The videos are are 320x208 resolution, which is horribly non-standard and causes the stretching of both videos (well, more accurately, squishing, but they have the same end effect), making everyone look fat.
I've never used iTunes, nor any player that can play files from iTunes, so I apologize for my gross ignorance in this area. But a number of video players I've used in the past can play video at any resolution in the correct aspect ratio, even if it's 23x147 or something. Can you not do this with some player for an iTunes video?
If not, I hope you'll pardon me for saying that iTunes sounds like a pretty limited format on which to buy video.
If you decide to cut expenses and get rid of that monthly subscription service bill, what do you have for the money you've paid?
If you decide to cut expenses and get rid of that monthly cable TV or XM radio bill, what do have for the money you paid?
Rhapsody is a primarily service where you are paying for the right to listen to any of the millions of songs in the library for a period of time. If you stop paying, they aren't taking away something you own, because you never bought it. That's how the original poster misrepresents the nature of the service.
I can't see that this is any different from an online-only subscription to the Wall Street Journal or the Economist -- if you stop subscribing, they don't still give you online access to the issues you already "paid for." Likewise, cable TV and XM Radio don't give you access to the TV programs or radio streams you consumed in the past either.
Do you think that there is something inherently wrong with these other services as well?
Active Record is just the name of the persistence layer used in Rails, not some attempt to call persistence a new technology.
I don't want to start a language war, because there are a lot of things that Perl is very good at. But I've done medium-scale application development in object-oriented Perl, and I came away from the experience convinced that object-oriented Perl just doesn't work very well above a certain scale -- very few of the things that make it easy to abstract things and work with multiple developers on a common project are there. As always, YMMV based on particular circumstances.
Ruby's syntax is similar to Perl for a number of areas, but the object orientation is a lot cleaner. Neither Ruby the language nor Rails the framework is perfect, but it can be a very productive toolkit for MVC web applications.
Personally, I hate the so-called "desktop replacement" notebooks that weigh 8 pounds or more, but I want pretty much all the functionality of a desktop computer. I wish I could use one of the little 12" ultralights, but I need more screen resolution to run Visual Studio and other apps effectively, and I hate integrated graphics.
My current compromise is to use a midweight (5-pound) notebook that's light enough to easily carry around most places -- for example, if I want to work through something over lunch, a 5 pounder is reasonable. It's practical to use for web surfing or (moderate) gaming while lying on the couch or in the car. For all of those things, a big notebook is overkill.
When I want something even more portable for using while walking around (or whatever) -- taking notes, playing MP3s, portable video player, mini-games, tasks, text reading -- I've found a Pocket PC pretty workable, though there are other similar alternatives.
My apologies -- I didn't know all these things existed. The stuff I'd seen was either internet-only, or providers like Vonage that focus primarily on access to hardware.
This is very cool stuff.
For my purposes, I don't think I'll be able to use either of these -- my primary area of interest is in having a phone I can use over wifi with a Pocket PC, and neither of these currently supports the platform. But I'll definitely start casting a wider net looking for a solution now. Thanks.
Actually, in 2025, the average movie budget may be nowhere near $15 million -- it may be more like $15,000. We've had garage bands around for a good long time now, but we're in the early stages of the era of the garage movie. Why should an "indie" movie cost $15 million to make?
With internet distribution, these movies have a way to find an audience for the first time. Everything from traditional "indie-style" character-driven dramas to creature features to animation are now accessible to anyone with a prosumer DV camera, a decent PC, and an idea.
Sure, there will be more expensive movies made in Hollywood, but there are only a trickle of those every year compared with the potential flood of no-budget indie flicks.
It doesn't matter! Cause I only use 10% of the fundamental features of every office suite.
But that's the genius of the new Microsoft Office! By dumping tons of unlikely new features you'll never use into it, they're increasing the overall number of features.
And everyone knows that 10% of a big number is more than 10% of a smaller number -- you're using more features!
AT&T will control a significant portion of the DSL market, which would allow AT&T to set forth the same anti-trust/anti-competitive behavior (by filtering VoIP data).
But AT&T and BellSouth don't "compete" in the DSL market in any useful sense. They serve different markets. Yes, this will create a larger provider, with a greater chance of influencing the market as a whole. But AT&T was already the largest local phone provider, so I don't think that changes things much.
Other than regulatory intervention, the competition from cable modem service is the best chance of preventing AT&T from making a move like this. And in the future, broadband wireless cellular networks and WiMax networks may provide legitimate competition to cable modem and DSL services. But I don't think that approviing or denying this merger will affect the outcome of that fight.
Not to mention AT&T would then have control of the bigger half of cellular customers in America (Cingular/AT&T Wireless). The last step would be their re-acquisition of Verizon (which would be epic at this point, as Verizon just acquired MCI, which was one of the companies AT&T flagged as a "competitor" in their earlier anti-trust proceedings).
There are three major wireless networks at this point -- Cingular, Verizon, and Sprint/Nextel. No merger between Cingular and Verizon would ever be approved, even by the Bush administration. Even the acquisition of Sprint seems pretty unlikely.
Actually, a more interesting potential merger would be Comcast-Sprint, which would allow Comcast to offer the same seamless wireless-tv-internet service that AT&T and Verizon are moving toward. But again, while that would lead to further industry consolidation, it wouldn't eliminate any competition.
Open standards would certainly be a good thing, but Skype also does some things that are likely inherently proprietary for the foreseeable future.
With Skype Out and Skype In, you can call regular telephones and receive calls from them. This requires that someone builds out connectivity to the phone system. I would be all for standardizing this part as well, but any solution would likely be as much regulatory as technical.
As distasteful as this current incident is, Skype still provides an incredibly useful solution for VOIP, and AFAIK, there aren't any open solutions with the same capabilities.
I have this book. It's a pretty straightforward introduction to the topic. The central problem with it is that all the examples that use server-side components only use Java.
If you use Java, great. But the book title is misleading, and it should be called "Foundations of Ajax in JavaScript and Java."
The other caveat: the book is designed for people who want to use Ajax to spruce up an existing web page a little, not design new applications built from the ground up to use Ajax as the data transport mechanism. If this meets your needs, great. If you're looking to do bigger stuff, get "Ajax in Action" froom Manning.
Yeah, their artist stations never worked very well, partially because of all the annoying regulations about how often you can play the same artist on a streaming radio station.
On the other hand, the feature where you can build a radio station out of 10 different artists and related music can be kind of fun. If you're so inclined, it's an interesting optimization problem to try to get the right mix of different artists based on who you include in the list and who you leave out.
But yeah, I've got plenty of friends that prefer streaming radio -- there are some good stations. Mostly I just love the ability to put almost anything out there into a playlist based on what I feel like listening to today.
I think Napster has other facets of its business that may account for its eventual demise outside of Microsoft, such as marketing a product that customers don't want -- highly publicized crippling of digital music files.
On the other hand, AFAIK, Rhapsody is still doing swimmingly.
They got their business model off the ground with even more limited access to the music than Naspter has -- for years, their music was only available as a stream, and the only file on your local drive was a cache you couldn't access.
But Rhapsody has always had a clean interface that's easy to explore for new music -- perfect for people who love music, and want to listen to new things. And while they've never had the explosion that iPod/iTunes has had, they've always had a strong customer base, and they grow by word of mouth.
Now that you can listen to DRM'ed files while you're offline and transfer those files to a mobile player -- albeit not an iPod(TM) -- the service seems even more powerful, not "crippled."
I think Napster ultimately just isn't as good a service, and that's why they're failing.
Why in the world should I pay for access to say, 22,000, songs when there are only 2000 I give a shit about? Why at the $15 monthly fee Napster charges in thirteen years I could own them all.
If iTunes works well for you, good for you. But I would point out that by this methodology, you're going to wait for years and years to listen to most of those 2000 songs. If you don't really like them all that much, that's no big deal, but personally, I'd rather listen to the music I want to listen to now, not a decade from now.
I've listened to literally thousands of albums on Rhapsody -- at home, at work, on my mobile player, in the car. Buying those thousands of albums (and counting) would cost me far more than renting them ever will.
Besides, one of the things I love most is that I can listen to any new music I hear about without having to settle for 30 second excerpts or buying the music in advance to see if I like it. I would never have listened to many of those thousands of albums if I had had to buy them on iTunes or as CDs.
As I said -- if iTunes works for you, more power to you. But I just have too broad a taste in music to settle for iTunes.
Microsoft and its ally Intel have also convinced Hewlett-Packard to consider making HD-DVD drives for computers. This would give Toshiba an answer to Dell, which remains committed to the Blu-ray format.
If Vista doesn't ship with support for Blu-Ray, how is Dell going to sell these to people?
And when did Dell stop following Intel and Microsoft on technology choices?
So if Sony is basically the "manufacturer" of the Cell processor and the manufacturer of the BluRay drive, the cost to them is way off. They don't have to pay someone else's marketing, sales and profit on these products, only the core cost of actually building the parts.
So if you plow enormous sums of money into R&D and manufacturing plants, you don't have any extra costs to add to the unit price? Uh, since when?
Don't you think it cost Sony a good chunk of change to develop the Blu-Ray standard and retool manufacturing to handle it? Don't you figure that if IBM is asking for money to help build a plant, it probably wasn't cheap?
All those upfront costs have to be recovered somehow. How is this any different from paying licensing royalties?
There are a ton of RSS readers for various mobile platforms such as Pocket PC and Palm. The most useful ones also work offline, so you can read the feeds without having an open connection.
But I can't help thinking that while the proprietary approach of taking specific websites and ripping their content might work for a brief period, in the long run it is surely doomed.
The proper solution is websites that deploy CSS intelligently to produce pages formatted properly for small screens. That's what CSS and the whole separation of content from presentation is for: making sure the underlying content can be accessed through a variety of platforms in a manner appropriate to each one.
There are already PocketPC phones that come with WiFi. Just to pick one, the Samsung SCH-i730 is a 3G phone that can happily use WiFi, and you should already be able to run Skype on it today. The downside is that you may have to buy an unlimited wireless data contract to get something like this from your cell provider, though if you use enough minutes, it still might be a good deal.
And if you don't care about coverage, you don't need a phone at all. Just go buy a decent iPaq or Axim with WiFi, and download the Skype PPC client. Your coverage will be limited to WiFi access points, but you can try it out today.
I agree that Sony has the wherewithal to mount another try if the PS3 doesn't win, but if that's the case, they're going to be in serious trouble by the time they release a PS4. Sony hasn't been in the best of shape lately -- they're a "safe, established brand," not an innovator in key categories like flat-screen TVs. They're a complete non-factor in MP3 players. They're a small niche "lifestyle brand" in computers.
XBox is providing heavy pressure in the console market, basically the last segment in which Sony enjoys both excellent sales and excellent margins. If the Playstation cash cow gets slaughtered, what exactly does Sony still have going for them?
They still have best brand name in the industry, of course, but did that save RCA, GE, and other consumer electronics brands that used to be great back in the day?
Yes, but do you know what consoles non-traditional gamers will be buying this Christmas? Discounted PS2s and XBoxen, that's what. Why? Because the consoles are cheap, and a ton of cheap games are available.
Either that, or they'll buy the little $20 PacMan games that are a controller on a cord.
Even $200 for a Revolution is a lot of money if you're not really that into gaming.
By the time non-traditional gamers get around to buying a console in the 360/PS3/Revolution generation, there will already be well-demarcated winners and losers, and they'll know to stay away from whatever console is going to be orphaned.
While non-traditional gamers are an important market, they follow the rest of the market, they don't drive it.
I'm perfectly capable of affording a MacBook Pro. But compared to the ThinkPad T60 14" I'd like to triple-boot, it weighs more, has a lower screen resolution, and is frankly inferior for my purposes.
For your purposes, an Intel Mac may be the best of all possible computers, but don't go making assumptions about other people's reasons for wanting to run OS X on other hardware.
Seriously though, I was administrating a company which all users had roaming profile - and it's a PAIN in the ass if a user move from one machine to another - you simple have to wait until of his desktop will be copied from the server - sometimes is few megabyes, but some heavy users have gigabytes of data to move...
The other problem I always had when I had a roaming profile is that you have to have the same perfectly vanilla application install everywhere. As soon as you start installing, say, Visual Studio, if it isn't on everyone's desk, roaming profiles are basically worthless.
SAMBA is not only linux centric. Many other OSes use samba for windows integration (even there is novell netware 4.x version).
I doubt microsoft can ignore all these systems. People will not easily dump their workstations for NT...
Microsoft can let companies that make other OS's license their patents for a nominal fee. They can even propose a standard, nondiscriminatory runtime license that anyone can get for cheap. This still guts SAMBA, because you couldn't put a component with a runtime license inside a GPL'ed program.
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The videos are are 320x208 resolution, which is horribly non-standard and causes the stretching of both videos (well, more accurately, squishing, but they have the same end effect), making everyone look fat.
I've never used iTunes, nor any player that can play files from iTunes, so I apologize for my gross ignorance in this area. But a number of video players I've used in the past can play video at any resolution in the correct aspect ratio, even if it's 23x147 or something. Can you not do this with some player for an iTunes video?
If not, I hope you'll pardon me for saying that iTunes sounds like a pretty limited format on which to buy video.
If you decide to cut expenses and get rid of that monthly subscription service bill, what do you have for the money you've paid?
If you decide to cut expenses and get rid of that monthly cable TV or XM radio bill, what do have for the money you paid?
Rhapsody is a primarily service where you are paying for the right to listen to any of the millions of songs in the library for a period of time. If you stop paying, they aren't taking away something you own, because you never bought it. That's how the original poster misrepresents the nature of the service.
I can't see that this is any different from an online-only subscription to the Wall Street Journal or the Economist -- if you stop subscribing, they don't still give you online access to the issues you already "paid for." Likewise, cable TV and XM Radio don't give you access to the TV programs or radio streams you consumed in the past either.
Do you think that there is something inherently wrong with these other services as well?
Active Record is just the name of the persistence layer used in Rails, not some attempt to call persistence a new technology.
I don't want to start a language war, because there are a lot of things that Perl is very good at. But I've done medium-scale application development in object-oriented Perl, and I came away from the experience convinced that object-oriented Perl just doesn't work very well above a certain scale -- very few of the things that make it easy to abstract things and work with multiple developers on a common project are there. As always, YMMV based on particular circumstances.
Ruby's syntax is similar to Perl for a number of areas, but the object orientation is a lot cleaner. Neither Ruby the language nor Rails the framework is perfect, but it can be a very productive toolkit for MVC web applications.
I program in raw machine code. It's a perfect fit for every job, every time!
How's client-side web page scripting working out for you?
Personally, I hate the so-called "desktop replacement" notebooks that weigh 8 pounds or more, but I want pretty much all the functionality of a desktop computer. I wish I could use one of the little 12" ultralights, but I need more screen resolution to run Visual Studio and other apps effectively, and I hate integrated graphics.
My current compromise is to use a midweight (5-pound) notebook that's light enough to easily carry around most places -- for example, if I want to work through something over lunch, a 5 pounder is reasonable. It's practical to use for web surfing or (moderate) gaming while lying on the couch or in the car. For all of those things, a big notebook is overkill.
When I want something even more portable for using while walking around (or whatever) -- taking notes, playing MP3s, portable video player, mini-games, tasks, text reading -- I've found a Pocket PC pretty workable, though there are other similar alternatives.
My apologies -- I didn't know all these things existed. The stuff I'd seen was either internet-only, or providers like Vonage that focus primarily on access to hardware.
This is very cool stuff.
For my purposes, I don't think I'll be able to use either of these -- my primary area of interest is in having a phone I can use over wifi with a Pocket PC, and neither of these currently supports the platform. But I'll definitely start casting a wider net looking for a solution now. Thanks.
Actually, in 2025, the average movie budget may be nowhere near $15 million -- it may be more like $15,000. We've had garage bands around for a good long time now, but we're in the early stages of the era of the garage movie. Why should an "indie" movie cost $15 million to make?
With internet distribution, these movies have a way to find an audience for the first time. Everything from traditional "indie-style" character-driven dramas to creature features to animation are now accessible to anyone with a prosumer DV camera, a decent PC, and an idea.
Sure, there will be more expensive movies made in Hollywood, but there are only a trickle of those every year compared with the potential flood of no-budget indie flicks.
You're right. They're less than half the size of the big(ger) 3, but they're a legitimate national network.
I can't get any coverage from them out here, and I didn't realize they were that big.
It doesn't matter! Cause I only use 10% of the fundamental features of every office suite.
But that's the genius of the new Microsoft Office! By dumping tons of unlikely new features you'll never use into it, they're increasing the overall number of features.
And everyone knows that 10% of a big number is more than 10% of a smaller number -- you're using more features!
AT&T will control a significant portion of the DSL market, which would allow AT&T to set forth the same anti-trust/anti-competitive behavior (by filtering VoIP data).
But AT&T and BellSouth don't "compete" in the DSL market in any useful sense. They serve different markets. Yes, this will create a larger provider, with a greater chance of influencing the market as a whole. But AT&T was already the largest local phone provider, so I don't think that changes things much.
Other than regulatory intervention, the competition from cable modem service is the best chance of preventing AT&T from making a move like this. And in the future, broadband wireless cellular networks and WiMax networks may provide legitimate competition to cable modem and DSL services. But I don't think that approviing or denying this merger will affect the outcome of that fight.
Not to mention AT&T would then have control of the bigger half of cellular customers in America (Cingular/AT&T Wireless). The last step would be their re-acquisition of Verizon (which would be epic at this point, as Verizon just acquired MCI, which was one of the companies AT&T flagged as a "competitor" in their earlier anti-trust proceedings).
There are three major wireless networks at this point -- Cingular, Verizon, and Sprint/Nextel. No merger between Cingular and Verizon would ever be approved, even by the Bush administration. Even the acquisition of Sprint seems pretty unlikely.
Actually, a more interesting potential merger would be Comcast-Sprint, which would allow Comcast to offer the same seamless wireless-tv-internet service that AT&T and Verizon are moving toward. But again, while that would lead to further industry consolidation, it wouldn't eliminate any competition.
Open standards would certainly be a good thing, but Skype also does some things that are likely inherently proprietary for the foreseeable future.
With Skype Out and Skype In, you can call regular telephones and receive calls from them. This requires that someone builds out connectivity to the phone system. I would be all for standardizing this part as well, but any solution would likely be as much regulatory as technical.
As distasteful as this current incident is, Skype still provides an incredibly useful solution for VOIP, and AFAIK, there aren't any open solutions with the same capabilities.
Which for the low-fi input device being used...an iPod...is about perfect.
Yes, but there are a whole lot of speaker systems that can output iPod-grade sound that don't cost $350.
I have this book. It's a pretty straightforward introduction to the topic. The central problem with it is that all the examples that use server-side components only use Java.
If you use Java, great. But the book title is misleading, and it should be called "Foundations of Ajax in JavaScript and Java."
The other caveat: the book is designed for people who want to use Ajax to spruce up an existing web page a little, not design new applications built from the ground up to use Ajax as the data transport mechanism. If this meets your needs, great. If you're looking to do bigger stuff, get "Ajax in Action" froom Manning.
Yeah, their artist stations never worked very well, partially because of all the annoying regulations about how often you can play the same artist on a streaming radio station.
On the other hand, the feature where you can build a radio station out of 10 different artists and related music can be kind of fun. If you're so inclined, it's an interesting optimization problem to try to get the right mix of different artists based on who you include in the list and who you leave out.
But yeah, I've got plenty of friends that prefer streaming radio -- there are some good stations. Mostly I just love the ability to put almost anything out there into a playlist based on what I feel like listening to today.
I think Napster has other facets of its business that may account for its eventual demise outside of Microsoft, such as marketing a product that customers don't want -- highly publicized crippling of digital music files.
On the other hand, AFAIK, Rhapsody is still doing swimmingly.
They got their business model off the ground with even more limited access to the music than Naspter has -- for years, their music was only available as a stream, and the only file on your local drive was a cache you couldn't access.
But Rhapsody has always had a clean interface that's easy to explore for new music -- perfect for people who love music, and want to listen to new things. And while they've never had the explosion that iPod/iTunes has had, they've always had a strong customer base, and they grow by word of mouth.
Now that you can listen to DRM'ed files while you're offline and transfer those files to a mobile player -- albeit not an iPod(TM) -- the service seems even more powerful, not "crippled."
I think Napster ultimately just isn't as good a service, and that's why they're failing.
Why in the world should I pay for access to say, 22,000, songs when there are only 2000 I give a shit about? Why at the $15 monthly fee Napster charges in thirteen years I could own them all.
If iTunes works well for you, good for you. But I would point out that by this methodology, you're going to wait for years and years to listen to most of those 2000 songs. If you don't really like them all that much, that's no big deal, but personally, I'd rather listen to the music I want to listen to now, not a decade from now.
I've listened to literally thousands of albums on Rhapsody -- at home, at work, on my mobile player, in the car. Buying those thousands of albums (and counting) would cost me far more than renting them ever will.
Besides, one of the things I love most is that I can listen to any new music I hear about without having to settle for 30 second excerpts or buying the music in advance to see if I like it. I would never have listened to many of those thousands of albums if I had had to buy them on iTunes or as CDs.
As I said -- if iTunes works for you, more power to you. But I just have too broad a taste in music to settle for iTunes.
Microsoft and its ally Intel have also convinced Hewlett-Packard to consider making HD-DVD drives for computers. This would give Toshiba an answer to Dell, which remains committed to the Blu-ray format.
If Vista doesn't ship with support for Blu-Ray, how is Dell going to sell these to people?
And when did Dell stop following Intel and Microsoft on technology choices?
So if Sony is basically the "manufacturer" of the Cell processor and the manufacturer of the BluRay drive, the cost to them is way off. They don't have to pay someone else's marketing, sales and profit on these products, only the core cost of actually building the parts.
So if you plow enormous sums of money into R&D and manufacturing plants, you don't have any extra costs to add to the unit price? Uh, since when?
Don't you think it cost Sony a good chunk of change to develop the Blu-Ray standard and retool manufacturing to handle it? Don't you figure that if IBM is asking for money to help build a plant, it probably wasn't cheap?
All those upfront costs have to be recovered somehow. How is this any different from paying licensing royalties?
There are a ton of RSS readers for various mobile platforms such as Pocket PC and Palm. The most useful ones also work offline, so you can read the feeds without having an open connection.
But I can't help thinking that while the proprietary approach of taking specific websites and ripping their content might work for a brief period, in the long run it is surely doomed.
The proper solution is websites that deploy CSS intelligently to produce pages formatted properly for small screens. That's what CSS and the whole separation of content from presentation is for: making sure the underlying content can be accessed through a variety of platforms in a manner appropriate to each one.
There are already PocketPC phones that come with WiFi. Just to pick one, the Samsung SCH-i730 is a 3G phone that can happily use WiFi, and you should already be able to run Skype on it today. The downside is that you may have to buy an unlimited wireless data contract to get something like this from your cell provider, though if you use enough minutes, it still might be a good deal.
And if you don't care about coverage, you don't need a phone at all. Just go buy a decent iPaq or Axim with WiFi, and download the Skype PPC client. Your coverage will be limited to WiFi access points, but you can try it out today.
I agree that Sony has the wherewithal to mount another try if the PS3 doesn't win, but if that's the case, they're going to be in serious trouble by the time they release a PS4. Sony hasn't been in the best of shape lately -- they're a "safe, established brand," not an innovator in key categories like flat-screen TVs. They're a complete non-factor in MP3 players. They're a small niche "lifestyle brand" in computers.
XBox is providing heavy pressure in the console market, basically the last segment in which Sony enjoys both excellent sales and excellent margins. If the Playstation cash cow gets slaughtered, what exactly does Sony still have going for them?
They still have best brand name in the industry, of course, but did that save RCA, GE, and other consumer electronics brands that used to be great back in the day?
Yes, but do you know what consoles non-traditional gamers will be buying this Christmas? Discounted PS2s and XBoxen, that's what. Why? Because the consoles are cheap, and a ton of cheap games are available.
Either that, or they'll buy the little $20 PacMan games that are a controller on a cord.
Even $200 for a Revolution is a lot of money if you're not really that into gaming.
By the time non-traditional gamers get around to buying a console in the 360/PS3/Revolution generation, there will already be well-demarcated winners and losers, and they'll know to stay away from whatever console is going to be orphaned.
While non-traditional gamers are an important market, they follow the rest of the market, they don't drive it.
I'm perfectly capable of affording a MacBook Pro. But compared to the ThinkPad T60 14" I'd like to triple-boot, it weighs more, has a lower screen resolution, and is frankly inferior for my purposes.
For your purposes, an Intel Mac may be the best of all possible computers, but don't go making assumptions about other people's reasons for wanting to run OS X on other hardware.
The other problem I always had when I had a roaming profile is that you have to have the same perfectly vanilla application install everywhere. As soon as you start installing, say, Visual Studio, if it isn't on everyone's desk, roaming profiles are basically worthless.
I doubt microsoft can ignore all these systems. People will not easily dump their workstations for NT...
Microsoft can let companies that make other OS's license their patents for a nominal fee. They can even propose a standard, nondiscriminatory runtime license that anyone can get for cheap. This still guts SAMBA, because you couldn't put a component with a runtime license inside a GPL'ed program.