Actually, and OEM can't sell a dual boot system at all because MS bootloader doesn't support anythign else.. and the OEM contract specifically specifies that all OEMS MUST use the windows bootloader!! that was the downfall of BeOS... what good is a second OS if you're not allowed to show the user it's there!!!
What you point out is what MS has been doing to Universities for years now!! Because the "university" is responsible for all the machines on its network, M$$ simply add up the number of students and pick a price. That's a bit excessive when they have a 99% lock on the OEMS that most college students would buy from!!!
my companies poor system engineer went thru much the same thing last year. We run lots of plant monitoring software from a half dozen different vendors and several were really upset when the guys pointed this MS boondoggle out to them.. we ended up sprining for several extra unlimited user licenses [which really wasn't that bad for our size company] but but it really put the panties in a twist of some of the vendors that said we could just "plug it in" to our network and let lots of people pull the data...
the whole thing is a joke!! When you figure in the whole week of engineering time, that was probably nearly more than the actual license fees.. and people say OSS software causes problems??
How does this affect the GPL?? I mean, will dual core processors allow users to "steal" extra usage from the hard working Linux programmers... The horror!!!
it needs touch sliders [like laptops are going to] and touch wheels [like the iPod] all backed by color of course!!! real touch sensitive light up gages!!!
what a pity to change the story for marketing... franky Megatron should be a mac 10, AK, or Uzi.... something crassly terrorist related!!
I like the idea of shockwave being an iPod... the "minis" could be mini-ipods or memory sticks that pillage IP from humans to build the ultimate weapon!!!
more to point, the book story really was written as one.. but the orginal publisher had it broken up because just 1 book would have been hard to publish... and of course 3 sell better!!
Technically, the publisher could pull the stolen property card...and send the cops to bust down your door because it wasn't really the store's property to sell yet.. Typically the cops wouldn't press that point, but the publishers do have that legal leg to stand on. Stuff like this falls under contract and trade secret. MS has been getting away with far more restrictive business contracts for years.. anything goes in contract land.
I'm not out for destroying windows, but breaking the monopoly pretty much shows the "emporer with no clothes" I think the push for open standards and "co-op-etition" should be first.. things like OO.org, Firefox, PHP, MySQL, Apache, etc that show the best of OSS wherever the user may be. Common & Open Data standards and communications protocols is the way to go. One thing I'm shocked to not see is that a group like SAMBA hasn't taken the fight to MS and created tools to help windows PCs interoperate better with THEM!! Pushing web standards would help too... 75% of what people do anymore is web based.. With Firefox being Free it's no reason to cut the IE strings and just start doing it right.. of course work to keep Safari, KHTML, and firefox in sync with features roadmaps so pages for one work for all easily!! The next step is to make using common programs EXACTLY THE SAME when you change OSes.. The absolute worst thing right now are missing features or poor intgration between versions of the same program on different OSes. Firefox extensions that ONLY work in windows, or OO.org features "half baked" in the linux version. Thats's what I mean by the experience has to be BETTER than windows.. so there's no pain when using common OSS apps on linux after learning them on windows.
The problem is not that linux needs to be as good as windows, it already is on many levels, but that it needs to be 2-3x better and more usable if we want people to 'just switch'. What everybody is noticing is that NOBODY really knows windows... we each know our own little bits and can easily ask around if we get stuck. We aren't good at windows and it's particularly difficult between versions with terrible consistancy. But everybody has learned the 'magic incantations' to keep windows barely functional... and they'd hate to do it all over again.
IN short linux needs to be almost perfect to wipe out windows.. then it has to deal with the lack of apps.. which means changing the rules of the game so users can make their own apps!!!! That requires a fundamental shift in what the developers are making... we need to be making buildable meta-tools that can be chained into an app and not worrying about tagging specific apps. In a lot of ways BeOS was closer than linux.. but the "everything is a module" [so anybody can rewrite one to drop in] means a race to the bottom is inevitable.. making commercial support shaky at best.
When BeOS was making a push to get big they ran into the "phone call" trouble... They would pitch great offers, show great examples of how their tech was so much better, and cheaper... heck Be even offered the OS free to the any company to break ranks!!! In the end though, that phone call from MS legal came thru that threatened to take away retroactive rebates and basically tank any company that even tried something different. Within 30 days the deals went from closed to companies not even returning Be's calls!!! that was really fishy.
The same thing is happening with intel/amd. AMD has a competitive product in terms of price, performance, and partnership... there's no reason some tier one vendor shouldn't be taking a chance on them... but WAIT.. serious applications written for intel might not work.. even though AMD has full legal cross-license to use the Intel special functions! They're designed specifically to be compatible with Intel compilers!!! Anybody seen talking to AMD gets the "call" from Intel and soon stops returning AMD's phone calls... sound familliar? AMD has had a good 5-year record of reliability and performance success.. They have a good 15%+ of the over-all chip market, but only 0-5% of the OEM market??? there's no LEGAL financial or techincal reason that at least 1 tier-one PC producer shouldn't be jumping ship right now... unless Intel is throwing the field by using illegal tactics to keep the customers tied to intel.
sure it would... techincally, the book is publisher property until the contracted sell date. The stores ususally don't have to pay for the inventory until the date as part of the release date deal. The retailers are mearly holding the product so they can have it on time. The alternative to retailers not holding up their end of the deal is simply to not ship to those people! After all, they didn't follow the contract. Unfortunately that favors the large retailers like walmart that will always get the first shipments...leaving the small guys in the cold.
it's really common for employees and friends to get stuff before "embargo" date. That's one of the perks of being a young kid working a low wage, service industry job after all!! Getting good dibs on hot stuff.. It happens with everything from beanie babies to starwars figures, from Halo2 to next weeks DVD releases.
but then there's nothing to stop the big stores from simpely wiping out the smaller ones... after all Walmart will probably need several runs of books just to stock the shelves. versus your local store that wants a few dozen copies for loyal customers. The publishers are torn.. Walmart only sells what's big and lot of it.. if they allow the big chains to wipe out the small stores, the publishers never get a hit like harry potter again.. After all, small bookstores stock a lot of stuff that's not big. Ocassionally something like Harry Potter really takes off. because it takes time to grow fans. The small stores are what keep the publishers in business between hits.
If they don't stack the deck in favor of the small stores they cut their own throats long-term.
It makes sense for apple to consolidate around intel if they're after steep discounts on embedded processors too. The intel XScale is a really good chip... it just happens to power all the pocket PCs out there right now.. which sells more.. iPods or Pocket PCs? Just getting that business is good for intel. more than that XScale could replace every single other embeded system they use to.. Airtunes express, Airport, iPods, and even slates, Newton replacements...etc. The media center's not quite there yet... MCE is great for gadget freaks, but suffers from the usual MS non-committment to actually drive a platform.. and even then XBox 360 is already advertized to gobble up whatever market they had for media PCs.. Apple could release a great media PC but frankly it's just not ready yet... if anything is right about apple, Jobs really knows how to hold his cards. Just the difference in presentation alone of Jobs versus Gates.. Jobs only sells stuff he can believe in... He IS our parents!!! How often is Gates embarassed at his few media presentations? versus Jobs who stakes the company on it!
but IBM is supposed to be a partner...not just a supplier. IBM has some great PPC things on every other platform but desktops... they have ppc for embeded, POWER 5 for servers.. but nothing for Apple? comming from an IBM server shop, i was really hoping for some kind of IBM/apple partnership with OSX fronting for "ugly" IBM big iron... espically after IBM sold off the PC division..
of course, like everybody else interesting[sun, aol, etc], IBM recieved a cool half-Billion+ from MS plus discounts.. looks like any chance of the industry ganging up on MS to take them out.
That sounds like my normal work day on help desk with full time paid employees!
for computing to be effective you hit the nail on the head. you listed issues that plague all IT, not just schools.. giving stuff to kids just brings out the problems that already exist in the sytem... thanks!
The real issue will be getting free, open knowladge out there for the schools to use. Teachers and school boards are so used to teaching to a product they've forgotten what they're really teaching. On top of that, all the state funded college/university establishment has become used to selling the knowladge rather than passing it down the food chain. One thing that's needed is to push the higher learning to get involved in lower education as part of their JOBs, not as extra spending money!
Imagine how good this could work if you gave the technology to work in noise one whole entire TV channel!!! You could have 100 channels of 1Mb wireless out of somebodies "valuable" spectrum.. these technologies are disruptive to the entire marketplace because they shatter the illusion that the public can't manage it's own airwaves... public non-regulated spectrum is death to high priced commercial broadcasters.
typical broadcast signals are so powerful and so sloppy nowdays they probably didn't even know about this until some geek cameraman read it on slashdot.
It's neat to see the technology be developed though.
After all, there's going to be a huge opening of spedctrum soon... it would be nice to get the ball rolling for the public to get some real benifit from some real quality spectrum...
overthrow rightfully elected democratic states when the people of them elect to do things bad for your Multinational businsees!!! After all, why should other countries elect to have clean air, water, and fair union/labor laws like we do here?
Slashdot Mirror
That would be a GREAT topic for a slashdot article!!! Let's see a breakdown of IBM's "trophy" systems according to their own licensing models!!!
What you point out is what MS has been doing to Universities for years now!! Because the "university" is responsible for all the machines on its network, M$$ simply add up the number of students and pick a price. That's a bit excessive when they have a 99% lock on the OEMS that most college students would buy from!!!
the whole thing is a joke!! When you figure in the whole week of engineering time, that was probably nearly more than the actual license fees.. and people say OSS software causes problems??
How does this affect the GPL?? I mean, will dual core processors allow users to "steal" extra usage from the hard working Linux programmers... The horror!!!
oops they went out of business.
it needs touch sliders [like laptops are going to] and touch wheels [like the iPod] all backed by color of course!!! real touch sensitive light up gages!!!
this would be a great idea to try with a fingerboard!
I like the idea of shockwave being an iPod... the "minis" could be mini-ipods or memory sticks that pillage IP from humans to build the ultimate weapon!!!
more to point, the book story really was written as one.. but the orginal publisher had it broken up because just 1 book would have been hard to publish... and of course 3 sell better!!
Technically, the publisher could pull the stolen property card...and send the cops to bust down your door because it wasn't really the store's property to sell yet.. Typically the cops wouldn't press that point, but the publishers do have that legal leg to stand on. Stuff like this falls under contract and trade secret. MS has been getting away with far more restrictive business contracts for years.. anything goes in contract land.
like your site too!
You're supposed to take an extra for the clerk to buy her boyfriend too... Duh!
IN short linux needs to be almost perfect to wipe out windows.. then it has to deal with the lack of apps.. which means changing the rules of the game so users can make their own apps!!!! That requires a fundamental shift in what the developers are making... we need to be making buildable meta-tools that can be chained into an app and not worrying about tagging specific apps. In a lot of ways BeOS was closer than linux.. but the "everything is a module" [so anybody can rewrite one to drop in] means a race to the bottom is inevitable.. making commercial support shaky at best.
The same thing is happening with intel/amd. AMD has a competitive product in terms of price, performance, and partnership... there's no reason some tier one vendor shouldn't be taking a chance on them... but WAIT.. serious applications written for intel might not work.. even though AMD has full legal cross-license to use the Intel special functions! They're designed specifically to be compatible with Intel compilers!!! Anybody seen talking to AMD gets the "call" from Intel and soon stops returning AMD's phone calls... sound familliar? AMD has had a good 5-year record of reliability and performance success.. They have a good 15%+ of the over-all chip market, but only 0-5% of the OEM market??? there's no LEGAL financial or techincal reason that at least 1 tier-one PC producer shouldn't be jumping ship right now... unless Intel is throwing the field by using illegal tactics to keep the customers tied to intel.
sure it would... techincally, the book is publisher property until the contracted sell date. The stores ususally don't have to pay for the inventory until the date as part of the release date deal. The retailers are mearly holding the product so they can have it on time. The alternative to retailers not holding up their end of the deal is simply to not ship to those people! After all, they didn't follow the contract. Unfortunately that favors the large retailers like walmart that will always get the first shipments.. .leaving the small guys in the cold.
it's really common for employees and friends to get stuff before "embargo" date. That's one of the perks of being a young kid working a low wage, service industry job after all!! Getting good dibs on hot stuff.. It happens with everything from beanie babies to starwars figures, from Halo2 to next weeks DVD releases.
If they don't stack the deck in favor of the small stores they cut their own throats long-term.
It makes sense for apple to consolidate around intel if they're after steep discounts on embedded processors too. The intel XScale is a really good chip... it just happens to power all the pocket PCs out there right now.. which sells more.. iPods or Pocket PCs? Just getting that business is good for intel. more than that XScale could replace every single other embeded system they use to.. Airtunes express, Airport, iPods, and even slates, Newton replacements...etc. The media center's not quite there yet... MCE is great for gadget freaks, but suffers from the usual MS non-committment to actually drive a platform.. and even then XBox 360 is already advertized to gobble up whatever market they had for media PCs.. Apple could release a great media PC but frankly it's just not ready yet... if anything is right about apple, Jobs really knows how to hold his cards. Just the difference in presentation alone of Jobs versus Gates.. Jobs only sells stuff he can believe in... He IS our parents!!! How often is Gates embarassed at his few media presentations? versus Jobs who stakes the company on it!
of course, like everybody else interesting[sun, aol, etc], IBM recieved a cool half-Billion+ from MS plus discounts.. looks like any chance of the industry ganging up on MS to take them out.
for computing to be effective you hit the nail on the head. you listed issues that plague all IT, not just schools.. giving stuff to kids just brings out the problems that already exist in the sytem... thanks!
The real issue will be getting free, open knowladge out there for the schools to use. Teachers and school boards are so used to teaching to a product they've forgotten what they're really teaching. On top of that, all the state funded college/university establishment has become used to selling the knowladge rather than passing it down the food chain. One thing that's needed is to push the higher learning to get involved in lower education as part of their JOBs, not as extra spending money!
Imagine how good this could work if you gave the technology to work in noise one whole entire TV channel!!! You could have 100 channels of 1Mb wireless out of somebodies "valuable" spectrum.. these technologies are disruptive to the entire marketplace because they shatter the illusion that the public can't manage it's own airwaves... public non-regulated spectrum is death to high priced commercial broadcasters.
It's neat to see the technology be developed though. After all, there's going to be a huge opening of spedctrum soon... it would be nice to get the ball rolling for the public to get some real benifit from some real quality spectrum...
overthrow rightfully elected democratic states when the people of them elect to do things bad for your Multinational businsees!!! After all, why should other countries elect to have clean air, water, and fair union/labor laws like we do here?
It's cheaper to assemble people in India or China and just import them.. they seem to be really good at over there!