If you don't export it out of china yourself, then the chinese will... If it has your brand on it legitimately (ie not a fake) then it will command a higher price in the west (somewhere between its price in china and the price of higher quality units) until people realise what it really is.
You would need to replace your client, change your workflow to accommodate a new client, replace any hardware handsets you had etc. Any of your clients that you actually talk to through skype instead of bridging to the PSTN would also need to change. You would lose any custom hacks/scripts you've done to the skype client etc.
And if your just using skype for calls to regular phones you really are missing out, skype typically have much worse rates/packages than most standard sip providers
I typically have accounts with 4-5 SIP providers at any one time plus a physical line which is used as backup, i typically use them according to who offers the best deal at the time or to the specific destination. If one provider offers a promotion i just need to change one setting in asterisk and all my calls take advantage of it automatically.
I used to use the asterisk monkey sounds, they even have one which says "something is terribly wrong.. they have been taken away by monkeys"... But more recently i've been taking apart soundboards and making a script of some celebrity, if you have someone say helo a few times, ask the caller who they are and what they want they tend to stay on the line a lot longer, even if its borat talking to them.
So you pay for a proprietary service? If you start talking to all your clients through skype, what happens if they decide to crank up the prices? By locking yourself into a proprietary service like that you are taking a step backwards. They are like BT, only worse, BT are heavily regulated, skype is not... It may be cheap right now, but for how long? It's a classic bait and switch.
But what if you resell the service, so that you are allowing unsuspecting members of the public to make expensive calls at knock down prices... For a destination where anyone else charges $0.50/minute but you charge $0.40, you still stand to make a significant profit because your costs are fraudulently being pushed on to someone else.
That only works if they operate a premium rate phone scam with the stolen accounts...
On the other hand, many criminals will sell 'minutes' to various countries at below the standard rates to service providers.. These providers then route calls from unsuspecting users over the questionable routes. Many of those calling cards being offered at unbelievable prices work this way.. Lots of people living in the west come from countries which are extremely expensive to call, and still have family there, and they will lap up these unbelievably cheap cards.
PDF is an open format, all the specifications for it are available publicly and many others have implemented it (openoffice, macosx, kpdf, pdflatex etc). MS decided not to implement it because they never implement anyone else's standards unless they're forced to, and even then they try to implement them poorly and push users onto their own proprietary formats instead.
In this case, MS wants people using their proprietary XPS format instead.
There is always the risk that any product controlled by a single company will be pulled or taken in an undesirable direction... People already either accept that risk, or are ignorant of it...
MS however are in exactly the same situation - why improve anything if people will buy it anyway? MS buying Adobe wouldn't change much, you would just see the mac and linux versions of whatever they make gradually languish behind much like they already do, not quite shit enough to really spur development of an alternative.
Who knows, neither of those are big enough to be worthy of attack by hackers...
Malware attacked IE when it had 90%+ market share, now that its share is down to around 50% it's a less attractive target.. However Flash (and a single plugin, not a choice of multiple implementations) is on 90%+ of target systems regardless of what browser they use so it now becomes the most efficient target for exploitation.
Adobe reader is also a good target, also installed on 90%+ systems, although there are far superior alternatives to it.
Malware authors want to ensure that the largest possible percentage of people who stumble across their trap will get caught in it.
Microsoft does patch management extremely poorly... They are way behind APT or Yum, you typically only get updates for what comes bundled with the OS and more recently for a few non bundled MS apps. Even many other MS apps don't get updated automatically, and no third party apps get updated at all as you pointed out, there is no way for third parties to integrate into the system update mechanism.
I don't think i've ever encountered a system in active use which didn't have some non MS apps installed which either had a bloated update app running in the background, or just never got updated at all. Also these update apps typically need admin privileges to run, so if you run as non admin you don't get updates from them.
Also if you have a large network using WSUS for updates, you might want to manually go round all those machines and verify that the updates truly are installed. But don't use the MS tools to verify patch installation, manually check the versions of individual files which should be replaced by the patches... You will get a pretty nasty shock on a handful of the machines.
For non technical people, because OSX is less hassle... No need to fuck around with firewalls, anti virus, anti malware and have having all this crap in the background wasting resources. Graphic designers don't want to deal with the hassle of maintaining a flakey OS.
For technical people, because OSX is unix based just like pretty much everything else other than windows.
What about what makes sense from the end user perspective? If a single company controls a piece of software you depend on, surely it's a huge risk to use it... What if they drop that software in part (ie drop it for the platform you use) or completely? I don't think i would feel happy running a business on software which can be pulled out from under me on a whim.
You can use your car, just not in the normal way...
You can drive it all you like on private land such as race tracks etc. You can have someone else drive it on public roads on your behalf. You can strip it down for parts. You could even turn it into a chicken coup or find some other non standard use for it. You could potentially take it to another country and drive it there, assuming the government of that country permits you to drive it there.
Downloading the full game as a demo and then having to pay to unlock it is not innovative, software has been distributed this way for years.. Also it wastes your bandwidth if you don't want the whole game.
And didn't services like gamespy provide chat, tags and matchmaking? All MS did was integrate that service into a console. On the other hand they made the service proprietary and dependent on their servers, so that once they turn the servers off you can no longer play (by contrast, quake always had server binaries you could run yourself and is now open source, people actually still play the first version of quake, infact people even still play doom).
As for them relying on windows and office, their method of retaining those cash cows is by locking people in, not by offering a compelling product that people will choose on a level playing field. This strategy just hurts everyone else.
Only, MS have already spent a bundle to find out that forcing a desktop interface onto a tablet doesn't work... While Apple have proved that an interface actually designed for touchscreen interaction can be successful on a tablet. And yet here they are again, trying to make another tablet running a desktop os.
A clone that was well marketed, but also generally inferior to its competition. But not just marketing, also using their weight in other areas to force people onto their products, and then using that same strategy to keep the users locked in there. They've never had to compete in an open market (IBM handed them their first monopoly with dos) and really have no idea how to, any market which is sufficiently far away from windows to avoid their lock-in strategies and they have immense trouble gaining a foothold, often wasting huge amounts of money to do so.
By contrast, i know several people who own iPads, and i frequently see total strangers using them on trains... When they first came out, the apple store near here was packed and there were queues of people lining up to buy one. This is far more success and public interest than any other tablet computer has ever had.
As for an MS tablet, they need to get away from the "windows everywhere" idea and come up with a completely new OS (preferably one which is posix/unix based like everyone else's) for tablets, with its own interface and applications which are specifically designed for the tablet form factor.
"Tablets running windows"... that's the whole problem, microsoft simply refuse to get away from windows even in areas where it's completely unsuitable...
The Windows interface is completely unsuitable for a tablet or phone, as is the desktop interface of OSX or Linux... Apple understands that and ensured that their tablet has a new interface designed for the form factor and new applications designed to work with that interface. RIM also seems to understand that dragging their old proprietary os along is just dead weight, and their tablet will have a unix compatible os with a specially designed interface and specially designed apps. Linux/Android also seems to be going for a proper tablet oriented interface... Linux certainly does have the capability to recompile existing desktop apps, but the fact noone is doing that is testament to what a bad idea that would be.
MS need to get away from windows, come up with something new and preferably posix/unix based like everything else is these days.
Windows is and always has been a lowend desktop os, and not one of the better ones at that... They are now saddled with mountains of legacy cruft and various design flaws they have to retain compatibility with. They went half way towards replacing it with NT, but then crippled their new kernel with all their existing mess...
Imagine if Apple had continued with OS9 and tried to make server and tablet versions of that, or what about AmigaOS, TOS (atari)? All these systems were designed for lowend desktops and for various reasons would be a poor choice even on todays desktop systems, let alone phones tablets or servers. Few could argue that OSX isn't a huge improvement over OS9, and in it's day Apple's old MacOS was way ahead of windows.
The problem with viewing the stats on your own sites... I have encountered places where their sites only work with IE, and their stats say that only IE users ever visit their site... But the reason for that is that users of other browsers just assume the site is broken and go elsewhere.
By contrast, i run a site called spamdecoy.net which provides anonymous readonly email (for when websites demand an email address for something)... The users are primarily privacy conscious and Firefox accounts for 70% while IE (all versions) accounts for about 5%. I also run websites with adult content, and IE usage is around the 20% mark (because very few people would browse such sites from work)...
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If you don't export it out of china yourself, then the chinese will...
If it has your brand on it legitimately (ie not a fake) then it will command a higher price in the west (somewhere between its price in china and the price of higher quality units) until people realise what it really is.
You would need to replace your client, change your workflow to accommodate a new client, replace any hardware handsets you had etc.
Any of your clients that you actually talk to through skype instead of bridging to the PSTN would also need to change.
You would lose any custom hacks/scripts you've done to the skype client etc.
And if your just using skype for calls to regular phones you really are missing out, skype typically have much worse rates/packages than most standard sip providers
I typically have accounts with 4-5 SIP providers at any one time plus a physical line which is used as backup, i typically use them according to who offers the best deal at the time or to the specific destination. If one provider offers a promotion i just need to change one setting in asterisk and all my calls take advantage of it automatically.
I used to use the asterisk monkey sounds, they even have one which says "something is terribly wrong.. they have been taken away by monkeys"...
But more recently i've been taking apart soundboards and making a script of some celebrity, if you have someone say helo a few times, ask the caller who they are and what they want they tend to stay on the line a lot longer, even if its borat talking to them.
So you pay for a proprietary service? If you start talking to all your clients through skype, what happens if they decide to crank up the prices? By locking yourself into a proprietary service like that you are taking a step backwards.
They are like BT, only worse, BT are heavily regulated, skype is not... It may be cheap right now, but for how long? It's a classic bait and switch.
Because it's a proprietary service that locks you in even worse than traditional telephone providers.
Instead, they should use SIP which is a standards based protocol supported by thousands of providers and all manner of devices.
But what if you resell the service, so that you are allowing unsuspecting members of the public to make expensive calls at knock down prices... For a destination where anyone else charges $0.50/minute but you charge $0.40, you still stand to make a significant profit because your costs are fraudulently being pushed on to someone else.
That only works if they operate a premium rate phone scam with the stolen accounts...
On the other hand, many criminals will sell 'minutes' to various countries at below the standard rates to service providers.. These providers then route calls from unsuspecting users over the questionable routes.
Many of those calling cards being offered at unbelievable prices work this way.. Lots of people living in the west come from countries which are extremely expensive to call, and still have family there, and they will lap up these unbelievably cheap cards.
The problem with doing that, is it devalues your brand...
PDF is an open format, all the specifications for it are available publicly and many others have implemented it (openoffice, macosx, kpdf, pdflatex etc).
MS decided not to implement it because they never implement anyone else's standards unless they're forced to, and even then they try to implement them poorly and push users onto their own proprietary formats instead.
In this case, MS wants people using their proprietary XPS format instead.
There is always the risk that any product controlled by a single company will be pulled or taken in an undesirable direction... People already either accept that risk, or are ignorant of it...
MS however are in exactly the same situation - why improve anything if people will buy it anyway?
MS buying Adobe wouldn't change much, you would just see the mac and linux versions of whatever they make gradually languish behind much like they already do, not quite shit enough to really spur development of an alternative.
Who knows, neither of those are big enough to be worthy of attack by hackers...
Malware attacked IE when it had 90%+ market share, now that its share is down to around 50% it's a less attractive target.. However Flash (and a single plugin, not a choice of multiple implementations) is on 90%+ of target systems regardless of what browser they use so it now becomes the most efficient target for exploitation.
Adobe reader is also a good target, also installed on 90%+ systems, although there are far superior alternatives to it.
Malware authors want to ensure that the largest possible percentage of people who stumble across their trap will get caught in it.
Microsoft does patch management extremely poorly... They are way behind APT or Yum, you typically only get updates for what comes bundled with the OS and more recently for a few non bundled MS apps. Even many other MS apps don't get updated automatically, and no third party apps get updated at all as you pointed out, there is no way for third parties to integrate into the system update mechanism.
I don't think i've ever encountered a system in active use which didn't have some non MS apps installed which either had a bloated update app running in the background, or just never got updated at all. Also these update apps typically need admin privileges to run, so if you run as non admin you don't get updates from them.
Also if you have a large network using WSUS for updates, you might want to manually go round all those machines and verify that the updates truly are installed. But don't use the MS tools to verify patch installation, manually check the versions of individual files which should be replaced by the patches... You will get a pretty nasty shock on a handful of the machines.
For non technical people, because OSX is less hassle... No need to fuck around with firewalls, anti virus, anti malware and have having all this crap in the background wasting resources. Graphic designers don't want to deal with the hassle of maintaining a flakey OS.
For technical people, because OSX is unix based just like pretty much everything else other than windows.
What about what makes sense from the end user perspective?
If a single company controls a piece of software you depend on, surely it's a huge risk to use it... What if they drop that software in part (ie drop it for the platform you use) or completely? I don't think i would feel happy running a business on software which can be pulled out from under me on a whim.
You can use your car, just not in the normal way...
You can drive it all you like on private land such as race tracks etc.
You can have someone else drive it on public roads on your behalf.
You can strip it down for parts.
You could even turn it into a chicken coup or find some other non standard use for it.
You could potentially take it to another country and drive it there, assuming the government of that country permits you to drive it there.
Downloading the full game as a demo and then having to pay to unlock it is not innovative, software has been distributed this way for years.. Also it wastes your bandwidth if you don't want the whole game.
And didn't services like gamespy provide chat, tags and matchmaking? All MS did was integrate that service into a console. On the other hand they made the service proprietary and dependent on their servers, so that once they turn the servers off you can no longer play (by contrast, quake always had server binaries you could run yourself and is now open source, people actually still play the first version of quake, infact people even still play doom).
As for them relying on windows and office, their method of retaining those cash cows is by locking people in, not by offering a compelling product that people will choose on a level playing field. This strategy just hurts everyone else.
Only, MS have already spent a bundle to find out that forcing a desktop interface onto a tablet doesn't work... While Apple have proved that an interface actually designed for touchscreen interaction can be successful on a tablet.
And yet here they are again, trying to make another tablet running a desktop os.
A clone that was well marketed, but also generally inferior to its competition.
But not just marketing, also using their weight in other areas to force people onto their products, and then using that same strategy to keep the users locked in there.
They've never had to compete in an open market (IBM handed them their first monopoly with dos) and really have no idea how to, any market which is sufficiently far away from windows to avoid their lock-in strategies and they have immense trouble gaining a foothold, often wasting huge amounts of money to do so.
OSX yes, but not iOS (which is what runs on their tablet) unless you jailbreak it.
By contrast, i know several people who own iPads, and i frequently see total strangers using them on trains... When they first came out, the apple store near here was packed and there were queues of people lining up to buy one. This is far more success and public interest than any other tablet computer has ever had.
As for an MS tablet, they need to get away from the "windows everywhere" idea and come up with a completely new OS (preferably one which is posix/unix based like everyone else's) for tablets, with its own interface and applications which are specifically designed for the tablet form factor.
"Tablets running windows"... that's the whole problem, microsoft simply refuse to get away from windows even in areas where it's completely unsuitable...
The Windows interface is completely unsuitable for a tablet or phone, as is the desktop interface of OSX or Linux...
Apple understands that and ensured that their tablet has a new interface designed for the form factor and new applications designed to work with that interface.
RIM also seems to understand that dragging their old proprietary os along is just dead weight, and their tablet will have a unix compatible os with a specially designed interface and specially designed apps.
Linux/Android also seems to be going for a proper tablet oriented interface... Linux certainly does have the capability to recompile existing desktop apps, but the fact noone is doing that is testament to what a bad idea that would be.
MS need to get away from windows, come up with something new and preferably posix/unix based like everything else is these days.
Windows is and always has been a lowend desktop os, and not one of the better ones at that... They are now saddled with mountains of legacy cruft and various design flaws they have to retain compatibility with.
They went half way towards replacing it with NT, but then crippled their new kernel with all their existing mess...
Imagine if Apple had continued with OS9 and tried to make server and tablet versions of that, or what about AmigaOS, TOS (atari)? All these systems were designed for lowend desktops and for various reasons would be a poor choice even on todays desktop systems, let alone phones tablets or servers.
Few could argue that OSX isn't a huge improvement over OS9, and in it's day Apple's old MacOS was way ahead of windows.
The problem with viewing the stats on your own sites...
I have encountered places where their sites only work with IE, and their stats say that only IE users ever visit their site... But the reason for that is that users of other browsers just assume the site is broken and go elsewhere.
By contrast, i run a site called spamdecoy.net which provides anonymous readonly email (for when websites demand an email address for something)... The users are primarily privacy conscious and Firefox accounts for 70% while IE (all versions) accounts for about 5%.
I also run websites with adult content, and IE usage is around the 20% mark (because very few people would browse such sites from work)...
Thats because the AV products marketing is specifically saying that...