I wouldn't count on SUN. They are loosing money faster than I can piss mine away at the casino and they don't have that many good projects up and coming.
Financial institutions are downgrading them (another one did today, their stock is now about 4 dollars), and think they don't have a solid plan to climb back into profitablilty. Personally I'm waiting for them to be bought out.
Makes me a sad panda. I like SUN.
Re:"Free is Bad," said Gates
on
Gates on Spam
·
· Score: 1
How is that free? You pay 50 dollars a month regardless if you make 1 phone call or 1000.
If you make 1 phone call you are just paid 50 dollars for it. If you make 50 phone calls, you paid 1 dollar for each one.
Either way, you're still paying.
Re:"Free is Bad," said Gates
on
Gates on Spam
·
· Score: 1
maybe inside of a 5 mile radius. And if it is more, then you pay for a package...regardless, you are paying something.
I've never understood that argument: A common argument used by open source advocates (myself included) in favor of open source is the simple question: 'Would you buy a car with the hood welded shut?'
90% of people never open their hood except for super routine maintenance (ie: patches). The other 10% only do it for fixing things they know how to.
So is the argument really has no basis. The real question would be, "would you buy a car that you had no involvment in making? That you couldn't look at the blueprints of?". (I know bad grammar) Of course you will. And in most cases, you can probably find them if you wanted.
Open source is good for developing and enhancing. Once you have a car, you're not going to enhance it in ways that you would need the 'source code'.
I'm not against open source...but the analogy sucks.
This would never happen, but I've often wondered what the aftermath would look like in this situation:
EU say MS has to do a bunch of stuff. Package a lot of competative software, pay a large fine, etc...
What would happen if MS says... "No thanks. We will no longer sell our product here. Here is your money, goodbye."
Everyone over there is screwed. All businesses lose there licence and would be in breach of contract. No more updates for personal computers running MS. A new worm comes out and everyone kisses their data goodbye...
I don't think that is it at all. Netscape died because they stopped inovating. When IE and Netscape first came out, everyone I knew used Netscape. Why? It was a better product. But low and behold new versions of IE came out what seemed like almost every week for a while...but where were the Netscape updats?
Then all of a sudden it seemed that IE was faster, more powerful and easier to write web pages for... Bam! Now buisiness' jump on board as well as the average user.
Still, where is the new Netscape to compete with MS? no where. At this point even I caved in. IE was the superior product.
Flash forward to today. I no longer use IE, but Mozilla. Why? It is the supperior product. The only problem now is that the avg person no longer cares about that as long as things work for them.
Let's use your example. You run a good bakery. You're donuts come in many different varieties, and your bread is moist and tasty. I open one next door to you. My donuts are hard, and my bread stale, but they are free. Where will Mr. Joe Public go? Do you really think people will settle for crap when at a small price more they can have a good product? No, they will pay for the quality.
Too little too late. Netscape did it to themselves.
It is no longer his fortune...it is the companies. He already has this fortune.
The reason MS will do anything but settle, because if they settle quickly and give in then it opens the door for that many more lawsuits to be filed against them.
The company has like 50 Billion in cash. CASH! Money is not an issue here. It seems to be the principle of the matter to me.
In all honesty, this would be the best move for MS. 95% of the people out there would never install the linux OS included in the bundle because 1) they really want to use windows and 2) they woudn't have the first clue what to do with linux.
I'm almost surprised MS hasn't done this already...that is if it was guarenteed to stop the monopoly lausuits. After all, most of the poeple out there who want to use linux already are, so the fact that it comes bundled with Windows won't change much there.
The only downside would be the people who are on the edge, that could go one way or another and are just a little too lazy to make the extra effort.
I was agreeing with the first post. There are plans for tons of senarios.
If you were referring to my oil comment two things: 1) What does global warming have to do with oil?
2) CNN is a bunch of sensationally shit. They can report whatever they want either way. It all comes down to who they interview and when and blah blah blah. They could make a cat getting stuck in a tree look all political if they wanted. Wake up and see journalism for what it is, and read through the bullshit when you can. Reading / Hearing about despair, panic and worry sells, so of course they will always play that angle.
If you want to argue, do reseach. In otherwords don't look at CNN articles, but look at actual research papers.
Anyway here you go: http://www.taipeitimes.com/News/biz/archives/2004/ 01/23/2003092364
-- A nice story about how there has been an 'oil crisis' for the past 40 years, yet we still seem to have at least 80 years of oil in reserve yet. But don't forget about all that untapped oil in Alaska...
We know that the oil is going to run out. Best possible case, we have two generations, more likely one, and the military is already planning scenarios for sudden climate change which will blow previous estimates of oil demand to hell.
You're just finding out about this now? I'm going to let you in on a little secret...
The military has scenarios for just about every possible action that can result in a conflict, and scenarios on how to attact every single country in the world including our allies.
There is a plan of attack if we ever wanted to invade England, France, China, etc...
There is a plan of attack if we were ever invaded by England, France, China, etc...
The whole purpose of having a government and millitary is to have these strategies planned out way ahead of time in case one of the events occurs. We would be screwed if we something happened and we had to come up with a plan on the spot.
Planning for the future, it is a wonderful thing.
I'm not even going to comment on the oil thing. That is an urban legend. We have like 200 years of oil left at the current rate of consumption. And that is assuming we don't find any new sources.
No kidding. Has nintendo ever made a backward compatable system? Weren't the original, super nintendo, N64 and now the game cube all independent of each other?
After all, what is the big deal with back-ward compatability? The new system isn't backwards compatable? OH NO! I guess I just can chuck my old system just yet. It won't stop my from loading up an older game on my older system. Hell, I did this all the time with nintendo.
I suppose the only big blow would be people who don't already have an XBox and were hoping that by getting an XBox2 they could pick up some of the older titles for cheap and go nuts.
Why does everyone keep saying this? The processor is totally different...the only real similarity is the graphics stuff is coming from ATI. OOOO, this makes it a gamecube?
here is an excerpt from an article on the business wire from yesterday: "The paper, citing information it said had been shared with game developers and publishers, said the console would use three International Business Machines Corp. (IBM,Trade) processors based on the new generation of powerful 64-bit computing technology and a graphics chip from ATI Technologies Inc. ((ATY.TO))"
Why is the title referring to this story as being 'leaked'? Leaked implies that the specs were released before they were suppose to be. Or that some shady deal occured. This isn't true.
The specs and what not, were in no way 'leaked'. They were reported to the press like any other news story. Hell, I even got this information yesterday morning through my 'stock news wire' from etrade. It was a national official artical.
Oops, I just 'leaked' the sourse of my information.
"Of course the was targeted for attacks...no one likes them because of . blah blah blah."
Is suppose to read: "Of course (insert race, country, religion here) was targeted for attacks...no one likes them because of (some ideal, rhetoric, or other hatful comment here). blah blah blah."
Everyone here bashes MS for not making super secure software...essentially they are blaming MS that people go out and create these worms and viruses and malicious scritps and what not.
Doesn't anyone understand that even though a flaw exists, it is still WRONG and in most cases ILLEGAL to exploit it?
It is like saying that rape victims are to blame that they got raped beacause they didn't take the necessary precautions to protect themselves. It is a harsh analogy, but it is one in the same.
Given enough time / knowledge anyone can hack into any system. The difference is, it is a little easier to explot Windows and its applications because it is so bloated and huge. That thrown together will everyone who would like to see MS fail, and you get all the previously mentioned viruses and malicios attacks.
Just because MS is a huge profitable heavy handed company, doesn't make any of this right. It is wrong. You think these attacks hurt MS? Pfft! They hurt the innocent businesses (both large and small) that use MS software for whatever reason (the main one being that MS is used everywhere so it is a common platform that everyone can use and understand and communicate with). That is a similar argument that is used in the world today. "Of course the was targeted for attacks...no one likes them because of . blah blah blah." Maybe that is true, but it changes nothing. It diminishes your point.
So go ahead and have your laugh: "Oh boy! Another worm, another security hole exploited. When will MS learn to make super tight software? Idiots. Look at all those stupid businesses using MS products. One day they'll figure out MS sucks and switch to linux or mac or open source...heh heh heh."
Personally I'll be saddened as a bunch of businesses lose gobs of money as they lose clients, thus hurting the economy.
By creating all this shit you may think you are taking on a just cause, but all you're really doing is hurting innocent victims and commiting illegal, wrong acts. Grow up.
Gentoo makes me cry. Every time I try to install it something fails, and it won't finish. Then I get pissed and frustrated and swear I'll never try again... then after a month or so, I jump back on the horse only to be disappointed again.
It isn't illegal because the gaming market isn't a monopoly. MS is trying to break into the market, not keep people out.
Now then, if Sony dropped their prices way below MS and the Nintendo, that may be a different story.
Also, no company ever has a business model based on losing money. Never. Ever. When a company expands into a new market, it is expected that the market will not be profitable for X number of years. Even when Sony and Nintendo started out, they lost money in the beginning. There is a lot of over-head related to starting a new division / company / market.
The strategy is always that you reduce your losses every year to meet your goal of being profitable in the future. That being said, if you loose too much money, it is better to get out, though when you're MS that is a mute point.
In my experience it is general practice to take big losses to begin with so you can establish a customer base. Ya know, get some loyalty. Then once you have a market you are able to run with it.
So what if MS just doesn't pay? They are a US corperation. Country X says you owe us 1 billion dollars. MS says "let me think about that...nope, sorry not going to pay."
Then what? They ban MS from selling in their country? Would / could they even do this? How many European corperations rely on MS products / updates / support?
Just a thought. After all, this seems more like a political thing than anything else. They want don't care about MS being a 'monopoly', they are just pissed it isn't one of their companies that isn't the monopoly or whatever.
I stand corrected. I'm sure MS isn't the only corp doing this then. If there is a loophole like this then you know anyone/everyone who knows about it uses it.
Slashdot Mirror
I wouldn't count on SUN. They are loosing money faster than I can piss mine away at the casino and they don't have that many good projects up and coming.
Financial institutions are downgrading them (another one did today, their stock is now about 4 dollars), and think they don't have a solid plan to climb back into profitablilty. Personally I'm waiting for them to be bought out.
Makes me a sad panda. I like SUN.
How is that free? You pay 50 dollars a month regardless if you make 1 phone call or 1000.
If you make 1 phone call you are just paid 50 dollars for it. If you make 50 phone calls, you paid 1 dollar for each one.
Either way, you're still paying.
maybe inside of a 5 mile radius. And if it is more, then you pay for a package...regardless, you are paying something.
why would I ever buy there? They are overpriced beyond all belief.
You are charged every time you make a phone call.
I've never understood that argument:
A common argument used by open source advocates (myself included) in favor of open source is the simple question: 'Would you buy a car with the hood welded shut?'
90% of people never open their hood except for super routine maintenance (ie: patches). The other 10% only do it for fixing things they know how to.
So is the argument really has no basis. The real question would be, "would you buy a car that you had no involvment in making? That you couldn't look at the blueprints of?". (I know bad grammar) Of course you will. And in most cases, you can probably find them if you wanted.
Open source is good for developing and enhancing. Once you have a car, you're not going to enhance it in ways that you would need the 'source code'.
I'm not against open source...but the analogy sucks.
The funny thing is that all the SUVs were made by non-American car companies...
I KNOW! I've tried intstalling it several times. Each time something different would go wrong. I was so frustrated.
Looks like I'll have to give it another go...
Woah...they actually expected to sell these things?
This would never happen, but I've often wondered what the aftermath would look like in this situation:
EU say MS has to do a bunch of stuff. Package a lot of competative software, pay a large fine, etc...
What would happen if MS says... "No thanks. We will no longer sell our product here. Here is your money, goodbye."
Everyone over there is screwed. All businesses lose there licence and would be in breach of contract. No more updates for personal computers running MS. A new worm comes out and everyone kisses their data goodbye...
Be intersting.
I don't think that is it at all. Netscape died because they stopped inovating. When IE and Netscape first came out, everyone I knew used Netscape. Why? It was a better product. But low and behold new versions of IE came out what seemed like almost every week for a while...but where were the Netscape updats?
Then all of a sudden it seemed that IE was faster, more powerful and easier to write web pages for... Bam! Now buisiness' jump on board as well as the average user.
Still, where is the new Netscape to compete with MS? no where. At this point even I caved in. IE was the superior product.
Flash forward to today. I no longer use IE, but Mozilla. Why? It is the supperior product. The only problem now is that the avg person no longer cares about that as long as things work for them.
Let's use your example. You run a good bakery. You're donuts come in many different varieties, and your bread is moist and tasty. I open one next door to you. My donuts are hard, and my bread stale, but they are free. Where will Mr. Joe Public go? Do you really think people will settle for crap when at a small price more they can have a good product? No, they will pay for the quality.
Too little too late. Netscape did it to themselves.
It is no longer his fortune...it is the companies. He already has this fortune.
The reason MS will do anything but settle, because if they settle quickly and give in then it opens the door for that many more lawsuits to be filed against them.
The company has like 50 Billion in cash. CASH! Money is not an issue here. It seems to be the principle of the matter to me.
In all honesty, this would be the best move for MS. 95% of the people out there would never install the linux OS included in the bundle because 1) they really want to use windows and 2) they woudn't have the first clue what to do with linux.
I'm almost surprised MS hasn't done this already...that is if it was guarenteed to stop the monopoly lausuits. After all, most of the poeple out there who want to use linux already are, so the fact that it comes bundled with Windows won't change much there.
The only downside would be the people who are on the edge, that could go one way or another and are just a little too lazy to make the extra effort.
Anyone else have thoughts on this?
I was agreeing with the first post. There are plans for tons of senarios.
/ 01/23/2003092364
n _out_of_oil.htm
If you were referring to my oil comment two things:
1) What does global warming have to do with oil?
2) CNN is a bunch of sensationally shit. They can report whatever they want either way. It all comes down to who they interview and when and blah blah blah. They could make a cat getting stuck in a tree look all political if they wanted. Wake up and see journalism for what it is, and read through the bullshit when you can. Reading / Hearing about despair, panic and worry sells, so of course they will always play that angle.
If you want to argue, do reseach. In otherwords don't look at CNN articles, but look at actual research papers.
Anyway here you go:
http://www.taipeitimes.com/News/biz/archives/2004
-- A nice story about how there has been an 'oil crisis' for the past 40 years, yet we still seem to have at least 80 years of oil in reserve yet. But don't forget about all that untapped oil in Alaska...
http://economics.about.com/cs/macroeconomics/a/ru
-- Very similar information.
Oh yea...You don't know what you are talking about
We know that the oil is going to run out. Best possible case, we have two generations, more likely one, and the military is already planning scenarios for sudden climate change which will blow previous estimates of oil demand to hell.
You're just finding out about this now? I'm going to let you in on a little secret...
The military has scenarios for just about every possible action that can result in a conflict, and scenarios on how to attact every single country in the world including our allies.
There is a plan of attack if we ever wanted to invade England, France, China, etc...
There is a plan of attack if we were ever invaded by England, France, China, etc...
The whole purpose of having a government and millitary is to have these strategies planned out way ahead of time in case one of the events occurs. We would be screwed if we something happened and we had to come up with a plan on the spot.
Planning for the future, it is a wonderful thing.
I'm not even going to comment on the oil thing. That is an urban legend. We have like 200 years of oil left at the current rate of consumption. And that is assuming we don't find any new sources.
Um no. Last time we asked for public input the public elected Al Gore as president.
The electoral college elected George W. Idiot as president...I mean Bush. George W. Bush.
No kidding. Has nintendo ever made a backward compatable system? Weren't the original, super nintendo, N64 and now the game cube all independent of each other?
After all, what is the big deal with back-ward compatability? The new system isn't backwards compatable? OH NO! I guess I just can chuck my old system just yet. It won't stop my from loading up an older game on my older system. Hell, I did this all the time with nintendo.
I suppose the only big blow would be people who don't already have an XBox and were hoping that by getting an XBox2 they could pick up some of the older titles for cheap and go nuts.
Why does everyone keep saying this? The processor is totally different...the only real similarity is the graphics stuff is coming from ATI. OOOO, this makes it a gamecube?
here is an excerpt from an article on the business wire from yesterday:
"The paper, citing information it said had been shared with game developers and publishers, said the console would use three International Business Machines Corp. (IBM,Trade) processors based on the new generation of powerful 64-bit computing technology and a graphics chip from ATI Technologies Inc. ((ATY.TO))"
This is a gamecube? That is almost funny.
Why is the title referring to this story as being 'leaked'? Leaked implies that the specs were released before they were suppose to be. Or that some shady deal occured. This isn't true.
The specs and what not, were in no way 'leaked'. They were reported to the press like any other news story. Hell, I even got this information yesterday morning through my 'stock news wire' from etrade. It was a national official artical.
Oops, I just 'leaked' the sourse of my information.
bah...
"Of course the was targeted for attacks...no one likes them because of . blah blah blah."
Is suppose to read:
"Of course (insert race, country, religion here) was targeted for attacks...no one likes them because of (some ideal, rhetoric, or other hatful comment here). blah blah blah."
Ya know, it just hit me.
Everyone here bashes MS for not making super secure software...essentially they are blaming MS that people go out and create these worms and viruses and malicious scritps and what not.
Doesn't anyone understand that even though a flaw exists, it is still WRONG and in most cases ILLEGAL to exploit it?
It is like saying that rape victims are to blame that they got raped beacause they didn't take the necessary precautions to protect themselves. It is a harsh analogy, but it is one in the same.
Given enough time / knowledge anyone can hack into any system. The difference is, it is a little easier to explot Windows and its applications because it is so bloated and huge. That thrown together will everyone who would like to see MS fail, and you get all the previously mentioned viruses and malicios attacks.
Just because MS is a huge profitable heavy handed company, doesn't make any of this right. It is wrong. You think these attacks hurt MS? Pfft! They hurt the innocent businesses (both large and small) that use MS software for whatever reason (the main one being that MS is used everywhere so it is a common platform that everyone can use and understand and communicate with). That is a similar argument that is used in the world today. "Of course the was targeted for attacks...no one likes them because of . blah blah blah." Maybe that is true, but it changes nothing. It diminishes your point.
So go ahead and have your laugh:
"Oh boy! Another worm, another security hole exploited. When will MS learn to make super tight software? Idiots. Look at all those stupid businesses using MS products. One day they'll figure out MS sucks and switch to linux or mac or open source...heh heh heh."
Personally I'll be saddened as a bunch of businesses lose gobs of money as they lose clients, thus hurting the economy.
By creating all this shit you may think you are taking on a just cause, but all you're really doing is hurting innocent victims and commiting illegal, wrong acts. Grow up.
Mod me down, I don't care.
Gentoo makes me cry. Every time I try to install it something fails, and it won't finish. Then I get pissed and frustrated and swear I'll never try again... then after a month or so, I jump back on the horse only to be disappointed again.
Bah!
It isn't illegal because the gaming market isn't a monopoly. MS is trying to break into the market, not keep people out.
Now then, if Sony dropped their prices way below MS and the Nintendo, that may be a different story.
Also, no company ever has a business model based on losing money. Never. Ever. When a company expands into a new market, it is expected that the market will not be profitable for X number of years. Even when Sony and Nintendo started out, they lost money in the beginning. There is a lot of over-head related to starting a new division / company / market.
The strategy is always that you reduce your losses every year to meet your goal of being profitable in the future. That being said, if you loose too much money, it is better to get out, though when you're MS that is a mute point.
In my experience it is general practice to take big losses to begin with so you can establish a customer base. Ya know, get some loyalty. Then once you have a market you are able to run with it.
So what if MS just doesn't pay? They are a US corperation. Country X says you owe us 1 billion dollars. MS says "let me think about that...nope, sorry not going to pay."
Then what? They ban MS from selling in their country? Would / could they even do this? How many European corperations rely on MS products / updates / support?
Just a thought. After all, this seems more like a political thing than anything else. They want don't care about MS being a 'monopoly', they are just pissed it isn't one of their companies that isn't the monopoly or whatever.
I stand corrected. I'm sure MS isn't the only corp doing this then. If there is a loophole like this then you know anyone/everyone who knows about it uses it.