Napster does not have a sustainable business model. They can only continue to exist as long as they are operating on the wrong side of the law. Consider what would happen if they won the trial. How long do you think it would be before Microsoft Napster, Napster.aol.com, etc were launched? If the service was legitimized, they would immediately be crushed by larger competitors (possibly including the record industry itself). Napster knows this, and therefore they have no real incentive to become a "legal" service.
I don't think it's a monopoly simply because it's FIVE companies. But just like Microsoft Windows isn't the only OS, Sony/Warner/EMI/etc. aren't the only record companies. Just the only ones people know about...
I hear lots of talk about how MS Office is nearly good enough (in 90% of cases) to import your typical MS Office file. Consider MS Excel's situation in the days when Lotus 123 reigned supreme. The beginning of the end for Lotus was when MS brought out a version of Excel (3.0 I believe) that actually handled 123 files BETTER than Lotus itself. Excel actually executes Lotus 123 macros faster than real Lotus 123, and thus more than overcame the standard "I have a huge investment in 123 files and macros" argument. Think of this as the bar that StarOffice has to reach to gain widespread acceptance: recreating hundreds of word and excel documents is FAR more expensive than the $xxx that MS charges for an Office license. StarOffice has to overcome this and maintain its lower price.
Is that in US$??? Seems incredibly cheap. I researched it, and the best rate plan was around $50 for 500 minutes. Past that, about $.15/min for non-roaming, and $.35 for roaming. Data costs you another $15 per month (I think).
In the US, a home line runs about $18 per month. But then, you don't have to pay for any local calls whatsoever.
>One thing I have always wondered is if and, if >so, how much does MS violate the GPL? After all, >their source is closed so how do you tell?
Well from friends who work there, they say they are "not allowed" to look at any Open Source software/Mozilla source/etc, because there is then no way of proving they didn't copy the code into MS code. HTH.
> I really don't want dicaprio in epII simply > because he will draw hordes of 12 year old > girls who just want to see the movie > because "leo's so hot!!!" and will ruin > the experience for the rest of us.
So, hordes of 12 year old girls are a BAD thing? *grin*
I do not know much about Linux, but on the Win32 platform, being statically linked to many DLL can kill your application's boot performance. The system has to load every DLL to which an application is statically linked when the application boots. On the other hand, a DLL to which the application is not statically linked (for example, a DLL that is loaded on your application's behalf by OLE, or a DLL that is delay loaded with the linker setting they added in Visual C 6) is only loaded on demand. When tuning the boot performance of the app. I develop prior to the release of its latest version, I was able to cut SECONDS off of the boot time by being cleverer about delay loading DLLs, and being statically linked to less stuff. For example, if you use WININET but don't connect to the internet until the user says "please connect", being statically linked to WININET is wasteful and will add many millions of cycles to boot time on a memory constrained system as the WININET DLL is faulted in from the slow disk.
At boot time, every disk page that you can avoid reading is precious. Another technique we use in with our application is delay initialization of static structures. For example, an HTML parser needs a table of HTML tags and their properties (e.g. is br a spanning tag for which I should look for a/br or not). This data structure is static for the duration of the process. However, for the application to boot this tag table may not be necessary; it's only needed the first time a document is parsed. So the solution is to maintain a static pointer to the table that is initially NULL, then the table gets initialized the first time it is accessed. Since the table doesn't have to be faulted in from disk during boot, several million CPU cycles will be cut from boot time, compared to a cost of only 2-3 cycles to check if the pointer is NULL each time before using the table.
Boot time is important if you want a user to make regular user of your app. Many a time I will make small edits to a piece of source code in notepad just because it boots faster than visual studio, which is a clearly superior editor in most other respects.
Ok, every time I try to install M*, I get the following error: ./apprunner: error in loading shared libraries ./libraptorhtmlpars.so: undefined symbol: __vt_8iostream.3ios
Very frustrating to read all these "Ah, so beautiful" posts when I can't ever run it. Any suggestions?
Slashdot Mirror
>A study also has a 50% chance
>of finding a non-significant
>correlation between cell phone use
>and below-average penis size.
Now THIS I would buy.
Napster does not have a sustainable business model. They can only continue to exist as long as they are operating on the wrong side of the law. Consider what would happen if they won the trial. How long do you think it would be before Microsoft Napster, Napster.aol.com, etc were launched? If the service was legitimized, they would immediately be crushed by larger competitors (possibly including the record industry itself). Napster knows this, and therefore they have no real incentive to become a "legal" service.
I don't think it's a monopoly simply because it's FIVE companies. But just like Microsoft Windows isn't the only OS, Sony/Warner/EMI/etc. aren't the only record companies. Just the only ones people know about...
I hear lots of talk about how MS Office is nearly good enough (in 90% of cases) to import your typical MS Office file. Consider MS Excel's situation in the days when Lotus 123 reigned supreme. The beginning of the end for Lotus was when MS brought out a version of Excel (3.0 I believe) that actually handled 123 files BETTER than Lotus itself. Excel actually executes Lotus 123 macros faster than real Lotus 123, and thus more than overcame the standard "I have a huge investment in 123 files and macros" argument. Think of this as the bar that StarOffice has to reach to gain widespread acceptance: recreating hundreds of word and excel documents is FAR more expensive than the $xxx that MS charges for an Office license. StarOffice has to overcome this and maintain its lower price.
Is that in US$??? Seems incredibly cheap. I researched it, and the best rate plan was around $50 for 500 minutes. Past that, about $.15/min for non-roaming, and $.35 for roaming. Data costs you another $15 per month (I think).
In the US, a home line runs about $18 per month. But then, you don't have to pay for any local calls whatsoever.
He talks about Ender's Shadow mainly, but he mentions his plans (this was right after ES came out) for the series and other books as well.
>I have a palm V, which is what I want. I want >something to keep addresses/phonenumbers >/appointments in, and it has to fit in my >pocket.
Wow... I have a little pocket organizer that does the same thing that costs about $50... so what then do *I* need a PalmV for?
"If I ever have a hit show, I'm gonna run that sucker into the ground..."
of an actual T-shirt which says "Microsoft, the Intellectual Property Trading Game" superimposed on a picture of the Monopoly board...
>One thing I have always wondered is if and, if >so, how much does MS violate the GPL? After all, >their source is closed so how do you tell?
Well from friends who work there, they say they are "not allowed" to look at any Open Source software/Mozilla source/etc, because there is then no way of proving they didn't copy the code into MS code. HTH.
Well, I'm working in NC, fresh out of college making 45K, so considering you are working in NYC it sounds like you are underpaid...
> I really don't want dicaprio in epII simply
> because he will draw hordes of 12 year old
> girls who just want to see the movie
> because "leo's so hot!!!" and will ruin
> the experience for the rest of us.
So, hordes of 12 year old girls are a BAD thing?
*grin*
Those numbers are preposterous.
18,000 pages/second * 17K/page * 1024 bytes/K * 8 bits/byte = 2506752000 bits/second
Over 250 times the capacity of your ethernet card!
I do not know much about Linux, but on the Win32 platform, being statically linked to many DLL can kill your application's boot performance. The system has to load every DLL to which an application is statically linked when the application boots. On the other hand, a DLL to which the application is not statically linked (for example, a DLL that is loaded on your application's behalf by OLE, or a DLL that is delay loaded with the linker setting they added in Visual C 6) is only loaded on demand. When tuning the boot performance of the app. I develop prior to the release of its latest version, I was able to cut SECONDS off of the boot time by being cleverer about delay loading DLLs, and being statically linked to less stuff. For example, if you use WININET but don't connect to the internet until the user says "please connect", being statically linked to WININET is wasteful and will add many millions of cycles to boot time on a memory constrained system as the WININET DLL is faulted in from the slow disk.
/br or not). This data structure is static for the duration of the process. However, for the application to boot this tag table may not be necessary; it's only needed the first time a document is parsed. So the solution is to maintain a static pointer to the table that is initially NULL, then the table gets initialized the first time it is accessed. Since the table doesn't have to be faulted in from disk during boot, several million CPU cycles will be cut from boot time, compared to a cost of only 2-3 cycles to check if the pointer is NULL each time before using the table.
At boot time, every disk page that you can avoid reading is precious. Another technique we use in with our application is delay initialization of static structures. For example, an HTML parser needs a table of HTML tags and their properties (e.g. is br a spanning tag for which I should look for a
Boot time is important if you want a user to make regular user of your app. Many a time I will make small edits to a piece of source code in notepad just because it boots faster than visual studio, which is a clearly superior editor in most other respects.
Ok, every time I try to install M*, I get the following error:
./apprunner: error in loading shared libraries
./libraptorhtmlpars.so: undefined symbol: __vt_8iostream.3ios
Very frustrating to read all these "Ah, so beautiful" posts when I can't ever run it. Any suggestions?
> 3.1) Linux certantly DOES perform Syncronous
> I/O! Otherwise all I/O would stop while one was > in progress.
Um, think you missed that letter "A" in front of Synchronous - the guy said it *needs* to be ASYNCHRONOUS not synchronous. HTH.
-- laural