Fox is NOT the only one takings sides. At least with Fox, if a politician is caught in a bathroom with someone, the word "Democrat" or "Republican" is used in the first sentence.
All the other major TV and Newspaper outlets will feature the word "Republican" in the first paragraph but will not use the word "Democrat" till the 4th or 5th paragraph
As in "Vermont Sentator So and So (Republican) was caught doing something. Is right up front. But "Utah Senator So and So was caught doing something, blah, blah, blah. He is a Democrat serving in the senate for the last 18 years". Ends up way down in the story.
I prefer my bias right up front, at least I know how they will slant the story. In that at least Air America and Rush Limbaugh have done a service to the public.
Speaking of such things, I am close to a story that has been in and out of the paper about 6 or 7 times. Close enough that I know all the parities involved and I have yet to hear one news report that has been anywhere close to even 25% correct. That scares me. If the rest of the news is like this, I am becoming dumber and less informed every time I read a newspaper or watch a reporter.
It would be nice if we lived in a world where a company only cared about breaking even, paid editors to keep the reporters straight and to help check out facts. Reporters tried to get every side to the story and present them all with as much intellectual honesty as possible. That people would flock to such a paper and buy it.
The Papers, Editors and Reporters would like you to believe that what they do is called "journalism" and all the above is true. But that is not the case. The paper is beholden to it's stock holders to turn a profit. Editors may have an ax to grind and are more favorable to one point of view or another. Or just like to see a story written in a certain way. Reporters want to "change the wolrd", or "cover a big story". It is a huge chore to collect all the facts and to be meticulous in being fair. It is a lot more work than just trying to publish stories that get you recognized.
All of these things go into the product called a "NewsPaper". It is sold to the reader as something open minded, informed and intelligent people read. Even if they wrote at a level opend minded 12th graders read at 20 years ago, and now write at a level for open minded 9th graders. It is also sold to the advertisers as a way to reach a large volume of people who can be influenced to spend their money on the advertisers product.
At best, it is in the stock holders benefit for a paper to strive for a certain bias or for "journalism". At worst, papers that don't deserve to exist will keep being published.
Yes, it's "good on the desktop" but there are still quite a few important applications for which there is no Linux app that can do the job. This is especially true in the area of media production.
Lucky for us, that is only a few percent of the Windows PC market. Even at that WINE is getting better at running Photoshop.
As someone once said. Piracy is a "success" tax. If no-one knows of you or is buying your product. You have zero sales AND zero piracy.
The more you sell, the better known you are, the more piracy you will experience. Thus the concept that piracy is a tax on success and those that are hurt the worst by it, can best afford it.
I know we should all leave Brittany alone. Yet somehow she is doing just find despite everything that is pirated. The band down the street that is not discovered, may have cut several CD's, but they are not pirated. They are not hurt by piracy, they are hurt by obscurity.
Different form factor and price. WinCE is designed for 320x240. Web browsing does not look great at that size. Also Microsoft does well in distribution channels where the prices are better than $200.00.
Linux will provide a true web browser at 1024x600. WinCE does not. It is not even designed to work in that form factor. There is no decent web browser for CE. This will hurt them badly. If you can't provide as good of experience at MySpace, Facebook, Youtube, Twitter, etc as Linux then they are out of the game.
Microsoft has always been able to play games with the distribution channels. With sub $200.00 devices. This will not be the case. To many places can now sell these computers. To many Chinese companies will be importing these at cheap prices. Flea markets, swap meets, discount stores.
We have been heading there for years. The total commoditization of the PC market. The one holdback item has been the OS. Microsoft has held the front. I like $15 phones, $20 coffee makers, $60 Microwaves and $100 TV's. It is about time for the PC to become a commodity item
ARM is going to create many problems for Microsoft. There are to many Chinese manufacturers who are or will be making cheap Linux netbooks for sale in China. They will be hitting the shores of other countries as well.
These companies have never gotten a penny from Microsoft. There is nothing Microsoft has to offer them. There is plenty of money for them to make selling ARM based Linux netbooks.
If someone was smart they would make a commercial giving someone $200.00 to by a computer that can do YouTube, Facebook, cam and edit documents....with 10 hour battery life. Nope $500 PC can't do it. $1000 PC can't do it. But the $179.00 netbook does.
Microsoft can't stop it. Every time Moores law pushes down the price of x86 hardware, AMR hardware prices drop as well. Kids will love getting a $150.00 computer. Microsoft can't compete. There is no way they can create a copy of Seven or XP that will be ARM based in the next few years. They have to give up this market.
Having lived through this era, although being in high school at the time, I remember that networks were quick to pull the trigger on anything that looked like it was losing in the ratings.
I was in Jr High at the time. I recall reading articles on how ABC was trying to kill Galactica. They mentioned the return on invested money. They also mentioned the ratings were strong, the demographics were strong and no mater how much ABC moved it, did not advertise it and tried to mess up the shows ratings as a justification, they just could not kill it. All the episodes were "in the can". They had a high quality show and an audience that would hunt down and find the episodes.
Once they were able to tool Galactica 1980 they were able to choke off the audience. The sick thing, is. That show was so much cheaper to produce, even with lower ratings it was still a better investment in a ROI.
The same thing happened in 1979 with Battlestar Galactica. The network green lighted the show. Heavily promoted it and it was doing well. The demographics were great. Show with the most college graduates watching had the under 35 crowd going for it. So why did it have to die?
In a word, production costs. An hour of Galactica could cost 1 million dollars which would bring in 2 million dollars. Thus a 1 million dollar profit. On the other hand 30 minutes of Happy Days and 30 minutes of Mork and Mindy would cost the network a total of $250,000. But it would bring in 2.5 million.
So do the math. Decent sci-fi show 1 dollar out for every dollar in. Cheap but good rated comedy gives us 2.25 dollars out for every dollar in.
The network starts looking at that time slot and sees that it can put in 2 sitcoms, or a Law and Order, or a CSI and make twice as much money. At that point the show has to die.
In the case of classic Glactica they put the show in hiatus. Then brought it back without advertising, they changed what time it was on. They changed what night it was on. The fans were to loyal. They would hunt the show out and find it each time. The ratings were not dropping fast enough. They had to convert the show into "Galictica 1981" (shudder) to finally kill the thing.
As with most business decisions. Follow the money.
Funny, I thought a troll was a post designed to be intentionally inflammatory. Whether it is true or not. By which definition, that post was a troll and the person who moderated it was NOT a troll.
On the other hand. Even though the post was a troll, you could be right that the person moderating it was trying to suppress the fact that Linux/Mac can pick virus or spyware. It is just not nearly as likely by design. In which case the moderator was a troll as well, even if the moderation was correct:D
Is it really that broke? If they are trying to maintain a monopoly, yes it is. They have to maintain lock in at all costs. Any broad range fix to usability is likely to damage lock-in. If there goal is to make simpler and better working products. Then no, it is not so badly broke that it can be fixed
The fast that nothing has changed is illuminating of what kind of company Microsoft currently is.
I think it is an intriguing idea for them, and if done right could help them a lot. I think the Mojave thing showed that people can like Vista when shown what new tools it has for them, but when just having it dumped upon they hated it.
Keep the faith kid. From what I can tell. Mojave was someone who knew what they were doing walking through all of the things that Vista can do. That is different than end users doing it themselves. Trust me on this one. I have users on my network that need help every three moths to burn files onto a CD in Xp.
I could have a presenter show them how easy it is. They would tell you how cool and easy XP is....Then three months later still call the help desk and ask how to burn a CD.
Three is a difference between a rigged demo and Joe Sixpack using Vista. It took Joe Sixpack 5 years to learn where everything is at in XP. Even if it is easier in Vista, it is harder, because it is not where Joe expects it to be. It is also not called what he expects it to be called.
After deciding they did not want to be kicked to the curb any longer by the "Im a Mac" ads. Microsoft made it very well known that they had a 300 million dollar ad campaign to counter that image. After 2 commercials with Jerry Seinfeld and Bill Gates that were essentially WTF moments. Those were pulled. "Are the luminaries at Microsoft working on a computer that is moist and chewy". Give me a break.
Then it morphed into the "I'm a PC" adds. Which were totally forgettable. The Mac ads were still kicking them in the nards. The Zune is not doing so hot against the iPod.
Microsoft's next area of failure? "Let's open a store like Apple has." This should be entertaining....
Who would want to be the president who 2 weeks after being in office takes television away from 20% of the country. It does not matter if the new president was Republican or Democrat. You could see this one coming on for a long time.
Mac User can't run Quick Books 2008, business fails.
Woman dies of thirst, bought wrong brand of water filter for her refrigerator.
Woman loses job, could not get to work, bought wrong weight of oil for car.
Woman starves to death. Bought months worth of tuna fish but it was packed with peanut oil and she was allergic to it.
Woman loses lottery, filled out lotto with crayon instead of pen.
Woman can't make phone calls, bought cell phone not compatible with her cell provider.
There are plenty of situations in life where someone can buy something incompatible and it wont work. Or something that takes a little work to get working. Also in the news water is wet
They may not have to. If the source for it is laying around anyone can look at it. If it is built on top of some FOSS licensed software that requires redistribution it will be copied. Plus they could give it to someone like China.
One of the big things that keep many Government agencies and large business from making the switch. They have not seen anyone do it successfully. The better Vietnam does this the more likely it is to have an effect in the west.
Also, if they write any software that helps with this. If it is written as opens source it would be available to help other organizations switch. It all snowballs.
Remember, to get "Most Favored Nation Trading Status". These countries are supposed to get their piracy rates down to under 10 or 20%. With software piracy at over 80%. Government is one of the major offenders.
This is a solution to that problem. Not one that Microsoft is going to like living with. But hey, no one in Vietnam will be stealing Microsoft's precious IP.
So, what should they do? Should they subpoena the ISP and find out who the perpetrator is and then drop the case if they person is over or under a certain age?
Lets call it like it is. This has always been about PR. Let those who download music know. If you share music for download...WE WILL FIND YOU.
While realisticly speaking, you have a better chance of winning a lottery than getting charged by the RIAA. Still the name of the game is image. In the long run. Going after 9 year old girls. Going after people who are seriously handicapped and on a fixed income. Going after old people who are even clueless about if they own a computer. May not be the best way to win the PR war.
I think their downfall was getting lawyers involved. They started running it like a protection racket. We get an IP address and someone says it was used by you. Pay us $5,000.00, say your a thief, a pirate and promise never download music again...even from iTunes. Then we will go away.
As a way for the RIAA to cap people for $5,00 weather they can afford it or not. So they can make a little dough. It worked well enough. As a way to stop actual file sharing...it failed. As a way to win the PR war in the public eye on file sharing. They went after two many of the wrong people.
The sad truth is that MS is doing better than ever
Which is like peeing in bed to stay warm.
The air in Microsoft's balloon has been market growth. As long as the PC market is expanding and Microsoft holds more than 51% of the OS and Office market. It grows. But that kind of growth is not sustainable in the first world markets. Everyone who wants a PC has one. The market is just replacement machines and single digit growth.
In the developing world, Microsoft has a fight on its hand. They are not the defacto standard and only 5% or 10% of installs are legit.
Double digit growth is NOT on the horizon for Microsoft. There is no guarantee that they will keep growing.
Like IBM, I think they are going to be around for a long time. But at some point, they will not hold more than 50% of the market on OS and Office products. They will have to compete on quality and their offerings will have to integrate well with other OS's and productivity offerings.
Seriously what is the adoption rate of silverlight? Any metrics? In the US vs Worldwide? In the US Business world vs US home? I would be surprised if there are more people running Silverlight than people running Flash Player 10. Silverlight has been out 2 years and Flash Player 10 has been out 2 months. What is interesting there. Is for most people there is no real need to install silverlight and no real need to upgrade from flash 9 to flash 10. Yet Flash Player 10 has better adoption rates.
So far I have yet to see any of the 100 users I deal with at work ask for silverlight. Same goes for any of the people I do support for outside of work. Friends, Family, etc. Or am I missing something? I don't care about any way that Silverlight is better than flash, has better development tools or is less expensive to work with. I am just talking about end user adoption rates.
At the rate it is going, how long till it is expected to hit even 25%? That is 25% of computers have Silverlight installed. Who cares that 98% are running flash. Or that flash and silverlight can run side by side. There is just no demand for silverlight.
Slashdot Mirror
Oy! Fox taking sides.
Fox is NOT the only one takings sides. At least with Fox, if a politician is caught in a bathroom with someone, the word "Democrat" or "Republican" is used in the first sentence.
All the other major TV and Newspaper outlets will feature the word "Republican" in the first paragraph but will not use the word "Democrat" till the 4th or 5th paragraph
As in "Vermont Sentator So and So (Republican) was caught doing something. Is right up front. But "Utah Senator So and So was caught doing something, blah, blah, blah. He is a Democrat serving in the senate for the last 18 years". Ends up way down in the story.
I prefer my bias right up front, at least I know how they will slant the story. In that at least Air America and Rush Limbaugh have done a service to the public.
Speaking of such things, I am close to a story that has been in and out of the paper about 6 or 7 times. Close enough that I know all the parities involved and I have yet to hear one news report that has been anywhere close to even 25% correct. That scares me. If the rest of the news is like this, I am becoming dumber and less informed every time I read a newspaper or watch a reporter.
It would be nice if we lived in a world where a company only cared about breaking even, paid editors to keep the reporters straight and to help check out facts. Reporters tried to get every side to the story and present them all with as much intellectual honesty as possible. That people would flock to such a paper and buy it.
The Papers, Editors and Reporters would like you to believe that what they do is called "journalism" and all the above is true. But that is not the case. The paper is beholden to it's stock holders to turn a profit. Editors may have an ax to grind and are more favorable to one point of view or another. Or just like to see a story written in a certain way. Reporters want to "change the wolrd", or "cover a big story". It is a huge chore to collect all the facts and to be meticulous in being fair. It is a lot more work than just trying to publish stories that get you recognized.
All of these things go into the product called a "NewsPaper". It is sold to the reader as something open minded, informed and intelligent people read. Even if they wrote at a level opend minded 12th graders read at 20 years ago, and now write at a level for open minded 9th graders. It is also sold to the advertisers as a way to reach a large volume of people who can be influenced to spend their money on the advertisers product.
At best, it is in the stock holders benefit for a paper to strive for a certain bias or for "journalism". At worst, papers that don't deserve to exist will keep being published.
Lucky for us, that is only a few percent of the Windows PC market. Even at that WINE is getting better at running Photoshop.
As someone once said. Piracy is a "success" tax. If no-one knows of you or is buying your product. You have zero sales AND zero piracy.
The more you sell, the better known you are, the more piracy you will experience. Thus the concept that piracy is a tax on success and those that are hurt the worst by it, can best afford it.
I know we should all leave Brittany alone. Yet somehow she is doing just find despite everything that is pirated. The band down the street that is not discovered, may have cut several CD's, but they are not pirated. They are not hurt by piracy, they are hurt by obscurity.
Different form factor and price. WinCE is designed for 320x240. Web browsing does not look great at that size. Also Microsoft does well in distribution channels where the prices are better than $200.00.
Linux will provide a true web browser at 1024x600. WinCE does not. It is not even designed to work in that form factor. There is no decent web browser for CE. This will hurt them badly. If you can't provide as good of experience at MySpace, Facebook, Youtube, Twitter, etc as Linux then they are out of the game.
Microsoft has always been able to play games with the distribution channels. With sub $200.00 devices. This will not be the case. To many places can now sell these computers. To many Chinese companies will be importing these at cheap prices. Flea markets, swap meets, discount stores.
We have been heading there for years. The total commoditization of the PC market. The one holdback item has been the OS. Microsoft has held the front. I like $15 phones, $20 coffee makers, $60 Microwaves and $100 TV's. It is about time for the PC to become a commodity item
ARM is going to create many problems for Microsoft. There are to many Chinese manufacturers who are or will be making cheap Linux netbooks for sale in China. They will be hitting the shores of other countries as well.
These companies have never gotten a penny from Microsoft. There is nothing Microsoft has to offer them. There is plenty of money for them to make selling ARM based Linux netbooks.
If someone was smart they would make a commercial giving someone $200.00 to by a computer that can do YouTube, Facebook, cam and edit documents....with 10 hour battery life. Nope $500 PC can't do it. $1000 PC can't do it. But the $179.00 netbook does.
Microsoft can't stop it. Every time Moores law pushes down the price of x86 hardware, AMR hardware prices drop as well. Kids will love getting a $150.00 computer. Microsoft can't compete. There is no way they can create a copy of Seven or XP that will be ARM based in the next few years. They have to give up this market.
So are we not to create robots?
Or are we not to create intelligent robots to use as slaves?
Or are we to only create robots that are to dumb to know they are slaves?
Having lived through this era, although being in high school at the time, I remember that networks were quick to pull the trigger on anything that looked like it was losing in the ratings.
I was in Jr High at the time. I recall reading articles on how ABC was trying to kill Galactica. They mentioned the return on invested money. They also mentioned the ratings were strong, the demographics were strong and no mater how much ABC moved it, did not advertise it and tried to mess up the shows ratings as a justification, they just could not kill it. All the episodes were "in the can". They had a high quality show and an audience that would hunt down and find the episodes.
Once they were able to tool Galactica 1980 they were able to choke off the audience. The sick thing, is. That show was so much cheaper to produce, even with lower ratings it was still a better investment in a ROI.
The same thing happened in 1979 with Battlestar Galactica. The network green lighted the show. Heavily promoted it and it was doing well. The demographics were great. Show with the most college graduates watching had the under 35 crowd going for it. So why did it have to die?
In a word, production costs. An hour of Galactica could cost 1 million dollars which would bring in 2 million dollars. Thus a 1 million dollar profit. On the other hand 30 minutes of Happy Days and 30 minutes of Mork and Mindy would cost the network a total of $250,000. But it would bring in 2.5 million.
So do the math. Decent sci-fi show 1 dollar out for every dollar in. Cheap but good rated comedy gives us 2.25 dollars out for every dollar in.
The network starts looking at that time slot and sees that it can put in 2 sitcoms, or a Law and Order, or a CSI and make twice as much money. At that point the show has to die.
In the case of classic Glactica they put the show in hiatus. Then brought it back without advertising, they changed what time it was on. They changed what night it was on. The fans were to loyal. They would hunt the show out and find it each time. The ratings were not dropping fast enough. They had to convert the show into "Galictica 1981" (shudder) to finally kill the thing.
As with most business decisions. Follow the money.
Funny, I thought a troll was a post designed to be intentionally inflammatory. Whether it is true or not. By which definition, that post was a troll and the person who moderated it was NOT a troll.
On the other hand. Even though the post was a troll, you could be right that the person moderating it was trying to suppress the fact that Linux/Mac can pick virus or spyware. It is just not nearly as likely by design. In which case the moderator was a troll as well, even if the moderation was correct :D
Or you could ask how long does it take for your TRS-80, Vic-20, Pete, Commdore-64, Atari-400, Atari-800 or Apple II to boot.
I remember my C64 came up in about 5 seconds. Of course that was offset by having a 1541 the slowest floppy drive known to mankind.
How can you admire him?
Northing changed.
Is it really that broke? If they are trying to maintain a monopoly, yes it is. They have to maintain lock in at all costs. Any broad range fix to usability is likely to damage lock-in. If there goal is to make simpler and better working products. Then no, it is not so badly broke that it can be fixed
The fast that nothing has changed is illuminating of what kind of company Microsoft currently is.
Keep the faith kid. From what I can tell. Mojave was someone who knew what they were doing walking through all of the things that Vista can do. That is different than end users doing it themselves. Trust me on this one. I have users on my network that need help every three moths to burn files onto a CD in Xp.
I could have a presenter show them how easy it is. They would tell you how cool and easy XP is....Then three months later still call the help desk and ask how to burn a CD.
Three is a difference between a rigged demo and Joe Sixpack using Vista. It took Joe Sixpack 5 years to learn where everything is at in XP. Even if it is easier in Vista, it is harder, because it is not where Joe expects it to be. It is also not called what he expects it to be called.
I would have to agree. It looks entertaining.
After deciding they did not want to be kicked to the curb any longer by the "Im a Mac" ads. Microsoft made it very well known that they had a 300 million dollar ad campaign to counter that image. After 2 commercials with Jerry Seinfeld and Bill Gates that were essentially WTF moments. Those were pulled. "Are the luminaries at Microsoft working on a computer that is moist and chewy". Give me a break.
Then it morphed into the "I'm a PC" adds. Which were totally forgettable. The Mac ads were still kicking them in the nards. The Zune is not doing so hot against the iPod.
Microsoft's next area of failure? "Let's open a store like Apple has." This should be entertaining....
Who would want to be the president who 2 weeks after being in office takes television away from 20% of the country. It does not matter if the new president was Republican or Democrat. You could see this one coming on for a long time.
How is this news?
Mac User can't run Quick Books 2008, business fails.
Woman dies of thirst, bought wrong brand of water filter for her refrigerator.
Woman loses job, could not get to work, bought wrong weight of oil for car.
Woman starves to death. Bought months worth of tuna fish but it was packed with peanut oil and she was allergic to it.
Woman loses lottery, filled out lotto with crayon instead of pen.
Woman can't make phone calls, bought cell phone not compatible with her cell provider.
There are plenty of situations in life where someone can buy something incompatible and it wont work. Or something that takes a little work to get working. Also in the news water is wet
Genius code is elegant code
Thinking Forth is a book about how to write elegant code. It is a skill that can be learned.
Yes, that is my assumption. Lots of FTP servers, lots of packages.
They may not have to. If the source for it is laying around anyone can look at it. If it is built on top of some FOSS licensed software that requires redistribution it will be copied. Plus they could give it to someone like China.
One of the big things that keep many Government agencies and large business from making the switch. They have not seen anyone do it successfully. The better Vietnam does this the more likely it is to have an effect in the west.
Also, if they write any software that helps with this. If it is written as opens source it would be available to help other organizations switch. It all snowballs.
Remember, to get "Most Favored Nation Trading Status". These countries are supposed to get their piracy rates down to under 10 or 20%. With software piracy at over 80%. Government is one of the major offenders.
This is a solution to that problem. Not one that Microsoft is going to like living with. But hey, no one in Vietnam will be stealing Microsoft's precious IP.
That part was actually hyperbole
Reality's an untamed beast
That's difficult to master,
But models are quite docile
And give you answer faster.
From a pome I saw in a computer book from the 70's, can be found online here http://www.langston.com/Fun_People/1993/1993AFE.html
Lets call it like it is. This has always been about PR. Let those who download music know. If you share music for download...WE WILL FIND YOU.
While realisticly speaking, you have a better chance of winning a lottery than getting charged by the RIAA. Still the name of the game is image. In the long run. Going after 9 year old girls. Going after people who are seriously handicapped and on a fixed income. Going after old people who are even clueless about if they own a computer. May not be the best way to win the PR war.
I think their downfall was getting lawyers involved. They started running it like a protection racket. We get an IP address and someone says it was used by you. Pay us $5,000.00, say your a thief, a pirate and promise never download music again...even from iTunes. Then we will go away.
As a way for the RIAA to cap people for $5,00 weather they can afford it or not. So they can make a little dough. It worked well enough. As a way to stop actual file sharing...it failed. As a way to win the PR war in the public eye on file sharing. They went after two many of the wrong people.
Which is like peeing in bed to stay warm.
The air in Microsoft's balloon has been market growth. As long as the PC market is expanding and Microsoft holds more than 51% of the OS and Office market. It grows. But that kind of growth is not sustainable in the first world markets. Everyone who wants a PC has one. The market is just replacement machines and single digit growth.
In the developing world, Microsoft has a fight on its hand. They are not the defacto standard and only 5% or 10% of installs are legit.
Double digit growth is NOT on the horizon for Microsoft. There is no guarantee that they will keep growing.
Like IBM, I think they are going to be around for a long time. But at some point, they will not hold more than 50% of the market on OS and Office products. They will have to compete on quality and their offerings will have to integrate well with other OS's and productivity offerings.
Silverlight?
Seriously what is the adoption rate of silverlight? Any metrics? In the US vs Worldwide? In the US Business world vs US home? I would be surprised if there are more people running Silverlight than people running Flash Player 10. Silverlight has been out 2 years and Flash Player 10 has been out 2 months. What is interesting there. Is for most people there is no real need to install silverlight and no real need to upgrade from flash 9 to flash 10. Yet Flash Player 10 has better adoption rates.
So far I have yet to see any of the 100 users I deal with at work ask for silverlight. Same goes for any of the people I do support for outside of work. Friends, Family, etc. Or am I missing something? I don't care about any way that Silverlight is better than flash, has better development tools or is less expensive to work with. I am just talking about end user adoption rates.
At the rate it is going, how long till it is expected to hit even 25%? That is 25% of computers have Silverlight installed. Who cares that 98% are running flash. Or that flash and silverlight can run side by side. There is just no demand for silverlight.