If the admin wants everyone to speak the same language then the server should not be up for the world to use and see.
Just because the server is available, doesn't mean you have a right to use it. You're a guest. Abide by the owner's requests or go find somewhere else that's more accommodating. Or, better yet, set up your own server run by the rules you find ideal.
If you think that they're going to cheat by talking in their native language )give out key info / advantage), then of course there are easier ways than by global comms which everyone can see.
Many years ago, I was playing in a paintball tournament in Germany. It was hosted by the US Army and open to all. A mix of teams from various nationalities ended up attending.
During one game, my team happened to be going up against a German team. I had found myself managing to sneak in to the middle of the field and had a couple of the German team flanked. As I shot at them, they didn't realize the impacts weren't coming from my teammates in front of them. I took one out. He called himself out as he looked down the line at me in surprise. And as he walked off the field, he said something to his friend who turned to look at him then down to where I was. Too late. I took the 2nd guy out.
The interesting thing was the referee who was standing further up from all of us. He was a US Army guy and part of the group that were hosting the tournament. He called out in German to the first player I had eliminated. I later found out he was informing the guy that he had earned his team a harsh penalty for talking after being hit.
The point? People will be rather brazen about their cheating if they think you don't know their language. And, perhaps, especially because you don't know their language.
As a side note, this wasn't the only time I experienced this theme. My German sucks. But our crew had some very fluent German speakers in our midst. We'd often picked up comments made openly (usually concerning strategy for the next game) simply because they didn't expect us to understand them. Thankfully, few cheated.
I'm only partially trolling with that - I'm no IT person, but I've been in a great many places with a great many Sun Workstations, and can count the number of times I've seen someone sitting at one of them actually working on one or two hands.
It depends on how you want to define "server". I always found that in the *nix world, the distinction was rather arbitrary. And that was a technical plus. But sometimes a political negative.
I used to admin a Unix lab in a major US Government research facility. It consisted of roughly 20 workstations - some HP, mostly Sun. The Division's management had began expressing concern over the underutilization of the lab. After all, they would poke their head in the door and rarely see anybody sitting in front of any of the keyboards. What they didn't understand was that the lab got heavy use. We had engineers logged in from down the street. And we had engineers scattered throughout the building who, using a combination of PuTTY and Hummingbird's Exceed, were happily working away via their "office automation" Wintel boxes from the comfort of their own desks.
There were a couple of engineers who preferred walking down to the lab to work. So one would occasionally find them physically there. But they weren't my heavy users and they didn't help perception of the lab's use. I often joked that I was going to rig up a cardboard silhouette that would pop up in front of a keyboard when someone logged in to the box.
A couple years after I left the lab, I heard that it had been entirely replaced with Windows boxes. It's a shame. My user base had always complained about using WinNT boxes when they went to train on the software we were using. To my pleasant suprise, they preferred the Unix systems at work. I can only hope, for their sakes, that Win2K was kinder to them than NT (and they didn't mind the walk to the lab).
You take some 19 year old schlub who is never going to do anything huge in his life and show him the disney version of heroism. I'm not saying that the real men didn't act and die with heroism, but the movie is a whitewash - ignoring the actual human costs of war and the reasons we were involved.
The movie I saw produced a pretty heavy body count. The perspective of the movie, and the book on which it was based, is entirely on the US forces - mostly those on the ground. And they were heavily maimed and killed. It even included a scene where a medic was forced to dig for an artery in a fellow soldier's pelvis in a doomed attempt to save his life. By the time the last survivors were able to make it out of the (what we now understand / suspect was a) trap they found themselves limping along the road alone. Safety came in the form of a stadium staging area and rows of covered dead.
I'm curious how many "19 year old schlub[s]" saw this and went "Oh yea! I wanna be doing that!" A dubious recruitment film, IMHO. And hardly whitewash.
The movie itself was more a slap in the face to the men killed in the real life events to which it makes reference than anything Michael writes could ever be.
How do you figure that? I haven't heard of any criticism towards the movie being inaccurate. Did I miss something?
What was your point? I'm not really in to the game of Chess myself. But I've heard that Fischer has been rumored to play online from time to time. Maybe you have knowledge of his applying his chess skills towards a world-wide campaign of chess defeats against the United States?
Yep. I say: Big Whoop. The non-windows gaming market share is what, %2? 5%? It costs a lot of money for the engineering and testing to ensure your game is cross-platform. It's generally not worth the cost to gain that meager 2-5% of market. And surprise! most game studios don't bother.
The important point that may be missed here is that if developers stick to open standards whenever possible, it will lower their cost to migrate from platform to platform.
I completely agree with your points on open standards (I kind of hint towards that in the PDF vs. Word discussion). However, I've tried to keep away from the subject. After all, we're talking about consoles here. Open standards are completely alien to this environment (Linux running on Xbox / PS2 hacks aside).
Although the entire IT industry used to be like that at one time too. Maybe its time for the console market to catch up.
I think what I was pointing out is that Microsoft's "standard" really is a standard.
Agreed. But having a standard isn't all that unique. The origional post had listed Microsoft's use of their standard as innovative. My point is that everyone (Sony included) has a standard.
Granted - Microsoft's standard may very well be superior; easier to use, easier to access, applied to multiple markets. And, in fact, I glossed over the origional posters mentioning the Xbox being "easy to program". However, just having a "standard" does not imply any of this. I wouldn't have been so critical if the parent poster had gone in to greater detail to demonstrate the importance of this particular standard over others.
Sony's development platform was not a standard prior to the release of the Playstation 2. Microsoft's DirectX already was a standard and most of the PC game developers out there were already skilled at using it. That's the point of the statement that you criticized, so don't start with the spin.
That's interesting. The origional statement was:
Also, the Xbox was built to be easy to program, utilizing standard libraries (DirectX) and development environments (Visual Studio).
There's nothing there about age or accessability of the standard. You'll note that I'm the one who mentions that Microsoft's standards makes it easy to develop for both Windows and XBox - allowing developers to straddle between "PC" and "console" markets.
Regarding Word and PDF: first off, Word and PDF are not parallel products. PDF was designed to allow documents to be transported electronically while still retaining its original characteristics. Word, however, is a word processor at its core; its primary uses are related to creation and printing of documents.
It doesn't matter what the format does. The fact still remains that PDF is well defined and publicly published. MS Word is not.
Though I don't know much about Word and PDF implementations, I do know there are free readers available for both formats. Also, an open source office suite that works wonderfully with Microsoft's publishing formats is widely and freely available
The 3rd party free readers for PDF work very well - they follow the documented standard. The Open Source word processor works very well thanks to extensive reverse engineering. However, it isn't perfect. You might want to note that every article on Open Office posted here involves a thread that talks about what areas of Word support fails.
True, DirectX is proprietary... but it's extremely widespread and is hardly comparable to Sony's format. We may hate Microsoft, but a lot of their standardized systems (.NET anyone?) are easy and intuitive to develop with.
My criticism has nothing to do with the quality or accessibility of either standard. And neither does the original statement (although maybe that's what they had meant).
Technically this is true, but the connector basically uses Microsoft Outlook Web Access via HTTP. Nice toy, but I wouldn't want to use it in anger.
There's a big project going on at work involving the migration to Exchange 2003. I'm fuzzy on the details since I've just now been asked to do some pilot testing - for Evolution, no less.
One tidbit I've picked up so far is the ability for home / travel users to access their Exchange accounts with a native Outlook client - via HTTP. Whether it is using the WebDAV API or what's been called "RPC over HTTP", I'm not sure. I've been told that Entourage for OSX will be doing the same. So it would seem that this isn't just a hack from Ximian.
Considering that the majority of the games released on the PC market focus on DirectX, I'd have to say that it's the standard.
And all of the Playstation games use Sony's standard (whatever that may be). The point being that Microsoft using a "standard" is not unique.
If you want to take your argument a step further, consider that Sony's "standard" has more marketshare and titles in the console market. Therefore, Microsoft isn't following "the standard" at all.
Because something is proprietary doesn't mean it isn't a standard. There's lots and lots of examples of standards that are proprietary--GIFs, PDF, MSWord, the Philips CD, Intel's Audio Codec. That's the way things work.
Some proprietary standards are less so than others. Let's take two from your list of examples: MS Word and PDF. The MS Word format, if published, is kept out of the public eye. The PDF format is well documented, publically published, and can be implemented by anyone.
Once you want to publish it to XBox, there is a licensing fee, but if I recall correctly, it's quite a bit less than Sony's or Nintendo's fee.
So there is a licensing fee... like Sony.
What we're ending up describing is, essentially, a proprietary environment just like Sony. Microsoft uses its standards. Sony uses theirs. Microsoft's environment might (or may not) be more accessable, easier to use, cheaper to develop, etc. Which are all laudible characteristics, to be sure. But the basics of licensing and standards between the competing platforms are esentially the same.
Except that Microsoft's tools are easily accessed and digested. All you need to know is on msdn.microsoft.com. The IDE is widely available (cheap for academic versions, free for upcoming Express versions), and the SDK is free.
Fair enough. But what you're describing is a superior, but no less proprietary, IDE and SDK.
A person can learn DirectX on his/her own, rather easily, and that knowledge is directly applicable to the production of an XBox game.
So what you're saying is I can produce Xbox games without any specific licensing?
Also, the Xbox was built to be easy to program, utilizing standard libraries (DirectX) and development environments (Visual Studio).
By "standard", you mean Microsoft's standards. Which is fortunate since this is a Microsoft product. An obvious advantage to this is being able to develop a tittle for both the Windows and Xbox (or "pc" and "console" if you prefer the misnomer) markets. But in the end, this "standard" is not any more special as any other existing standard. When you code for Sony, you use their tools. And when you code for Microsoft, you use their tools.
IBM is still a $90 billion a year company. There was no IBM "fall". They are still very much alive and kicking.
It sounds like you define "fall" as a complete failure or bankruptcy of a company. Not so. IBM of today is a major player in IT. However, during the 80's, they were THE voice of business IT. They owned the market. They set standards. Heck - the IBM PC didn't become popular because it was first to market, most powerfull, least expensive, or first to provide the business computing killer app. But it was a success in business because businesses wanted microcomputers and IBM had one to offer.
Not anymore. Today's IBM competes with other major players in the market; their position in the market fell. Which is a good thing. Unless you're business is IBM's business.
I hear that sometimes many people thing MS being a monopoly is a bad thing but one large monopoly against another like MS against Sony is the essence of competition.
You're confusing the term "monopoly" with "large, well-funded, and capable corporation". It doesn't take monopoly to create competition.
Who didn't expect Microsoft to be a significant player? For Microsoft to have entered this market and remain insignificant in it would have been evidence of a colossal blunder. Microsoft has the funding it takes to bring in top talent / expertise and develop. Microsoft has one of the most formidable marketing machines in Technology. These alone almost guarantee Microsoft got attention when it entered a market that isn't exactly awash with players.
However, an important piece that might not be immediately apparent is that Microsoft's day 1 for competing with console makers didn't start with the Xbox. Microsoft has competed for decades; every time a consumer or game developer makes a choice on whether they pick a "PC" or console.
Granted, this hasn't been direct competition per se. People tend to look at PC gaming and consoles as exclusive markets. However, there IS a certain degree of indirect competition between the two markets. And more importantly - whether Microsoft has been competing with consoles all along or competing with other OSes for personal computing gaming... Microsoft has been developing expertise in gaming technology.
Microsoft is not going from "nowhere to significant" with the Xbox. It's nowhere as drastic as Ballmer makes it sound. Microsoft has simply decided to shift their existing business strategy to compete directly with console makers.
Granted, the console industry is made up of considerable competition. Microsoft's task isn't trivial. But combine their existing expertise, funding, and talent for marketing... it's no surprise the Xbox has had at least mediocre success.
Re:Red Hat is still priced for perfection
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Red Hat Vs. The Lawyers
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· Score: 3, Insightful
And since much of their revenue is for service, their costs will grow as their sales grow (in contrast to Microsoft's Windows monopoly, which requires very few marginal expenses for each sale).
Good point. However, remember that "service" in this case is more than a helpdesk ticket. Service is also software. Software-as-service takes on two forms.
The first software service is packaging. All of Redhat's software is Open Source. One can download, build, and configure the exact same system that is bundled as any of the official RedHat platforms. However, Redhat does this for their customers with official RPMs.
Of course, this service isn't unique. Even if you don't want to package your own RPMs, there are others who will - collected in to public repositories. So why is Redhat's service unique?
Redhat offers a slow-moving target for enterprise developers. If you're dependant on enterprise applications (say, Oracle) you're going to want to run on a platform Oracle has agreed to support. Redhat does the testing and negotionation with enterprise developers to create that platform. Redhat's RPMs are a part of this.
Some techies will find this all a bit dubious. But then, the concept of "someone to support it / blame" is seen as dubious - and it's often cited as a real issue with Business IT.
There's no real incentive not to get shot, besides the lack of points. With paintball you know when you've been hit, because it hurts like hell.
We all have our own thresholds for pain - your milage may vary. However, I disagree. Paintball doesn't hurt near as much.
That's not to say it doesn't hurt. But then, you will most likely be running around in some outdoors environment complete with all the bugs, critters, dirt, thorns, heat, cold, and other obstacles and assailants of the outdoors. You're in for some sort of physical abuse one way or another. Occasionally, it'll involve a particularly unfortunate and nasty impact by a paintball.
There are plenty of times I've noted mystery dots on my skin after a day on the field. Sometimes they'll look like I had a particularly nasty time with an octopus - lines of red welts stitched across a body part. Obviously, I'd taken hits (or a number of hits) but forgotten. The thing is, unless the contact produced a broken paintball and resulting mark, I would quickly forget the impact. I felt the hit(s). Looked down, checked for paint. Discovered none. And moved on, quickly forgetting the encounter (eager to induce a simular encounter with my opponent on a more favorable term).
This is not a hit that "hurts like hell."
So the advantage to a paintball? Physics. You don't worry about hotspots on your target (although some areas produce better breaks than others). Obstacles such as leaves give way to a paintball where they block photons. There's something of a thrill when you hear the "thock" of a paintball connect to something nearby... or the "whir" of one speeding past you. And there's a certain sense of satisfaction when you've manage to arch a shot across a wide open space to produce a hit where the target assumed he'd be out of range and safe (a zen moment referred to as the "longball").
The reason Microsoft is integrating code from SCO is that SCO Unix is a powerful x86 UNIX that's also certified by the Open group and unencumbered by the "viral licensing" of the GPL. For a commercial product hoping to replace UN*X systems, these two features are immensely more important than the number of features the utilities provide.
No, it's important to MICROSOFT. Other commercial products have been able to work within the requirements of the GPL fine. This includes, up to this point, Microsoft's own SFU for the years Microsoft has owned it as well as the period of time before Microsoft's purchase.
But Microsoft has an ideological stake in this. So they'll make the sacrifice of functionality for licensing. Keep this in mind when you see someone criticizing Linux supporters for exactly the same behavior.
Actually, this is exactly what they aren't doing.
It may be their intention to stop doing this. But it's exactly what they've been doing.
SFU does include GCC, but for the most part the utilities are from OpenBSD.
It's hard to tell what's going under the hood with the latest version of SFU without actually downloading it. However, at one time in the past, Microsoft was very forthcoming with what SFU included. But you can still find traces if you look.
The utilities bc, ci, co, cpio, csplit, dc, diff, diff3, gawk, gzip, gunzip, ident, merge, nl, rcs, rcsdiff, rcsmerge and rlog are covered under the GNU General Public License, here reproduced.
In accordance with section 3b of this license the source code to those utilities is available from the Interix World Wide Web site, http://www.microsoft.com/windows/sfu.
Also, if you look at an older version of the SFU site, you'll note a sidebar that reads:
GPL Utility Source Code
The GPL utility source code for Services for UNIX 3.0 contains the base utilities diff, sdiff, bc, dc, cpio, gzip, gunzip, gawk, patch, csplit, nl, strings, rpm, and SDK utilities/libraries ld.so, gcc, gdb, g++, g77, gasp, objcopy, ld, as, ar, nm, size, strip, ci, co, diff3 rcs, rlog, and ident.
The GPL utility source code for Interix 2.2 contains the utilities bc, ci, co, cpio, csplit, dc, diff, diff3, gawk, gzip, gunzip, ident, merge, nl, rcs, rcsdiff, rcsmerge and rlog.
Note that Microsoft honors the GPL and offers source code via download and media (at the modest rate of $20). Which is a Good Thing.
Now - as I noted, I'm not sure whether GPL utilities play such a role in the latest version of SFU. But at one time they did.
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Just because the server is available, doesn't mean you have a right to use it. You're a guest. Abide by the owner's requests or go find somewhere else that's more accommodating. Or, better yet, set up your own server run by the rules you find ideal.
Many years ago, I was playing in a paintball tournament in Germany. It was hosted by the US Army and open to all. A mix of teams from various nationalities ended up attending.
During one game, my team happened to be going up against a German team. I had found myself managing to sneak in to the middle of the field and had a couple of the German team flanked. As I shot at them, they didn't realize the impacts weren't coming from my teammates in front of them. I took one out. He called himself out as he looked down the line at me in surprise. And as he walked off the field, he said something to his friend who turned to look at him then down to where I was. Too late. I took the 2nd guy out.
The interesting thing was the referee who was standing further up from all of us. He was a US Army guy and part of the group that were hosting the tournament. He called out in German to the first player I had eliminated. I later found out he was informing the guy that he had earned his team a harsh penalty for talking after being hit.
The point? People will be rather brazen about their cheating if they think you don't know their language. And, perhaps, especially because you don't know their language.
As a side note, this wasn't the only time I experienced this theme. My German sucks. But our crew had some very fluent German speakers in our midst. We'd often picked up comments made openly (usually concerning strategy for the next game) simply because they didn't expect us to understand them. Thankfully, few cheated.
It depends on how you want to define "server". I always found that in the *nix world, the distinction was rather arbitrary. And that was a technical plus. But sometimes a political negative.
I used to admin a Unix lab in a major US Government research facility. It consisted of roughly 20 workstations - some HP, mostly Sun. The Division's management had began expressing concern over the underutilization of the lab. After all, they would poke their head in the door and rarely see anybody sitting in front of any of the keyboards. What they didn't understand was that the lab got heavy use. We had engineers logged in from down the street. And we had engineers scattered throughout the building who, using a combination of PuTTY and Hummingbird's Exceed, were happily working away via their "office automation" Wintel boxes from the comfort of their own desks.
There were a couple of engineers who preferred walking down to the lab to work. So one would occasionally find them physically there. But they weren't my heavy users and they didn't help perception of the lab's use. I often joked that I was going to rig up a cardboard silhouette that would pop up in front of a keyboard when someone logged in to the box.
A couple years after I left the lab, I heard that it had been entirely replaced with Windows boxes. It's a shame. My user base had always complained about using WinNT boxes when they went to train on the software we were using. To my pleasant suprise, they preferred the Unix systems at work. I can only hope, for their sakes, that Win2K was kinder to them than NT (and they didn't mind the walk to the lab).
The movie I saw produced a pretty heavy body count. The perspective of the movie, and the book on which it was based, is entirely on the US forces - mostly those on the ground. And they were heavily maimed and killed. It even included a scene where a medic was forced to dig for an artery in a fellow soldier's pelvis in a doomed attempt to save his life. By the time the last survivors were able to make it out of the (what we now understand / suspect was a) trap they found themselves limping along the road alone. Safety came in the form of a stadium staging area and rows of covered dead.
I'm curious how many "19 year old schlub[s]" saw this and went "Oh yea! I wanna be doing that!" A dubious recruitment film, IMHO. And hardly whitewash.
How do you figure that? I haven't heard of any criticism towards the movie being inaccurate. Did I miss something?
What was your point? I'm not really in to the game of Chess myself. But I've heard that Fischer has been rumored to play online from time to time. Maybe you have knowledge of his applying his chess skills towards a world-wide campaign of chess defeats against the United States?
Unless you consider the possibility of these two being introduced to each other through the penetentary system. Just picture THAT for a moment.
Wait. I sense the basis of a Cinemax movie here. Call my agent.
The important point that may be missed here is that if developers stick to open standards whenever possible, it will lower their cost to migrate from platform to platform.
I completely agree with your points on open standards (I kind of hint towards that in the PDF vs. Word discussion). However, I've tried to keep away from the subject. After all, we're talking about consoles here. Open standards are completely alien to this environment (Linux running on Xbox / PS2 hacks aside).
Although the entire IT industry used to be like that at one time too. Maybe its time for the console market to catch up.
Agreed. But having a standard isn't all that unique. The origional post had listed Microsoft's use of their standard as innovative. My point is that everyone (Sony included) has a standard.
Granted - Microsoft's standard may very well be superior; easier to use, easier to access, applied to multiple markets. And, in fact, I glossed over the origional posters mentioning the Xbox being "easy to program". However, just having a "standard" does not imply any of this. I wouldn't have been so critical if the parent poster had gone in to greater detail to demonstrate the importance of this particular standard over others.
That's interesting. The origional statement was:
There's nothing there about age or accessability of the standard. You'll note that I'm the one who mentions that Microsoft's standards makes it easy to develop for both Windows and XBox - allowing developers to straddle between "PC" and "console" markets.
It doesn't matter what the format does. The fact still remains that PDF is well defined and publicly published. MS Word is not.
The 3rd party free readers for PDF work very well - they follow the documented standard. The Open Source word processor works very well thanks to extensive reverse engineering. However, it isn't perfect. You might want to note that every article on Open Office posted here involves a thread that talks about what areas of Word support fails.
My criticism has nothing to do with the quality or accessibility of either standard. And neither does the original statement (although maybe that's what they had meant).
There's a big project going on at work involving the migration to Exchange 2003. I'm fuzzy on the details since I've just now been asked to do some pilot testing - for Evolution, no less.
One tidbit I've picked up so far is the ability for home / travel users to access their Exchange accounts with a native Outlook client - via HTTP. Whether it is using the WebDAV API or what's been called "RPC over HTTP", I'm not sure. I've been told that Entourage for OSX will be doing the same. So it would seem that this isn't just a hack from Ximian.
I'm not aware that I made any comments as to WHY they fell. I'm simply stating that they did. They why of it is a completely different discussion.
And all of the Playstation games use Sony's standard (whatever that may be). The point being that Microsoft using a "standard" is not unique.
If you want to take your argument a step further, consider that Sony's "standard" has more marketshare and titles in the console market. Therefore, Microsoft isn't following "the standard" at all.
Some proprietary standards are less so than others. Let's take two from your list of examples: MS Word and PDF. The MS Word format, if published, is kept out of the public eye. The PDF format is well documented, publically published, and can be implemented by anyone.
So there is a licensing fee... like Sony.
What we're ending up describing is, essentially, a proprietary environment just like Sony. Microsoft uses its standards. Sony uses theirs. Microsoft's environment might (or may not) be more accessable, easier to use, cheaper to develop, etc. Which are all laudible characteristics, to be sure. But the basics of licensing and standards between the competing platforms are esentially the same.
Fair enough. But what you're describing is a superior, but no less proprietary, IDE and SDK.
So what you're saying is I can produce Xbox games without any specific licensing?
By "standard", you mean Microsoft's standards. Which is fortunate since this is a Microsoft product. An obvious advantage to this is being able to develop a tittle for both the Windows and Xbox (or "pc" and "console" if you prefer the misnomer) markets. But in the end, this "standard" is not any more special as any other existing standard. When you code for Sony, you use their tools. And when you code for Microsoft, you use their tools.
It sounds like you define "fall" as a complete failure or bankruptcy of a company. Not so. IBM of today is a major player in IT. However, during the 80's, they were THE voice of business IT. They owned the market. They set standards. Heck - the IBM PC didn't become popular because it was first to market, most powerfull, least expensive, or first to provide the business computing killer app. But it was a success in business because businesses wanted microcomputers and IBM had one to offer.
Not anymore. Today's IBM competes with other major players in the market; their position in the market fell. Which is a good thing. Unless you're business is IBM's business.
You're confusing the term "monopoly" with "large, well-funded, and capable corporation". It doesn't take monopoly to create competition.
Who didn't expect Microsoft to be a significant player? For Microsoft to have entered this market and remain insignificant in it would have been evidence of a colossal blunder. Microsoft has the funding it takes to bring in top talent / expertise and develop. Microsoft has one of the most formidable marketing machines in Technology. These alone almost guarantee Microsoft got attention when it entered a market that isn't exactly awash with players.
However, an important piece that might not be immediately apparent is that Microsoft's day 1 for competing with console makers didn't start with the Xbox. Microsoft has competed for decades; every time a consumer or game developer makes a choice on whether they pick a "PC" or console.
Granted, this hasn't been direct competition per se. People tend to look at PC gaming and consoles as exclusive markets. However, there IS a certain degree of indirect competition between the two markets. And more importantly - whether Microsoft has been competing with consoles all along or competing with other OSes for personal computing gaming... Microsoft has been developing expertise in gaming technology.
Microsoft is not going from "nowhere to significant" with the Xbox. It's nowhere as drastic as Ballmer makes it sound. Microsoft has simply decided to shift their existing business strategy to compete directly with console makers.
Granted, the console industry is made up of considerable competition. Microsoft's task isn't trivial. But combine their existing expertise, funding, and talent for marketing... it's no surprise the Xbox has had at least mediocre success.
Good point. However, remember that "service" in this case is more than a helpdesk ticket. Service is also software. Software-as-service takes on two forms.
The first software service is packaging. All of Redhat's software is Open Source. One can download, build, and configure the exact same system that is bundled as any of the official RedHat platforms. However, Redhat does this for their customers with official RPMs.
Of course, this service isn't unique. Even if you don't want to package your own RPMs, there are others who will - collected in to public repositories. So why is Redhat's service unique?
Redhat offers a slow-moving target for enterprise developers. If you're dependant on enterprise applications (say, Oracle) you're going to want to run on a platform Oracle has agreed to support. Redhat does the testing and negotionation with enterprise developers to create that platform. Redhat's RPMs are a part of this.
Some techies will find this all a bit dubious. But then, the concept of "someone to support it / blame" is seen as dubious - and it's often cited as a real issue with Business IT.
How very W.C. Fields.
We all have our own thresholds for pain - your milage may vary. However, I disagree. Paintball doesn't hurt near as much.
That's not to say it doesn't hurt. But then, you will most likely be running around in some outdoors environment complete with all the bugs, critters, dirt, thorns, heat, cold, and other obstacles and assailants of the outdoors. You're in for some sort of physical abuse one way or another. Occasionally, it'll involve a particularly unfortunate and nasty impact by a paintball.
There are plenty of times I've noted mystery dots on my skin after a day on the field. Sometimes they'll look like I had a particularly nasty time with an octopus - lines of red welts stitched across a body part. Obviously, I'd taken hits (or a number of hits) but forgotten. The thing is, unless the contact produced a broken paintball and resulting mark, I would quickly forget the impact. I felt the hit(s). Looked down, checked for paint. Discovered none. And moved on, quickly forgetting the encounter (eager to induce a simular encounter with my opponent on a more favorable term).
This is not a hit that "hurts like hell."
So the advantage to a paintball? Physics. You don't worry about hotspots on your target (although some areas produce better breaks than others). Obstacles such as leaves give way to a paintball where they block photons. There's something of a thrill when you hear the "thock" of a paintball connect to something nearby... or the "whir" of one speeding past you. And there's a certain sense of satisfaction when you've manage to arch a shot across a wide open space to produce a hit where the target assumed he'd be out of range and safe (a zen moment referred to as the "longball").
No, it's important to MICROSOFT. Other commercial products have been able to work within the requirements of the GPL fine. This includes, up to this point, Microsoft's own SFU for the years Microsoft has owned it as well as the period of time before Microsoft's purchase.
But Microsoft has an ideological stake in this. So they'll make the sacrifice of functionality for licensing. Keep this in mind when you see someone criticizing Linux supporters for exactly the same behavior.
It may be their intention to stop doing this. But it's exactly what they've been doing.
It's hard to tell what's going under the hood with the latest version of SFU without actually downloading it. However, at one time in the past, Microsoft was very forthcoming with what SFU included. But you can still find traces if you look.
Microsoft's FTP server offers a copy of the GPL which begins:
Also, if you look at an older version of the SFU site, you'll note a sidebar that reads:
Note that Microsoft honors the GPL and offers source code via download and media (at the modest rate of $20). Which is a Good Thing.
Now - as I noted, I'm not sure whether GPL utilities play such a role in the latest version of SFU. But at one time they did.