that site isn't actually controlled by MS, it's controlled by talk city (talkcity.com). i don't think MS owns talk city, though, so they really shouldn't have any say. (although what ever happened to the dogfood doctrine? MS should have enough muscle to nudge them to the dark side.)
who's going to buy groceries through fedex/ups? webvan isn't competing in the same space -- yet. plus, building a delivery infrastructure for whatever reason exists at the time doesn't hurt. sure fedex and ups (and several others) already have them, but they're thinking about delivery in a very conventional (too conventional) method. (ironically enough, i think it was fedex who's business plan was failed in a business class because it was too unconventional.)
here's something to think about: with all of the local chain stores, warehouses, and other infrastructure that currently exist in metropolitan areas, why order something from timbuktu with 2-3 day delivery if i can get it the same day locally? the fastest you can really get something is overnight if it's not local. i want to order something in the morning before i go to work and have it when i come home at night. not that the big grocery store warehouse idea from webvan is a bad idea, but wouldn't a purchasing broker/agent/whatever be a better idea? you wouldn't need all of the (physical) infrastructure, just a few deals to sell the mechandise from the existing stores. the computer infrastructure would be a bit more complex, but definately doable if standardized.
i would hate to see brick and mortar stores go away. everybody's afraid of it in the face of the amazon.com's of the world. something like this would at least leverage the fact they they're already here and local.
what we have here are two opposing forces -- the necessity to ensure freedom & the necessity to protect the innocent. what is the government supposed to do? laws aren't made to limit your actions, they're made to protect others. i don't care if what MS has done kills apple, netscape, AOL, or any of the ISVs that have gone away because of them. if that happens in a vaccum, then fine, i don't care. but it's an issue that's a lot more complex than just a company going about their business. in general, when it comes to computers, you have to treat the general public like they're minors and you have to look out for their best interests because at this point they're not capable of defending themselves -- most aren't even capable of making informed decisions on the matter.
guilty as sin and gets off scott free. actually, i'm kind of bracing myself for this, since i have this weird notion that life should be fair -- something i'm trying desperately to overcome.
last i heard, USWest (if you are "fortunate" enough to be in an area where they're located) charges about $50 a month for line and internet access and they throw in the adsl device for free. i think that's a 256k both ways. we usually get better throughput than we're paying for at work, but there have been times that USWest have had problems with their ATM and it's just a slug.
but the best part is his top reason: he's a visionary. as he has proved in the past & continues to proves. i don't know where this world would be without bill. i'd probably still be fashioning tools out of stone. plus, as a bonus reason, he claims that one day microsoft may make something revolutionary. not today. not after 10 or 20 years of R & D, though. some day, 15 or 20 years down the road, there will be something coming out of the billions of annual spending on R & D; something that doesn't seem anti-intuitive, useless, a big waste of resources, or doesn't force you into that same old "not quite clear on the concept" path that microsoft seems to love so much. of course, i've always been convinced that the precise reason most people hate MS isn't because of their monopoly power, it's that they haven't done anything to advance the state of the art. for all of their money and effort and time, i have yet to see anything clean, elegant, or innovative. for having one of the greatest visionaries of all time and the most R & D budget of just about an company, you'd think they could come up with one thing that was at least an elegant implementation of one of their products/APIs/languages/etc.
my understanding is that the big sun servers (E10000, etc) do essentially that. i think there was talk about it with the articles on the ebay fiasco. you might want to look back at some of that. i think i read that unisys has a system like that, too, but i don't recall off the top of my head. i'm sure there are probably a lot of instances of this sort of system.
last i checked, BeOS was positioning itself as the OS for multimedia designers, then a while ago i heard some rumblings about embedding BeOS in set top boxes (& the like), and now they've got a spiffy new web site proclaiming them the "software platform for the broadband digital media".
don't get me wrong -- BeOS is cool, but they run the risk that a lot of ventures do -- you only get so much venture capital before you have to go out and prove yourself and find a niche to be successful. BeOS isn't going to be a MS competitor any time soon, so it seems to me that Be is searching hard to find a niche, possibly at the cost of support for a "standard desktop OS".
not that i'm an expert, nor do i care that much, but it points out one of the advantages of linux. it can be whatever it wants to be without feeling the pressure of investors and businesses & it's a lot harder to disappoint and alienate people that way.
apparently linux is turning into the dos of old: there was one ms-dos (the gold standard, i suppose) and several OS (dos) clones that could run dos executables. until, at least, MS decided they didn't like it, that is. where linux is different is that there's no MS to decide that this negatively affected their bottom line.
at least in out local (twin cities) paper, that is. then again, so is some wrestler dying in some pay-per-view wrestling stunt, so take it for what you will. anyway, the article in our local paper is a lot longer than the abc one. here's the url it basically confirms what everyone else says: that 40 lbs. isn't even close to the actual weight (more like 60 lbs.), plus it was spliced together on a 3 ft. reel at the time. it also suggests an interesting use of the film: selling frames at $20 a pop (x 190,000 frames)
way back when i was in college i had a swedish chef translation program -- i don't even remember what it was called anymore and i've long since lost it. does anybody happen to have it or know where to find it?
and my cynical ways, but did the article make it seem like they could have "saved a lot of money" by moving to NT clusters, but that was too much work, so they decided to use Linux instead. plus, i was just reading in dr. dobbs last night how linux is such a great choice for beowolf because of its stability (don't have to worry about keeping 30 or so machines up & running through the course of your simulation).
that's cool. let everybody come up with their own security scheme. make everybody's life hell. i didn't check closely, but i'm assuming that you'll have to rip the mp3s with their software to get the security. you can't have a player that doesn't play unprotected mp3s since you can't expect every mp3 ripper to support *every* security scheme there is, making this thing security a PITA. and the more trouble something is to the end user, the less it'll get used. hopefully end of story.
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that site isn't actually controlled by MS, it's controlled by talk city (talkcity.com). i don't think MS owns talk city, though, so they really shouldn't have any say. (although what ever happened to the dogfood doctrine? MS should have enough muscle to nudge them to the dark side.)
who's going to buy groceries through fedex/ups? webvan isn't competing in the same space -- yet.
plus, building a delivery infrastructure for whatever reason exists at the time doesn't hurt. sure fedex and ups (and several others) already have them, but they're thinking about delivery in a very conventional (too conventional) method. (ironically enough, i think it was fedex who's business plan was failed in a business class because it was too unconventional.)
here's something to think about: with all of the local chain stores, warehouses, and other infrastructure that currently exist in metropolitan areas, why order something from timbuktu with 2-3 day delivery if i can get it the same day locally? the fastest you can really get something is overnight if it's not local. i want to order something in the morning before i go to work and have it when i come home at night. not that the big grocery store warehouse idea from webvan is a bad idea, but wouldn't a purchasing broker/agent/whatever be a better idea? you wouldn't need all of the (physical) infrastructure, just a few deals to sell the mechandise from the existing stores. the computer infrastructure would be a bit more complex, but definately doable if standardized.
i would hate to see brick and mortar stores go away. everybody's afraid of it in the face of the amazon.com's of the world. something like this would at least leverage the fact they they're already here and local.
what we have here are two opposing forces -- the necessity to ensure freedom & the necessity to protect the innocent. what is the government supposed to do? laws aren't made to limit your actions, they're made to protect others. i don't care if what MS has done kills apple, netscape, AOL, or any of the ISVs that have gone away because of them. if that happens in a vaccum, then fine, i don't care. but it's an issue that's a lot more complex than just a company going about their business. in general, when it comes to computers, you have to treat the general public like they're minors and you have to look out for their best interests because at this point they're not capable of defending themselves -- most aren't even capable of making informed decisions on the matter.
guilty as sin and gets off scott free. actually, i'm kind of bracing myself for this, since i have this weird notion that life should be fair -- something i'm trying desperately to overcome.
last i heard, USWest (if you are "fortunate" enough to be in an area where they're located) charges about $50 a month for line and internet access and they throw in the adsl device for free. i think that's a 256k both ways. we usually get better throughput than we're paying for at work, but there have been times that USWest have had problems with their ATM and it's just a slug.
but the best part is his top reason: he's a visionary. as he has proved in the past & continues to proves. i don't know where this world would be without bill. i'd probably still be fashioning tools out of stone. plus, as a bonus reason, he claims that one day microsoft may make something revolutionary. not today. not after 10 or 20 years of R & D, though. some day, 15 or 20 years down the road, there will be something coming out of the billions of annual spending on R & D; something that doesn't seem anti-intuitive, useless, a big waste of resources, or doesn't force you into that same old "not quite clear on the concept" path that microsoft seems to love so much. of course, i've always been convinced that the precise reason most people hate MS isn't because of their monopoly power, it's that they haven't done anything to advance the state of the art. for all of their money and effort and time, i have yet to see anything clean, elegant, or innovative. for having one of the greatest visionaries of all time and the most R & D budget of just about an company, you'd think they could come up with one thing that was at least an elegant implementation of one of their products/APIs/languages/etc.
my understanding is that the big sun servers (E10000, etc) do essentially that. i think there was talk about it with the articles on the ebay fiasco. you might want to look back at some of that. i think i read that unisys has a system like that, too, but i don't recall off the top of my head. i'm sure there are probably a lot of instances of this sort of system.
don't get me wrong -- BeOS is cool, but they run the risk that a lot of ventures do -- you only get so much venture capital before you have to go out and prove yourself and find a niche to be successful. BeOS isn't going to be a MS competitor any time soon, so it seems to me that Be is searching hard to find a niche, possibly at the cost of support for a "standard desktop OS".
not that i'm an expert, nor do i care that much, but it points out one of the advantages of linux. it can be whatever it wants to be without feeling the pressure of investors and businesses & it's a lot harder to disappoint and alienate people that way.
apparently linux is turning into the dos of old: there was one ms-dos (the gold standard, i suppose) and several OS (dos) clones that could run dos executables. until, at least, MS decided they didn't like it, that is. where linux is different is that there's no MS to decide that this negatively affected their bottom line.
at least in out local (twin cities) paper, that is. then again, so is some wrestler dying in some pay-per-view wrestling stunt, so take it for what you will. anyway, the article in our local paper is a lot longer than the abc one. here's the url it basically confirms what everyone else says: that 40 lbs. isn't even close to the actual weight (more like 60 lbs.), plus it was spliced together on a 3 ft. reel at the time. it also suggests an interesting use of the film: selling frames at $20 a pop (x 190,000 frames)
way back when i was in college i had a swedish chef translation program -- i don't even remember what it was called anymore and i've long since lost it. does anybody happen to have it or know where to find it?
and my cynical ways, but did the article make it seem like they could have "saved a lot of money" by moving to NT clusters, but that was too much work, so they decided to use Linux instead. plus, i was just reading in dr. dobbs last night how linux is such a great choice for beowolf because of its stability (don't have to worry about keeping 30 or so machines up & running through the course of your simulation).
that's cool. let everybody come up with their own security scheme. make everybody's life hell. i didn't check closely, but i'm assuming that you'll have to rip the mp3s with their software to get the security. you can't have a player that doesn't play unprotected mp3s since you can't expect every mp3 ripper to support *every* security scheme there is, making this thing security a PITA. and the more trouble something is to the end user, the less it'll get used. hopefully end of story.