I don't know anyone who uses Hotmail for anything other than SPAM collectors. The interface is slow and cluttered, the terms (must sign on once a month) more restrictive, and they have demonstrated that they can't keep up with the space-race between Google and Yahoo (and some others). I rank their free e-mail offering a couple of notches below MyWay, Netscape and peoples local ISPs which are also responding to the space race by more generous storage deals.
Even AOL's new AIM e-mail now that it has IMAP support is making the others look week.
Now if Hotmail would just drop the sign-on frequently requirement it would be the perfect SPAM trap. I could direct all my junk mail there and they would delete it automatically. Way to go MS! Innovation!
Between US technology generating less and less capable devices and US Media generating less and less desirable content.
No matter who wins this technology will soon be able to declare total victory:
"See! Nobody is stealing your content any more!"
I wonder if the lawyers have figured out that they are putting themselves out of business? I at least give them credit for being ABLE to figure it out. Microsoft and Intel are another story.
Why not just get an AMD based machine now? There are already 64-bit AMD based systems out there for around $800 and that INCLUDES LCD MONITOR, fast hard drive, DVD burner etc. For a bit more you can get an AMD based laptop too. How long before Apple, or anyone else for that matter can match that? If I hadn't blown my money on this Powerbook 6 months ago that's what I'd go get right now. I'd leave a few gig partition for running Windows programs, put Linux on the rest, and whenever possible, run the Windows stuff in a virtual machine. I wouldn't miss OS X very much as it requires that you buy a new version once a year to get continued support. Thanks to XP becoming so bloated, MS can't manage a new version once a year like Apple can. XP will be "current" for a long long time.
Gramer, spling and typink skilz are far overated intodays internet age. basicly if you cn reed what is typd then it iz gud enuf. Much better then wasteing our time lerning a bunch of stuf we dont need no more.
Even grate skolers have known this for yeers as u can see:
Hollywood is about to find itself in the same position as the big four American auto makers did in the 1980s. Someone comes out of 'nowhere' and takes a big chunk of their market share. And nothing they can do will convince people to go back to their product.
I've been predicting this for a few years now (probably not an original notion with me either) and I just see more and more evidence every day (or with every film release).
A big factor is that, even if Hollywood was doing a good job of what they do (and they are certainly not) filmmakers in many other countries now have access to the same technology that used to be only possible with the high budget Hollywood system.
As more special effects things are done with computers and animation the only advantage Hollywood might still have is the number of servers they can hook up into a rendering farm. You still need artists and tech people with know-how, and more and more that describes India, China, Brazil and dozens of other places.
More importantly, while other countries used to crave the American culture that could produce these things, all other aspects being equal they would probably rather have a similar product in their own language and with their own talent. That might not have been affordable to them in the past, but it is now.
With only the mind-numbed American public to consume this Hollywood stuff guess what sort of stuff it is going to be. My Netflix queue doesn't contain anything made in the last 10 years and I doubt I'll ever see all the old movies once through. If I do, watching them again will be no big burden. As far as I'm concerned Hollywood can close up shop and go home right now. I won't miss them.
It is a shame that they got themselves into this position though. I don't think it's fixable.
Well, it sure doesn't render all PDFs that I've tried. I keep a copy of Acroread around just in case. I keep Kpdf, Kghostview, and Xghostview installed and for any given PDF one of them or all three may fail to render it properly. They can also be extremely slow at times. While I'd say that MOST of the time the open source version are faster than Acroread I've seen exceptions (as recently as two days ago) that would take several minutes to display a fairly ordinary looking page in the open version and display almost immediately in Acroread. One thing I'm not sure of is whether the PDF file format is totally open, or does Adobe hold some information back? Maybe it would be better if there were some standard for this sort of thing that was not "owned" by a particular company.
I'll add my tribute to Micro Center. I lived near the Fairfax VA store when it first opened up and I soon forgot all about the CompUSA that was only a few miles further away. Unfortunately I live 3 hours away now, or I'd be over there once a week I'm sure.
One thing I noticed is that Micro Center always had good support for alternate technologies. They carried OS/2 and related software long after it had stopped being mainstream, and I could always go in there and buy the latest boxed versions of Red Hat, Suse, and usually another distro or two. Come to think of it I think I got my first copy of Slackware there back when they had a large collection of shareware and free-ware (ala Walnut Creek) CDs for several bucks a each.
Someone here posted that they work on commission and have pushy sales-reps. That was not the case in the Fairfax store. I could go in there and browse for hours without being bothered and usually get a knowledgeable answer when I did ask a question. Unlike the CompUSA their staff didn't turn over every 6 months and I know some of them have been there for a good 8-10 years.
Furthermore they continued to offer full refunds on hardware and software after CompUSA started charging restocking fees and limiting the refund period on some items to two weeks.
Finally, the really exceptional think about the store was its book section. They had every tech magazine I'd ever heard of as well as some non-computer specialty magazines on shortwave radios, photography, and audio. The book section proper was like a small library with books on every computer related subject as well as related math, science, and electronics. You could also often find older editions of things like MCSE study guides on sale for a few dollars each.
Next time I'm over that way I may just pop in and buy a Linux machine (like I really need another one!)
I went back and read Dvoraks predictions from 2 years ago and they all imply that Apple will let OS X run on generic PCs. This s CLEARLY not what was announced yesterday although more than half the Slashdot posters don't seem to understand it yet.
I for one was "putting up with" Apple's OS X on my new Powerbook. Two things happened yesterday that will change this. Apple "switched" and Debian Sarge went production. Soon as I have a day or two to do the appropriate backup/install/restore drill I'll be running Linux on my new Powerbook.
Thats what I don't think a lot of people understand about this. Apple computers will STILL be more expensive because they will not be 100% compatible with normal PCs and the cost of the finished hardware is a function of production volume. It might be easier to run Windows apps using various emulation techniques, but SO WHAT? If I wanted to run a lot of Windows apps I'd be running Windows. This move will cause Apple to cease to exist as a separate entity in 3 years or so. They won't even finish their planned transition before the mistake is realized... but it will be too late by then. Now the question is: who will end up buying what's left.
PS: It looks like this story may be causing Slashdot to be Slashdotted. Or something.
They have very strict adult verification requirements (self imposed) and so you HAVE to sign up using a credit card (I know this isn't foolproof verification). So in theory there is no such thing as an anonymous user. They either know who you are or at least know who someone is that trusts you with there CC.
Nonetheless there are many people who have signed up for the $10 one-time membership who are regular users. There is only a monthly bill if that is what you select when you sign up. Monthly billing gives you ownership right, roughly equivalent to a web hosting service, but in 3D. You can also opt in or out of that level of service as your needs change. Don't want to own any virtual real estate? Then just pay $10 and you are done.
Second Life sounds like something that should have been an open souce / free / funded by donations project.
There probably WILL be an open source system such as Second Life at some point. But that point might be ten years in the future for all we know. While there are a few Open Source projects that come up with something totally new, for the most part Open Source is a lot like Microsoft, wait for an innovation and then copy it. My feeling is that Open Source eventually does it better, but it rarely does it first. I'll settle for that.
The other good thing about that is that SL is supported on Apple computers and people are running it on Linux (though that isn't fully supported YET), so it's the only fully collaborative environment that I know of that is not OS specific. When Open Source gets around to doing this, the results will look a lot like Second Life. (And the price is right, as mentioned elsewhere)
I've just installed Ubuntu on a Mac Mini... Reason? - Excellent (reliable) hardware, with a vast software base that's rapidly getting better, with 6 monthly stable releases.
Oh, don't forget, you won't have to worry about Apple pulling the plug on your software support after they "switch" to Intel. I'll be moving mine to Debian as soon as I confirm the Monday announcement.
Build cubicles with walls that go all the way up to the ceiling.
Once upon a time I was told that there was some study that demonstrated that office workers were more productive in cubicles. I was also told that it was actually cheaper to build offices out of dry-wall but that thanks to all this research people were opting to spend more for cubicles.
Since then I've seen the debate go back and forth, and about half that time I've been in an office, the other half in a cubicle. I;ve still yet to see any real evidence one way or another, just endless speculation, and from tme to time some new invention to make cubicle life more tolerable (funny there is no need to invent things to make regular office life more tolerable).
Hopefully one day most of us (information workers specifically) will work from home. That was predicted to the first of my knowledge in the early 70s when I was still in college. I haven't seen much of it happening yet. As I near retirement age I suspect I never will.
Well, I agree with the principle of what you are saying, but the fact is that the start-up and shutdown of a modern OS has more to do with initializing or closing files, buffers, ie data than programs. All that would still have to be done even if the OS was in ROM (and last time I checked, accessing ROM was slower than RAM, so at minimum, the OS would have to be relocated from one type of memory to the other.)
One way to avoid this is to never turn your computer off. A well designed system (Apple for example) goes to a very low power state when not in use. I just turn of the monitor, or left unused for about an hour that happens automatically too. If you are using an Apple laptop just close the lid. Unless you aren't planning to use it for several days it will be ready to go when you open it back up again.
Some Windows systems are configured this way, and I've even had my Linux laptop set up to do this (but it involved a bit of tinkering).
Now one problem with Windows is that as late as Windows 2000 it really wasn't designed to stay up very long. Seriously. If you didn't boot every day or two you'd find your memory leaked all over the place. Generally what I'd do is just reboot instead of logging off when I was done, then at least it was ready to go the next time I was.
They may have improved that with XP... or it might have gotten worse. I'm one of those people like the author of the article who don't consider Windows ready for prime time.
Assuming that users have prior Windows experience nowadays is like assuming TRUE. Show me a significant population of users not familiar with Microsoft Windows, and I'll show you a market. Until then...
China, India, Brazil, just to name the large ones. Which is why MS is practically giving it away in those places. Twenty years from now America will be the least computer literate country on the planet unless something wakes up our consumers soon.
Meanwhile, Microsoft employees are wondering why it is that their children show no interest in computers other than playing games.
Many people don't know that "decimated" means to kill 1/10 of the opposition. So it might be accurate to say that as of today Firefox has decimated Microsoft's browser share. It is not good to be decimated, but it is not the same as being wiped out.
Microsoft destroyed the competition in the browser market, and in the process probably halted a lot of true innovation that would have taken place had there been a more protracted contest.
What happens when Microsoft dominates a market? We always say that their competition did it to themselves. Apple had the best computer, but in taking an overly proprietary approach they limited their own importance in the market. Netscape didn't take Microsoft seriously enough soon enough. They flip flopped between selling the browser and giving it away, and in the end had trouble doing either.
At whatever time Microsoft is seen to have lost their magic touch (already in my opinion) we will no doubt look back and say that they did it to themselves. They will either fail because they didn't accept the Open Source concept and use it to their own advantage, or they will fail because they tried to do just that and executed poorly.
Their biggest failure however has been a failure to diversify. They have never succeeded at anything that didn't involve building on their existing monopoly which was in large part handed to them by IBM. They would have benefited in a merger with a hardware company such as Intel, or Sun when they were on the way up. They can't do that now, and they will look silly (like HP and Compaq) to do such a thing on the way down.
They did not have vision, they did it to themselves. Soon everyone will see how obvious it was.
Heck, I'm still using a Palm III with a serial to USB adaptor. Works great. Runs for months on two AAA batteries so I don't obsess about keeping it plugged in all the time.
I continue to think there is a market for a sub-$100 (as in $20-$60, not $99.95) PDA that just does the basics.
Unfortunately there are too many too-well-paid people who will buy every $600 pocket device that comes out, and the market responds to these people and ignores the rest of us.
Apple doesn't charge an arm and a leg for OS updates like MS does. Apple just charges an arm. Of course they do new versions more frequently than MS has, but the principle is the same:
We don't think our users are willing to pay a "Subscription" fee to use our software, so we have to make our money with new releases. Nobody would pay for a new release that LOOKS exactly like the old release so we have to change that look with each new release even if the results starts to look like clutter.
I for one would love to pay a "leave me the fuck alone" fee to Apple so that I continued to get updated version of Safari, bug fixes, and (at my option) a new feature or two from time to time. I really don't want to pay to update my OS once a year, especially when it looks like the same attention to detail that goes into a new Windows release went into this thing.
Putting Debian Linux on my new Powerbook will probably make it seem about twice as fast (that was my experience with the iBook). That option looks better the more I hear about the latest cat from Apple.
Internal Server Error The server encountered an internal error or misconfiguration and was unable to complete your request.
Please contact the server administrator, webmaster@collegebums.org and inform them of the time the error occurred, and anything you might have done that may have caused the error.
More information about this error may be available in the server error log.
Additionally, a 500 Internal Server Error error was encountered while trying to use an ErrorDocument to handle the request.
So I guess the overflow worked even better than he thought it would.
Well, I haven't tried the beta yet, but the article said something that differs from my experience, namely that there is a dependance on Java being installed. I remember the early versions of OO used to search far and wide for your Java installation, but even then, gave you the chance to specify where it was or just do without it. Most of the systems I've installed OO on since then definitely do not have Java, and I don't even remember being asked about it. Is that a Windows/Linux difference?
Meantime, few of the people I know are running OO even though it would easily accommodate their needs. These are people who don't REALLY know how to use Office either, they just think they do. Most of their word processing needs would be satisfied with the free Wordpad application as far as that goes. They are just to lazy to attempt what they have been told by the press is a drastic change in their usage habits. I think OO use will gradually grow, especially in developing countries, up to the point where the many US users actually feel odd for not using the same system the rest of the world is using. This bothers me in the same way that it bothers me how many high school students we graduate who can't read and don't know of any concept not expressed in a rap song.
Our society of dunces may not be on the verge of collapse, but we certainly are in no position to lead the world in certain types of technology, particularly those that absorb huge numbers of "high-tech" workers. Our specialty will be missiles and Mars Rovers. Others will do PCs and associated software. I find Gate's recent remarks on the H1B visas particularly amusing in this regard. His company should seriously consider moving.
Now that we have that gay issue out of the way I know there are some other public statements we have made recently that need our attention is this crazy new blog world we live in. With more than half the company now spending their days taking pot-shots at their employer (me) either openly or anonymously there is almost no "right" way for us to come down on any issue. Take for example Bill's recently statements on immigration, public education and so on. We are setting Bill up with his own internal blog where he can express such, um, insightful ideas, in the future.
In the mean time, so as not to offend anyone we are coming down squarely on both sides of every issue we can from now on. We will be dividing the campus into quadrants with employment practices as follows: The west-most building will be our gay-friendly zone, and the east will be the more traditional "family values" area. The northern parts of the campus will hire mostly H1B visa holders while the south will take an America First point of view with respect to hiring decisions. The lower floors of each building will continue to favor hiring guys and the upper floors will hire mostly female workers, as we don't want any criticisms about a glass ceiling. Bill will be moved downstairs as we know he doesn't deal with female authority figures very well.
We will have to subdivide the campus further as other social issues arise, or as Bill or I shoot off our mouths prematurely in the future. At some point the low-rise architecture we have chosen will probably have to give way to something more flexible.
To me, this situation underscoresthe importance of having clearly-defined principles on which we base ouractions. We will do everything we can to avoid taking a firm position on anything, so that we can be true to our one core principal, which is that software should cost consumers a whole heck of a lot more than it costs us to produce it.
Slashdot Mirror
I don't know anyone who uses Hotmail for anything other than SPAM collectors. The interface is slow and cluttered, the terms (must sign on once a month) more restrictive, and they have demonstrated that they can't keep up with the space-race between Google and Yahoo (and some others). I rank their free e-mail offering a couple of notches below MyWay, Netscape and peoples local ISPs which are also responding to the space race by more generous storage deals.
Even AOL's new AIM e-mail now that it has IMAP support is making the others look week.
Now if Hotmail would just drop the sign-on frequently requirement it would be the perfect SPAM trap. I could direct all my junk mail there and they would delete it automatically. Way to go MS! Innovation!
Between US technology generating less and less capable devices and US Media generating less and less desirable content.
No matter who wins this technology will soon be able to declare total victory:
"See! Nobody is stealing your content any more!"
I wonder if the lawyers have figured out that they are putting themselves out of business? I at least give them credit for being ABLE to figure it out. Microsoft and Intel are another story.
Why not just get an AMD based machine now? There are already 64-bit AMD based systems out there for around $800 and that INCLUDES LCD MONITOR, fast hard drive, DVD burner etc. For a bit more you can get an AMD based laptop too. How long before Apple, or anyone else for that matter can match that? If I hadn't blown my money on this Powerbook 6 months ago that's what I'd go get right now. I'd leave a few gig partition for running Windows programs, put Linux on the rest, and whenever possible, run the Windows stuff in a virtual machine. I wouldn't miss OS X very much as it requires that you buy a new version once a year to get continued support. Thanks to XP becoming so bloated, MS can't manage a new version once a year like Apple can. XP will be "current" for a long long time.
Gramer, spling and typink skilz are far overated intodays internet age. basicly if you cn reed what is typd then it iz gud enuf. Much better then wasteing our time lerning a bunch of stuf we dont need no more.
Even grate skolers have known this for yeers as u can see:
http://webster.commnet.edu/grammar/twain.htm
Hollywood is about to find itself in the same position as the big four American auto makers did in the 1980s. Someone comes out of 'nowhere' and takes a big chunk of their market share. And nothing they can do will convince people to go back to their product.
I've been predicting this for a few years now (probably not an original notion with me either) and I just see more and more evidence every day (or with every film release).
A big factor is that, even if Hollywood was doing a good job of what they do (and they are certainly not) filmmakers in many other countries now have access to the same technology that used to be only possible with the high budget Hollywood system.
As more special effects things are done with computers and animation the only advantage Hollywood might still have is the number of servers they can hook up into a rendering farm. You still need artists and tech people with know-how, and more and more that describes India, China, Brazil and dozens of other places.
More importantly, while other countries used to crave the American culture that could produce these things, all other aspects being equal they would probably rather have a similar product in their own language and with their own talent. That might not have been affordable to them in the past, but it is now.
With only the mind-numbed American public to consume this Hollywood stuff guess what sort of stuff it is going to be. My Netflix queue doesn't contain anything made in the last 10 years and I doubt I'll ever see all the old movies once through. If I do, watching them again will be no big burden. As far as I'm concerned Hollywood can close up shop and go home right now. I won't miss them.
It is a shame that they got themselves into this position though. I don't think it's fixable.
Well, it sure doesn't render all PDFs that I've tried. I keep a copy of Acroread around just in case. I keep Kpdf, Kghostview, and Xghostview installed and for any given PDF one of them or all three may fail to render it properly. They can also be extremely slow at times. While I'd say that MOST of the time the open source version are faster than Acroread I've seen exceptions (as recently as two days ago) that would take several minutes to display a fairly ordinary looking page in the open version and display almost immediately in Acroread. One thing I'm not sure of is whether the PDF file format is totally open, or does Adobe hold some information back? Maybe it would be better if there were some standard for this sort of thing that was not "owned" by a particular company.
I'll add my tribute to Micro Center. I lived near the Fairfax VA store when it first opened up and I soon forgot all about the CompUSA that was only a few miles further away. Unfortunately I live 3 hours away now, or I'd be over there once a week I'm sure.
One thing I noticed is that Micro Center always had good support for alternate technologies. They carried OS/2 and related software long after it had stopped being mainstream, and I could always go in there and buy the latest boxed versions of Red Hat, Suse, and usually another distro or two. Come to think of it I think I got my first copy of Slackware there back when they had a large collection of shareware and free-ware (ala Walnut Creek) CDs for several bucks a each.
Someone here posted that they work on commission and have pushy sales-reps. That was not the case in the Fairfax store. I could go in there and browse for hours without being bothered and usually get a knowledgeable answer when I did ask a question. Unlike the CompUSA their staff didn't turn over every 6 months and I know some of them have been there for a good 8-10 years.
Furthermore they continued to offer full refunds on hardware and software after CompUSA started charging restocking fees and limiting the refund period on some items to two weeks.
Finally, the really exceptional think about the store was its book section. They had every tech magazine I'd ever heard of as well as some non-computer specialty magazines on shortwave radios, photography, and audio. The book section proper was like a small library with books on every computer related subject as well as related math, science, and electronics. You could also often find older editions of things like MCSE study guides on sale for a few dollars each.
Next time I'm over that way I may just pop in and buy a Linux machine (like I really need another one!)
I think you have it exactly right.
I went back and read Dvoraks predictions from 2 years ago and they all imply that Apple will let OS X run on generic PCs. This s CLEARLY not what was announced yesterday although more than half the Slashdot posters don't seem to understand it yet.
I for one was "putting up with" Apple's OS X on my new Powerbook. Two things happened yesterday that will change this. Apple "switched" and Debian Sarge went production. Soon as I have a day or two to do the appropriate backup/install/restore drill I'll be running Linux on my new Powerbook.
I'm only a sample point of one though.
My further comments on this are in my journal.
Thats what I don't think a lot of people understand about this. Apple computers will STILL be more expensive because they will not be 100% compatible with normal PCs and the cost of the finished hardware is a function of production volume. It might be easier to run Windows apps using various emulation techniques, but SO WHAT? If I wanted to run a lot of Windows apps I'd be running Windows. This move will cause Apple to cease to exist as a separate entity in 3 years or so. They won't even finish their planned transition before the mistake is realized... but it will be too late by then. Now the question is: who will end up buying what's left.
PS: It looks like this story may be causing Slashdot to be Slashdotted. Or something.
Here is a direct link to the item at SL. There has been voting going on for new features and this is one of the ones they accepted:
= 5
http://secondlife.com/vote/get_feature.php?get_id
The Clicable Culture site has indeed bogged down. But all the info is on that SL page anyway.
They have very strict adult verification requirements (self imposed) and so you HAVE to sign up using a credit card (I know this isn't foolproof verification). So in theory there is no such thing as an anonymous user. They either know who you are or at least know who someone is that trusts you with there CC.
Nonetheless there are many people who have signed up for the $10 one-time membership who are regular users. There is only a monthly bill if that is what you select when you sign up. Monthly billing gives you ownership right, roughly equivalent to a web hosting service, but in 3D. You can also opt in or out of that level of service as your needs change. Don't want to own any virtual real estate? Then just pay $10 and you are done.
Second Life sounds like something that should have been an open souce / free / funded by donations project.
There probably WILL be an open source system such as Second Life at some point. But that point might be ten years in the future for all we know. While there are a few Open Source projects that come up with something totally new, for the most part Open Source is a lot like Microsoft, wait for an innovation and then copy it. My feeling is that Open Source eventually does it better, but it rarely does it first. I'll settle for that.
The other good thing about that is that SL is supported on Apple computers and people are running it on Linux (though that isn't fully supported YET), so it's the only fully collaborative environment that I know of that is not OS specific. When Open Source gets around to doing this, the results will look a lot like Second Life. (And the price is right, as mentioned elsewhere)
I've just installed Ubuntu on a Mac Mini...
Reason? - Excellent (reliable) hardware, with a
vast software base that's rapidly getting better,
with 6 monthly stable releases.
Oh, don't forget, you won't have to worry about Apple pulling the plug on your software support after they "switch" to Intel. I'll be moving mine to Debian as soon as I confirm the Monday announcement.
Build cubicles with walls that go all the way up to the ceiling.
Once upon a time I was told that there was some study that demonstrated that office workers were more productive in cubicles. I was also told that it was actually cheaper to build offices out of dry-wall but that thanks to all this research people were opting to spend more for cubicles.
Since then I've seen the debate go back and forth, and about half that time I've been in an office, the other half in a cubicle. I;ve still yet to see any real evidence one way or another, just endless speculation, and from tme to time some new invention to make cubicle life more tolerable (funny there is no need to invent things to make regular office life more tolerable).
Hopefully one day most of us (information workers specifically) will work from home. That was predicted to the first of my knowledge in the early 70s when I was still in college. I haven't seen much of it happening yet. As I near retirement age I suspect I never will.
Well, I agree with the principle of what you are saying, but the fact is that the start-up and shutdown of a modern OS has more to do with initializing or closing files, buffers, ie data than programs. All that would still have to be done even if the OS was in ROM (and last time I checked, accessing ROM was slower than RAM, so at minimum, the OS would have to be relocated from one type of memory to the other.)
One way to avoid this is to never turn your computer off. A well designed system (Apple for example) goes to a very low power state when not in use. I just turn of the monitor, or left unused for about an hour that happens automatically too. If you are using an Apple laptop just close the lid. Unless you aren't planning to use it for several days it will be ready to go when you open it back up again.
Some Windows systems are configured this way, and I've even had my Linux laptop set up to do this (but it involved a bit of tinkering).
Now one problem with Windows is that as late as Windows 2000 it really wasn't designed to stay up very long. Seriously. If you didn't boot every day or two you'd find your memory leaked all over the place. Generally what I'd do is just reboot instead of logging off when I was done, then at least it was ready to go the next time I was.
They may have improved that with XP... or it might have gotten worse. I'm one of those people like the author of the article who don't consider Windows ready for prime time.
Assuming that users have prior Windows experience nowadays is like assuming TRUE. Show me a significant population of users not familiar with Microsoft Windows, and I'll show you a market. Until then...
e .aspx
China, India, Brazil, just to name the large ones. Which is why MS is practically giving it away in those places. Twenty years from now America will be the least computer literate country on the planet unless something wakes up our consumers soon.
Meanwhile, Microsoft employees are wondering why it is that their children show no interest in computers other than playing games.
http://www.jeffsandquist.com/WelcomeToBitmansPlac
Many people don't know that "decimated" means to kill 1/10 of the opposition. So it might be accurate to say that as of today Firefox has decimated Microsoft's browser share. It is not good to be decimated, but it is not the same as being wiped out.
Microsoft destroyed the competition in the browser market, and in the process probably halted a lot of true innovation that would have taken place had there been a more protracted contest.
What happens when Microsoft dominates a market? We always say that their competition did it to themselves. Apple had the best computer, but in taking an overly proprietary approach they limited their own importance in the market. Netscape didn't take Microsoft seriously enough soon enough. They flip flopped between selling the browser and giving it away, and in the end had trouble doing either.
At whatever time Microsoft is seen to have lost their magic touch (already in my opinion) we will no doubt look back and say that they did it to themselves. They will either fail because they didn't accept the Open Source concept and use it to their own advantage, or they will fail because they tried to do just that and executed poorly.
Their biggest failure however has been a failure to diversify. They have never succeeded at anything that didn't involve building on their existing monopoly which was in large part handed to them by IBM. They would have benefited in a merger with a hardware company such as Intel, or Sun when they were on the way up. They can't do that now, and they will look silly (like HP and Compaq) to do such a thing on the way down.
They did not have vision, they did it to themselves. Soon everyone will see how obvious it was.
Heck, I'm still using a Palm III with a serial to USB adaptor. Works great. Runs for months on two AAA batteries so I don't obsess about keeping it plugged in all the time.
I continue to think there is a market for a sub-$100 (as in $20-$60, not $99.95) PDA that just does the basics.
Unfortunately there are too many too-well-paid people who will buy every $600 pocket device that comes out, and the market responds to these people and ignores the rest of us.
Apple doesn't charge an arm and a leg for OS updates like MS does. Apple just charges an arm. Of course they do new versions more frequently than MS has, but the principle is the same:
We don't think our users are willing to pay a "Subscription" fee to use our software, so we have to make our money with new releases. Nobody would pay for a new release that LOOKS exactly like the old release so we have to change that look with each new release even if the results starts to look like clutter.
I for one would love to pay a "leave me the fuck alone" fee to Apple so that I continued to get updated version of Safari, bug fixes, and (at my option) a new feature or two from time to time. I really don't want to pay to update my OS once a year, especially when it looks like the same attention to detail that goes into a new Windows release went into this thing.
Putting Debian Linux on my new Powerbook will probably make it seem about twice as fast (that was my experience with the iBook). That option looks better the more I hear about the latest cat from Apple.
Well, I haven't tried the beta yet, but the article said something that differs from my experience, namely that there is a dependance on Java being installed. I remember the early versions of OO used to search far and wide for your Java installation, but even then, gave you the chance to specify where it was or just do without it. Most of the systems I've installed OO on since then definitely do not have Java, and I don't even remember being asked about it. Is that a Windows/Linux difference?
Meantime, few of the people I know are running OO even though it would easily accommodate their needs. These are people who don't REALLY know how to use Office either, they just think they do. Most of their word processing needs would be satisfied with the free Wordpad application as far as that goes. They are just to lazy to attempt what they have been told by the press is a drastic change in their usage habits. I think OO use will gradually grow, especially in developing countries, up to the point where the many US users actually feel odd for not using the same system the rest of the world is using. This bothers me in the same way that it bothers me how many high school students we graduate who can't read and don't know of any concept not expressed in a rap song.
Our society of dunces may not be on the verge of collapse, but we certainly are in no position to lead the world in certain types of technology, particularly those that absorb huge numbers of "high-tech" workers. Our specialty will be missiles and Mars Rovers. Others will do PCs and associated software. I find Gate's recent remarks on the H1B visas particularly amusing in this regard. His company should seriously consider moving.
Other Issues
Now that we have that gay issue out of the way I know there are some other public statements we have made recently that need our attention is this crazy new blog world we live in. With more than half the company now spending their days taking pot-shots at their employer (me) either openly or anonymously there is almost no "right" way for us to come down on any issue. Take for example Bill's recently statements on immigration, public education and so on. We are setting Bill up with his own internal blog where he can express such, um, insightful ideas, in the future.
In the mean time, so as not to offend anyone we are coming down squarely on both sides of every issue we can from now on. We will be dividing the campus into quadrants with employment practices as follows: The west-most building will be our gay-friendly zone, and the east will be the more traditional "family values" area. The northern parts of the campus will hire mostly H1B visa holders while the south will take an America First point of view with respect to hiring decisions. The lower floors of each building will continue to favor hiring guys and the upper floors will hire mostly female workers, as we don't want any criticisms about a glass ceiling. Bill will be moved downstairs as we know he doesn't deal with female authority figures very well.
We will have to subdivide the campus further as other social issues arise, or as Bill or I shoot off our mouths prematurely in the future. At some point the low-rise architecture we have chosen will probably have to give way to something more flexible.
To me, this situation underscoresthe importance of having clearly-defined principles on which we base ouractions. We will do everything we can to avoid taking a firm position on anything, so that we can be true to our one core principal, which is that software should cost consumers a whole heck of a lot more than it costs us to produce it.
Steve
Windows XP comes with a thing called the "Indexing Service" that periodically crawls through the disk
Oh. Now when my Windows using friends tell me their system is crawling I'll know what they are talking about. Thanks!
Putting two and two together here from the article:
"Each craft will reach its final altitude by utilizing proprietary lifting gas technology."
So it will be floated up there using gas from Balmer? Will be be shouting "Developers" as he fills those gasbags?