I doubt it costs Adobe $995 for each iteration of Photoshop, and yet people are willing to pay that for the program and several hundred dollars for each incremental upgrade (in which, every often, the core functionality remains unchanged). Ditto for Macromedia, ditto for just about every software product.
Fact is, Windows is priced at a pretty competitive amount with its competition:
XP Home: $99
OS X: $129
No one can say that the software that runs your hardware, that browses the Web, that provides your networking, etc., isn't worth $100 unless you're an outrageous cheapskate.
Strangely, every comment in the "The Truth About CmdrTaco, VA, and Microsoft" thread got modded down to 0 or -1 simultaneously... plus the parent post disappeared. I'm not typically a conspiracy nut, but this is starting to stink.
Have you ever READ the licence for Microsoft products? Nobody would in their RIGHT mind pay a lot of dollars for a product when there are NO GUARANTEES about whether it works or not, and it also specifically says that the producer is NOT LIABLE for any inherent flaws?
To their credit, Microsoft is one of the few companies that will give a full refund on an opened product. I bought Office XP, didn't like it, sent it back to MS and got a check in the mail for the full retail price a couple weeks later.
And besides, what software company does give any guarantees about their products? The performance of a piece of software is widely dependant on the machine it's been run on, and very, very few companies will make promises. MS, for all its flaws, will at least give your money back if you don't like what you buy.
Re:trying to be objective
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Mac Rants
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It was the fact that I had to pay for it whether or not I even had the product. Apple's approach was "Here is what you get for your money." Like their product or not, at least it's a straightforward deal. M$ was "Whether you get it or not, you have to pay for it." *Bzzt!* Sorry, no dice.
I'm still not sure I get your point. You complain about PC's because you have to buy Windows, but you defend Macs because they say "Here's what you get for your money" and still make you buy the MacOS?
I'm not sure that makes a lot of sense to me.
Re:trying to be objective
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Mac Rants
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· Score: 1
Okay, I'll admit, I'm a bit biased towards the Mac. I bought my first one at a time when you still had to pay M$ for the Windows license whether you had Windows or not. I'm a capitalist, but that struck me as being closer to Naziism. So I got a Mac and didn't look back.
Wow, were you able to get that Mac without the MacOS? Or do you just prefer your Nazis in black turtlenecks?
I was pricing a laptop last week and there was a big ol' tab to select Linux when you were beginning the customization process. It was pretty much impossible to miss.
That said, you did have to go to the configuration screen to see it, but where else would it have been?
I was actually pretty impressed how easy it was to select Linux instead of Windows. You can't say they didn't try.
Would you buy Windows Me if it was the same as Windows 3.1? No, you would just keep using 3.1. Then, once every single person has a Microsoft OS, how are they going to keep up their cash flow? If they "innovate" and come out with a "new" and "better" OS every 2 years, they can get a hundred bucks from every single person every 2 years.
Yeah, I read the comment, and I read yours. So what you're saying is that Microsoft has to keep improving their product so that people buy new versions, right?
What the hell's wrong with that? That's the way every industry works.
The reason Microsoft has continued to "innovate" in the market is because they need to maintain their monopoly and a source of revenue.
I thought that's exactly what having a monopoly stops from happening. The premise, as I've always heard it, is that since Microsoft has a monopoly, they don't *have* to innovate.
Or is Microsoft just damned if they do and damned if they don't?
No more insane than Steve Jobs calling the Mac your "digital hub" while releasing a "revolutionary media OS" that can't decode DVD video, burn CDs or run the company's own video editing software.
I wonder if this isn't going to cause more problems than it solves... I think most people will be pretty peeved if they order a Windows PC and find that they get a version without IE installed. This could end up being a real non-event... what OEM is going to want to remove software from their shipping OS?
It IS a good thing that people can now Add/Remove the IE components -- makes sense for most workstation machines to have the components running, but a server is probably better off without the overhead.
At any rate, it's good to see MS being more flexible... now about product activation...
".NET to kill JINI"? After three years with no shipping products to speak of, I think it's safe to say that JINI killed itself. If I'm not mistaken, Sun's not even talking much about it anymore.
I was a JINI believer too, but c'mon... it's stillborn technology.
Not true. Several of the interviews took place even before the "Findings of Fact" or the "Findings of Law" were released. They were embargoed so they couldn't be published until much later.
"DumbTags"! "DUMBTAGS"! Stop, you're killing me! Oh, DAMN is that clever.
How about this... You can only call them "DumbTags" if you speak in Comic Book Guy voice from the Simpsons: "The aforementioned Micro$oft 'DumbTags' are the worst... idea... EVER!"
Maybe they could use that technology to unlink all of the VA Linux server and memory ads that keep appearing on/. It could end up being a valuable service for the fine folks at LNUX who can't seem to get their own advertising department to take their calls.
"When we say our servers are 'cool,' we mean 'cool' like in 'morgue freezer' cool... can we get an art director on that?"
Would you want your "objective" political coverage written by someone who writes on the side for pro-Democrat or pro-Republican publications?
I'm all in favor of the author of the article knowing what he's talking about, but you're nuts if you think this guy doesn't have a very obvious agenda. He's made no bones about his ardently pro-Linux opinions (which he's totally entitled to), but I'm not sure the Wall Street Journal is really the place to air them under the guise of objective journalism.
It's pretty shocking that the WSJ would print this. Lee Gomes has a long history of being unabashedly pro-Linux (just do a Google search on "Lee Gomes Linux").
Obviously that's not the point. Comparing the support of Win95A and Win95B to the support of Suse 5.3 and Redhat 7.1 is silly. There are some very significant differences between the different Linux distros that aren't an issue on the two "forks" of Windows.
Like it or not, the various "flavors" of Windows (both of them) are, in the vast majority of cases, binary compatible. With the new compatibility layer in Win2k SP2 and XP (which allows the OS to spoof itself as Win95 or NT4), it's even more so.
Like it or not, the guy has a point. Different distros are different and dependencies can be a bitch if you're trying to write a piece of software that you can claim runs on "Linux," flavor independent.
That's what I'm saying. Educational discounts don't really reflect actual pricing. Photoshop is around $200 educational, Dreamweaver is $99. Full versions of each of those programs are roughly three times that.
I don't think Office has ever been available retail for $99.
I think your memory fails you. Office has never, ever been $99. The cheapest I ever saw Office was $129 for the educational version back in the early 90s when they first launched it, but it's never been anywhere near that cheap.
MS has a consumer package -- the Works Suite -- that has Word, Works, Encarta and some other consumer products for $89 or so. Maybe that's what you're thinking of.
Microsoft says the Internet Explorer Smart Tags feature, which is similar to a Smart Tag feature in the new Office XP, will be turned off by default in the final release, and that users will have to consciously choose to enable it by activating a setting buried in the browser's menus. In addition, Microsoft says, it will provide a free bit of programming code, called a "meta tag," that site owners could use to bar any Smart Tags from appearing on their sites.
So, it's a feature that other, now defunct, companies have offered before (NBCi: "See a word, click it, get information") and that it turned off by default.
What's the problem, exactly? Oh, right, it's Microsoft.
So it is OK if only a few lives are ruined? At exactly what ruined-lives/gainfully-employed-person ratio would you begin to fault Micro$oft?
In business, certain companies succeed and others fail. Your argument is that MS is evil because it beat some companies and they subsequently went out of business. Sorry, but most of these companies have really wretched business plans and couldn't have survived under the best of circumstances. Smart, agile companies that have sustainable business plans can compete just fine against whomever.
By your logic, we should also legalize murder. Since 90-plus percent of the people out there would be gainfully employed and in no danger of being murdered, it's OK.
Legalizing murder? What the hell are you talking about?
Yes, Micro$hit is everywhere in computing. 90-plus percent, as you said. But UH-OH, that does not constitute a positive point about them. Indeed, you've just SHOT yourself in the FOOT. They ARE everywhere! They ARE a MONOPOLY and YOU'VE REALLY GOT NO CHOICE IF YOU WANT TO BE A PART OF 90-PLUS PERCENT OF ALL AVAILABLE GAINFUL EMPLOYMENT!! YES! YES! YESSSS!!!!
Wow... we've got a live one here. All's I'm saying is that Microsoft's presence benefits many, many people and that the vast majority of the open source companies haven't figured out a way to make any money. Not sure how that's MS's fault, as they made the decision to raise a lot of capital and give away the product.
What you're suggesting flies in the face of "one man, one vote." Last I heard, "land mass" has nothing to do with voting population. Yes, Bush won vast stretches of relatively unpopulated land which looks very compelling on a map plot.
But what is more compelling are the numbers. More individual people voted for Gore and for Democratic senators. That fact is undeniable, regardless of how you want to rationalize it by claiming that more "land mass" voted for Bush. Land mass doesn't vote. People do. And more people voted for Gore.
If you count land mass, then maybe 70% of the US voted for Bush.
You must admit, that's a pretty strange argument. I mean, the state with the greatest land mass is Alaska, but it's perhaps the most politically insignificant state in the union.
Slashdot Mirror
I doubt it costs Adobe $995 for each iteration of Photoshop, and yet people are willing to pay that for the program and several hundred dollars for each incremental upgrade (in which, every often, the core functionality remains unchanged). Ditto for Macromedia, ditto for just about every software product.
Fact is, Windows is priced at a pretty competitive amount with its competition:
XP Home: $99
OS X: $129
No one can say that the software that runs your hardware, that browses the Web, that provides your networking, etc., isn't worth $100 unless you're an outrageous cheapskate.
Strangely, every comment in the "The Truth About CmdrTaco, VA, and Microsoft" thread got modded down to 0 or -1 simultaneously... plus the parent post disappeared. I'm not typically a conspiracy nut, but this is starting to stink.
Probably with something witty like "Ours is shipping."
Yeah, and if I can combine a bologna sandwich with a rocket ship, I won't fly to the moon hungry.
To their credit, Microsoft is one of the few companies that will give a full refund on an opened product. I bought Office XP, didn't like it, sent it back to MS and got a check in the mail for the full retail price a couple weeks later.
And besides, what software company does give any guarantees about their products? The performance of a piece of software is widely dependant on the machine it's been run on, and very, very few companies will make promises. MS, for all its flaws, will at least give your money back if you don't like what you buy.
It was the fact that I had to pay for it whether or not I even had the product. Apple's approach was "Here is what you get for your money." Like their product or not, at least it's a straightforward deal. M$ was "Whether you get it or not, you have to pay for it." *Bzzt!* Sorry, no dice.
I'm still not sure I get your point. You complain about PC's because you have to buy Windows, but you defend Macs because they say "Here's what you get for your money" and still make you buy the MacOS?
I'm not sure that makes a lot of sense to me.
Okay, I'll admit, I'm a bit biased towards the Mac. I bought my first one at a time when you still had to pay M$ for the Windows license whether you had Windows or not. I'm a capitalist, but that struck me as being closer to Naziism. So I got a Mac and didn't look back. Wow, were you able to get that Mac without the MacOS? Or do you just prefer your Nazis in black turtlenecks?
That said, you did have to go to the configuration screen to see it, but where else would it have been?
I was actually pretty impressed how easy it was to select Linux instead of Windows. You can't say they didn't try.
Yeah, I read the comment, and I read yours. So what you're saying is that Microsoft has to keep improving their product so that people buy new versions, right?
What the hell's wrong with that? That's the way every industry works.
I thought that's exactly what having a monopoly stops from happening. The premise, as I've always heard it, is that since Microsoft has a monopoly, they don't *have* to innovate.
Or is Microsoft just damned if they do and damned if they don't?
Guess that means Slashdot can stay .org b/c god knows VA Linux isn't going to make money any time soon.
No more insane than Steve Jobs calling the Mac your "digital hub" while releasing a "revolutionary media OS" that can't decode DVD video, burn CDs or run the company's own video editing software.
I wonder if this isn't going to cause more problems than it solves... I think most people will be pretty peeved if they order a Windows PC and find that they get a version without IE installed. This could end up being a real non-event... what OEM is going to want to remove software from their shipping OS?
It IS a good thing that people can now Add/Remove the IE components -- makes sense for most workstation machines to have the components running, but a server is probably better off without the overhead.
At any rate, it's good to see MS being more flexible... now about product activation...
".NET to kill JINI"? After three years with no shipping products to speak of, I think it's safe to say that JINI killed itself. If I'm not mistaken, Sun's not even talking much about it anymore.
I was a JINI believer too, but c'mon... it's stillborn technology.
Not true. Several of the interviews took place even before the "Findings of Fact" or the "Findings of Law" were released. They were embargoed so they couldn't be published until much later.
"DumbTags"! "DUMBTAGS"! Stop, you're killing me! Oh, DAMN is that clever.
How about this... You can only call them "DumbTags" if you speak in Comic Book Guy voice from the Simpsons: "The aforementioned Micro$oft 'DumbTags' are the worst... idea... EVER!"
Maybe they could use that technology to unlink all of the VA Linux server and memory ads that keep appearing on /. It could end up being a valuable service for the fine folks at LNUX who can't seem to get their own advertising department to take their calls.
"When we say our servers are 'cool,' we mean 'cool' like in 'morgue freezer' cool... can we get an art director on that?"
I'm all in favor of the author of the article knowing what he's talking about, but you're nuts if you think this guy doesn't have a very obvious agenda. He's made no bones about his ardently pro-Linux opinions (which he's totally entitled to), but I'm not sure the Wall Street Journal is really the place to air them under the guise of objective journalism.
To wit:
ZDNet
WSJ
Linux Magazine, where he's a contributing writer.
Regardless of what you think about Linux and MS, this isn't the guy to be writing about it.
Like it or not, the various "flavors" of Windows (both of them) are, in the vast majority of cases, binary compatible. With the new compatibility layer in Win2k SP2 and XP (which allows the OS to spoof itself as Win95 or NT4), it's even more so.
Like it or not, the guy has a point. Different distros are different and dependencies can be a bitch if you're trying to write a piece of software that you can claim runs on "Linux," flavor independent.
I don't think Office has ever been available retail for $99.
Not sure how we got on this tangent.
MS has a consumer package -- the Works Suite -- that has Word, Works, Encarta and some other consumer products for $89 or so. Maybe that's what you're thinking of.
Microsoft says the Internet Explorer Smart Tags feature, which is similar to a Smart Tag feature in the new Office XP, will be turned off by default in the final release, and that users will have to consciously choose to enable it by activating a setting buried in the browser's menus. In addition, Microsoft says, it will provide a free bit of programming code, called a "meta tag," that site owners could use to bar any Smart Tags from appearing on their sites.
So, it's a feature that other, now defunct, companies have offered before (NBCi: "See a word, click it, get information") and that it turned off by default.
What's the problem, exactly? Oh, right, it's Microsoft.
So it is OK if only a few lives are ruined? At exactly what ruined-lives/gainfully-employed-person ratio would you begin to fault Micro$oft?
In business, certain companies succeed and others fail. Your argument is that MS is evil because it beat some companies and they subsequently went out of business. Sorry, but most of these companies have really wretched business plans and couldn't have survived under the best of circumstances. Smart, agile companies that have sustainable business plans can compete just fine against whomever.
By your logic, we should also legalize murder. Since 90-plus percent of the people out there would be gainfully employed and in no danger of being murdered, it's OK.
Legalizing murder? What the hell are you talking about?
Yes, Micro$hit is everywhere in computing. 90-plus percent, as you said. But UH-OH, that does not constitute a positive point about them. Indeed, you've just SHOT yourself in the FOOT. They ARE everywhere! They ARE a MONOPOLY and YOU'VE REALLY GOT NO CHOICE IF YOU WANT TO BE A PART OF 90-PLUS PERCENT OF ALL AVAILABLE GAINFUL EMPLOYMENT!! YES! YES! YESSSS!!!!
Wow... we've got a live one here. All's I'm saying is that Microsoft's presence benefits many, many people and that the vast majority of the open source companies haven't figured out a way to make any money. Not sure how that's MS's fault, as they made the decision to raise a lot of capital and give away the product.
What you're suggesting flies in the face of "one man, one vote." Last I heard, "land mass" has nothing to do with voting population. Yes, Bush won vast stretches of relatively unpopulated land which looks very compelling on a map plot.
But what is more compelling are the numbers. More individual people voted for Gore and for Democratic senators. That fact is undeniable, regardless of how you want to rationalize it by claiming that more "land mass" voted for Bush. Land mass doesn't vote. People do. And more people voted for Gore.
If you count land mass, then maybe 70% of the US voted for Bush.
You must admit, that's a pretty strange argument. I mean, the state with the greatest land mass is Alaska, but it's perhaps the most politically insignificant state in the union.