Plus they have a cash reservers that can last them 5 years of $0 in sales.
It isn't quite that straightforward.
Most MS stock is owned by it's employees who are all greedy human beings just like the rest of us.
The moment those cash reserves start dropping dramatically, those share prices will also drop and a whole heap of MS stock starts getting dumped onto the markets as each greedy person takes their money and runs.
MS is basically forced into this tactic in order to keep the cash reserves at that level to keep the stock prices up - this could be a very bad decision on the part of MS and its outcome all depends on whether or not its customers are going to sit there like sheep and do nothing or stop buying / renewing licenses in the future.
I hope people migrate to Linux from Windows but I only want them to do that because they see Linux as providing what they want, not because MS forced them to.
The mindset in the Open Souce community is that you take some responsibility yourself as a user, not hand it over to MS as is the case with their customers. Therefore, if you like a piece of OS software but want some new features, then you take the trouble to contact the development team for that software and tell them that, rather than sitting about waiting for it to happen.
People should always have a wide range of choice for software and if they choose an MS or OSS product, that's fine provided they've made that choice on the merits of what that software provides for them, not because a third party has forced them to make that decision.
The real issue here is not the price increases as they stand - it's basically the fact that it's a message from Microsoft to its customers, essentially saying to them "Use your influence to stop the government hassling us or we'll make you foot the cost of any legal action."
The fact is the MS is in a position that most other corporations would love to be in - not simply just being a monopoly but actually dictating to it's customers whatever it likes, rather than in most other industries when the customer has the power of choice and some influence over product pricing.
Whether this is good for Linux or not is irrelevant - the fact is that the user base MS has is no longer a customer but a dependant in the same way a drug addict needs a dealer - in other words, customers taking some control and forcing MS's hand.
What this needs is a few big MS customers to simply refuse to pay those license fees and to stop upgrades (and no, I'm not talking about just moving to Linux) - then there is some likelihood of vesting power back into the customers' hands such that MS products are bought based on their quality and pricing, rather than just because they are depended on.
It is very dangerous to allow a corporation to have this much influence & power over its customers - if the customers just "lay down and die" now, then this kind of event will happen more frequently as MS gets more confident in its bullying tactics. This will get *much* worse unless people start acting now.
Incidentally, before anyone accuses me of Linux zealotism, my attitude always has been that Linux's continued success should be based on the postivie aspects of delivering what people want rather than MS negativity forcing people to migrate to it.
In this case, migration to Linux is an option but hitting MS in its corporate wallet is what is needed to counter this action - users should just continue using the MS software they have and not upgrade. Corporate users should look at the licenses they have a maybe start cutting back on Office licenses, possibly handing out Open Office to users who don't need the full capabilities of MS Office.
These are actions that can be taken that will not necessarily affect the user environment greatly but that will send a message to MS that the bullying must now stop.
Any member of the male species that has to be a member of a gang and carry a baseball bat around with him obviously has a personality issue due to possessing miniscule genitalia.
It follows that such males cannot therefore contribute easily to the human reproductive cycle and therefore the continuation of the species - so I say let them get on with it, it's just natural selection in action.
Just give the last man standing a mop and a trashcan and let him clear up all the bits afterwards...
Assuming that a parallel universe exists for every conbination of every event that has occurred within our own universe, then if anybody manages to find these parallel universes and a way to get across to them, then please give me a call:
1. The universe here Bill Gates' computer science tutor at university said "That's a crap piece of code, Bill. I'm putting you in the law degree class."
2. The universe where Jon Bon Jovi hijacked Stevie Ray Vaughan's plane and got killed instead.
3. The universe where Darl McBride wasn't dropped on his head as an infant.
4. The universe where whenever you post something off-topic to Slashdot you get disconnected and...
I don't WANT a PC. I want a console where I put a game in and play it immediately.
Good answer - cannot argue with that point.
Besides the thing is that even if you have twice the power in the PC you won't get twice as impressive games.
Agreed. But you have twice the power for the overheads for emulation and for standard PC games - therefore you have greater choice.
PC games are coded for the lowest common denominator (even if it allows for some scalability) whereas the developers know exactly what they can get out of an Xbox and can use it to its fullest - which in the end results in more impressive games with steady framerates and great graphics.
You're right about games being optimised for a specific platform but I think you've over-generalised the PC a little. Unsteady framerates can be caused by anything from a slow CPU to bad set of drivers to a virus killer running in the background - that's down to user maintenance.
I appreciate "ease of use" is a lot of the issue with consoles but the problem I have with the X-Box is that it is still just a cut-down PC with more restrictions on it.
Yes, precisely. Which is why I phrased the question in the first place - to get some intelligent cohesive answers to my intelligent cohesive questions from some X-Box users.
Thanks for your answer - you many now consider me slightly less ignorant with regards to the X-Box.
Please stop with the ranting, give your brain chance to work and read what I said.
The majority of X-Box games, certainly when I look on the shelves of the local game store, have been ported to or from the PC - Medal Of Honour, Splinter Cell, Deus Ex, Armed & Dangerous etc. Yes, a minority of titles are specific to the X-Box bit not many.
All games I own on the GameCube are specific to the platform (or at least not PC ports) - Metroid Prime, Monkey Ball, Rogue Squadron, etc. That's why I own a GameCube and a PC.
The point of my argument is that, to my knowledge, the X-Box has no unique titles that are not available on the PC that make it worthwhile buying one over a PC - in the longer term, the X-Box costs more to continue playing games on, most of which you can play on the PC anyway. Plus, with a micro PC, there is little difference in size and more flexibility.
The issue is not whether I hate Microsoft or not - it's the fact that the X-Box offers a similar set of titles to the PC with less flexibility.
I'd like to see alot more games released that aren't made to compete graphics wise with todays games. Maybe a deal with Sega where all the old Genisis games can be bought via the Live service and played with an official emulator.
It won't happen but, there again, the retrogaming scene is perfectly good left as it is anyway.
You need to remember that games companies are businesses, first and foremost, and they're much more inclined to produce new games on modern platforms which they can sell for 40-50 Euros/dollars/pounds at a time rather than revamp older games, even via emulation, which people are not going to be willing to pay more that a couple Euros/dollars/pounds for.
Added to that, the further back you go in computer/console gaming history, the more of a legal quagmire it is - facts like whether the original author or the publisher of a game own the rights to its distribution means its very difficult, and expensive, for games companies to sort this out.
At the moment, with the retro scene on the Internet, authors and games companies seem to be happy to ignore "free" distribution of old games roms and images provided that the platforms aren't sold anymore and no-one else plans to make any money from it, even to the point where many authors and publishers have made this stuff legally free to distribute.
The time when an individual or company makes a serious attempt at making money from retrogames is the time when the whole scene will collapse - because at that point all the lawyers will descend like vultures to tear everyone else apart for a bite of the cherry.
Games sales are as bouyant as ever, freee retrogaming harms no-one so just leave it as it is.
We OSS users have the best of both worlds - since we're invariably people that care about what we run on our computers, we're normally knowledgeable enough to run OSS first but run Windows for all the stuff that OSS doesn't do.
You, like countless others, have fallen into the trap of believing that OSS is out to displace Microsoft and commercial software, entirely the worng viewpoint.
OSS is about having as much choice as possible, about using open standards and about having access to good software despite (possibly) not having enough money to buy commercial software - this only benefits commercial software houses because people get into the mindset of running free software, rather than pirated commercial software.
OSS games will never keep pace with commercial games simply because commercial games software houses have the budgets to hire graphics artists, animators and coders equivalent (sometimes) to the budgets of many movie producers - OSS games are dependent upon the free time given by the same people, obviously much smaller.
I don't see why licensing 500+ cars makes for this being classified as a good racing game alone.
I hear a lot of comments from friends that a particular racing game (on whatever platform) has "excellent and realistic handling" as they zoom around a racing circuit in a Porsche - but then I look in their driveway & see a boring saloon car and think to myself "but how do you actually know how realistic the handling is?"
I'm not a racing game nut though I've always liked the Need For Speed series on the PC - and while I've never driven a Porsche (to me a car is a piece of metal with for wheels, a CD player and air-conditioning!), I'd hope that the NFS - Porsche Unleashed game was "realistic" purely because it was limited to about 9 Porsche car models only and that EA had done their research before coding it.
I know the GT series is highly rated but, at the end of it all, entertainment value, not realism, is what makes a racing game good.
I have to admit that recently I've been going back to some of the old classics via emulation and there are still hundreds of old games that are worth firing up again for another spin - I remember Jumping Jack very well, recently I've been playing Highway Encounter on a ZX Spectrum emulator and Deuteros & Speedball 2 on an Amiga emulator.
To be honest, the PC games scene is usually pretty bland until around Christmas time and even then, the ratio of true classic games against the number of actual releases is very small these days.
I don't own an X-Box (and never will as long as it has a Microsoft logo on it) but I did spend an afternoon playing Halo with a buddy - I enjoyed it but I can't say it did as much for me as Half-Life or Unreal Tournament 2003/2004 still does for me.
As to the X-Box, no matter how I look at it or think about it, it's still nothing more (to me) than a cut-down PC from about 2 years ago and I don't understand why it has sold in the volume it has - after all, by spending double the price of an X-Box, you can get a micro-case PC with twice the power, have Internet & application usability as well and by the time you've bought a few X-Box games, you've spent more money than on a micro PC.
Please note that these are the perceptions of someone now officially "middle-aged" although I do own a GameCube and GBA, the former because there are some good games that will never get ported to the PC and the latter because of portability & travelling.
But Halo has been done for the PC now and while I suppose there are a few more "X-Box only" good games, I still don't understand the justifications for buying one.
If you've bought one and like it then good luck to you but I'd honestly love to know the appeal it has over a micro PC that would still sit beneath the TV, have a TV-out video card and with a DVD drive will happily play movies also - as well as letting you run MAME (without a hardware hack) and countless other good freebie games from the Internet.
...a sharp-dressed Californian man in a designer suit with absolutely no knowledge of computers came up with the "next revolution in Internet software" today.
However, business analysts were cautious as it is still likely that the sales people will lie through their teeth to get as many customers as possible to buy this product and that software engineers will still be descending onto each installation in their droves to debug major problems the day after the system goes live.
Move along, nothing to see here apart from "man in smart suit speak with forked tongue".
It would just be so *nice* if we could all get organised enough such that for 24 hours only every person on this planet did not buy, rent or pay to view anything with a copyright on it - no orders from Amazon, record stores empty, no-one queueing for cinema tickets...
Imagine the effect that action would have in the boardrooms of the RIAA, Sony, etc.
A lot of the comments here seem to be congratulating MS for making this decision of allowing owners of illegal copies of XP to download SP2. There are pluses and negatives to this decision which have already been covered in previous comments.
However, some people seem to be under the illusion that MS have made a charitable gesture to those users and almost sanctioned the use of pirated copies of XP in the future - this is not the case.
Everything that MS does is purely for financial reasons, nothing more. The fact is that their reputation has taken a beating recently with regard to worms & viruses and, as many people have already said, it makes sense to allow all users to apply updates to limit the spread of those across the Internet in the future.
However, MS's ultimate aims are to sell more copies of XP and deep down MS knows full well that the struggle to keep Windows in and Linux out of the desktop is going to get more and more difficult over the next few years - so from a financial perspective, it makes far more sense to keep all users working with MS products now (and taking a financial hit as a result) rather than risking them seeking an alternative OS. This decision is therefore purely a business one, not a charitable one.
Finally, I also believe that the people here who are proudly proclaiming some kind of victory because they can continue to run updated copies of illegal XP installations, need to grow up and join the world of adults.
Piracy achieves nothing apart from making things bad for everyone. Any piece of commercial software released today has a price that factors in some assumptions based on the amount of illegal copies that will be run of it - the upshot is that the price is higher than it should be and honest users suffer.
A lot of people need to grow up out of this childish "must have" attitude. The only way to force the hand of any business is to hit them where it hurts - in their profits. In other words, if people don't want to pay the full price for a product, they should contact the vendor or manufacturer and tell them exactly why their product is overpriced and and why they will not use it, rather than simply copying it. The same goes for a product that restricts rights to fair usage - don't use it or buy it if you don't like what it does to your freedoms.
Pirates are nothing more than cowardly sheep who are ultimately responsible for driving prices up and allowing all manner of restrictive technologies to get in through the back door. In a few years time, when these same people still need their Windows "fix", they may not be congratulating MS so loudly when they find that all their data is DRMed and the ability to copy & share data, something they took for granted previously, has disappeared.
Go take a look at HP's share prices recently and then you'll understand who's responsible.
I worked for Lucent during the Fiorina years and I saw it decline from a great company to one that was brought down to its knees - sure, the dotcom bust was part of the reason but Fiorina's "dubious" business practices didn't help. Whatever anyone says, she was kicked off the Lucent board and how she ever got to HP is beyond my comprehension - well, one idea springs to mind but it involves a casting couch.
I hope Lucent pick themselves up again - the heavy investment in 3G technology did not help their recovery - as they have the Bell Labs heritage (along with Avaya) and a more rounded workforce than IBM, albeit much smaller.
IBM is very good with server technologies and web integration stuff but Lucent has the better telecoms and networks skills and is probably well placed to offer services in those areas.
As for HP the sooner they kick out Fiorina, the better - I wouldn't trust that woman to run a hotdog stall, let alone a global company.
The "real world" is what you and I make of it, my friend, not what is determined by some money-grabbing corporations.
As the consumer, you ALWAYS have the power of choice - either to hand over your money or to keep hold of it.
If enough people don't hand over their money, the seller has to sit down and listen to those people or go out of business, that's the principle of what I am saying.
Saying to yourself "Well, they do it everyone else so they might as well do it for me" is a defeatist attitude that lets them get away with it and everything worse for the rest of us.
When you are spending that kind of money, you shop around carefully for something that fits your exact needs - I find it very difficult to believe no reputable laptop vendor would sell him XP Professional pre-installed.
It's a good argument you make but it all depends on having a clear definition of "fair use".
I believe "fair use" to be any process that allows you to continue to use a product personally once you have paid for it once.
So, for example, it's fair use to make a backup copy of a software CD for day-to-day use while keeping the original CD safe in storage.
With a music CD, I consider it unfair to have to pay for a piece of music in MP3 (or other data) format when I already own that same piece of music on CD and that fair use is therefore maintaining the right to convert that music to whatever format I like.
Copying a CD (software or music) for someone else to use is NOT fair use because you buy the right to fair use by buying the product in the first place. This scenario, therefore, falls within the legal control of the copyright holder to enforce.
As to your last statement, a copyrighted work becomes public domain when the copyright expires - although I do agree that, in the majority of cases, the copyright is held for far too long a period.
Hotfixes my ass, let's see one OS from MS where quality is something one would expect from multibillion dollar company with thousands of developers.
Unfortunately, though you make some valid points, you need to put a "business head" on.
Microsoft do not care about making a secure, stable OS - they just care about making money, just like any other business.
If they predict that it will cost them, say, $1,000,000 in R&D time to develop a fix for a bug but implementing that fix will only generate, say, $500,000 of profit, they will not write that fix - it makes NO business sense to.
Let's see one modern MS OS (for x86 not PDAs!) where standard supported minimum install is below 20Mb
But what's the criteria for that "standard"? Some people wants an OS with media players and web browsers included, others want an OS with a kernel and a few commands to run, say, a webserver.
If you want that sort of functionality in an OS then you ARE talking about customisation, not standard and therefore it's up to you to strip out what you don't want.
Sure, Linux will run in 20MB perfectly easily, there's even a tool out there on the Internet to run Windows 98 in about 5-6MB of disk space but you have to learn to strip out what you don't want yourself - whatever you might think, computing is STILL about having to learn how OSes fit together yourself, not simply expecting someone to make it and sell it to you the way you want it out of the box.
Okay, then "NO", I do not believe they should provide updates to pirated software users.
I believe they always WILL provide those updates (or at least not police update downloads as tightly as they could) because a whole heap of pirate users running patched versions of your product is better than for your image than them running insecure unpatched versions.
But from a business perspective, why should any company create a support infrastructure for people who pirate their software? I myself an in a hardware/software support role and I have a job because enough legitimate customers pay for software and support contracts.
Also, speaking as a business, why should I care whether my product is disastrous for the Internet or not? I only care about selling products and contracts and that my product has a good reputation in the marketplace - no different to Shell or BP just wanting to sell fuel and not giving a damn about the effects of their products on the environment - it's not morally right, sure, but from a business perspective it makes no sense to care about anything that costs your business money unless it brings in more money.
When i ordered my laptop i HAD to buy windows XP HOME with the package
You HAD to do nothing. You SHOULD have bought your laptop elsewhere and explained to the original vendor you were not buying their product because XP Home was installed and you did not want to pay for XP Home. Then, if a lot more people did that, the laptop vendor would realise that to stay in business, he needs to give his customers what they want.
Instead, what you did, was got screwed over by the laptop maker and Microsoft because most other people do exactly the same thing you do.
Things change for the better because you take direct positive action BEFORE handing over your money rather than whining AFTER you've handed it over.
Like it's already the case with the Enterprise products from SuSE (and RH, I presume).
I do so like arguing with people whose sole experience with Linux is based on hearsay and what they read on the Internet.:-)
Anyway, to correct you - you can download free versions of SuSE, Red Hat, Mandrake, etc. from the appropriate web sites; you can then download (probably limited) updates from their sites or get what you need elsewhere on the Internet.
You can also pay these companies for service contracts and get everything you need from them that way. The choice is yours because that's how it is with Linux.
But it would bring a bit more honesty to the debate of the cost of running Windows vs. Linux/BSD;-)
There is no debate because debate assumes two sides interested in arguing a point. The Linux community does not care about "TCO" because there are far too many variables to put forward a valid comparison anyway - for example, what you spend on supporting any OS depends on what in-house skills you do or do not have.
"Cost of running" is simply a Micrsoft marketing ploy to sell more of their products, nothing more. Let's face it, they can hardly make Windows - Linux comparisons on the security or stability issues, so they might as well go for the "Windows is cheaper" option:-)
SuSE is (currently) very lax with regards to the licensing of their Enterprise-products. They have a "We trust you not to do silly things"-attitude.
SuSE does not make money making a Linux distro, it makes money from support contracts and Linux deployments. It therefore does not have too many concerns about who runs their distro unless they can sell services with it. Standard business practice.
Linux lesson ended for today - thank you for your time...
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It isn't quite that straightforward.
Most MS stock is owned by it's employees who are all greedy human beings just like the rest of us.
The moment those cash reserves start dropping dramatically, those share prices will also drop and a whole heap of MS stock starts getting dumped onto the markets as each greedy person takes their money and runs.
MS is basically forced into this tactic in order to keep the cash reserves at that level to keep the stock prices up - this could be a very bad decision on the part of MS and its outcome all depends on whether or not its customers are going to sit there like sheep and do nothing or stop buying / renewing licenses in the future.
The mindset in the Open Souce community is that you take some responsibility yourself as a user, not hand it over to MS as is the case with their customers. Therefore, if you like a piece of OS software but want some new features, then you take the trouble to contact the development team for that software and tell them that, rather than sitting about waiting for it to happen.
People should always have a wide range of choice for software and if they choose an MS or OSS product, that's fine provided they've made that choice on the merits of what that software provides for them, not because a third party has forced them to make that decision.
The fact is the MS is in a position that most other corporations would love to be in - not simply just being a monopoly but actually dictating to it's customers whatever it likes, rather than in most other industries when the customer has the power of choice and some influence over product pricing.
Whether this is good for Linux or not is irrelevant - the fact is that the user base MS has is no longer a customer but a dependant in the same way a drug addict needs a dealer - in other words, customers taking some control and forcing MS's hand.
What this needs is a few big MS customers to simply refuse to pay those license fees and to stop upgrades (and no, I'm not talking about just moving to Linux) - then there is some likelihood of vesting power back into the customers' hands such that MS products are bought based on their quality and pricing, rather than just because they are depended on.
It is very dangerous to allow a corporation to have this much influence & power over its customers - if the customers just "lay down and die" now, then this kind of event will happen more frequently as MS gets more confident in its bullying tactics. This will get *much* worse unless people start acting now.
Incidentally, before anyone accuses me of Linux zealotism, my attitude always has been that Linux's continued success should be based on the postivie aspects of delivering what people want rather than MS negativity forcing people to migrate to it.
In this case, migration to Linux is an option but hitting MS in its corporate wallet is what is needed to counter this action - users should just continue using the MS software they have and not upgrade. Corporate users should look at the licenses they have a maybe start cutting back on Office licenses, possibly handing out Open Office to users who don't need the full capabilities of MS Office.
These are actions that can be taken that will not necessarily affect the user environment greatly but that will send a message to MS that the bullying must now stop.
It follows that such males cannot therefore contribute easily to the human reproductive cycle and therefore the continuation of the species - so I say let them get on with it, it's just natural selection in action.
Just give the last man standing a mop and a trashcan and let him clear up all the bits afterwards...
1. The universe here Bill Gates' computer science tutor at university said "That's a crap piece of code, Bill. I'm putting you in the law degree class."
2. The universe where Jon Bon Jovi hijacked Stevie Ray Vaughan's plane and got killed instead.
3. The universe where Darl McBride wasn't dropped on his head as an infant.
4. The universe where whenever you post something off-topic to Slashdot you get disconnected and...
[CLICK]
Good answer - cannot argue with that point.
Besides the thing is that even if you have twice the power in the PC you won't get twice as impressive games.
Agreed. But you have twice the power for the overheads for emulation and for standard PC games - therefore you have greater choice.
PC games are coded for the lowest common denominator (even if it allows for some scalability) whereas the developers know exactly what they can get out of an Xbox and can use it to its fullest - which in the end results in more impressive games with steady framerates and great graphics.
You're right about games being optimised for a specific platform but I think you've over-generalised the PC a little. Unsteady framerates can be caused by anything from a slow CPU to bad set of drivers to a virus killer running in the background - that's down to user maintenance.
I appreciate "ease of use" is a lot of the issue with consoles but the problem I have with the X-Box is that it is still just a cut-down PC with more restrictions on it.
Yes, precisely. Which is why I phrased the question in the first place - to get some intelligent cohesive answers to my intelligent cohesive questions from some X-Box users.
Thanks for your answer - you many now consider me slightly less ignorant with regards to the X-Box.
Doomed to failure though. Too many people know about Flash2Advance cartridges and existing emulated NES roms.
The SNES might be more successful because the current SNES emulation on GBA is slow but the NES is about perfect.
The majority of X-Box games, certainly when I look on the shelves of the local game store, have been ported to or from the PC - Medal Of Honour, Splinter Cell, Deus Ex, Armed & Dangerous etc. Yes, a minority of titles are specific to the X-Box bit not many.
All games I own on the GameCube are specific to the platform (or at least not PC ports) - Metroid Prime, Monkey Ball, Rogue Squadron, etc. That's why I own a GameCube and a PC.
The point of my argument is that, to my knowledge, the X-Box has no unique titles that are not available on the PC that make it worthwhile buying one over a PC - in the longer term, the X-Box costs more to continue playing games on, most of which you can play on the PC anyway. Plus, with a micro PC, there is little difference in size and more flexibility.
The issue is not whether I hate Microsoft or not - it's the fact that the X-Box offers a similar set of titles to the PC with less flexibility.
It won't happen but, there again, the retrogaming scene is perfectly good left as it is anyway.
You need to remember that games companies are businesses, first and foremost, and they're much more inclined to produce new games on modern platforms which they can sell for 40-50 Euros/dollars/pounds at a time rather than revamp older games, even via emulation, which people are not going to be willing to pay more that a couple Euros/dollars/pounds for.
Added to that, the further back you go in computer/console gaming history, the more of a legal quagmire it is - facts like whether the original author or the publisher of a game own the rights to its distribution means its very difficult, and expensive, for games companies to sort this out.
At the moment, with the retro scene on the Internet, authors and games companies seem to be happy to ignore "free" distribution of old games roms and images provided that the platforms aren't sold anymore and no-one else plans to make any money from it, even to the point where many authors and publishers have made this stuff legally free to distribute.
The time when an individual or company makes a serious attempt at making money from retrogames is the time when the whole scene will collapse - because at that point all the lawyers will descend like vultures to tear everyone else apart for a bite of the cherry.
Games sales are as bouyant as ever, freee retrogaming harms no-one so just leave it as it is.
We OSS users have the best of both worlds - since we're invariably people that care about what we run on our computers, we're normally knowledgeable enough to run OSS first but run Windows for all the stuff that OSS doesn't do.
You, like countless others, have fallen into the trap of believing that OSS is out to displace Microsoft and commercial software, entirely the worng viewpoint.
OSS is about having as much choice as possible, about using open standards and about having access to good software despite (possibly) not having enough money to buy commercial software - this only benefits commercial software houses because people get into the mindset of running free software, rather than pirated commercial software.
OSS games will never keep pace with commercial games simply because commercial games software houses have the budgets to hire graphics artists, animators and coders equivalent (sometimes) to the budgets of many movie producers - OSS games are dependent upon the free time given by the same people, obviously much smaller.
I hear a lot of comments from friends that a particular racing game (on whatever platform) has "excellent and realistic handling" as they zoom around a racing circuit in a Porsche - but then I look in their driveway & see a boring saloon car and think to myself "but how do you actually know how realistic the handling is?"
I'm not a racing game nut though I've always liked the Need For Speed series on the PC - and while I've never driven a Porsche (to me a car is a piece of metal with for wheels, a CD player and air-conditioning!), I'd hope that the NFS - Porsche Unleashed game was "realistic" purely because it was limited to about 9 Porsche car models only and that EA had done their research before coding it.
I know the GT series is highly rated but, at the end of it all, entertainment value, not realism, is what makes a racing game good.
To be honest, the PC games scene is usually pretty bland until around Christmas time and even then, the ratio of true classic games against the number of actual releases is very small these days.
As to the X-Box, no matter how I look at it or think about it, it's still nothing more (to me) than a cut-down PC from about 2 years ago and I don't understand why it has sold in the volume it has - after all, by spending double the price of an X-Box, you can get a micro-case PC with twice the power, have Internet & application usability as well and by the time you've bought a few X-Box games, you've spent more money than on a micro PC.
Please note that these are the perceptions of someone now officially "middle-aged" although I do own a GameCube and GBA, the former because there are some good games that will never get ported to the PC and the latter because of portability & travelling.
But Halo has been done for the PC now and while I suppose there are a few more "X-Box only" good games, I still don't understand the justifications for buying one.
If you've bought one and like it then good luck to you but I'd honestly love to know the appeal it has over a micro PC that would still sit beneath the TV, have a TV-out video card and with a DVD drive will happily play movies also - as well as letting you run MAME (without a hardware hack) and countless other good freebie games from the Internet.
However, business analysts were cautious as it is still likely that the sales people will lie through their teeth to get as many customers as possible to buy this product and that software engineers will still be descending onto each installation in their droves to debug major problems the day after the system goes live.
Move along, nothing to see here apart from "man in smart suit speak with forked tongue".
Imagine the effect that action would have in the boardrooms of the RIAA, Sony, etc.
However, some people seem to be under the illusion that MS have made a charitable gesture to those users and almost sanctioned the use of pirated copies of XP in the future - this is not the case.
Everything that MS does is purely for financial reasons, nothing more. The fact is that their reputation has taken a beating recently with regard to worms & viruses and, as many people have already said, it makes sense to allow all users to apply updates to limit the spread of those across the Internet in the future.
However, MS's ultimate aims are to sell more copies of XP and deep down MS knows full well that the struggle to keep Windows in and Linux out of the desktop is going to get more and more difficult over the next few years - so from a financial perspective, it makes far more sense to keep all users working with MS products now (and taking a financial hit as a result) rather than risking them seeking an alternative OS. This decision is therefore purely a business one, not a charitable one.
Finally, I also believe that the people here who are proudly proclaiming some kind of victory because they can continue to run updated copies of illegal XP installations, need to grow up and join the world of adults.
Piracy achieves nothing apart from making things bad for everyone. Any piece of commercial software released today has a price that factors in some assumptions based on the amount of illegal copies that will be run of it - the upshot is that the price is higher than it should be and honest users suffer.
A lot of people need to grow up out of this childish "must have" attitude. The only way to force the hand of any business is to hit them where it hurts - in their profits. In other words, if people don't want to pay the full price for a product, they should contact the vendor or manufacturer and tell them exactly why their product is overpriced and and why they will not use it, rather than simply copying it. The same goes for a product that restricts rights to fair usage - don't use it or buy it if you don't like what it does to your freedoms.
Pirates are nothing more than cowardly sheep who are ultimately responsible for driving prices up and allowing all manner of restrictive technologies to get in through the back door. In a few years time, when these same people still need their Windows "fix", they may not be congratulating MS so loudly when they find that all their data is DRMed and the ability to copy & share data, something they took for granted previously, has disappeared.
#!/bin/bash
#
# Pizza Customiser Script
#
grep pepperoni MeatFeast.txt >> MyPizza
grep chillis Inferno.txt >> MyPizza
grep mushrooms Farmhouse.txt >> MyPizza
grep sausauge Italiano.txt >> MyPizza
mail orders@dominos.co.uk MyPizza
#
Easy, huh?
I worked for Lucent during the Fiorina years and I saw it decline from a great company to one that was brought down to its knees - sure, the dotcom bust was part of the reason but Fiorina's "dubious" business practices didn't help. Whatever anyone says, she was kicked off the Lucent board and how she ever got to HP is beyond my comprehension - well, one idea springs to mind but it involves a casting couch.
I hope Lucent pick themselves up again - the heavy investment in 3G technology did not help their recovery - as they have the Bell Labs heritage (along with Avaya) and a more rounded workforce than IBM, albeit much smaller.
IBM is very good with server technologies and web integration stuff but Lucent has the better telecoms and networks skills and is probably well placed to offer services in those areas.
As for HP the sooner they kick out Fiorina, the better - I wouldn't trust that woman to run a hotdog stall, let alone a global company.
The "real world" is what you and I make of it, my friend, not what is determined by some money-grabbing corporations.
As the consumer, you ALWAYS have the power of choice - either to hand over your money or to keep hold of it.
If enough people don't hand over their money, the seller has to sit down and listen to those people or go out of business, that's the principle of what I am saying.
Saying to yourself "Well, they do it everyone else so they might as well do it for me" is a defeatist attitude that lets them get away with it and everything worse for the rest of us.
When you are spending that kind of money, you shop around carefully for something that fits your exact needs - I find it very difficult to believe no reputable laptop vendor would sell him XP Professional pre-installed.
I believe "fair use" to be any process that allows you to continue to use a product personally once you have paid for it once.
So, for example, it's fair use to make a backup copy of a software CD for day-to-day use while keeping the original CD safe in storage.
With a music CD, I consider it unfair to have to pay for a piece of music in MP3 (or other data) format when I already own that same piece of music on CD and that fair use is therefore maintaining the right to convert that music to whatever format I like.
Copying a CD (software or music) for someone else to use is NOT fair use because you buy the right to fair use by buying the product in the first place. This scenario, therefore, falls within the legal control of the copyright holder to enforce.
As to your last statement, a copyrighted work becomes public domain when the copyright expires - although I do agree that, in the majority of cases, the copyright is held for far too long a period.
Unfortunately, though you make some valid points, you need to put a "business head" on.
Microsoft do not care about making a secure, stable OS - they just care about making money, just like any other business.
If they predict that it will cost them, say, $1,000,000 in R&D time to develop a fix for a bug but implementing that fix will only generate, say, $500,000 of profit, they will not write that fix - it makes NO business sense to.
Let's see one modern MS OS (for x86 not PDAs!) where standard supported minimum install is below 20Mb
But what's the criteria for that "standard"? Some people wants an OS with media players and web browsers included, others want an OS with a kernel and a few commands to run, say, a webserver.
If you want that sort of functionality in an OS then you ARE talking about customisation, not standard and therefore it's up to you to strip out what you don't want.
Sure, Linux will run in 20MB perfectly easily, there's even a tool out there on the Internet to run Windows 98 in about 5-6MB of disk space but you have to learn to strip out what you don't want yourself - whatever you might think, computing is STILL about having to learn how OSes fit together yourself, not simply expecting someone to make it and sell it to you the way you want it out of the box.
I believe they always WILL provide those updates (or at least not police update downloads as tightly as they could) because a whole heap of pirate users running patched versions of your product is better than for your image than them running insecure unpatched versions.
But from a business perspective, why should any company create a support infrastructure for people who pirate their software? I myself an in a hardware/software support role and I have a job because enough legitimate customers pay for software and support contracts.
Also, speaking as a business, why should I care whether my product is disastrous for the Internet or not? I only care about selling products and contracts and that my product has a good reputation in the marketplace - no different to Shell or BP just wanting to sell fuel and not giving a damn about the effects of their products on the environment - it's not morally right, sure, but from a business perspective it makes no sense to care about anything that costs your business money unless it brings in more money.
You HAD to do nothing. You SHOULD have bought your laptop elsewhere and explained to the original vendor you were not buying their product because XP Home was installed and you did not want to pay for XP Home. Then, if a lot more people did that, the laptop vendor would realise that to stay in business, he needs to give his customers what they want.
Instead, what you did, was got screwed over by the laptop maker and Microsoft because most other people do exactly the same thing you do.
Things change for the better because you take direct positive action BEFORE handing over your money rather than whining AFTER you've handed it over.
I do so like arguing with people whose sole experience with Linux is based on hearsay and what they read on the Internet. :-)
Anyway, to correct you - you can download free versions of SuSE, Red Hat, Mandrake, etc. from the appropriate web sites; you can then download (probably limited) updates from their sites or get what you need elsewhere on the Internet.
You can also pay these companies for service contracts and get everything you need from them that way. The choice is yours because that's how it is with Linux.
But it would bring a bit more honesty to the debate of the cost of running Windows vs. Linux/BSD ;-)
There is no debate because debate assumes two sides interested in arguing a point. The Linux community does not care about "TCO" because there are far too many variables to put forward a valid comparison anyway - for example, what you spend on supporting any OS depends on what in-house skills you do or do not have.
"Cost of running" is simply a Micrsoft marketing ploy to sell more of their products, nothing more. Let's face it, they can hardly make Windows - Linux comparisons on the security or stability issues, so they might as well go for the "Windows is cheaper" option :-)
SuSE is (currently) very lax with regards to the licensing of their Enterprise-products. They have a "We trust you not to do silly things"-attitude.
SuSE does not make money making a Linux distro, it makes money from support contracts and Linux deployments. It therefore does not have too many concerns about who runs their distro unless they can sell services with it. Standard business practice.
Linux lesson ended for today - thank you for your time...