You can't be a winning company in the long haul by worrying too hard about the next quarter, and being willing to abuse your customers in order to make that quarter look good. MS is busy thinking about ways to make personal computing more expensive to the customers, and more profitable to themselves. In order to get ever-higher returns, they need to have ever-tighter lock-ins. Some are going to chafe eventually. I believe that cutting back on users' choises will hurt MS in the end, although I have to admit it is working just fine for them now.
You are forgetting the effect of positive feedback. It works for you when you are establishing your monopoly, as the more you own the easier it is to push the next piece. But at some point, which is often hard to predict or even see when it happens, positive feedback starts to work the other way, against you.
MS is locked into maintaining ever-increasing returns, quarter by quarter. There is no way to expand the market, as everybody is already using their product. As soon as some present customer defects, they have to make up the loss by turning the profit knob, which they always have been able to do safely with core products until now.
But now may be a different time, and every turn of the profit knob by raising prices, killing old products, boosting licensing fees, and so on may bring even more defections. More defections, more crank turning, and so it goes, with the action feeding on itself.
You have to do the audit no matter what when they suspect you to prove to them you are clean.
You do not have to do the audit if you don't use MS software. They have no legal standing to come into your plant. There's no need to be especially polite about denying their offer, either.
Windows and every other OS on the planet has version numbers also.
The trouble is that you need to know what version Windows is, plus what combination of service packs, and now.NET files, is installed.
There is an alternative for almost everything on Windows.
What's the alternative to I.E.? How can I get rid of I.E. and still do those essential product updates, you know, the ones that require ActiveX controls (5 of them as of this morning) to operate.
I didn't hear that, and I read what I could about the trial. Sounds fishy to me, but show me where a court transcript can be found, or other concrete evidence, and I am willing to read it.
The grandparent post just disputed the claim that the human body makes nicotine. He gave no evidence that it does not. The post does nothing *at all* to show the "research" was flawed. I'm guessing you are a non-smoker, and like to call people who disagree with your opinions stupid.
I agree, Animal Crossing (aka Animal Crack) is a great game! The attention to detail is fantastic. When you donate a frog to the museum, it sits on a lilypad in a tank. When in croaks (not dies) there are little ripples that go out from the lily pad. There are hundreds of details like that.
He failed to adress why a 16 year old can't be a valid source of information. Like Bobby Fisher might have written an article on chess, as an example. Young people often have time and interest to become very informed on a specicialized topic, and there is no reason that they shouldn't contribute, and be proud of their contributions if they are good.
Could you please make your paypal link take me to a payment page with your PayPal ID on it? It is not clear how to us PayPal to send you money. Thanks!
Webster's doesn't agree, check #4 in particular.
Main Entry: 1engine
Pronunciation: 'en-j&n
Function: noun
Etymology: Middle English engin, from Middle French, from Latin ingenium natural disposition, talent, from in- + gignere to beget -- more at KIN
Date: 13th century
1 obsolete a : INGENUITY b : evil contrivance : WILE
2 : something used to effect a purpose : AGENT, INSTRUMENT (mournful and terrible engine of horror and of crime -- E. A. Poe)
3 a : a mechanical tool: as (1) : an instrument or machine of war (2) obsolete : a torture implement b : MACHINERY c : any of various mechanical appliances -- often used in combination (fire engine)
4 : a machine for converting any of various forms of energy into mechanical force and motion; also : a mechanism or object that serves as an energy source (black holes may be the engines for quasars)
5 : a railroad locomotive
Sure, you can wire MS Word up to be almost anything, as it is a programming system in its own right by now. Of course, you could have used any real PROM programming system to write data into EEPROMS, and then your system wouldn't be subject to breaking the next time you got an "update" or a new version of MS Word.
Using Word as a scripting system isn't ideal. I do wish that MS Word had an easy-to-use macro-record/playback like Brief had. The system MS Word offers now is terrible.
How is Microsoft working hard to make its products better? For example, how has MS Word improved in the last five years? Excel? XP?
I know they work to fix vulnerabilities that expose all Windows users to attack, but even this is done on a "when they feel like it" basis, rather than in a timely fashion.
DRM is about establishing a limited domain on which content vendors can purvey their products. The digital equivalent of building a shopping mall. People can't wander out in the courtyard of a shopping mall and set up a trinket booth without permission. This is no different.
Except, to continue your simile, it is now (or soon will be) illegal to set up a shop outside of the shopping mall. Welcome to the new world, sanitized for your protection. *Additional charges may apply.
There si no law that gives anybody teh explicit right to record TV.
But there is a law making it illegal for you to use technical means to defeat the corporations' technical means of blocking you from using your fair-use rights. Doesn't that seem even a little bit strange to you?
The trouble is that the corporations can make it technically impossible to exercise your fair-use rights without defeating an encryption scheme. And then they bought themselves a set of laws to make it illegal to defeat the encryption. So they use a combination of technology and special legislation to make what was legal (and still is legal in some abstract sense) impossible.
Slashdot Mirror
You can't be a winning company in the long haul by worrying too hard about the next quarter, and being willing to abuse your customers in order to make that quarter look good. MS is busy thinking about ways to make personal computing more expensive to the customers, and more profitable to themselves. In order to get ever-higher returns, they need to have ever-tighter lock-ins. Some are going to chafe eventually. I believe that cutting back on users' choises will hurt MS in the end, although I have to admit it is working just fine for them now.
You are forgetting the effect of positive feedback. It works for you when you are establishing your monopoly, as the more you own the easier it is to push the next piece. But at some point, which is often hard to predict or even see when it happens, positive feedback starts to work the other way, against you.
MS is locked into maintaining ever-increasing returns, quarter by quarter. There is no way to expand the market, as everybody is already using their product. As soon as some present customer defects, they have to make up the loss by turning the profit knob, which they always have been able to do safely with core products until now.
But now may be a different time, and every turn of the profit knob by raising prices, killing old products, boosting licensing fees, and so on may bring even more defections. More defections, more crank turning, and so it goes, with the action feeding on itself.
I guess that works, (though I used Opera instead,) but it really is "in addition to" rather than "replacing" as I see it.
I didn't hear that, and I read what I could about the trial. Sounds fishy to me, but show me where a court transcript can be found, or other concrete evidence, and I am willing to read it.
The grandparent post just disputed the claim that the human body makes nicotine. He gave no evidence that it does not. The post does nothing *at all* to show the "research" was flawed. I'm guessing you are a non-smoker, and like to call people who disagree with your opinions stupid.
I'd like to also recommend Dark Fall, an adventure game basically made by one guy. It's one seriously spooky game.
I agree, Animal Crossing (aka Animal Crack) is a great game! The attention to detail is fantastic. When you donate a frog to the museum, it sits on a lilypad in a tank. When in croaks (not dies) there are little ripples that go out from the lily pad. There are hundreds of details like that.
Ooops, found the link in the article! (Something about reading the article that I forget.)
You obviously don't have a clue as to how Wikipedia works. Look into it, it is interesting.
He failed to adress why a 16 year old can't be a valid source of information. Like Bobby Fisher might have written an article on chess, as an example. Young people often have time and interest to become very informed on a specicialized topic, and there is no reason that they shouldn't contribute, and be proud of their contributions if they are good.
Could you please make your paypal link take me to a payment page with your PayPal ID on it? It is not clear how to us PayPal to send you money. Thanks!
I miss Frank Zappa. His speech to Congress was a classic. Check it out.
Webster's doesn't agree, check #4 in particular.
Main Entry: 1engine
Pronunciation: 'en-j&n
Function: noun
Etymology: Middle English engin, from Middle French, from Latin ingenium natural disposition, talent, from in- + gignere to beget -- more at KIN Date: 13th century
1 obsolete a : INGENUITY b : evil contrivance : WILE
2 : something used to effect a purpose : AGENT, INSTRUMENT (mournful and terrible engine of horror and of crime -- E. A. Poe)
3 a : a mechanical tool: as (1) : an instrument or machine of war (2) obsolete : a torture implement b : MACHINERY c : any of various mechanical appliances -- often used in combination (fire engine)
4 : a machine for converting any of various forms of energy into mechanical force and motion; also : a mechanism or object that serves as an energy source (black holes may be the engines for quasars)
5 : a railroad locomotive
Sure, you can wire MS Word up to be almost anything, as it is a programming system in its own right by now. Of course, you could have used any real PROM programming system to write data into EEPROMS, and then your system wouldn't be subject to breaking the next time you got an "update" or a new version of MS Word.
Using Word as a scripting system isn't ideal. I do wish that MS Word had an easy-to-use macro-record/playback like Brief had. The system MS Word offers now is terrible.
How is Microsoft working hard to make its products better? For example, how has MS Word improved in the last five years? Excel? XP?
I know they work to fix vulnerabilities that expose all Windows users to attack, but even this is done on a "when they feel like it" basis, rather than in a timely fashion.
You've reverse engineered their survey technology in order to make modifications! Arrest that man!
Maybe they forgot to sign the EULA?
That's why Trusted Computing will only allowed signed drivers. Get the picture? When Bill puts "My Computer" on your screen, he means it.
Except, to continue your simile, it is now (or soon will be) illegal to set up a shop outside of the shopping mall. Welcome to the new world, sanitized for your protection. *Additional charges may apply.
Do most monitors and harddrives have built in DRM? I didn't know about this. Can you give a link?
I have a computer with monitor and a harddrive, but the only DRM I think I have is PGP, and in that case I own the key.
The trouble is that the corporations can make it technically impossible to exercise your fair-use rights without defeating an encryption scheme. And then they bought themselves a set of laws to make it illegal to defeat the encryption. So they use a combination of technology and special legislation to make what was legal (and still is legal in some abstract sense) impossible.
That is certainly violating our fair-use rights.