do with the current drop in RAM prices? Did they enable the AMD and other cheap processor makers? Considering that the price of the OS is the only component of the PC that has RISEN in the past ten years, just how do you attribute the price drop to MS?
On a related note, how do you attribute the price drop in MAINFRAME computer prices to MS?
2. MS have consistently brought down prices - they cut prices in the spreadsheet market; they are producing software that is cheaper than what was their before. And they're still doing it. MS Sql Server, which is at least on a par with Oracle, is much cheaper than it, and thus benefits consumers that way.
This is good?! The courts have a name for this. It's called DUMPING. Let me explain. A big company comes into town. Just for shits and giggles, we'll call this company Wal-Mart. Through much fanfare, they advertise ridiculously low prices which they tell everyone they can offer because they 'buy and sell in volume' (ie, we lose money on each widget, but we make it up in volume). Small-fry local competitors can't compete, and within the year they have all shut-down. Wal-Mart then discovers, to their incredulous suprise, that their superstore in the middle of rural nowhere isn't making money. Their solution is either:
1) Raise prices. Usually above what the small-fry guy was charging because there is so much corporate overhead to cover.
2) Close the store and make the people travel an additional 40 miles to the next town (where there is only a Wal-Mart since they've also locked out all the competition there.)
Either way, the customer ends up with crappier products at the same or worse price, worse service since the minimum wage checkout person who used to have his own store really couldn't care less if the wheels fall off you kids bike, and no one to complain to (as if Wal-Mart gives a damn what one customer thinks, unless that customer is a radio talk show host.)
I know that I'm responding to a troll, an ignoramus or a fool, as evidenced by your claim that SQL Server is anywhere close to being on par with Oracle.
3. Believe it or not, Microsoft actually do produce good software.
More troll/ignoramus/fool evidence. Define good. (Hint: "I can write a letter before the system crashes," is not it.)
4. Microsoft have benefitted the US economy. It really has. Compared with the UK, for instance, the strength of the US IT industry is vast - and much of this strength is due to Microsoft.
Because of it or in spite of it?
5. Nearly all opposition to MS comes from jealous competitors. Netscape have been beaten fair-and-square by MS, for instance - just compare Netscape 6 with MSIE, for instance.
I'm not an MS competitor. I've just used their products as well as others. I choose to oppose MS because I'm consistently appalled by the fact that even though competitors offer superior performance, they are consistently shut out by monopolistic practises. It's not just Netscape either. Can you say DR-DOS, just to name one?
Strangling distribution channels with monopolistic threats is not 'fair-and-square'. Illegal tying and dumping are not 'fair-and-square'. Comparing
1)a product that didn't receive proper development funding because cash flow was cut by monopolistic practise of a competitor
2)a product that was over funded by the monopolistic competitor with monies derived from other monopolized sources in order to attempt to hide that harm is being done to the consumer
is not a fair comparison.
whereas the truth is that Microsoft produce damn fine software
I think I've done a very good job of avoiding personal attack and refuting your presumptions with facts and logic. On this point, however, I'm completely at a loss to dam up the rising tide within me that must say:
The truth is, sir, that you are a clueless shithead. Please do not confuse other people until you have removed your head from your ass.
You are very, very confused as to how numbers are stored in a binary system. .9999 will not be stored with 4 digits (.9999). It will be stored as a binary mantissa and a binary exponent, not as 4 characters. The problem lies in that the mantissa can only carry so much precision. Think of it this way:
.5
.25
.75
.125
For number greater than 1:
0000 = 0
0001 = 1
0010 = 2
0011 = 3
0100 = 4
etc.
For numbers less than 1:
1000 =
0100 =
1100 =
0010 =
etc.
I'm working off of very vague memories here (10 years since I had this in class), but I believe the IA32 architecture has 80 bit floats, with some portion allocated for the mantissa and the rest for the exponent.
That's right, Man!!
I may be a tech geek, but I'm also 230 all-American pounds of twisted steel and sex appeal. If it all ended tomorrow I would run butt-wild naked, kill you all for food and mate with your women. Then I would make me a 733t machine from beach sand that I purify over the campfire that I start from rubbing two sticks together. Doping. We don't need no stinking doping. I would just make up a new type of PN just using leaves from an oak tree or something, just like they do on all those Star Trek episodes. Tech geeks are 733t I say, especially us suave, muscled, manly type.
For the clueless: doping in the process of adding specific amounts of certain impurities to purified silicon in order for it to be a semi-conductor. It's also the process of adding impurities to the human body in order to get fucked-up, but that is a different post.
Saying that if thieves must exist, then they should exist in large numbers and that they should all look alike is not the same as saying that their activities should be legal. The first situation allows the public to arm themselves and be wary of the fraudulent. The second gives the fraudulent free reign.
Buying a computer should not be based on trust, and this is exactly one point covered in my previous post. Buying a computer should be based on a contract, whether explicitly signed or through common business laws. Fraud should always be illegal, and once the transaction is no longer based on trust, purchasing from the big or small would be less of an issue.
Suppose YOU had a time machine and got stuck in some medieval time. Would you survive more than a day? What of your advanced technical knowledge would be of any use to you without the advance tools that you honestly couldn't replicate? Would you live like a king or a beggar?
For instance, if I was thrown in the past, I feel that I could live comfortably if I could improve the life and health of a king and his court. Perhaps by building a plumbing or central heating system for his castle. But this always begs the question of where would I get pipes, pumps and ventilation ducts. I usually end up feeling dumber that I like, so I quit thinking about it.
As to the question at hand. The truth is that much of the problems with legacy systems would be reproduced if we had to start from ground zero. How would we produce a transistor without the knowledge and equipment to produce a diode? Once we have the equipment set up to produce transistors and diodes, how quickly do we abandon a machine full of discreet transistor and diodes which is used to make integrated circuits? The problem with legacy systems is not a technological one. It is an economic one, much related to the problem of do you remodel a building or tear down the old and build it new.
- Fill them with pornographic images
But, wouldn't this make them suck more?
I'm sorry. I just had to ask.
Wow, someone on /. that actually knows something from real life experience. I'm to understand that your reclusive group is scheduled to be classified as an endangered species.
But now that you have popped up. May I presume to ask a question? (Well, I guess I will since I already have.)
I thought that any damage to cartilage caused it to calcify into bone after a long period of painful tenderness. I'm a wrestler, thereby being very familiar with cauliflower ear. For those who don't know, a painful condition whereby the cartilage of the ear becomes tender and inflamed after being pounded upon by a competitor (also developed from talking on the phone too much). Older wrestlers tend to have knobby, hard ear lobes.
How do you put new cartilage in without causing damage and the corresponding calcification?
Let's hope it does.
There's a common misconception about fraud victims: that they somewhow deserved what they got, because they were themselves greedy and bought an idea that was too good to be true. But that's just false. No victim is responsible for his own suffering. We all owe each other a duty to prevent victimhood whenever and wherever we find it.
No I don't think that is a misconception. Most frauds use quick/easy money as bait, and they are generally quite obviously bullshit to anyone who will stop a minute to think. Two simple questions expose nearly any fraud:
1) Where are they making their money?
2) What makes me so special?
People who refuse to slow down enough to ponder these questions before jumping for the vanishing money are below contempt in their greed.
Fools and their money are soon parted. -Ben Franklin
Fraud victims are usually poor and hopeless.
I find the idea that anyone in the western world is hopeless to be ludicrous. Left with limited options? Yes. Hopeless? Bullshit! The two are not equivalent. If nothing else it is bonehead easy to get a factory job that will pay for schooling. I know. I was a 21yr old truck driver who lost his liscense with a new wife and a new baby. I worked bagging groceries as a second job until I got a job that would pay for schooling. Now I count myself amoung some of the highest paid professionals in the world. My former position is usually what is held up as 'hopeless'. Hell, the worst that I could have done was to hold my $10 hour factory job, ad infinitum.
They're the same type who play state-sanctioned lotteries (why we tolerate those, I'll never understand) because they have no other source of hope. They're trying to scrape themselves a living, and along comes a wolf who fleeces them. That's a bad thing. That much is clear.
And the wolf would be toothless if the fools would stop and think for a moment. But consider nature for a moment. The more predators there are, the more wary herbivores become. Evolution will even provide the hunted with additional defences to protect them from becoming prey.
Now apply it to this situation. The more people get taken, the more wary they will become of being taken again. People will begin to read contracts and question the terms thereof. People will question what they are told by politicians. The online frauds are small potatoes compared to those proferred by the like of Republican Party, the Democrats, M$ and AOL, IMNSHO. People agree to abominable terms in contracts from large companies all the time because they feel comfortable that someone else is looking after them. People believe that their politicians don't lie to them because the other party is watching (except that the other party is also lying so they agree not to call each other on it). It's gotten to the point where large companies feel like they can have customers sign anything with imputence(sp?). Unfortunately, some of the companies are so large and control so much of so many markets that their terms must be accepted in order to operate effectively in society. A power they derive from the fact that so many do not question the contract terms.
Down with the coddling. Let people be taken until they learn to be a little shrewd about thier business dealings. Fools don't deserve their money, and people will quickly learn to question what they are told and not to be foolish. It will make for a much better society all around once everyone looks out for themselves.
The trouble with analyzing fiction is that it is all made up. You can just say anything you want.
Death Star II was constructed from unknown materials. Specifically, the density of the materials was unknown.
Asteroids such as caused the Cretaceous-Tertiary extinction on Earth are not simply hanging in orbit and then drop. They impact while moving at celestial speeds. Death Star II would have started it's descent at nearly zero velocity compared to an asteroid. Depending upon the materials used, inertial mass may have been low enough that the atmosphere would slow even multi-kilometer wide pieces to the point that secondary disasters such as global earthquakes and nuclear winter would not occur. Think what would happend if DSII were constructed of cardboard. Pieces would hit the air and then sort of float to the ground. Yeah, it would be a big mess, but not something that could destroy a world.
Moderators?! Insightful!!??!!
More like half-thought out bullshit.
Microsoft got to where they are today through two things - a comination of ruthless business tactics and complete incompetance on the part of potential competitors.
How about adding in network effects? Where did blind luck fall in your analysis? BTW, a small competitor forced out of business by a monopoly's misleading marketing (ie, bald-face lying) and blackballing those who wish to do business with him can not be considered incompetent.
If there are half a dozen different types of system, each with their own way of doing things, then people are either going to have to be trained for each one, or lose out on potential employment at offices using an OS they don't know.
Or, OSs will standardize on a set of fairly standard widgets. You would not need training on Jack's OS, because it would look just like Jane's OS. Most of the GUI 'innovation' in the last 20 years has consisted almost exclusively of adding more buttons that are 'prettier'. Adding a new 'feature' in a multi-OS world would mean that you would have to make its purpose obvious and simple, else no one would use it. Compare this to the current situation of adding buttons for buttons sake.
There is also another scenario that you ignore. In a multi-OS world, the use of the OS would be considered before the purchase. No more 'nobody ever got fired for buying $$$$'. Each purchase would require thought, and the OS would fit the purpose. Why does there need to be a graphical interface in the kernel of a mail server which has remote administration? Nobody knows and nobody cares, becasue 'nobody ever got fired for buying Microsoft.'
Furthermore, single vendors will not be able to leech off of the economy by forcing unnecessary upgrade cycles. A multi-OS world would force open data formats (remember what forced ASCII on the world), which would allow companies to keep there profits instead of re-investing in software to do the same thing as their current software, except in a different data format.
So, in sum, a multi-OS situation will not 'damage the economy'? It would enhance the economy. It will allow true innovation and force an openess of formats that will slow leeches like Microsoft from sucking the life-blood from nearly every company in the western world.
becomes even less useful to me and my modem. Say what you will about /., at least they use frames and text intelligently enough to create a nice interface that loads well over a modem. Most 'news' sites think they are publishing a glossy magazine, repleat with a ton of bandwidth wasting garbage graphics.
Or, maybe, he was bitching because he could not get the senators drunk while bribing them, requireing him to put a lot more money in the pot of for the same amount of 'education' (as defined by M$).
Or, maybe, he's bitching because he can't get recruits drunk before having them sign NDA/NCA with ridiculous terms.
Or, he's just a whiney fraternity reject who wants to stay smashed, and he's pissed that the politicos in Utah don't worship at his feat like they did in Florida.
Question: Why the hell would the senators be falling all over themselves to meet with this guy any more than any other constituent? If he has something to say, bring it up at a BUSINESS CONFERENCE where everyone can consider any proposals put forth. There is no valid public reason for politicos to meet with the richest merchants in secret back rooms. If Mister CEO has something important to say, say it in public, or write the senator a letter like the rest of us.
Your car exhaust bothers me and is bad for my health. Ban it.
Done. In NC you have to take your car in yearly for inspection. Part of that inspection is now emissions testing. I just wish they would apply the same standards to school buses and logging trucks.
Your loud talking in public interupts my thoughts, which negatively effects my well-being. Stop it.
Done. Lots of ordinances are in place to control noise levels.
Your barbeque polutes the atmosphere and poses a serious health risk to others. Please refrain from cooking outdoors.
Done. In most cities, if your barbeque gets to big the local fire department will make it smaller for you.
When you wash your car in the driveway it drains polluted water into my aquifer. Stop washing your car.
Done (sortof). Many controls are place on what can be included in cleaners.
Your grocery bags are filling my landfill. Please find another way to transport your food.
Done. Many grocery stores encourage the use of reusable cloth grocery bags and recycling of the plastic kind.
What else could I help you with.
I used to chew tobacco. I would tell smokers that I was more polite than they, since I didn't force others to share my pleasure; furthermore, if they didn't cease sharing their tobacco smoke with me I would kindly commence to share my tobacco juice with them.
Wow, you just may end up getting my money after all.
Look, here is my wish list, and where I think most of the vendors are missing out on marketing the strength of Linux/Unix to the whole SOHO market.
I don't want to be stuck at a desk at home. I need a lot of power sometimes, but rarely. I want to be able to access my high speed connection no matter where I'm at. Sometimes I want to carry a little work with me when I go out of town. I want my wife and kids to be able to use the computer resources, too, and they want the same things that I do.
What I want is a decent multi-processor server (couple of Celeron 500, 256MB is plenty), with two or three of the cheapest laptops I can get, wirelessly networked. The server handles the printer and the Net connection and runs all the apps. The laptop is just a display device. When in the network, all it does is provide a login screen then pulls everything else from the server. A utility would provide synchronization of my home directory when I wanted to leave the network, then the notebook would run under its own power.
This is possible to do now, but the hassles of setting everything up to run together is a BIG hassle. I am willing to pay a premium if someone has already configured the system to handle all of this. But just a 'laptop with Linux' is covered pretty well by several HOWTOs. Futhermore, this isn't something to be marketed in pieces. This is an $3000 to $4000 integrated home computing solution. I just set it down power up the components, add a few users, and away I go. It would require your own customized distribution. It would require that you actually choose one text editor to include instead of dumping 10 on the disk. It would require that you test that the system does what an average SOHO user would want to do with a computer with out them having to download hundreds of megs of compressed source code. It would require that you do a lot of hand holding. It would require that you build a very large safe to hold all the money that people like me would send to you.
So you're telling me that the one reason that we don't run Winblows is so that we don't have to pay the M$ tax. Instead we pay it to hardware vendors?
where are you going to get these parts
.
.
.
for less than $2300 ???
Well,...? How about here. There's a lot of other places, but this one was easy to find. Sure, it doesn't come with my choice of Linux distribution or StarOffice, but, guess what, I can get those for FREE!!
I'm happy with my Dodge Dakota Sport.
HEH, cool choice. I've got a QuadCab. My two boys love it, too. Dodge may not have been first with the 4door truck, but that Nissan thing doesn't have shit for leg room in the back seat.
Unfortunately, that doesn't do anything to improve the value proposition of your notebooks. Gateway is in the midwest, too. Their Solo 1150 has MSRP starting at $899.