but all we have is Cringely's assertion that the company's are investing only token efforts.
From the article:
It's not as if these companies are gearing up to produce automobiles. The engineering teams for any of these products are, at most, 20 to 30 people - immaterial for Microsoft, which has 90,000 or so employees, and Google, which has 20,000
It's not clear that Chrome OS/Bing would be improved if Google committed 1000 people to it. In fact, I would expect it to be significantly worse.
If Cringely's numbers can be believed (he doesn't source them) perhaps Google took it's 30 most brilliant, motivated systems developers and put them on the task of building a revolutionary OS. And Microsoft took it's 30 most brilliant, motivated search developers and put them on Bing. And though the numbers are smaller, I'm sure that neither MS nor Google would look at that as an immaterial investment.
Both projects could effectively revolutionize a mature market. And both could be born out of a tiny group of dedicated professionals.
In short, Cringely is a moron and everyone should ignore him.
So, since it's no longer difficult to make & distribute copies of music, why are the companies that make up the RIAA still charging the same prices?
Why is Walmart selling CDs for $10 when I can get the same songs for free? Why is Apple selling songs for $1 when I can get the same songs for free?
Now you say, "you're not getting those songs for free! you're stealing". And I say "Who am I stealing from?"
RIAA is suing the pants off everyone they can because the services the member companies provide (finding musicians and recording and marketing their music) no longer justify the fees they're extracting.
Personally, I've stopped purchasing/downloading music entirely. I'll start again when the money I pay for music actually goes to the artist.
shortening the length of the yellow light leads to more tickets and increased revenues for the camera company and for the locality.
if the goal is to reduce the number of accidents caused by people driving through red lights, then installing the cameras and lengthening the yellow would be the optimal solution.
however, the stories I've read/heard on the subject all seem to involve these cameras being installed and the yellow duration being shortened. And the camera's end up generating a good amount of money, but the number of accidents stays about the same.
Thank you (and many others on these boards) for distributing the FUD.
As I hope we all have learned by now, information that is "compartmentalized" is far less valuable. Little bits of data from disparate sources can reveal patterns that those gathering the intelligence would miss.
And IMHO, paranoia about employees "stealing" information should not stand in the way of increasing the efficiency of intelligence gathering and analysis.
the argument that Microsoft is not a monopoly is moot. they are a monopoly, here in the US, in Europe and in Russia.
the question is whether they are using their monopoly position to harm a country's citizens. in this case, it's fairly clear that they are.
Vista's only competition in the market is XP (Windows NT, ME, 98, 95, etc are no longer competitive). Many users see XP as a better choice. So the only way that Vista can beat XP is if it takes a fall.
That is, the consumers want XP. Microsoft thinks it will make more money if those consumers buy Vista. So Microsoft kills XP, knowing that its users will eventually knuckle under and buy an inferior product.
I actually wouldn't be surprised if you could still find blank VHS tapes in Walmarts and other stores. (Wikipedia is my buddy)
Still, the VHS format died because Sony et. al. made a legitimate case that DVD was a better format. People went out and bought DVD players and rented DVD movies and found that, you know what, it was a better experience over all.
two versions old? that's a metric? Vista's lifespan was what, a year and a half?
XP is a good enough operating system. In my (admittedly limited) understanding, demand for XP is actually quite a bit higher than for Vista. (Though this seems to be borne out by things like people paying $100 more for a Vista license so they can downgrade to XP.)
Replacing a very popular product with a much less popular product is corporate suicide (imagine if Toyota discontinued the Corolla line and replaced it with a Hummer line -- Honda would be very pleased). The only way a company could get away with this is if they are in a monopoly position. And it's reasonable to consider that an abuse of that monopoly power to do so.
After all, Microsoft's monopoly does not give them the right to foist garbage upon their users year after year.
My office has XP machines, I know they work with all my software and I the people here are comfortable with that OS. If "Windows 7" (like Vista) doesn't offer sufficient enhancements over XP, why should I be forced to purchase an inferior (for me) product in order to get a new computer?
1. software is very different from car parts. a better metaphor would be Coke and New Coke.
XP may be a 9 year old OS, but to many people it's a better OS than Vista. Vista is New Coke. The Coca-Cola company tried to insist on selling New Coke exclusively, but they alienated their existing customers. They went back to the original formula because New Coke was driving away customers to Pepsi and other competitors.
If Coke was the only kind of soda, then we'd all be drinking New Coke today. Regardless of whether it was wanted by customers.
That's what Microsoft did with Vista. Except there's no "Pepsi" competitor to force them to market their more desirable product.
To answer your question, Microsoft can "get rid" of their aging product when they produce a new product that people want more than XP.
We're all biased by our experiences, it's called the human condition. The Supreme Court handles cases where justice cannot be objectively determined.
For example is gun ownership a good thing for society or a bad thing for society? Abortion? Gay marriage? Torturing terrorists?
Is the constitution a flexible, living document into which we can read much or is it literal, limited only to the context in which its authors lived?
Intelligent people differ on the answer to all these questions (and many more). Not because they haven't had all the facts, but because their life experiences bias them to one side of each issue or another.
Usually I think David Brooks is an asshat, but today's opinion piece in the NY Times is pretty insightful on this subject.
"We are trying to ensure we know more about who came and who left," [Michael Hardin] said. "We have a large population of illegal immigrants in the United States - we want to make sure the person getting on the plane really is the person the records show to be leaving."
huh? so the epidemic of people pretending to leave the country on commercial flights by booking flights and sending doppelgangers in their place is finally over! rejoice Americans! we are all now super safe!
all the comments are usless dribble about M$ being buggy and instable
I am not reading the same comments page as you apparently. Very few of the +modded comments here fit your description (and as for the unmodded comments, this is/., home of the troll).
It appears that the source of most of the critical comments here is the word "Free". A more accurate summary would have said MS extends RC period for Windows 7 to 1 full year. Boring, and therefore unlikely to show up on the/. frontpage.
But just as an aside: We're talking about the first RC for Windows 7, or in other words, a beta version. Even Microsoft is saying that it's going be buggy and unstable.
If it was stable and feature complete they would stick it in a box and sell it.
rational risk assessment is unAmerican in the 21st century
errr... the last time a 747 flew low across downtown Manhattan, 3000 people died. That was 8 years ago. Statistically, these are very rare, very deadly events.
rational risk assessment would suggest evacuating tall buildings in such an event.
the evacuations and panic could have been avoided if the authorities had been permitted to notify building operators beforehand.
no, in fact TFA says that's not the implication at all. Harman has been a long-time supporter of the warrantless wiretapping program.
The (newly revealed) crime is Antonio Gonzalez using his authority to halt a criminal investigation into a key political ally of the Bush administration.
The original crime is Harman offering a quid-pro-quo with a foreign agent. Which, by the way, was captured on a legally requested wiretap.
Slashdot Mirror
but all we have is Cringely's assertion that the company's are investing only token efforts.
From the article:
It's not as if these companies are gearing up to produce automobiles. The engineering teams for any of these products are, at most, 20 to 30 people - immaterial for Microsoft, which has 90,000 or so employees, and Google, which has 20,000
It's not clear that Chrome OS/Bing would be improved if Google committed 1000 people to it. In fact, I would expect it to be significantly worse.
If Cringely's numbers can be believed (he doesn't source them) perhaps Google took it's 30 most brilliant, motivated systems developers and put them on the task of building a revolutionary OS. And Microsoft took it's 30 most brilliant, motivated search developers and put them on Bing. And though the numbers are smaller, I'm sure that neither MS nor Google would look at that as an immaterial investment.
Both projects could effectively revolutionize a mature market. And both could be born out of a tiny group of dedicated professionals.
In short, Cringely is a moron and everyone should ignore him.
If your computer is hacked than you're boned.
Seems to me that the solution is to have a strong password and keep your computer free of malware.
Is that really so hard?
So, since it's no longer difficult to make & distribute copies of music, why are the companies that make up the RIAA still charging the same prices?
Why is Walmart selling CDs for $10 when I can get the same songs for free? Why is Apple selling songs for $1 when I can get the same songs for free?
Now you say, "you're not getting those songs for free! you're stealing". And I say "Who am I stealing from?"
RIAA is suing the pants off everyone they can because the services the member companies provide (finding musicians and recording and marketing their music) no longer justify the fees they're extracting.
Personally, I've stopped purchasing/downloading music entirely. I'll start again when the money I pay for music actually goes to the artist.
why is the WPA passkey field ever masked?
just a guess, but it could be because of the 3 manufacturing plants and 1100 dealerships Nissan has in the US.
corruption.
shortening the length of the yellow light leads to more tickets and increased revenues for the camera company and for the locality.
if the goal is to reduce the number of accidents caused by people driving through red lights, then installing the cameras and lengthening the yellow would be the optimal solution.
however, the stories I've read/heard on the subject all seem to involve these cameras being installed and the yellow duration being shortened. And the camera's end up generating a good amount of money, but the number of accidents stays about the same.
I would like to mod you "Right On" but there is no such option.
Thank you (and many others on these boards) for distributing the FUD.
As I hope we all have learned by now, information that is "compartmentalized" is far less valuable. Little bits of data from disparate sources can reveal patterns that those gathering the intelligence would miss.
And IMHO, paranoia about employees "stealing" information should not stand in the way of increasing the efficiency of intelligence gathering and analysis.
the argument that Microsoft is not a monopoly is moot. they are a monopoly, here in the US, in Europe and in Russia.
the question is whether they are using their monopoly position to harm a country's citizens. in this case, it's fairly clear that they are.
Vista's only competition in the market is XP (Windows NT, ME, 98, 95, etc are no longer competitive). Many users see XP as a better choice. So the only way that Vista can beat XP is if it takes a fall.
That is, the consumers want XP. Microsoft thinks it will make more money if those consumers buy Vista. So Microsoft kills XP, knowing that its users will eventually knuckle under and buy an inferior product.
I actually wouldn't be surprised if you could still find blank VHS tapes in Walmarts and other stores. (Wikipedia is my buddy)
Still, the VHS format died because Sony et. al. made a legitimate case that DVD was a better format. People went out and bought DVD players and rented DVD movies and found that, you know what, it was a better experience over all.
That has not happened with Vista.
two versions old? that's a metric? Vista's lifespan was what, a year and a half?
XP is a good enough operating system. In my (admittedly limited) understanding, demand for XP is actually quite a bit higher than for Vista. (Though this seems to be borne out by things like people paying $100 more for a Vista license so they can downgrade to XP.)
Replacing a very popular product with a much less popular product is corporate suicide (imagine if Toyota discontinued the Corolla line and replaced it with a Hummer line -- Honda would be very pleased). The only way a company could get away with this is if they are in a monopoly position. And it's reasonable to consider that an abuse of that monopoly power to do so.
After all, Microsoft's monopoly does not give them the right to foist garbage upon their users year after year.
My office has XP machines, I know they work with all my software and I the people here are comfortable with that OS. If "Windows 7" (like Vista) doesn't offer sufficient enhancements over XP, why should I be forced to purchase an inferior (for me) product in order to get a new computer?
1. software is very different from car parts. a better metaphor would be Coke and New Coke.
XP may be a 9 year old OS, but to many people it's a better OS than Vista. Vista is New Coke. The Coca-Cola company tried to insist on selling New Coke exclusively, but they alienated their existing customers. They went back to the original formula because New Coke was driving away customers to Pepsi and other competitors.
If Coke was the only kind of soda, then we'd all be drinking New Coke today. Regardless of whether it was wanted by customers.
That's what Microsoft did with Vista. Except there's no "Pepsi" competitor to force them to market their more desirable product.
To answer your question, Microsoft can "get rid" of their aging product when they produce a new product that people want more than XP.
We're all biased by our experiences, it's called the human condition. The Supreme Court handles cases where justice cannot be objectively determined.
For example is gun ownership a good thing for society or a bad thing for society? Abortion? Gay marriage? Torturing terrorists?
Is the constitution a flexible, living document into which we can read much or is it literal, limited only to the context in which its authors lived?
Intelligent people differ on the answer to all these questions (and many more). Not because they haven't had all the facts, but because their life experiences bias them to one side of each issue or another.
Usually I think David Brooks is an asshat, but today's opinion piece in the NY Times is pretty insightful on this subject.
"We are trying to ensure we know more about who came and who left," [Michael Hardin] said. "We have a large population of illegal immigrants in the United States - we want to make sure the person getting on the plane really is the person the records show to be leaving."
huh? so the epidemic of people pretending to leave the country on commercial flights by booking flights and sending doppelgangers in their place is finally over! rejoice Americans! we are all now super safe!
all the comments are usless dribble about M$ being buggy and instable
I am not reading the same comments page as you apparently. Very few of the +modded comments here fit your description (and as for the unmodded comments, this is /., home of the troll).
It appears that the source of most of the critical comments here is the word "Free". A more accurate summary would have said MS extends RC period for Windows 7 to 1 full year. Boring, and therefore unlikely to show up on the /. frontpage.
But just as an aside: We're talking about the first RC for Windows 7, or in other words, a beta version. Even Microsoft is saying that it's going be buggy and unstable.
If it was stable and feature complete they would stick it in a box and sell it.
No airports in the NYC area are anywhere near downtown Manhattan. Airplanes on approach and takeoff do not buzz large skyscrapers.
How about replying to my post instead of replying to your strawman argument?
Here's the hypothetical:
Two people meet for the first time.
Person A smiles and says hello.
Person B punches Person A in the face and walks away.
They meet once again a week/month/year later...
Is Person A jumping at shadows if he anticipates Person B punching him in the face?
sheesh
rational risk assessment is unAmerican in the 21st century
errr... the last time a 747 flew low across downtown Manhattan, 3000 people died. That was 8 years ago. Statistically, these are very rare, very deadly events.
rational risk assessment would suggest evacuating tall buildings in such an event.
the evacuations and panic could have been avoided if the authorities had been permitted to notify building operators beforehand.
ugh. cannot... believe... modded... insightful...
do you look both ways before crossing the street?
do you check the expiration date before drinking milk?
when the fire alarm in your building goes off, do you sit there quietly, since statistically it's probably a false alarm?
in short, do you take any precautions when going about your life? are you living in FEAR!?
The article mentions attaining a FISA application
Then-CIA Director Porter J. Goss reviewed the Harman transcript and signed off on the Justice Departmentâ(TM)s FISA application ...
I believe that makes this a legal wiretap under the 1978 FISA law.
RTFS ...
evidence against California rep Jane Harman was apparently captured some time ago on a legal NSA wiretap
LEGAL, as in, they used the existing FISA law passed by Congress in 1978. Not the Bush administration's made-up law.
no, in fact TFA says that's not the implication at all. Harman has been a long-time supporter of the warrantless wiretapping program.
The (newly revealed) crime is Antonio Gonzalez using his authority to halt a criminal investigation into a key political ally of the Bush administration.
The original crime is Harman offering a quid-pro-quo with a foreign agent. Which, by the way, was captured on a legally requested wiretap.
thank you for your excellent post. unfortunately I lack mod points at the moment.
can anyone explain why this is tagged "Obama" and "Obamerica"?
Seriously, what's with all the anti-Obama-trolling on Slashdot lately?
my town recently increased the fines for speeding! Is that what Obama meant by change?
I thought electing a black man would mean I could commit whatever crimes I wanted without fear of repercussion! This isn't change I can believe in!
They don't like YouTube, they don't like Obama... does the EFF like anything?
Seriously, write a press-release about how much you love little puppies or something. Your grumpiness is making me depressed.