This is, I have to say, a brilliant idea. I don't think it guarantees that the Microsoft monopoly is over, as you say, but it would be a very clever marketing move.
I think many people in the Linux world underestimate how important marketing is. Very simple things really, like the language you use, really do make a difference.
You may like to think that marketing doesn't influence you. And perhaps it doesn't. But it influences a hell of a lot of people - that's why companies like Microsoft pay hundreds of thousands of dollars to develop product names like "XP".
Apple. think different. Repeat. Repeat again. Repeat a hundred times. Eventually people make the association between Apple and creativity.
The reason "Redhat Windows" (or SUSE Windows or whatever) would be a brilliant move would be because it would immediately make an association in Joe Publics mind. The billions that Microsoft has spent making people associate Windows with terms such as reliablity, quality, etc., would be transferred to Redhat, for free.
Now, I can here some of you thinking "bullshit, people aren't so stupid", but you've got to remember that we are not Joe Public. Joe Public doesn't understand what we understand, and to you and me, that makes them appear stupid:
Joe: I want to buy a computer.
Sales dude: Oh, this one's nice. It's a Linux machine.
Joe: Oh, no, I want a Windows computer.
Sales dude: Well, how about this one. It's got RedHat Windows on it.
Joe: Oh, is that like Microsoft Windows?
Sales dude: Yes, it's very similar. And it's cheaper.
Warning! Positive comments about Microsoft ahead...
I have Windows XP on my desktop and RedHat on my public server.
I have grown to appreciate the way Windows XP patches itself. Frankly it is a bit of a pain in the butt having to apply patches to my RedHat server each month and I would be much happier if it could just do it itself, automatically, like XP does.
I hate Microsoft. They're bastards. But the auto-patching that Windows XP does is great. We need it for Linux, both desktop and server.
Why does Slashdot always link to NY Times, a subscription site? I don't subscribe, so can't read it. A quick search on Google News is all it takes to throw up other links about this story:
It has nothing to do with the Internet per se, other than to say that it's easier than ever to confine your information sources to those that agree with you in the first place.
This is related to a phenomenon that psychologists refer to as confirmation bias. The basic gist is that when someone comes across a fact that confirms something they already believe to be true, they give it greater significance than when they come across a fact that does not confirm what they already believe to be true, or disproves it.
People gain more satisfaction processing facts that confirm what they already believe than facts that don't. I personally believe that this is related to another phenomenon that I have observed, but don't know if there's a name for it (I'm sure there is - someone please enlighten me). That is that our environment is very complex, making it difficult to interpret. We analysed the world by compartmentalising things, usually into two opposing groups. This human tendency is heavily reflected in the world of politics - the left and the right, for instance, and that most horrible of modern concepts, "Unamerican".
However, the services you mentioned in the UK seem to be screwed up whether they are state run or privitized.
Yes, but I think most people agree that they are even more screwed up now than before. Prices to travel by train have certainly increased considerably, with no increase in quailty of service. And the NHM is considerably worse off than it used to be.
This is simply false. Legally enforced government monopolies have zero incentive to compete.
Hhhmmm... Many Americans (at least on Slashdot) seem to think that anything that is government controlled must be crappy. It may be the case that government provided services in the USA are rubbish, and that your local governments are no good, but that doesn't mean that it is the case everywhere in the world.
Many countries in Europe have extremely efficient state controlled services. Now I know this is going to set some of you rabid freemarketeers into flame mode, but it is simply true - Europe has many examples of efficient, high quality state run services.
Under the influence of Margret Thatcher and Ronald Regan, the UK decided to try to adopt the US model of having everything privitized. Now they have some of the worst and most expensive public transport and health services in Europe. As a result of this, the UK government has recently increased taxes (shock! horror!), with general public consent (no! it can't be true!).
All I'm saying is this - free markets and competition does not guarantee quality and low price, and government controlled does not necessarily mean high prices and poor service. The sensible solution is to have free market competition and public funded services, and use the most appropriate one for the situation.
No matter how close you get to a corporation, even if you're related to the founder, PLEASE get some perspective. Company mantras do NOT qualify as religion.
True. But there are companies, and there are companies.
All too often these days, people think anything goes in the name of profits, and that's all there is to a company. Making money. Full stop. Do whatever you can within the law to screw maximum profits out of your customers, get maximum profit from your employees, the only thing that matters is the bottom line.
Not all companies are like that. I expect one thing that upsets David Packard is that the 'HP Way' contained many humanitarian principals which have now been cast aside. Now the merger has taken place many thousands of people are probably going to be made redundant. I expect making people redundant would have kept the founders of HP awake at night. To the current administrators of the HP empire, employees are just numbers that have to be juggled to maximise profits.
Sure, you need a working example, but in the case of user interfaces that is easy. If, for instance, I want a patent on "dragging little dots around as a way to navigate information", it's a piece of cake to make a working example in Macromedia Flash, on which I could get a patent. So whilst I agree that "ideas" are not patentable and that you need a working example, when it comes to how a graphical user interface works that isn't much of a barrier.
After all, Adobe's patent on 'dockable tabs' does not specify, for instance, the language or operating system it works with. So anyone could throw together a working example of that type of user interface design and patent it.
Software development would not "grind to a halt," as you suggest, because most patent holders licence their patents to others for a fee.
Increasingly a lot of innovation in the software sector is happening as a result of Open Source projects. There are lots of examples, but for instance, one I'm quite excited about is that icons in KDE in the next version can be vector-based. I think this can be viewed upon as an innovation because I believe neither OS X nor Windows XP have this feature.
But what if someone had patented this idea? Who would pay the fees? KDE is not a profit making organisation, and so they would have to remove this feature. This is just a little example, but I do believe that software development could indeed be seriously impeded if software patents become commonplace.
I assert that GUI innovations SHOULD be patentable (although I'd like to see a much shorter duration on all software-related patents).
When I was a CS undergraduate, I took the designing user interfaces course. As part of the coursework, I designed a voice activated interface (this was at a time when such things didn't exist). Various other students imagined how other interfaces of the future might work. Some of the ideas we came up with were great.
Now, we could have all patented the ideas we came up with, and since then I'm sure some of our patents would have been infringed, and we could have licenced and sued. But would it make sense to do that? What if all undergraduate students did it? New developments in the software world would grind to a halt.
The argument that interface innovations that appear obvious now weren't at the time they were invented is I believe a poor one. A creative person can sit down with a pencil and paper and come up with lots of ideas for possible user interface designs - it's relatively easy for those people who have an inclination for it. You've only got to look at the web sites of some of the more creative web designers to realise that there are many different creative ideas out there for user interfaces. The world would be a poorer place if all these designers patented their ideas and prevented other people from using them.
The interface that is common today for products like Adobe Photoshop is a cumulation of many different ideas from many different individuals and companies. As a company focused on the creative industy, Adobe should be ashamed of itself for this kind of action.
yes. you said "That's why there are so many Microsoft viruses around." because of the way office is developed. That is not true.
Well, I am sure if Microsoft developed their software using the kind of clean room programming that NASA uses, it would have fewer holes to exploit. Therefore, it is not untrue to say that the way MS develops makes it easier to develop viruses for their software. Hell, Bill Gates himself has recently told his developers that they need to pay more attention to security.
it's like encouraging someone to buy a pentium 4 because it's clockspeed is high, or buy an athlon XP because it's obviously compatible with Microsoft XP, it's as much marketting as it is truth.
The Open Source community needs to be more aware of the power of the subtle use of language. Simple words can be a very effictive tool in changing the mindsets of Joe Public. Marketeers do it all the time.
When talking about OpenOffice with Joe Public, be sure to use appropriate descriptive words.
"I see you're still using traditional software on your computer, Bob. Don't you know that stuff is susceptible to Microsoft Outlook viruses? Have you tried Openoffice? It's free! It's free because it is developed using a leading-edge development method that's superior to the old-fashioned way that Microsoft develops software. Microsoft software is expensive because the conventional methods they use to create it are inefficient. That's why there are so many Microsoft viruses around. There aren't any OpenOffice viruses. Why don't you give it a try?"
In less than two years, the OpenOffice.org community has grown to more than 10,000 volunteers,
I would be really interested to know more about this. If anyone from OpenOffice can comment I'd love to hear you.
How many external contributors actually make significant contributions? How many people (that don't work for Sun) are paid by their employers to contribute to this project? What proportion of new code (or documentation or whatever) comes from non-Sun people?
I personally believe that Open Source represents a much superior development model to the way Microsoft uses, but I would like to hear how effective it is on this project.
How much will MS have to spend to develop the XBox2? Well, let's see...
You seem to suggest that Microsoft won't have to spend much to develop the next XBox, because they can just use off-the-shelf PC components. I'm afraid if they take that approach then they really will be a failure.
Using off the shelf components to create Personal Computers has been the norm up until now. But the domestic product market is different. Firstly, in this kind of business it is really important to keep the cost per unit down as low as possible. Really really low. You're talking about selling tens of millions of units, which are all identical. That often means custom built chips and boards. Secondly, how the unit itself looks is really important. This is something that Microsoft has yet to learn. It may not be a deciding factor in the US if a domestic product is big and ugly, but it is in the rest of the world, and it certainly is in Japan. Finally, system stablity is really important with domestic products. PC users are used to the things screwing up, but domestic users aren't. Microsoft has already discovered the expense of trivial problems with domestic products with CDs being scratched. I'm sure Microsoft aren't used to people returning their products to stores and demanding refunds. With domestic goods, that happens, and it's extremely costly.
So if Microsoft doesn't heavily invest in developing XBox2 then they won't be in the consumer appliance market very long. Different rules apply there.
Do you know who the world's largest consumer electronics maker is? Matsushita Electric Industrial Co. Sony are second to them (although rapidly catching up). And my point is? The consumer electronics market is different to the software market. Substantially different. And the XBox is a consumer electronics product. Microsoft has entered a whole different arena than where they are used to playing. They have already made some serious mistakes with the XBox, and don't seem to understand the consumer electronics market when they declare things like the next version of the XBox will be the centre of entertainment in a home. The big electronics manufacturers learnt long ago that combining different functions into a single consumer product (e.g. TV with integrated DVD, combined TV and Hi-fi) isn't as sensible an idea as it sounds.
I'm not saying that Microsoft won't make it. They might. But their solid track record in the software world isn't going the help them much in this battle.
Fighting in the domestic entertainment appliance arena today are:
Microsoft: XBox - success uncertain
Other attempts at (non-hardware) domestic entertainment products MSN - dissapointing - not very profitable - failed to unseat AOL Microsoft Bob - 'domestic OS' - laughable failure Pocket PC operating system for phones and PDAs - moderate success, not a significant revenue generator yet Various TV/cable ventures - moderate success or failure Microsoft games - successful and profitable
Sony TVs, music systems, VCRs, DVD players etc - very successful globally over many years Sony Walkman, personal stereos, mini-disc players - very successful globablly over many years PlayStation 1 and 2 - very successful worldwide Mobile phones - increasingly successful collaboration with major service providers
Other domestic ventures (not hardware): Sony entertainment products (movies, record lables), generally successful or very successful over many years.
Who would you bet on winning in the domestic appliance ring - the 900lb gorrilla or Godzilla?
Labels serve a very important purpose: they let us know which artists are worth listening to.
Isn't this, like, rubbish? Do you really need a big company to do this? A radio DJ does this. That's their job. So do you friends who are really into a particular genre. I don't need a company taking a big cut of the sale to tell me what is good to listen to.
It strikes me that many organisations in the USA are wussies when it comes to dealing with the BSA. The BSA is an organisation that is basically a front for Microsoft and a few other big companies.
You should be playing hardball with them. It's happening in the UK. All the biggest organisations in the UK are getting together and collectively saying no to the Microsoft "if you're going to do this kind of stuff, we're going to look for alternatives to your software. And if you don't give us more reasonable licencing terms, we're going elsewhere too." It seems to be working. I don't know why it isn't happening in the USA.
In no other situation am I, essentially, guilty until proven innocent.
Nowdays, this attitude is taking over what used to be common place. For instance, ever been through an IRS audit?
But an IRS audit is a completely different situation. That's the government/state. Different rules apply.
The government can throw you in jail if you commit a crime. Hell, they can even kill you in some parts of the USA. However, different rules apply for companies (thankfully!)
I am CEO of a fairly successful web development company. We provide web hosting services, as well as software as a service on our servers for which our clients pay a substantial monthly fee.
Sometimes a client is late paying, despite the fact that in our contract with the client we clearly specify they should pay their dues at the beginning of each calendar month.
I want a red telephone on my desk so I can call some tax-payer funded corporate police to go smash the fuckers door down if they're late paying. That would be great! Yea!
one thing that impressed me was he wrote a BASIC interpretter straight through, and it ran correctlly on the very first attempt.
Personally I think there is a huge difference between someone who can 'hack' really well and get things working, and someone who can come up with really elegant, modular and generic solutions to programming problems. The former might be very clever, but in my opinion it is only the latter who deserve to go into the programmers hall of fame. I've never seen any of Bill G's code, but I expect he is (was) of the former type - a brilliant hacker. Certainly the solutions that microsoft has come up with over the years suggest that this is the case.
I've heard Microsofties say this before. (I assume you are a Microsoftie otherwise you wouldn't be able to make such a claim. None of us mere mortals have ever seen any of his code).
But anyway, I am willing to believe you, if you actually tell me what he has coded, and why it is "genius". Really, I'd love to know. Can you point to a piece of code that he has done that is as "genius" as some of the stuff RMS or Bill Joys work?
his accomplishments back in the day far supercede anything ANYONE who posts to this site have accomplished
That's a pretty dumb thing to say. You don't know what people who post to this site have accomplised. Period. There are some pretty clever people here.
Is it just me or do there seem to be more and more Microsofties, or Microsoft apologists, posting to this site than ever. Why? I thought MSDN was supposed to be brilliant? Why do you post your comments there, where people will be more receptive to them?
Slashdot Mirror
Redhat Windows, Mandrake Windows etc
This is, I have to say, a brilliant idea. I don't think it guarantees that the Microsoft monopoly is over, as you say, but it would be a very clever marketing move.
I think many people in the Linux world underestimate how important marketing is. Very simple things really, like the language you use, really do make a difference.
You may like to think that marketing doesn't influence you. And perhaps it doesn't. But it influences a hell of a lot of people - that's why companies like Microsoft pay hundreds of thousands of dollars to develop product names like "XP".
Apple. think different. Repeat. Repeat again. Repeat a hundred times. Eventually people make the association between Apple and creativity.
The reason "Redhat Windows" (or SUSE Windows or whatever) would be a brilliant move would be because it would immediately make an association in Joe Publics mind. The billions that Microsoft has spent making people associate Windows with terms such as reliablity, quality, etc., would be transferred to Redhat, for free.
Now, I can here some of you thinking "bullshit, people aren't so stupid", but you've got to remember that we are not Joe Public. Joe Public doesn't understand what we understand, and to you and me, that makes them appear stupid:
Joe: I want to buy a computer.
Sales dude: Oh, this one's nice. It's a Linux machine.
Joe: Oh, no, I want a Windows computer.
Sales dude: Well, how about this one. It's got RedHat Windows on it.
Joe: Oh, is that like Microsoft Windows?
Sales dude: Yes, it's very similar. And it's cheaper.
Joe: Great! I'll take that one.
Warning! Positive comments about Microsoft ahead...
I have Windows XP on my desktop and RedHat on my public server.
I have grown to appreciate the way Windows XP patches itself. Frankly it is a bit of a pain in the butt having to apply patches to my RedHat server each month and I would be much happier if it could just do it itself, automatically, like XP does.
I hate Microsoft. They're bastards. But the auto-patching that Windows XP does is great. We need it for Linux, both desktop and server.
Why does Slashdot always link to NY Times, a subscription site? I don't subscribe, so can't read it. A quick search on Google News is all it takes to throw up other links about this story:
Reuters
Reuters
Does Slashdot have a deal with NY Times?
It has nothing to do with the Internet per se, other than to say that it's easier than ever to confine your information sources to those that agree with you in the first place.
This is related to a phenomenon that psychologists refer to as confirmation bias. The basic gist is that when someone comes across a fact that confirms something they already believe to be true, they give it greater significance than when they come across a fact that does not confirm what they already believe to be true, or disproves it.
People gain more satisfaction processing facts that confirm what they already believe than facts that don't. I personally believe that this is related to another phenomenon that I have observed, but don't know if there's a name for it (I'm sure there is - someone please enlighten me). That is that our environment is very complex, making it difficult to interpret. We analysed the world by compartmentalising things, usually into two opposing groups. This human tendency is heavily reflected in the world of politics - the left and the right, for instance, and that most horrible of modern concepts, "Unamerican".
However, the services you mentioned in the UK seem to be screwed up whether they are state run or privitized.
Yes, but I think most people agree that they are even more screwed up now than before. Prices to travel by train have certainly increased considerably, with no increase in quailty of service. And the NHM is considerably worse off than it used to be.
This is simply false. Legally enforced government monopolies have zero incentive to compete.
Hhhmmm... Many Americans (at least on Slashdot) seem to think that anything that is government controlled must be crappy. It may be the case that government provided services in the USA are rubbish, and that your local governments are no good, but that doesn't mean that it is the case everywhere in the world.
Many countries in Europe have extremely efficient state controlled services. Now I know this is going to set some of you rabid freemarketeers into flame mode, but it is simply true - Europe has many examples of efficient, high quality state run services.
Under the influence of Margret Thatcher and Ronald Regan, the UK decided to try to adopt the US model of having everything privitized. Now they have some of the worst and most expensive public transport and health services in Europe. As a result of this, the UK government has recently increased taxes (shock! horror!), with general public consent (no! it can't be true!).
All I'm saying is this - free markets and competition does not guarantee quality and low price, and government controlled does not necessarily mean high prices and poor service. The sensible solution is to have free market competition and public funded services, and use the most appropriate one for the situation.
No matter how close you get to a corporation, even if you're related to the founder, PLEASE get some perspective. Company mantras do NOT qualify as religion.
True. But there are companies, and there are companies.
All too often these days, people think anything goes in the name of profits, and that's all there is to a company. Making money. Full stop. Do whatever you can within the law to screw maximum profits out of your customers, get maximum profit from your employees, the only thing that matters is the bottom line.
Not all companies are like that. I expect one thing that upsets David Packard is that the 'HP Way' contained many humanitarian principals which have now been cast aside. Now the merger has taken place many thousands of people are probably going to be made redundant. I expect making people redundant would have kept the founders of HP awake at night. To the current administrators of the HP empire, employees are just numbers that have to be juggled to maximise profits.
No, you couldn't. *Ideas* are not patentable.
Sure, you need a working example, but in the case of user interfaces that is easy. If, for instance, I want a patent on "dragging little dots around as a way to navigate information", it's a piece of cake to make a working example in Macromedia Flash, on which I could get a patent. So whilst I agree that "ideas" are not patentable and that you need a working example, when it comes to how a graphical user interface works that isn't much of a barrier.
After all, Adobe's patent on 'dockable tabs' does not specify, for instance, the language or operating system it works with. So anyone could throw together a working example of that type of user interface design and patent it.
Software development would not "grind to a halt," as you suggest, because most patent holders licence their patents to others for a fee.
Increasingly a lot of innovation in the software sector is happening as a result of Open Source projects. There are lots of examples, but for instance, one I'm quite excited about is that icons in KDE in the next version can be vector-based. I think this can be viewed upon as an innovation because I believe neither OS X nor Windows XP have this feature.
But what if someone had patented this idea? Who would pay the fees? KDE is not a profit making organisation, and so they would have to remove this feature. This is just a little example, but I do believe that software development could indeed be seriously impeded if software patents become commonplace.
Of course the problem with that is that the school would hold the patents.
It's not relevant to my argument whether the school or the student holds the patent.
I assert that GUI innovations SHOULD be patentable (although I'd like to see a much shorter duration on all software-related patents).
When I was a CS undergraduate, I took the designing user interfaces course. As part of the coursework, I designed a voice activated interface (this was at a time when such things didn't exist). Various other students imagined how other interfaces of the future might work. Some of the ideas we came up with were great.
Now, we could have all patented the ideas we came up with, and since then I'm sure some of our patents would have been infringed, and we could have licenced and sued. But would it make sense to do that? What if all undergraduate students did it? New developments in the software world would grind to a halt.
The argument that interface innovations that appear obvious now weren't at the time they were invented is I believe a poor one. A creative person can sit down with a pencil and paper and come up with lots of ideas for possible user interface designs - it's relatively easy for those people who have an inclination for it. You've only got to look at the web sites of some of the more creative web designers to realise that there are many different creative ideas out there for user interfaces. The world would be a poorer place if all these designers patented their ideas and prevented other people from using them.
The interface that is common today for products like Adobe Photoshop is a cumulation of many different ideas from many different individuals and companies. As a company focused on the creative industy, Adobe should be ashamed of itself for this kind of action.
yes. you said "That's why there are so many Microsoft viruses around." because of the way office is developed. That is not true.
Well, I am sure if Microsoft developed their software using the kind of clean room programming that NASA uses, it would have fewer holes to exploit. Therefore, it is not untrue to say that the way MS develops makes it easier to develop viruses for their software. Hell, Bill Gates himself has recently told his developers that they need to pay more attention to security.
Did I say anything that wasn't true?
it's like encouraging someone to buy a pentium 4 because it's clockspeed is high, or buy an athlon XP because it's obviously compatible with Microsoft XP, it's as much marketting as it is truth.
This is how the IT industry works.
The Open Source community needs to be more aware of the power of the subtle use of language. Simple words can be a very effictive tool in changing the mindsets of Joe Public. Marketeers do it all the time.
When talking about OpenOffice with Joe Public, be sure to use appropriate descriptive words.
"I see you're still using traditional software on your computer, Bob. Don't you know that stuff is susceptible to Microsoft Outlook viruses? Have you tried Openoffice? It's free! It's free because it is developed using a leading-edge development method that's superior to the old-fashioned way that Microsoft develops software. Microsoft software is expensive because the conventional methods they use to create it are inefficient. That's why there are so many Microsoft viruses around. There aren't any OpenOffice viruses. Why don't you give it a try?"
In less than two years, the OpenOffice.org community has grown to more than 10,000 volunteers,
I would be really interested to know more about this. If anyone from OpenOffice can comment I'd love to hear you.
How many external contributors actually make significant contributions? How many people (that don't work for Sun) are paid by their employers to contribute to this project? What proportion of new code (or documentation or whatever) comes from non-Sun people?
I personally believe that Open Source represents a much superior development model to the way Microsoft uses, but I would like to hear how effective it is on this project.
How much will MS have to spend to develop the XBox2? Well, let's see...
You seem to suggest that Microsoft won't have to spend much to develop the next XBox, because they can just use off-the-shelf PC components. I'm afraid if they take that approach then they really will be a failure.
Using off the shelf components to create Personal Computers has been the norm up until now. But the domestic product market is different. Firstly, in this kind of business it is really important to keep the cost per unit down as low as possible. Really really low. You're talking about selling tens of millions of units, which are all identical. That often means custom built chips and boards. Secondly, how the unit itself looks is really important. This is something that Microsoft has yet to learn. It may not be a deciding factor in the US if a domestic product is big and ugly, but it is in the rest of the world, and it certainly is in Japan. Finally, system stablity is really important with domestic products. PC users are used to the things screwing up, but domestic users aren't. Microsoft has already discovered the expense of trivial problems with domestic products with CDs being scratched. I'm sure Microsoft aren't used to people returning their products to stores and demanding refunds. With domestic goods, that happens, and it's extremely costly.
So if Microsoft doesn't heavily invest in developing XBox2 then they won't be in the consumer appliance market very long. Different rules apply there.
Do you know who the world's largest consumer electronics maker is? Matsushita Electric Industrial Co. Sony are second to them (although rapidly catching up). And my point is? The consumer electronics market is different to the software market. Substantially different. And the XBox is a consumer electronics product. Microsoft has entered a whole different arena than where they are used to playing. They have already made some serious mistakes with the XBox, and don't seem to understand the consumer electronics market when they declare things like the next version of the XBox will be the centre of entertainment in a home. The big electronics manufacturers learnt long ago that combining different functions into a single consumer product (e.g. TV with integrated DVD, combined TV and Hi-fi) isn't as sensible an idea as it sounds.
I'm not saying that Microsoft won't make it. They might. But their solid track record in the software world isn't going the help them much in this battle.
If this happens we may need to float the british iles off into the mid atlantic and quietly sink them.
Or attach them to the USA and make them another state.
Fighting in the domestic entertainment appliance arena today are:
Microsoft:
XBox - success uncertain
Other attempts at (non-hardware) domestic entertainment products
MSN - dissapointing - not very profitable - failed to unseat AOL
Microsoft Bob - 'domestic OS' - laughable failure
Pocket PC operating system for phones and PDAs - moderate success, not a significant revenue generator yet
Various TV/cable ventures - moderate success or failure
Microsoft games - successful and profitable
Sony
TVs, music systems, VCRs, DVD players etc - very successful globally over many years
Sony Walkman, personal stereos, mini-disc players - very successful globablly over many years
PlayStation 1 and 2 - very successful worldwide
Mobile phones - increasingly successful collaboration with major service providers
Other domestic ventures (not hardware):
Sony entertainment products (movies, record lables), generally successful or very successful over many years.
Who would you bet on winning in the domestic appliance ring - the 900lb gorrilla or Godzilla?
Labels serve a very important purpose: they let us know which artists are worth listening to.
Isn't this, like, rubbish? Do you really need a big company to do this? A radio DJ does this. That's their job. So do you friends who are really into a particular genre. I don't need a company taking a big cut of the sale to tell me what is good to listen to.
It strikes me that many organisations in the USA are wussies when it comes to dealing with the BSA. The BSA is an organisation that is basically a front for Microsoft and a few other big companies.
You should be playing hardball with them. It's happening in the UK. All the biggest organisations in the UK are getting together and collectively saying no to the Microsoft "if you're going to do this kind of stuff, we're going to look for alternatives to your software. And if you don't give us more reasonable licencing terms, we're going elsewhere too." It seems to be working. I don't know why it isn't happening in the USA.
In no other situation am I, essentially, guilty until proven innocent.
Nowdays, this attitude is taking over what used to be common place. For instance, ever been through an IRS audit?
But an IRS audit is a completely different situation. That's the government/state. Different rules apply.
The government can throw you in jail if you commit a crime. Hell, they can even kill you in some parts of the USA. However, different rules apply for companies (thankfully!)
I am CEO of a fairly successful web development company. We provide web hosting services, as well as software as a service on our servers for which our clients pay a substantial monthly fee.
Sometimes a client is late paying, despite the fact that in our contract with the client we clearly specify they should pay their dues at the beginning of each calendar month.
I want a red telephone on my desk so I can call some tax-payer funded corporate police to go smash the fuckers door down if they're late paying. That would be great! Yea!
Only joking. Almost the weekend!
one thing that impressed me was he wrote a BASIC interpretter straight through, and it ran correctlly on the very first attempt.
Personally I think there is a huge difference between someone who can 'hack' really well and get things working, and someone who can come up with really elegant, modular and generic solutions to programming problems. The former might be very clever, but in my opinion it is only the latter who deserve to go into the programmers hall of fame. I've never seen any of Bill G's code, but I expect he is (was) of the former type - a brilliant hacker. Certainly the solutions that microsoft has come up with over the years suggest that this is the case.
actually gates is a genius programmer...
I've heard Microsofties say this before. (I assume you are a Microsoftie otherwise you wouldn't be able to make such a claim. None of us mere mortals have ever seen any of his code).
But anyway, I am willing to believe you, if you actually tell me what he has coded, and why it is "genius". Really, I'd love to know. Can you point to a piece of code that he has done that is as "genius" as some of the stuff RMS or Bill Joys work?
his accomplishments back in the day far supercede anything ANYONE who posts to this site have accomplished
That's a pretty dumb thing to say. You don't know what people who post to this site have accomplised. Period. There are some pretty clever people here.
Is it just me or do there seem to be more and more Microsofties, or Microsoft apologists, posting to this site than ever. Why? I thought MSDN was supposed to be brilliant? Why do you post your comments there, where people will be more receptive to them?
Is'nt this what linux does?
Yes, it does. But "Linux" isn't a business. That's why it's such a threat to MS. It changes the rules.