They wrote off a billion in future repairs to the XBox 360. So part of that 300 million in profit is happening because Microsoft had shifted most 2007 and all 2008 XBox repair losses to the 1st quarter 2007. When everything is said and done, I think they would have turned a small profit.
That 300 million is not an indicator of future performance. At some point one of three things will happen a) the XBox is built well enough it does not need repairs b) they have to show what xbox repairs are costing them or c) they stop repairing them. The DVD scratching problem is still out there. If they end RROD support there will be a class action law suit.
I doubt Vista is a huge flop or a tremendous success.
What do you call Windows ME? Was it a success or flop? There are still people out there running it. There are even people who think it is better than Win98SE.
If you were loading an old computer with an OS and you had a choice of Win98SE or WinME what would you choose? Even if ME did not kill Microsoft. ME still has the stink of death attached to it. It was a flop. I would even say that Vista is a bigger flop than ME was.
SP1 for Vista is not getting the job done. With Microsoft planning on having 7 out in less than 2 years. How hard do you think they are working on Vista SP2?
The proponents of GPL sing a great song about freedom - but more than a few of them are fully aware of just how much control the GPL reserves for them, and they love it.
On the other hand. If you want to sell your software in a traditional manner and not give out the source code to the end user. You can do that as well. There are just some conditions you have to follow.
There is a price to be paid to use software that is free. Free in the sense of "I wrote this so others can use and improve it. If you want to use it, you must give others the same benefit I gave you". You can't really cry "Boo hoo. Those GPL'd tools and libraries are so AWESOME. They were given to me free on the condition that I would use them that way myself. Now I want sell my code and have to play by their rules."
If you don't like the terms of the GPL. You can always use those awesome LGPL, BSD or closed sourced software libraries out there.
And yes, the GPL gives me the freedom to sell you the privilege of using my software in a non-GPL manner. That is of course assuming that I built it in such a manner that is does not rely on GPL software itself. So if someone can build that "golden widget" as GPL software without the need of statically linking to GPL code. Then more power to them.
The point is you "cant" figure it out. The only party that can figure out and implement OOXML properly is Microsoft. There are things in OOXML like "do spacing like winword95". There is not place to look that up, you would have to reverse engineer it.
As for binary data. The XML is a wrapper around 64 bit encoded binary objects. Many of these structures are structures that are found in current Microsoft file formats. The problem is even with the specifications being made available, which Microsoft has announced today they would be doing. They have patented it in such a way any implementation you would write to work with the structure must be licensed from Microsoft or else you will be violating the patten.
Also, Open Source has not been invited to play. The license for looking at what documentation is available prevents you from implementing this in GPL'd software.
OOXML is a ruse. It is a smoke screen.
It was named to confuse people. Office Open XML is meant to sound like "Open Office XML". After all if you thought it was an Open Office format you would love and embrace it. Instead of treating it like Microsoft's bastard child.
It was never designed to be fully implemented. It is designed to be an ISO standard. So you can say "I have met the requirement of being able to archive documents in an open format OOXML is an open format".
It does not qualify as an open format. Face it, you can't perfectly open up a Word 95 document in Office 2007. That is a 12 year time frame. Microsoft is always pushing a new format to lock users in to there product. Backward compatibility is not in their favor. In 10 years time, you will not be able to open up a OOXML formated document saved today. Which will make it worthless as standard.
As a standard it is intentionally to complex. There are several program that can already open / save to ODF. With that software being free. 20 years from now, you can still find and download it. Or even look at the old spec and write something that can work with ODF 1.0.
There is only ONE set of software that can even work with ODF. It will not be available in the future. You cant buy/legally get a copy of Office 95. What would make anyone think there will be a legal way to open up an OOXML file saved in 2007 and have it look correct in 2020? Where would someone get Office 2007 then?
In context the question was why don't DVD games come with their own linux distro so you can just boot the DVD to play
I said the reason was due to all the hardware that has to be supported. Getting accelerated video drivers that work with xorg and ALL major video cards and autodetecting all monitors would be quite a chore.
The range of hardware to support is staggering. Take a look at Knoppix or any other live CD. Trying to have accelerated video drivers that work for all major cards is a chore.
The thing that makes imbeded linux work is that the hardware manufacturer is going to put the drivers right in the BIOS.
This is a boon for linux. Because that means they are either designing the system for linux or are making their special proprietary drivers for it. If that is the case,those drivers WILL be extracted and reverse engineered.
Well anytime Windows is acting unstable. Instead of being screwed and dead in the water. You can fire your computer back up this way. Amazingly enough. You could even use it to google out error messages to get Windows going again. Possibly even download a missing or damaged DLL?
Or discover since all you do is facebook, hotmail, youtube and myspace. You don't really need Windows.
Right now NOTHING even writes to MS-OOXML. Once it is a standard MS can change and implement it as they want. At that point Office may be able to save to that format. it won't be the default format. They may change it or even remove support for it at a future point.
Then due to the fact that there are blobs of binary data in it, in propriety Microsoft formats. Others are not free to implement code that reads or writes these formats. These formats are not publically documented. Let alone public standards.
Who else will ever be able to read MS-OOXML? Who else will be able to write to it? Only Microsoft. At least when you are talking about xhtml or html5 it is possible to create a browser that can read and render both formats.
An industry-wide open format is important for users,
What is even more important than an open format. Is that the software is open. People can make available on line all versions of OpenOffice or Abiword or Koffice.
25 years from now, if you have an Openoffice 1.0 document that you need to open. And OpenOffice 12 does not render it right. No problem, in a VM run Slackware 10 and OpenOffice 1.0 and work with them. All 100% free and legal.
25 years from now if you have a Microsoft Word 95 document and Office 2035 can not open it what do you do? Well since you don't own a copy of Office 95 nor a copy of Windows 95/98/XP. You will have to break the law to even run Windows XP with MicoSoft Office 95. That is if you could still FIND a copy. You already can not buy a retail copy of Windows 95 or 98? Does any current Microsoft license even allow you to uninstall Windows XP and run Windows 95 or Windows 3.11? If there is no support now for a 13-15 year old Microsoft products, what chance do you think there will be for a 35 to 45 year old product?
Long term, with free software being legal to distribute. The changes of finding 30 year old Open Source software will be much higher than being able to find 30 year old Closed Source software. The law is not a barrier to Open Source software. It is to Closed Source software. Publically making available Closed source Software is not legal. And yes, I am talking specifically talking about Microsoft OS's and Microsoft office. If you think I am wrong. Please post a link to where I can legally download a copy of Windows XP and Office 2003.
I know everybody wants to immediately jump to the conclusion that the Burton Group is in Microsoft's pocket, etc., etc.,
No, I question the intellectual honesty of the Burton Group. I hardly think their conclusions are objective. I don't even think they believe what they are saying. They are intentionally dishonest because ODF will not work with sharepoint and Office 2007 does. So to continue having a thriving sharepoint market. They are LYING. Saying things they know are not true, distortions of the truth and are not technically correct. In the hopes the PHB's will read their drivel and continue buying Microsoft Products. Thus allowing them to continue selling sharepoint support and serevices.
Notice I said "Office 2007" not OOXML. It is a dead end format if ISO approves it. By design, it is only intended for Office products to WRITE to it. No one else will be able to read those files, or write their own files in OOXML format. Office may not even be able to read OOXML. But that wont matter. All that matters is it is an ISO approved format for long term document storage and interoperability.
Ah, Fluxbox is bliss. Even with all the stuff I have running in startup scripts, it takes about 3 seconds to come up. It stays out of my way. You can see my desktop at p:bayimgcomoaIdfaABo
I use xtdesk for icon support. What is cool about, as seen in the picture, is that instead of getting a context menu for the icons, I get a menu of more apps to launch. Since I do desktop support. I have an icon for each location, left click and I remote into the server for that location. Right click and I can pick any desktop at that location to remote into.
It makes me the envy of the windows guy doing support. He can often be heard cursing as he is looking up a computer to find out where to remote to. Whereas I am always on right click then one left click away.
I would have to give up that goodness to go back to KDE.
I find I like all of the goodies in KDE, but the light and quick feel of gtk2 apps.
If the local schools switched to Linux and OpenOffice, the time spent training students on OpenOffice and Linux to get jobs with the state, which provides 70% of the jobs in our state, the four years spent doing business computer classes would be almost wasteful.
If that is the case. The schools are teaching the wrong things. They should teach concepts not particular applications. Word Processing is understanding the following things: opening files, closing files, printing files. How paragraphs work, word wrap, newlines. Line and word spacing. Indents, margins, headers, footers, fonts, fixed and variable width fonts. Page breaks. Columns, insertign graphics and using styles.
Anyone who has any training should be able to set down and go "oh, I want a document with 1 inch margins, single spaced in a 10pt serif font, paragraphs with first word indented" If you understand the concepts, then everything else is menu surfing in a program you don't know. There is only a handful of concepts no matter how much you tart it up.
On the other hand if you only teach how to use word (or any word processor). 90% of what the student takes for granted are program defaults. They never think about line spacing or margins. They just take for granted the layout they are given.
Shame my school is so bloody useless and has an IT department so incompetent it is painful.
Sorry, the school probably got what they deserved.
They hired someone who was extensively papered/experienced in taking care of Microsoft technologies. As opposed to someone who actually understands general computer principles with experience in multiple operating systems. The school is locked into Microsoft solutions because the only thing their IT staff understands is Microsoft products.
Which is strange enough how I feel about gnome. Now mind you. I am more comfortable with Fluxbox, Enlightenment and Afterstep than gnome. All of which are NOT at all like Windows. So it is not that KDE is striving to be like Micorsoft Windows which makes it comfortable.
Gnome has that "itch" that you can not scratch syndrome going for it. If something is almost what you want but not quite...well to bad you are stuck with it. In KDE there is enough room for customization you can often get exactly what you want.
In addition to that the KIO slaves are so sweet. It does not matter where a file is stored at, on a local share, NFS, SMB, FPT or SFTP, you can just give a URI. Then Boom! Away you go with using it.
With DKOP going away with the move to HAL for interprogram communications. I wish all systems had the KDE base libs and evyerone would build GTK2 apps on top of HAL and KIO.
So as long as you change the icon from Firefox to IE and change the spinner to the blue E and make msn.com their home page. The only thing they will notice is that Google is now there search engine and it works better than ever for searching.
I would agree. I think the point of the OLPC project is great. To teach children to read, provide them with the libraries of the world, critical thinking skills. Teach them graphics, music, logic and programming. The apps that come with it and the source code for those apps makes all of this possible.
Whereas the classmate PC has a different purpose. Teach kids how to use Word, Excel and Powerpoint so they can find offshored jobs from US firms. Anything else it teaches is incidental.
We should be commenting on the total lack of creativity going towards Redmond. I think anybody who has ever gone on slashdot ever has seen the chair throwing joke
I have this sweet picture of goatse that you JUST GOTTA SEE.
No, it's up to the people who are actually buying and using the laptops. And if they decide to go with Intel, he has no right to throw a hissy-fit about it.
Intel should not have signed a non-compete agreement then.
It might be ok if they were just cold-calling countries.
It is a little shady if they try negotiating with countries which they already know OLPC is negotiating with.
It is downright unethical for them to go and ask countries to break their contract for OLPC's to get an Intel product.
It is pretty sleazy for Intel to figure that there is more profit here than potential fallout over doing it.
Can't we accept that Intel, SCO, et al are more than capable of having their own rotten agendas?
As past performance has indicated. It would be foolish to just automatically write off Microsoft as NOT being involved.
SCO did not have money to follow through on their "case". And in comes Microsoft buying a 10 million dollar license. Then Microsoft went to Baystar of Canada and told them that SCO was a good investment and they would back them if they invested 50 million.
These other companies may be evil. But we often find out that Microsoft is their "enabler".
Re:Is there a hidden 3rd party?
on
Negroponte vs Intel
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· Score: 4, Informative
Refusing low-priced laptops because they run Windows is as misguided
The difference is that the OLPC is:
Is designed to last. One OLPC that lasts 5 years is cheaper than 3 Classmates that only last 18 months each.
Is designed to "mesh" to get internet out to the child farthest from the village. Let me know when Windows XP has a "mesh" update for their wireless stack.
Is packaged with educational software. Microsoft and Intel have not developed any educational software that will go for "free" on these machines. And purchasing more software for the classmate only drives the price up.
I do remember that period. It took damend near 3 years to make XP solid. Let's talk again in 3 years!
In 2 years you mean. As in 3 years from Vista's release date. Which would be in January 2010.
Per Microsoft that will be just months before the release of Windows 7. The best version of windows yet. Low cost, easy to maintain, makes moving apps and user settings a breeze.
It's certainly not a legit, but it does get rid of Vista. Since all of the computers came with XP or Vista anyways, they've already paid for Windows.
I have to admit. I have a hard time getting excited about calling it "Piracy" moving back to XP. Especially where you go from Vista home to XP home. Microsoft got their money...and the user finally has a Microsoft OS that is stable and fast enough for day to day use.
MS wanted to remove the stain of running Hotmail on BSD. It took them years to do it. They were not able to throw enough money at the problem to get Windows to run on a stripped down kernel. As a point of pride MS wanted to get this done and even then, they had to admit at NT back in 99 was to complex for them to strip it down to a 10meg mini system. Or even a 50 meg mini system.
Sure you could have built Google on top of a MS OS but you would lose four things.
Hardware Costs, you would have to purchase more hardware because each computer does less, having to carry the weight of a "heavy" Microsoft OS.
OS Costs, you to pay for all of those copies of Windows and whatever licenses for connections to web servers and database backends
Scalability, the microsoft software you would be building on is not designed to cluster or scale at this level. You would be writing custom tools for it. While that technology is already available in the *nix world for that.
Customizations, they run their own database and file systems, which they were able to customize at the OS level. As an MS partner they may be able to access to look at the source code for windows. But they would not have been able to custom compile a system to their liking.
In 2007 I put my wifes computer and a friends computer on Ubuntu. Also a co-worker in tech support who wanted a system as tweaked as mine was for responding to support issues.
So in December 2006 there was one Linux desktop. Now in December 2007 there were 4 Linux desktops.
If 25% of the community introduce 3 or 4 people to using desktop Linux in year, it would double every year.
That may not be sustainable. But there are enough dedicated linux desktop folks at this point. I would believe that it could of happened in 2007.
Slashdot Mirror
They wrote off a billion in future repairs to the XBox 360. So part of that 300 million in profit is happening because Microsoft had shifted most 2007 and all 2008 XBox repair losses to the 1st quarter 2007. When everything is said and done, I think they would have turned a small profit.
That 300 million is not an indicator of future performance. At some point one of three things will happen a) the XBox is built well enough it does not need repairs b) they have to show what xbox repairs are costing them or c) they stop repairing them. The DVD scratching problem is still out there. If they end RROD support there will be a class action law suit.
What do you call Windows ME? Was it a success or flop? There are still people out there running it. There are even people who think it is better than Win98SE.
If you were loading an old computer with an OS and you had a choice of Win98SE or WinME what would you choose? Even if ME did not kill Microsoft. ME still has the stink of death attached to it. It was a flop. I would even say that Vista is a bigger flop than ME was.
SP1 for Vista is not getting the job done. With Microsoft planning on having 7 out in less than 2 years. How hard do you think they are working on Vista SP2?
Vista is a flop cut from the same cloth as ME.
On the other hand. If you want to sell your software in a traditional manner and not give out the source code to the end user. You can do that as well. There are just some conditions you have to follow.
There is a price to be paid to use software that is free. Free in the sense of "I wrote this so others can use and improve it. If you want to use it, you must give others the same benefit I gave you". You can't really cry "Boo hoo. Those GPL'd tools and libraries are so AWESOME. They were given to me free on the condition that I would use them that way myself. Now I want sell my code and have to play by their rules."
If you don't like the terms of the GPL. You can always use those awesome LGPL, BSD or closed sourced software libraries out there.
And yes, the GPL gives me the freedom to sell you the privilege of using my software in a non-GPL manner. That is of course assuming that I built it in such a manner that is does not rely on GPL software itself. So if someone can build that "golden widget" as GPL software without the need of statically linking to GPL code. Then more power to them.
As for binary data. The XML is a wrapper around 64 bit encoded binary objects. Many of these structures are structures that are found in current Microsoft file formats. The problem is even with the specifications being made available, which Microsoft has announced today they would be doing. They have patented it in such a way any implementation you would write to work with the structure must be licensed from Microsoft or else you will be violating the patten.
Also, Open Source has not been invited to play. The license for looking at what documentation is available prevents you from implementing this in GPL'd software.
OOXML is a ruse. It is a smoke screen.
I said the reason was due to all the hardware that has to be supported. Getting accelerated video drivers that work with xorg and ALL major video cards and autodetecting all monitors would be quite a chore.
The thing that makes imbeded linux work is that the hardware manufacturer is going to put the drivers right in the BIOS.
This is a boon for linux. Because that means they are either designing the system for linux or are making their special proprietary drivers for it. If that is the case,those drivers WILL be extracted and reverse engineered.
Well anytime Windows is acting unstable. Instead of being screwed and dead in the water. You can fire your computer back up this way. Amazingly enough. You could even use it to google out error messages to get Windows going again. Possibly even download a missing or damaged DLL? Or discover since all you do is facebook, hotmail, youtube and myspace. You don't really need Windows.
Right now NOTHING even writes to MS-OOXML. Once it is a standard MS can change and implement it as they want. At that point Office may be able to save to that format. it won't be the default format. They may change it or even remove support for it at a future point.
Then due to the fact that there are blobs of binary data in it, in propriety Microsoft formats. Others are not free to implement code that reads or writes these formats. These formats are not publically documented. Let alone public standards.
Who else will ever be able to read MS-OOXML? Who else will be able to write to it? Only Microsoft. At least when you are talking about xhtml or html5 it is possible to create a browser that can read and render both formats.
What is even more important than an open format. Is that the software is open. People can make available on line all versions of OpenOffice or Abiword or Koffice.
25 years from now, if you have an Openoffice 1.0 document that you need to open. And OpenOffice 12 does not render it right. No problem, in a VM run Slackware 10 and OpenOffice 1.0 and work with them. All 100% free and legal.
25 years from now if you have a Microsoft Word 95 document and Office 2035 can not open it what do you do? Well since you don't own a copy of Office 95 nor a copy of Windows 95/98/XP. You will have to break the law to even run Windows XP with MicoSoft Office 95. That is if you could still FIND a copy. You already can not buy a retail copy of Windows 95 or 98? Does any current Microsoft license even allow you to uninstall Windows XP and run Windows 95 or Windows 3.11? If there is no support now for a 13-15 year old Microsoft products, what chance do you think there will be for a 35 to 45 year old product? Long term, with free software being legal to distribute. The changes of finding 30 year old Open Source software will be much higher than being able to find 30 year old Closed Source software. The law is not a barrier to Open Source software. It is to Closed Source software. Publically making available Closed source Software is not legal. And yes, I am talking specifically talking about Microsoft OS's and Microsoft office. If you think I am wrong. Please post a link to where I can legally download a copy of Windows XP and Office 2003.
No, I question the intellectual honesty of the Burton Group. I hardly think their conclusions are objective. I don't even think they believe what they are saying. They are intentionally dishonest because ODF will not work with sharepoint and Office 2007 does. So to continue having a thriving sharepoint market. They are LYING. Saying things they know are not true, distortions of the truth and are not technically correct. In the hopes the PHB's will read their drivel and continue buying Microsoft Products. Thus allowing them to continue selling sharepoint support and serevices.
Notice I said "Office 2007" not OOXML. It is a dead end format if ISO approves it. By design, it is only intended for Office products to WRITE to it. No one else will be able to read those files, or write their own files in OOXML format. Office may not even be able to read OOXML. But that wont matter. All that matters is it is an ISO approved format for long term document storage and interoperability.
I use xtdesk for icon support. What is cool about, as seen in the picture, is that instead of getting a context menu for the icons, I get a menu of more apps to launch. Since I do desktop support. I have an icon for each location, left click and I remote into the server for that location. Right click and I can pick any desktop at that location to remote into.
It makes me the envy of the windows guy doing support. He can often be heard cursing as he is looking up a computer to find out where to remote to. Whereas I am always on right click then one left click away.
I would have to give up that goodness to go back to KDE.
I find I like all of the goodies in KDE, but the light and quick feel of gtk2 apps.
If that is the case. The schools are teaching the wrong things. They should teach concepts not particular applications. Word Processing is understanding the following things: opening files, closing files, printing files. How paragraphs work, word wrap, newlines. Line and word spacing. Indents, margins, headers, footers, fonts, fixed and variable width fonts. Page breaks. Columns, insertign graphics and using styles.
Anyone who has any training should be able to set down and go "oh, I want a document with 1 inch margins, single spaced in a 10pt serif font, paragraphs with first word indented" If you understand the concepts, then everything else is menu surfing in a program you don't know. There is only a handful of concepts no matter how much you tart it up.
On the other hand if you only teach how to use word (or any word processor). 90% of what the student takes for granted are program defaults. They never think about line spacing or margins. They just take for granted the layout they are given.
Sorry, the school probably got what they deserved.
They hired someone who was extensively papered/experienced in taking care of Microsoft technologies. As opposed to someone who actually understands general computer principles with experience in multiple operating systems. The school is locked into Microsoft solutions because the only thing their IT staff understands is Microsoft products.
Which is strange enough how I feel about gnome. Now mind you. I am more comfortable with Fluxbox, Enlightenment and Afterstep than gnome. All of which are NOT at all like Windows. So it is not that KDE is striving to be like Micorsoft Windows which makes it comfortable.
Gnome has that "itch" that you can not scratch syndrome going for it. If something is almost what you want but not quite...well to bad you are stuck with it. In KDE there is enough room for customization you can often get exactly what you want.
In addition to that the KIO slaves are so sweet. It does not matter where a file is stored at, on a local share, NFS, SMB, FPT or SFTP, you can just give a URI. Then Boom! Away you go with using it.
With DKOP going away with the move to HAL for interprogram communications. I wish all systems had the KDE base libs and evyerone would build GTK2 apps on top of HAL and KIO.
So as long as you change the icon from Firefox to IE and change the spinner to the blue E and make msn.com their home page. The only thing they will notice is that Google is now there search engine and it works better than ever for searching.
Whereas the classmate PC has a different purpose. Teach kids how to use Word, Excel and Powerpoint so they can find offshored jobs from US firms. Anything else it teaches is incidental.
I have this sweet picture of goatse that you JUST GOTTA SEE.
Intel should not have signed a non-compete agreement then.
It might be ok if they were just cold-calling countries.
It is a little shady if they try negotiating with countries which they already know OLPC is negotiating with.
It is downright unethical for them to go and ask countries to break their contract for OLPC's to get an Intel product.
It is pretty sleazy for Intel to figure that there is more profit here than potential fallout over doing it.
As past performance has indicated. It would be foolish to just automatically write off Microsoft as NOT being involved.
SCO did not have money to follow through on their "case". And in comes Microsoft buying a 10 million dollar license. Then Microsoft went to Baystar of Canada and told them that SCO was a good investment and they would back them if they invested 50 million.
These other companies may be evil. But we often find out that Microsoft is their "enabler".
The difference is that the OLPC is:
In 2 years you mean. As in 3 years from Vista's release date. Which would be in January 2010.
Per Microsoft that will be just months before the release of Windows 7. The best version of windows yet. Low cost, easy to maintain, makes moving apps and user settings a breeze.
Why would I care how stable Vista is then?
I have to admit. I have a hard time getting excited about calling it "Piracy" moving back to XP. Especially where you go from Vista home to XP home. Microsoft got their money...and the user finally has a Microsoft OS that is stable and fast enough for day to day use.
There both mythical nations like Canada. Harry Potter comes from the United Kingdom. Oliver Twist comes from England. Nobody comes from Canada.
You could look at this summary http://www.theregister.co.uk/2002/11/21/ms_paper_touts_unix/ or the actual Whitepaper http://www.securityoffice.net/mssecrets/hotmail.html.
MS wanted to remove the stain of running Hotmail on BSD. It took them years to do it. They were not able to throw enough money at the problem to get Windows to run on a stripped down kernel. As a point of pride MS wanted to get this done and even then, they had to admit at NT back in 99 was to complex for them to strip it down to a 10meg mini system. Or even a 50 meg mini system.
Sure you could have built Google on top of a MS OS but you would lose four things.
In 2007 I put my wifes computer and a friends computer on Ubuntu. Also a co-worker in tech support who wanted a system as tweaked as mine was for responding to support issues.
So in December 2006 there was one Linux desktop. Now in December 2007 there were 4 Linux desktops.
If 25% of the community introduce 3 or 4 people to using desktop Linux in year, it would double every year.
That may not be sustainable. But there are enough dedicated linux desktop folks at this point. I would believe that it could of happened in 2007.