Honestly I'd like to see a competitor come out with an alternative OS. The main issue will be software support. Remember back to the VHS/Beta days - Beta was better (technologically), but VHS won out because of its far larger library of videos. Same thing with Apple/Macs and PC clones.
If AOL could create an easy-to-use OS that could run Windows programs, I'd consider buying it, as, I think, many others would. However, as you mentioned, this would require years and billions of dollars. And, of course, the time and money it takes AOL to start this project, Microsoft, of course, is innovating and continuing to swallow up more market share.
To restate what I sort of skimmed on at the end - I think AOLs best bet would have been way back before MSN was created to partner with Microsoft. Now it may be too late, with MS entrenched in MSN and the like, although who knows. It would be kind of neat to see a merger forming AOL-MS-Time Warner.
How is AOL going to compete with Microsoft by just selling a Linux distro? First off, who uses AOL? Newbies; in fact, newbies who already own computers. Computers they bought that came shipped with MS Windows. Now, AOL buys Red Hat and says, "Use Linux." What percentage of these absolute newbies are going to be talked into installing a new operating system?
Furthermore, Linux as it is now is not tailored for newbies. Yes, it is ten times better than it was just a couple of years ago, but it's still not as easy to use or install or configure as Windows is, plus it lacks the software that everyone and his mom have used before at work/school. So AOL will need to build software too, now, eh? Maybe they leave that in Red Hat's domain, but now they're adding onto their expenses.
Even with software support, no de facto AOL user will ever be talked into switching operating systems. It isn't a newbie-level task. The only hope is if vendors sell the computers with this Linux distro already on it, or if AOL gets into the computer hardware sales arena, which would be beyond crazy, especially when considering the entrenched market leaders are having a difficult time in this economy. So AOL would have to convice Compaq/HP/Gateway/etc. to sell Linux versions.
Of course, Microsoft wouldn't like this and would strongly encourage them not to do this. Ad campaigns would convince the newbies that if they bought AOL Linux they couldn't use their favorite software, or play their favorite games. Come on AOL, you can spend your money better than by trying to compete against Microsoft in the desktop arena. Stick to your ISP business, stick to your media empire - dominate there and work WITH Microsoft to blend the media and the computer age.
Is it really that hard to make a simple chess engine? I'd imagine it is very complicated to make a good one, but I would also wager there are books with cookie-cutter designs for making a simplistic one.
If I buy something there and am unbeknowingstly signed up to some mail list, that, IMHO, is annoying, but not spam. If, upon receiving the mailing list, I click on the little link at the bottom to unsubscribe, and am told that I have unsubscribed, but still keep getting emails, then that is spam (IMHO).
It's called Female Sexual Castration (FSC) or sometimes referred to as genital mutilation, and is performed (forcefully, no doubt) in a number of African nations.
Suing spammers will only stop the likes of Flooz.com (as quoted in the linked to article) and other large sites from sending spam (i.e., eBay/Buy.com, two companies I can't seem to unsubscribe from). I don't know about you, but the vast majority of spam I get is from individuals or very small companies, at least I'd assume it is. It's usually racked with spelling errors and grammatical no-no's, and are not ads for the latest mega-eCommerce site's sales, but for Viagra, toner cartridges, incredible wealth from a home-based business, "legal" ecstacy-type drugs, penis-lengtheners, and, of course, the usual solicitations from horny 18 year old lesbian cheerleaders.
Many of these spammers send from hotmail.com or from email addresses that are not in the US. So how would I go about suing them? Even assuming that I could sue them, how could I manage to go about collecting my settlement from them?
I'm afraid suing is not the answer to ending all spam, just a small class of spam.
And because Microsoft changes the Word file format with each release, its users are locked into a system that compels them to buy each upgrade whether they want a change or not. They may even find, several years from now, that the Word documents they are writing this year can no longer be read with the version of Word they use then
Word's format hasn't changed since Word 97, no? Also, I don't have Office XP, but I could have sworn I had heard that you could save Word files as XML files. Is this not the case?
A Kurt Vonnegut short story, I think
on
The Drone War
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· Score: 2
There was a Kurt Vonnegut short story, if I remember correctly, where man-steered missles are used. That is, a human being sits inside the missle and directs its path to the target. Supposedly computers were worth too much to lose one to aid the missle's navigation, so men were used instead.
Additionally, at the time they had most of the resources of continental Europe at their disposal if they wished
But they had to convert those natural resources into bullets, tanks, guns, etc. Also, despite their control of continental Europe, they lacked food and oil, two important resources for fighting any war or building any bomb (hence the push into Russia, to get to their oil fields).
More people were killed constructing the Rockets than were killed by them in combat. Development of the Rocket took away from Germany's air power and perhaps helped their loss in that arena, or at least hastened it
But it sure was psychologically devestating, no? The thought of unmanned rockets, fired from deep within Germany, able to kill Londeners. And the whirring high pitched sounds it must have made coming in, how terrifying. Plus, of course, Germany really never could have kept up with the Allies air superiority presence (especially since the Allies had radar), hence the rockets made attacking England possible late in the war.
Hitler was pretty desperate for a "miracle weapon" late in the war, and continously promised his people that Germany was close to such a weapon that would stem the tide of the war. If he had just waited another couple of years and allowed his scientists to develop jet engines before the war, rockets, maybe even A-bombs, who would have known what our world would be like today?
I had the opportunity to talk to a woman at Microsoft who use to work for Sun. She was big believe on Java when it was knew, thinking of the possiblities, but resigned after Sun took Java and killed it.
Regardless of what Cringely says, you should read the interview before jumping to conclusions. Do you agree with me that a number of companies that "lost" to Microsoft lost because they made bad business decisions? If the answer is, "No," read the interview, think about things for a while, then get back to me.
Yes, there are a lot of companies who have been squashed (or, as Joel would say, "Had their lunch eaten") by Microsoft in large part because of Microsoft's money/marketing, but there are also a lot of companies that nose dived into failure because of their own ignorant business and technology decisions.
While Microsoft may not like the costs and annoyance of court cases and DOJ action, it must give them some satisfaction because most of those companies bringing suit against Microsoft are doing so because they think that's their best option. I would argue that for these plantiffs making better products would be a "better option."
Before you jump to false conclusions. A lot of companies that Microsoft "drove out of business" were driven out of business because they made stupid mistakes. Yes, MS's money and marketing helped, but some of the stupid things these companies do is their own damned fault.
So switching to Linux wasn't a MS is bad, Linux is good... it was a, "Those damn Sun boxes are expensive, Linux is cheap, therefore better." I don't understand how people are using this to debase Microsoft. It would be like if someone said, "Sony just upgraded their Web site from Windows 2000 to Windows XP - Microsoft wins another round against Linux!"
I actually played it back in school three or four years ago (when I had more freetime). My only complaint was that the graphics were a bit blah and it was far too like Civ I. Seeing their site just now, though, I am quite impressed with their graphical improvements. I'll have to give it a try once I get some free time...
would allow the player to choose what level they wanted to play. That is, if it were a war-type game, you could choose either to be a general, where you do nothing but order commands and see what the results are, and then order counter plans, etc. Or you could be a division leader, where you control a small group, and are given orders you need to follow... or you are an individual soldier in a 3d style game, where you have specific orders, like, "Don't let the enemy get past these defenses," as you sit there in a foxhole with a rifle.
Of course, to make it popular, you'd likely need to let the user switch between the modes as the game progressed.
Got to hear a talk from Henri Casanova, one of the top dogs working on distributed application scheduleing and simulation software for The Grid. Neat stuff, but, as he addressed in his talk, we're really looking at a network of computers that only people needing massively intensive computations done on highly parallizable problems would find useful. Translation: only researchers in certain fields need this.
Multiplayer civilization isn't much fun - it simply takes too long
It's much more fun to play against a human than a dumb computer. Hopefully the AI for CIV3 is much better than previous games.
Anyhow, I really don't mind waiting long, if the game is worth it. I use to play Axis and Allies multiplayer, where you could end up waiting 15 minutes for your next turn...:-) But, damn, it was a fun game.
I'm gonna wait to buy this game until it goes multiplayer. According to the CIV3 FAQ, the game will not have multiplayer support when it ships, although they plan on making some multiplayer options available in Spring 2002. (Not holding my breath.)
I've never been employed as a game programmer, never had much of an interest, but I had a friend who use to work for a large game programming company and his comments were: "When you first start off, the first project you work on is always some obscure portion of a baseball game." He did not elaborate why. That is all.
I'd buy 10% of the users to his site use non-IE. It's an ASP information site, so, yes, the majority of users use IE. I've seen the same numbers on my ASP site.
You can't go around calling saying the local police kill small children (unless of course they do).
AFAIK, you can say lies... well, as long as you believe they are true. If you truly believe the local police to be killing babies, you are protected by free speach, AFAIK.
Why on earth would Microsoft begin a licensing scheme that earns less profit
Do you not realize that profit = net income - net expenses? If you lower net income BUT lower net expenses further, your net profit increases!! If MS distributes Office over the Web only (not far away), then that saves a bundle of money on shipping/CD stamping/etc. Also, since people are paying on a per-feature basis, MS will quickly learn what features are profitable and which ones aren't. They then can stop spending time on developing features that people don't find useful enough to pay for...
Slashdot Mirror
Honestly I'd like to see a competitor come out with an alternative OS. The main issue will be software support. Remember back to the VHS/Beta days - Beta was better (technologically), but VHS won out because of its far larger library of videos. Same thing with Apple/Macs and PC clones.
If AOL could create an easy-to-use OS that could run Windows programs, I'd consider buying it, as, I think, many others would. However, as you mentioned, this would require years and billions of dollars. And, of course, the time and money it takes AOL to start this project, Microsoft, of course, is innovating and continuing to swallow up more market share.
To restate what I sort of skimmed on at the end - I think AOLs best bet would have been way back before MSN was created to partner with Microsoft. Now it may be too late, with MS entrenched in MSN and the like, although who knows. It would be kind of neat to see a merger forming AOL-MS-Time Warner.
How is AOL going to compete with Microsoft by just selling a Linux distro? First off, who uses AOL? Newbies; in fact, newbies who already own computers. Computers they bought that came shipped with MS Windows. Now, AOL buys Red Hat and says, "Use Linux." What percentage of these absolute newbies are going to be talked into installing a new operating system?
Furthermore, Linux as it is now is not tailored for newbies. Yes, it is ten times better than it was just a couple of years ago, but it's still not as easy to use or install or configure as Windows is, plus it lacks the software that everyone and his mom have used before at work/school. So AOL will need to build software too, now, eh? Maybe they leave that in Red Hat's domain, but now they're adding onto their expenses.
Even with software support, no de facto AOL user will ever be talked into switching operating systems. It isn't a newbie-level task. The only hope is if vendors sell the computers with this Linux distro already on it, or if AOL gets into the computer hardware sales arena, which would be beyond crazy, especially when considering the entrenched market leaders are having a difficult time in this economy. So AOL would have to convice Compaq/HP/Gateway/etc. to sell Linux versions.
Of course, Microsoft wouldn't like this and would strongly encourage them not to do this. Ad campaigns would convince the newbies that if they bought AOL Linux they couldn't use their favorite software, or play their favorite games. Come on AOL, you can spend your money better than by trying to compete against Microsoft in the desktop arena. Stick to your ISP business, stick to your media empire - dominate there and work WITH Microsoft to blend the media and the computer age.
Is it really that hard to make a simple chess engine? I'd imagine it is very complicated to make a good one, but I would also wager there are books with cookie-cutter designs for making a simplistic one.
If I buy something there and am unbeknowingstly signed up to some mail list, that, IMHO, is annoying, but not spam. If, upon receiving the mailing list, I click on the little link at the bottom to unsubscribe, and am told that I have unsubscribed, but still keep getting emails, then that is spam (IMHO).
It's called Female Sexual Castration (FSC) or sometimes referred to as genital mutilation, and is performed (forcefully, no doubt) in a number of African nations.
Many of these spammers send from hotmail.com or from email addresses that are not in the US. So how would I go about suing them? Even assuming that I could sue them, how could I manage to go about collecting my settlement from them?
I'm afraid suing is not the answer to ending all spam, just a small class of spam.
Word's format hasn't changed since Word 97, no? Also, I don't have Office XP, but I could have sworn I had heard that you could save Word files as XML files. Is this not the case?
There was a Kurt Vonnegut short story, if I remember correctly, where man-steered missles are used. That is, a human being sits inside the missle and directs its path to the target. Supposedly computers were worth too much to lose one to aid the missle's navigation, so men were used instead.
But they had to convert those natural resources into bullets, tanks, guns, etc. Also, despite their control of continental Europe, they lacked food and oil, two important resources for fighting any war or building any bomb (hence the push into Russia, to get to their oil fields).
But it sure was psychologically devestating, no? The thought of unmanned rockets, fired from deep within Germany, able to kill Londeners. And the whirring high pitched sounds it must have made coming in, how terrifying. Plus, of course, Germany really never could have kept up with the Allies air superiority presence (especially since the Allies had radar), hence the rockets made attacking England possible late in the war.
Hitler was pretty desperate for a "miracle weapon" late in the war, and continously promised his people that Germany was close to such a weapon that would stem the tide of the war. If he had just waited another couple of years and allowed his scientists to develop jet engines before the war, rockets, maybe even A-bombs, who would have known what our world would be like today?
And they wonder why they can't get laid!
Regardless of what Cringely says, you should read the interview before jumping to conclusions. Do you agree with me that a number of companies that "lost" to Microsoft lost because they made bad business decisions? If the answer is, "No," read the interview, think about things for a while, then get back to me.
Yes, there are a lot of companies who have been squashed (or, as Joel would say, "Had their lunch eaten") by Microsoft in large part because of Microsoft's money/marketing, but there are also a lot of companies that nose dived into failure because of their own ignorant business and technology decisions.
While Microsoft may not like the costs and annoyance of court cases and DOJ action, it must give them some satisfaction because most of those companies bringing suit against Microsoft are doing so because they think that's their best option. I would argue that for these plantiffs making better products would be a "better option."
You may want to check out this article by Robert Cringely: Microsoft's C# Language Might Be the Death of Java, but Sun's the One to Blame.
A lot of truth in that...
So switching to Linux wasn't a MS is bad, Linux is good... it was a, "Those damn Sun boxes are expensive, Linux is cheap, therefore better." I don't understand how people are using this to debase Microsoft. It would be like if someone said, "Sony just upgraded their Web site from Windows 2000 to Windows XP - Microsoft wins another round against Linux!"
I actually played it back in school three or four years ago (when I had more freetime). My only complaint was that the graphics were a bit blah and it was far too like Civ I. Seeing their site just now, though, I am quite impressed with their graphical improvements. I'll have to give it a try once I get some free time...
would allow the player to choose what level they wanted to play. That is, if it were a war-type game, you could choose either to be a general, where you do nothing but order commands and see what the results are, and then order counter plans, etc. Or you could be a division leader, where you control a small group, and are given orders you need to follow... or you are an individual soldier in a 3d style game, where you have specific orders, like, "Don't let the enemy get past these defenses," as you sit there in a foxhole with a rifle.
Of course, to make it popular, you'd likely need to let the user switch between the modes as the game progressed.
Got to hear a talk from Henri Casanova, one of the top dogs working on distributed application scheduleing and simulation software for The Grid. Neat stuff, but, as he addressed in his talk, we're really looking at a network of computers that only people needing massively intensive computations done on highly parallizable problems would find useful. Translation: only researchers in certain fields need this.
It's much more fun to play against a human than a dumb computer. Hopefully the AI for CIV3 is much better than previous games.
Anyhow, I really don't mind waiting long, if the game is worth it. I use to play Axis and Allies multiplayer, where you could end up waiting 15 minutes for your next turn... :-) But, damn, it was a fun game.
I'm gonna wait to buy this game until it goes multiplayer. According to the CIV3 FAQ, the game will not have multiplayer support when it ships, although they plan on making some multiplayer options available in Spring 2002. (Not holding my breath.)
while (!codeSampleFixed) hired = false;
// hint: using += on a bool?
I've never been employed as a game programmer, never had much of an interest, but I had a friend who use to work for a large game programming company and his comments were: "When you first start off, the first project you work on is always some obscure portion of a baseball game." He did not elaborate why. That is all.
I'd buy 10% of the users to his site use non-IE. It's an ASP information site, so, yes, the majority of users use IE. I've seen the same numbers on my ASP site.
AFAIK, you can say lies... well, as long as you believe they are true. If you truly believe the local police to be killing babies, you are protected by free speach, AFAIK.
Do you not realize that profit = net income - net expenses? If you lower net income BUT lower net expenses further, your net profit increases!! If MS distributes Office over the Web only (not far away), then that saves a bundle of money on shipping/CD stamping/etc. Also, since people are paying on a per-feature basis, MS will quickly learn what features are profitable and which ones aren't. They then can stop spending time on developing features that people don't find useful enough to pay for...