The cost of achieving superiority in all of those other fields would be astronomical. And on top of that, some don't make sense at all. Rail system superiority isn't feasible in a country as large as the United States, the population density is too low. Instead, we invested in massive highway projects that could, arguably, become very rail-like as soon as driving AI increases a bit more. Also, for all of its faults, our health care system is pretty good. You don't have to wait to get surgery, and if you can afford it world class health care is immediately available.
Internet access superiority, we don't have because the free market hasn't demanded it yet. It is getting there though. We do have general internet superiority though. And the reason we don't have manufacturing superiority anymore is because a trained monkey could do the majority of the manufacturing today, and because of unionization, you have to pay trained monkeys in the US $80k a year. At some point, it just isn't worth it. It made sense to pay when it was a skill job, but it's mainly robotic now.
On top of that, menial manufacturing jobs have been getting eliminated for ages. We don't have too many blacksmiths, or glassblowers, or potters anymore, the majority have seemed to find other work. Besides, the money isn't in manufacturing, it's in drawing up the design and doing the engineering for the robot to allow manufacturing at a sustainable rate today. Bottom line, as history has progressed, we've eliminated tons of jobs. Globalization just makes this process faster, because you can ship it oversees to get it done for less, before you eliminate the job entirely. It only makes sense to keep a job around long enough that the cost of developing, building, and deploying technology to do the job, is more expensive than the people that are presently doing it.
Military spending is a tricky issue as well. Much more than the ability to defend oneself is gained from it. For example, military spending greatly increased our ability to mass produce things, has paved the way toward clean and efficient nuclear energy, revolutionized air travel with the jet engine, made possible a whole slew of satellite based services like GPS, saved tons of people in Germany, prevented a much greater loss of life in Japan, and created synthetic rubber. Additionally, like all public works projects, the majority of the money that is spent on the project trickles back down into the economy. You could view this like tax cuts, while there is a temporary loss, there is ultimately a higher gain. From wikipedia: President Ronald Reagan signed tax cuts into law and while it took some time, these tax cuts arguably stimulated a doubling in total tax revenues (from five hundred billion to one trillion dollars). Don Lambro of the Washington Times credits the Reagan tax cuts with the eventual surpluses of the 1990s.
For the time being, there isn't much financial incentive to explore space. Lets face it, somebody has got to pay for it. We didn't try to sail across the ocean until people thought there was a decent route to get faster trade that way. Expect the same with space.
Bush should absolutely be speaking up about foreign nations stealing from American companies, regardless of if it is intellectual property, software, or hardware design. Why should foreign companies get a free ride? It raises the prices domestically in the long run, because it destroys competition.
Given the title of the topic, only fools wait until the last minute, my implication was you don't have to file by the due date, if you are owed a refund. It does make sense to forget about the deadline if, like me, you own a company, you've paid up your estimated tax, and they only owe you about $100.
The thing is, to get the $100, I'd have to spend about 10 hours going over the accounting again. So, every three years, I do all the work at once since most of the effort is duplicated anyway, and file then. It takes about 12 hours once, rather than 10 hours three times. I'm not too concerned about the $300, in the 18 hours I save I'll make a lot more than that anyway. Not everything is cut and dry, or easy.
The real problem is that there is so much hypocrisy in the Left. The liberal media is in favor of stopping the genocide in Darfur, but also in favor of causing one by pulling out of Iraq. If the United States pulled out today, Iraq would be pretty likely to fall into a state of anarchy, followed by civil war and potential genocide.
Worse yet, if we were to intervene in Darfur, as soon as we get there the left would insist that we leave. It's a lose lose proposition, especially for the poor bastards that are gonna die over it.
Not broadcast, but they do make great, inexpensive, computer monitors. I picked up a 37" 1080p for $1000 and have been using it for weeks and am very happy with it at this point.
It depends on the operating system. XP and Vista seem to have very mature multiple monitor support. I believe this is largely because Gates and most of the other higher ups at MS use 3 displays. If you have multiple displays and XP, buy Ultramon immediately, it makes it perfect.
When I use XP, I use a three monitor setup, a 24" (16:9) in the front, and two 20" (4:3) to either side. This increases my productivity dramatically. I think about it this way. When I am working on a hardware project, I generally am standing at a workbench with the parts directly in front of me, the design document to the left, and part documentation to the right. I don't have everything in one big pile and swap them from the front to the back. When I am in front of the computer, I have my IDE on the monitor in front of me, Firefox to the right (generally with five or six tabs open with various pieces of documentation), and Outlook to the left, generally with the design info. With Ultramon, I can easily move maximized windows from screen to screen.
When I am using by Macbook Pro, the stories a bit different. Primarily, OSX isn't as good with multiple monitors. This is largely because of the lack of an Ultramon. My biggest gripe is that the toolbar only appears on one monitor, so if I am using textmate on the external, I have to switch displays to get to the menus, and LOTS of programs don't handle multiple monitors very well. For example, when I type in the search box in Firefox, the drop down box with stuff I've searched before only shows up on the primary display.
Since the MBP only has a single DVI output, I can't do three monitors with it, so I settled on one large one. I bought a Westinghouse 1080p 37" HDTV http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82 E16889234001 and use that. In fact, I'm writing this on it right now, and I couldn't be happier. It was only $1,000, has multiple DVI inputs, has a 1920x1080 resolution, and is clear enough that I can sit less than a foot away and use it. Large displays such as the Westinghouse are good with OS X because most apps don't generally take up the whole window anyway.
It's an interesting paradigm shift going from 3 small to one large. I'm not really sure which is better. On one hand, I think having multiple monitors when all windows are maximized is wonderful, but at the same time, I think one large one with several open windows can be just as effective because you don't need to move your head as much.
Having said all that, I guess the bottom line is, with OS X I would always go with a single, large display, and with XP, I would always buy Ultramon, then three displays to go with it (Note: it isn't the other way around, don't bother if you aren't going to have Ultramon).
Re:We'll fix that right after we get cold fusion.
on
X Prize For a 100-MPG Car
·
· Score: 4, Insightful
That isn't the problem. Only an idiot would believe that everyone should live in apartments crammed together. Because something works for you, doesn't mean it does or should for anyone else.
Re:We'll fix that right after we get cold fusion.
on
X Prize For a 100-MPG Car
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
To some people, housing quality matters more than how far they have to drive to work, or the environmental impact of their commute.
Internet bandwidth hasn't kept up, but local bandwidth definitely has. My network throughput is more than capable of transmitting data faster than my hard drives are able to write it. And I wouldn't even agree about the net bandwidth. I have a 15mb connection where I used to have a 56k.
I offer an online storage system to my clients that does just that. I have a SAN with over 5TB free, so offering a few hundred GBs of storage out is no big deal. All files are encrypted on their end before transmission, and we never get the key.
Even with the source code, I was unable to recover (rightly so) any data for a client that had lost their key. I now offer clients the option of storing the key encrypted on our systems, and then copying their private key onto a usb key for them to keep, in case they forget their encryption key. In either case, without their private key or their encryption key, I can't access their files.
This should definitely be an improvement. For example, I have a relatively high speed connection. I can download at about 1.8MB/s and upload at about 250KB/s.
I often get stuck in torrents where there is a single seeder, and many peers all slowly downloading, primarily from the seeder. If the seeder would only send packets to my client at say 40KB/s, I could them send them out to pretty much everyone else much faster. Of course, the real solution would probably be better multicast support, but that doesn't seem likely anytime soon.
I've heard the same things, and I've got the Windows Mobile version. My phone locks up if it receives a large e-mail. If I get called while I am on a call, the phone almost always drops both calls and hangs.
Windows Mobile reminds me a lot of Windows 98. Basically, it can do some really cool stuff, but it's gonna be a few more years until it's a stable platform and only third party software mucks it up. I hate rebooting my phone twice a day.
Shooting guns when you are young isn't illegal in the US as far as I know. When I was in the boy scouts (5th - 7th grade), they let us play with all sorts of weapons.
At camp we had archery, riflery (.22s), and they let us throw hatchets at targets. We also found out that bug repellent is highly flammable. I remember shooting pellet guns much younger than that, and we regularly went skeet shooting.
Safety was stressed and everything was extremely well supervised. That is probably why I have no problem with guns today, it's an issue of training and respect.
The problem is with the education system. I don't see what the big deal is, but then again I went to private Catholic elementary, middle, and high schools, where we learned about science in classes called Science and religion in classes called Religion.
Seems pretty logical to me. The catholics that actually teach it taught that the bible should be taken as a collection of stories that can assist you in making moral decisions. Not necessarily fact, for fact we have science class. We were taught about evolution, darwinism, and the big bang and it wasn't presented as a theory either, but fact.
Interestingly enough, at one point or another we went into great detail about pretty much every major religion and belief system. Would it really hurt to learn about religion as a whole as long as it isn't taught in a secular manner? We did, which is probably why I don't practice any religion.
You don't have to do anything illegal to get your point across.
Our neighbors kids used to throw balls at our fence causing our dog to bark. The barking dog annoyed the neighbor, so they reported the dog to animal control and we were threatened with a $500 fine. They never said anything to us, they just made the report, and there was nothing that we could legally do about it.
We did, however, end up playing a Christian Rock CD on repeat from a stereo on the deck at the loudest legal level during all legal hours (I believe 7am to 11pm, I had it on a timer) every day. They tried to call the police about this multiple times, but because I knew all the legalities involved, there wasn't anything they could do about it. I believe they were forced to stop calling about it because they were threatened with filing a false report.
Eventually (less than two weeks), they wrote me a letter apologizing for filing the report and said they wouldn't complain again about the dog barking if I stopped playing the music. The point is, sometimes the only way to compromise with an asshole is to be a bigger asshole.
We'll talk about the xbox business model for a second, I would have to say that the business model for their music service is a bit shakier, and I'm more familiar with the xbox model.
First, they sell the base units at a substantial loss. This is absolutely necessary to hit the critical mass install base that is necessary to be profitable. Along with the system though, they also sell a number of games, and generally a few accessories. Over the course of the system, the initial cost of the console should be made up by the game royalties and the accessory profits.
As you said, however, that division is operating at a rather substantial loss. The reason for this is the relatively high cost of entry into this particular market. Nobody is gonna buy a console without games, so Microsoft acquired a number of studios (Rare, Bungie,...) as well as a number of other assets (think Xbox live equipment) that are one time costs.
None of this makes sense in the short term. However, one of Microsofts long time goals as I recall, was to break out of the office and into the living room with a convergence platform set-top box thing. The xbox is ultimately going to be this device, probably two generations from now, when there market share tops 60% or so.
They will be in a good position to exploit the onset of IPTV and be in a position to dominate the multibillion dollar games industry.
$7 billion, as you said, is a ton of cash to blow. But if they could get 70% or so now of a market that could be worth 50-100 billion a year in the future, that $7 billion is dishwater, totally irrelevant in the long term.
Further, Microsoft has been kicking around some rather interesting approaches to monetizing the Xbox platform. They already offer some music and movie trailers over live, I'm sure this will only grow from there. Also, they have been playing more and more with paid downloadable content, and live as a yearly service charge. A large user base using either of these services, and the cash will flow in quite nicely.
The execs at Microsoft are gearing up right now to be ready 12 years from now. There intermediate goal is to float the project until the infrastructure and market share are established.
Looking at the music service, there are a number of avenues they could take with that as well if you look at it long term. First, they could dominate online music sales. Second, they could offer unlimited music subscription based services (think yahoo music, but with a GOOD device that can be used with it). Third, these services can tie into the xbox platform and make that more attractive (stream music from ms music in any xbox game). Fourth, they can vertically integrate and become a label themselves, essentailly in charge of the majority of music distribution (hint: this is where the serious dollars are). Fifth, they could start a community based music site ala MySpace and use that to sign popular indy bands for their label, even a fifty fifty split (50c for MS and 50c for the artist) would make them a ton. Sixth, they can use their influence and fat wallet to get *every* artist and label onboard their service. As you can see, step A has to be marketshare. Step B is implement other methods to make up for the initial losses.
Microsoft is thinking about the future, not about today. Fortunately for them, they don't need intermediate goals, they have more than enough cash to float the project until they have bought sufficient market share to achieve their goals.
The purpose of the Xbox project and this project are not to make money. The purpose is to gain as much marketshare as possible as quickly as possible at whatever cost necessary. Microsoft has demonstrated that they have the wearwithall(sp?) to stay the course, they have demonstrated this time and again.
Both projects are loss leaders, they'll take large short term losses for gigantic long term gains. They're one of the only companies that can afford a business model that starts with, "First we'll throw money at the consumer...".
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The cost of achieving superiority in all of those other fields would be astronomical. And on top of that, some don't make sense at all. Rail system superiority isn't feasible in a country as large as the United States, the population density is too low. Instead, we invested in massive highway projects that could, arguably, become very rail-like as soon as driving AI increases a bit more. Also, for all of its faults, our health care system is pretty good. You don't have to wait to get surgery, and if you can afford it world class health care is immediately available.
Internet access superiority, we don't have because the free market hasn't demanded it yet. It is getting there though. We do have general internet superiority though. And the reason we don't have manufacturing superiority anymore is because a trained monkey could do the majority of the manufacturing today, and because of unionization, you have to pay trained monkeys in the US $80k a year. At some point, it just isn't worth it. It made sense to pay when it was a skill job, but it's mainly robotic now.
On top of that, menial manufacturing jobs have been getting eliminated for ages. We don't have too many blacksmiths, or glassblowers, or potters anymore, the majority have seemed to find other work. Besides, the money isn't in manufacturing, it's in drawing up the design and doing the engineering for the robot to allow manufacturing at a sustainable rate today. Bottom line, as history has progressed, we've eliminated tons of jobs. Globalization just makes this process faster, because you can ship it oversees to get it done for less, before you eliminate the job entirely. It only makes sense to keep a job around long enough that the cost of developing, building, and deploying technology to do the job, is more expensive than the people that are presently doing it.
Military spending is a tricky issue as well. Much more than the ability to defend oneself is gained from it. For example, military spending greatly increased our ability to mass produce things, has paved the way toward clean and efficient nuclear energy, revolutionized air travel with the jet engine, made possible a whole slew of satellite based services like GPS, saved tons of people in Germany, prevented a much greater loss of life in Japan, and created synthetic rubber. Additionally, like all public works projects, the majority of the money that is spent on the project trickles back down into the economy. You could view this like tax cuts, while there is a temporary loss, there is ultimately a higher gain. From wikipedia: President Ronald Reagan signed tax cuts into law and while it took some time, these tax cuts arguably stimulated a doubling in total tax revenues (from five hundred billion to one trillion dollars). Don Lambro of the Washington Times credits the Reagan tax cuts with the eventual surpluses of the 1990s.
For the time being, there isn't much financial incentive to explore space. Lets face it, somebody has got to pay for it. We didn't try to sail across the ocean until people thought there was a decent route to get faster trade that way. Expect the same with space.
Bush should absolutely be speaking up about foreign nations stealing from American companies, regardless of if it is intellectual property, software, or hardware design. Why should foreign companies get a free ride? It raises the prices domestically in the long run, because it destroys competition.
Given the title of the topic, only fools wait until the last minute, my implication was you don't have to file by the due date, if you are owed a refund. It does make sense to forget about the deadline if, like me, you own a company, you've paid up your estimated tax, and they only owe you about $100.
The thing is, to get the $100, I'd have to spend about 10 hours going over the accounting again. So, every three years, I do all the work at once since most of the effort is duplicated anyway, and file then. It takes about 12 hours once, rather than 10 hours three times. I'm not too concerned about the $300, in the 18 hours I save I'll make a lot more than that anyway. Not everything is cut and dry, or easy.
You don't have to file if you are entitled to a refund.
The real problem is that there is so much hypocrisy in the Left. The liberal media is in favor of stopping the genocide in Darfur, but also in favor of causing one by pulling out of Iraq. If the United States pulled out today, Iraq would be pretty likely to fall into a state of anarchy, followed by civil war and potential genocide.
Worse yet, if we were to intervene in Darfur, as soon as we get there the left would insist that we leave. It's a lose lose proposition, especially for the poor bastards that are gonna die over it.
Not broadcast, but they do make great, inexpensive, computer monitors. I picked up a 37" 1080p for $1000 and have been using it for weeks and am very happy with it at this point.
It depends on the operating system. XP and Vista seem to have very mature multiple monitor support. I believe this is largely because Gates and most of the other higher ups at MS use 3 displays. If you have multiple displays and XP, buy Ultramon immediately, it makes it perfect.
2 E16889234001 and use that. In fact, I'm writing this on it right now, and I couldn't be happier. It was only $1,000, has multiple DVI inputs, has a 1920x1080 resolution, and is clear enough that I can sit less than a foot away and use it. Large displays such as the Westinghouse are good with OS X because most apps don't generally take up the whole window anyway.
When I use XP, I use a three monitor setup, a 24" (16:9) in the front, and two 20" (4:3) to either side. This increases my productivity dramatically. I think about it this way. When I am working on a hardware project, I generally am standing at a workbench with the parts directly in front of me, the design document to the left, and part documentation to the right. I don't have everything in one big pile and swap them from the front to the back. When I am in front of the computer, I have my IDE on the monitor in front of me, Firefox to the right (generally with five or six tabs open with various pieces of documentation), and Outlook to the left, generally with the design info. With Ultramon, I can easily move maximized windows from screen to screen.
When I am using by Macbook Pro, the stories a bit different. Primarily, OSX isn't as good with multiple monitors. This is largely because of the lack of an Ultramon. My biggest gripe is that the toolbar only appears on one monitor, so if I am using textmate on the external, I have to switch displays to get to the menus, and LOTS of programs don't handle multiple monitors very well. For example, when I type in the search box in Firefox, the drop down box with stuff I've searched before only shows up on the primary display.
Since the MBP only has a single DVI output, I can't do three monitors with it, so I settled on one large one. I bought a Westinghouse 1080p 37" HDTV http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N8
It's an interesting paradigm shift going from 3 small to one large. I'm not really sure which is better. On one hand, I think having multiple monitors when all windows are maximized is wonderful, but at the same time, I think one large one with several open windows can be just as effective because you don't need to move your head as much.
Having said all that, I guess the bottom line is, with OS X I would always go with a single, large display, and with XP, I would always buy Ultramon, then three displays to go with it (Note: it isn't the other way around, don't bother if you aren't going to have Ultramon).
That isn't the problem. Only an idiot would believe that everyone should live in apartments crammed together. Because something works for you, doesn't mean it does or should for anyone else.
To some people, housing quality matters more than how far they have to drive to work, or the environmental impact of their commute.
Internet bandwidth hasn't kept up, but local bandwidth definitely has. My network throughput is more than capable of transmitting data faster than my hard drives are able to write it. And I wouldn't even agree about the net bandwidth. I have a 15mb connection where I used to have a 56k.
I offer an online storage system to my clients that does just that. I have a SAN with over 5TB free, so offering a few hundred GBs of storage out is no big deal. All files are encrypted on their end before transmission, and we never get the key.
Even with the source code, I was unable to recover (rightly so) any data for a client that had lost their key. I now offer clients the option of storing the key encrypted on our systems, and then copying their private key onto a usb key for them to keep, in case they forget their encryption key. In either case, without their private key or their encryption key, I can't access their files.
This site, http://puretna.com/, is specifically made for porn torrents. Also, for the Usenet variety, check out http://newzxxx.com/ .
I don't know why anyone would complain, the spec is only 6,000 pages long.
This should definitely be an improvement. For example, I have a relatively high speed connection. I can download at about 1.8MB/s and upload at about 250KB/s.
I often get stuck in torrents where there is a single seeder, and many peers all slowly downloading, primarily from the seeder. If the seeder would only send packets to my client at say 40KB/s, I could them send them out to pretty much everyone else much faster. Of course, the real solution would probably be better multicast support, but that doesn't seem likely anytime soon.
I've heard the same things, and I've got the Windows Mobile version. My phone locks up if it receives a large e-mail. If I get called while I am on a call, the phone almost always drops both calls and hangs.
Windows Mobile reminds me a lot of Windows 98. Basically, it can do some really cool stuff, but it's gonna be a few more years until it's a stable platform and only third party software mucks it up. I hate rebooting my phone twice a day.
Shooting guns when you are young isn't illegal in the US as far as I know. When I was in the boy scouts (5th - 7th grade), they let us play with all sorts of weapons.
At camp we had archery, riflery (.22s), and they let us throw hatchets at targets. We also found out that bug repellent is highly flammable. I remember shooting pellet guns much younger than that, and we regularly went skeet shooting.
Safety was stressed and everything was extremely well supervised. That is probably why I have no problem with guns today, it's an issue of training and respect.
The problem is with the education system. I don't see what the big deal is, but then again I went to private Catholic elementary, middle, and high schools, where we learned about science in classes called Science and religion in classes called Religion.
Seems pretty logical to me. The catholics that actually teach it taught that the bible should be taken as a collection of stories that can assist you in making moral decisions. Not necessarily fact, for fact we have science class. We were taught about evolution, darwinism, and the big bang and it wasn't presented as a theory either, but fact.
Interestingly enough, at one point or another we went into great detail about pretty much every major religion and belief system. Would it really hurt to learn about religion as a whole as long as it isn't taught in a secular manner? We did, which is probably why I don't practice any religion.
And this is exactly why you shouldn't smoke pot.
Of course he doesn't veto many bills. The republicans control the house and the senate.
You don't have to do anything illegal to get your point across.
Our neighbors kids used to throw balls at our fence causing our dog to bark. The barking dog annoyed the neighbor, so they reported the dog to animal control and we were threatened with a $500 fine. They never said anything to us, they just made the report, and there was nothing that we could legally do about it.
We did, however, end up playing a Christian Rock CD on repeat from a stereo on the deck at the loudest legal level during all legal hours (I believe 7am to 11pm, I had it on a timer) every day. They tried to call the police about this multiple times, but because I knew all the legalities involved, there wasn't anything they could do about it. I believe they were forced to stop calling about it because they were threatened with filing a false report.
Eventually (less than two weeks), they wrote me a letter apologizing for filing the report and said they wouldn't complain again about the dog barking if I stopped playing the music. The point is, sometimes the only way to compromise with an asshole is to be a bigger asshole.
Hey buddy. A lot of people's girlfriends are in there.
We'll talk about the xbox business model for a second, I would have to say that the business model for their music service is a bit shakier, and I'm more familiar with the xbox model.
First, they sell the base units at a substantial loss. This is absolutely necessary to hit the critical mass install base that is necessary to be profitable. Along with the system though, they also sell a number of games, and generally a few accessories. Over the course of the system, the initial cost of the console should be made up by the game royalties and the accessory profits.
As you said, however, that division is operating at a rather substantial loss. The reason for this is the relatively high cost of entry into this particular market. Nobody is gonna buy a console without games, so Microsoft acquired a number of studios (Rare, Bungie,...) as well as a number of other assets (think Xbox live equipment) that are one time costs.
None of this makes sense in the short term. However, one of Microsofts long time goals as I recall, was to break out of the office and into the living room with a convergence platform set-top box thing. The xbox is ultimately going to be this device, probably two generations from now, when there market share tops 60% or so.
They will be in a good position to exploit the onset of IPTV and be in a position to dominate the multibillion dollar games industry.
$7 billion, as you said, is a ton of cash to blow. But if they could get 70% or so now of a market that could be worth 50-100 billion a year in the future, that $7 billion is dishwater, totally irrelevant in the long term.
Further, Microsoft has been kicking around some rather interesting approaches to monetizing the Xbox platform. They already offer some music and movie trailers over live, I'm sure this will only grow from there. Also, they have been playing more and more with paid downloadable content, and live as a yearly service charge. A large user base using either of these services, and the cash will flow in quite nicely.
The execs at Microsoft are gearing up right now to be ready 12 years from now. There intermediate goal is to float the project until the infrastructure and market share are established.
Looking at the music service, there are a number of avenues they could take with that as well if you look at it long term. First, they could dominate online music sales. Second, they could offer unlimited music subscription based services (think yahoo music, but with a GOOD device that can be used with it). Third, these services can tie into the xbox platform and make that more attractive (stream music from ms music in any xbox game). Fourth, they can vertically integrate and become a label themselves, essentailly in charge of the majority of music distribution (hint: this is where the serious dollars are). Fifth, they could start a community based music site ala MySpace and use that to sign popular indy bands for their label, even a fifty fifty split (50c for MS and 50c for the artist) would make them a ton. Sixth, they can use their influence and fat wallet to get *every* artist and label onboard their service. As you can see, step A has to be marketshare. Step B is implement other methods to make up for the initial losses.
Microsoft is thinking about the future, not about today. Fortunately for them, they don't need intermediate goals, they have more than enough cash to float the project until they have bought sufficient market share to achieve their goals.
The purpose of the Xbox project and this project are not to make money. The purpose is to gain as much marketshare as possible as quickly as possible at whatever cost necessary. Microsoft has demonstrated that they have the wearwithall(sp?) to stay the course, they have demonstrated this time and again.
Both projects are loss leaders, they'll take large short term losses for gigantic long term gains. They're one of the only companies that can afford a business model that starts with, "First we'll throw money at the consumer...".
That's probably what everyone was saying about that Microsoft game console thing.
We're talking about a company that already has some experience with coming in and gaining marketshare from an incumbent player with die hard fans.
Imagine how quickly DVDJon would have anything of value cracked.