I'd call that an extreme case of biting off too much at one time. XP in and of itself is a cultural change. Turn around and change the language as well is gonna complicate things more. Early XP at a company should be the only "new" thing being done at one time. Once the programmers are truly XP's, THEN you can switch other parts of the environment.
Also, there's enough missing in your description of this that would lead me to think that the company is blaming XP for a true LACK of design. There is still a design that needs to be followed, at the higher level, and an upper manager deciding which parts of that design get implemented in the XP way. Part of that design is in talking about how components done by individual pairs get integrated together again. That requires extreme communication at the early stages of work before you go through pairs together to "do this, do that, test it".
Software is still complex, as much as XP tries to hide that. Non-trivial software still requires division of responsibilities and agreement of component interfaces so that later component integration can take place with relative ease (e.g., again in the XP way with two programmers, one from each component being attached at the time)
Since XP requires extreme levels of communication and feedback, and the company was not achieving communication adequately, then its easily concluded that the company never really used XP, and therefore XP is not to blame.
In fact, most OpenSource 'C' code (we'll leave Perl out of it...), especially if it uses GNU libraries, ends up looking rather hideous by the time its released, and that can easily be blamed on one thing: Unix. Or is that many things, 'cause that's my point. Most OpenSource stuff has to deal with all the multiple versions of Unix out there, including Linux (including multiple versions of Linux), and though Autoconf is a great way to handle that, it leads to rather ugly code in the final deliverable, because of its heavy reliance on the pre-processor.
I'd think with sites out there like f*ckedcompany.com already doing this, you'd have better things to do than keep reporting on dying companies and services out there...
One could hope. But that may be unlikely. Again, "Not Invented Here" -- the developers who left the dying project might not go to the surviving one. They'd probably be sick of the whole thing and move on to something else entirely.
Hey, I never said I liked J2EE and ONE, only that Sun put them out, and M$'s.NET is a reaction to them. If ONE fails because of.NET, then M$ comes out a winner yet again, like they did when they cloned Netscape to make IE 3. If ONE falls flat on its own face, then M$ can cut work on.NET 'cause they know (after ONE's example) that the whole idea was garbage (M$'s done that before too -- in some cases the vaporware alone killed the competing product). Take your pick. I personally don't see the use of either of them, and plan on playing with a lot of the stuff from Jakarta in the next few months...
And what is an objective criteria? Application-development platforms are judged on something that varies greatly : developer opinion. Because that opinion varies greatly, the vendors of them try their damndest to bypass the developers and sell to project managers of companies instead, letting them mandate the platform. And certainly that's objective criteria that manager might use...but its not going to be the most informed because he's not the one who's going to have to use it.
Developers rarely respond well to "marketing". They respond by using the product, then judging "how much easier was my project because of this product?" against "how much did this thing cost, and do my end-users have to pay extra to use my product because I used this thing in it?"
The.NET clones have removed the cost factor (if they actually ever work), but at the same time, nothing M$ has done has shown that.NET itself will make anybody's development job easier.
Actually, as I stated before, Sun has their own environment they're developing, Sun ONE, and I belive it was announced before.NET..NET is a reactive strike against Sun just as its key language, C#, is a reactive strike against Java.
Then again, the division of effort may lead to both failing because neither can quite reach getting enough outside developers involved to move it forward at a pace that will keep up with M$'s future (expect it, 'cause its how they do things) consistent changes and updates (many incompatible with early versions -- again, its how they work so why should.NET be any different).
I take as a prime example the issue of the simple email client for GTK/GNOME. A glance @ the gnome software list shows 25 email clients. Do we really need that many? And are ANY of them solid/robust enough to put on someone's desktop and say "you can do anything you want with this that you could do with Outlook, and at the same time be safer than Outlook".
My opinion: no.
The "Not Invented Here" syndrome is still pretty rampant, and I feel it'll be the same between these two.NET clones as well (as the "PR Snafu" demonstrated), and that will likely kill both projects in the mid-range, so that neither survive in the long term when M$ really gets version 3.0 of.NET going (knowing again, that their 3.0 is always the first version of any M$ product that really actually works...).
Then again, by that point they may realize.NET is a crock of crap and have moved on completely --.NET is a strategic move to take on Sun and J2EE and ONE, not an effort to really change the world for the better).
It would be better for OpenSource to stop cloning stuff that already exists (or doesn't exist and has no real driving need to exist) and come up with its own killer app. Apache as a spokesman for OpenSource originality only goes so far. The world is waiting for something new, not a rehash of what's old, or a clone of something that isn't even done yet.
No I haven't "lost control". No, its not going to be seen the same on every browser, but standards do exist for a reason. I can (should) at least trust that the browser they use isn't gonna screw with the content of my page. If some package puts something else between my pages and their browser, then the user had better be darn well aware that it is doing it and what's "new" is not on my page. Content INCLUDES links.
E.g., the various CGI scripts out there that 'translate' pages, either to legit languages (babelfish), or to silly languages (using the old jive or swedish chef filters), but the URL is always tainted in that respect to show that this is not the real page.
If there isn't some indicator/reminder, then its changing my code and my content and may potentially slander my work (see my other replies to this story under "heck no").
Web content is copyrighted automatically, like all creations. Some things like the translators I consider fair use and don't get mad at. Some things like image blockers are fair use. Other things that change the links to advertisements are not. Someone else is making advertising money over MY content, and their advertising may or may not slander me and I have no way of knowing what it is unless I buy their service. That is something I can not allow. --
You know, you gotta get up real early if you want to get outta bed... (Groucho Marx)
Actually, I see from the article they do have a way to make sure my site isn't affected. Now the question is begged, will they support my request...
Also, some of my site is in a different (and shared) domain for technical reasons (lack of php support on the main site) -- can they respect my request for not tampering with my subpage ("/~acroyear/") on the shared domain, or will they only respect the domain owners (a major ISP with better things to do than argue with software like this)? --
You know, you gotta get up real early if you want to get outta bed... (Groucho Marx)
There's a difference. The copyright statutes refering to "first sale" apply to the physical artifact (e.g., the book). You can do what you want with that book, including destroy it or sell it...though that is viewed as "damage", and you're not gonna get much for it if you do try to sell it.
With MY web page, if you have software that changes its contents, the user may or may not have any idea what it SHOULD look like. They only see your over-linked version that will lead them to things they aren't looking for. If I have a link to some local DC band's official home page, and I'm explicitly saying "This link will go to the that band's home page", then having that link go ANYWHERE else is making me out to be a liar, regardless of whether or not the user approved the software that changed that link. That software puts my reputation as a reliable source of information at SEVERE risk, and I should have the right to defend my reputation from such slander. --
You know, you gotta get up real early if you want to get outta bed... (Groucho Marx)
Again, its a matter of interpretation. My entire HTML page for my web site is my content, in its HTML form. This to me includes the links. If I have a link, that's content. Albiet cheap content compared to paragraphs and stuff, but its something. In my case, my page is a descriptive index to other relevant pages (specifically celtic music events in the DC area), and having a link go somewhere else may cost that surfer the chance to learn about a group or event they might want to know about...
I don't want someone else looking at my page to see anything other than what I put in there. There's reasons I pay for my web hosting instead of just using a geocities-like service. --
You know, you gotta get up real early if you want to get outta bed... (Groucho Marx)
Someone surmised on the list that he's not even had contact with the Russian consulate, much less a decent bail hearing. So has anyone else tried to contact the Russian Embassy on his behalf to try to get an alternate press coverage (since the press seems to ignore geeks and keep it to geek humor, maybe a statement by the Russian Government will get the mainstream media's attention)? --
You know, you gotta get up real early if you want to get outta bed... (Groucho Marx)
Guilt is for a court of law to decide, though your comments on the constitutionality of it are spot on.
There is, however, another issue at stake. Its not just his being arrested for a crime whose constitutionality is questionable. Its the fact that his civil rights are SERIOUSLY being violated, and probably because he is a foreign national. He has not been granted bail or even a bail hearing (they keep saying they'll do that when they move him to San Jose, but that hasn't happened either) and he's been in jail for over 11 days. He's probably not been granted full counsel yet, and certainly has likely not been given the chance to talk to Russian diplomats (or else the diplomats would already be going public about protesting the unjustness of this). In other words, we're doing to him EVERYTHING we protest other countries (like China, or the Soviet Union (before the Fall)) have been doing to our citizens over the years.
Our constitution (the 5th ammendment) says that constitutional protection for due process applies to ALL PERSONS, not just to u.s. citizens (the 14th makes exceptions to states prosecuting cases, but does not make an exception for a federal prosecution). --
You know, you gotta get up real early if you want to get outta bed... (Groucho Marx)
a series that did explain itself as the story progressed.
I find that to be the case with a LOT of recent anime that's OAV or theater release -- they put so much into the action that very little goes into the characters, why the characters are who they are, why what they're doing has any importance, and whether or not you should care about them.
Having watched Yamato/Star Blazers, Robotech, etc, as a kid find that most recent anime is very hard to get into because there's very little to relate to. And its not because of cultural differences, is 'cause litterally there is nothing to relate to. A series (e.g., Ranma 1/2) gives time to properly introduce characters and relationships and give you a reason to want a relationship or a character to go one way or the other. OAVs and Movies that don't have series tie-ins tend to be too short and underdeveloped, character-wise, to give that reason to interact.
Its just action in the end. Even (to give non-anime references) Lethal Weapon and Die Hard, both "just action", gave you enough reason to want to follow the characters and support their part of the action. More appropraitely, contrast Akira to Mad Max -- both post-apacolyptic(sp), but with Mad Max, you usually found yourself supporting Max's attempts to change things / make things better. Akira (and most of its OAV clones) never did that for me -- I found nothing to care about, so I didn't care about the movie. The last anime movie that did was Vampire Hunter D.
--
You know, you gotta get up real early if you want to get outta bed... (Groucho Marx)
I tried playing via voice some infocom games (specifically, Enchanter) using WinFrotz and Dragon NaturallySpeaking.
Would have been fine, except Enchanter ONLY took "NE" and "northeast" to mean Go NorthEast (and same for NWSESW) and I couldn't get Dragon NS to think of NorthEast as one word...it kept separating them. And "Spell 'N','E'" didn't seem too much more successful either. I finally gave up on it. --
You know, you gotta get up real early if you want to get outta bed... (Groucho Marx)
No, but it WOULD be a violation of trademark if they included Sony's "Compact Disc Digital Audio" logo on the disc packaging anywhere. If it isn't compliant, it probably doesn't have the rights to use Sony's logo. Similarly, "cheaper" DVD players out there that can't play cdrs also don't display the sony logo, since cdrs normally follow the standard (Abiet as loosely as they can get away with). --
You know, you gotta get up real early if you want to get outta bed... (Groucho Marx)
There will be ways around that and hardware makers will upgrade their firmware to adapt. Remember old Atari and Apple games in the 80s and how they used bad sectors to prevent floppy copies? They got around that. Sometimes with bad data (e.g., the bootleg copy of Zork III for Atari was missing a paragraph of text), but most often things were just fine. --
You know, you gotta get up real early if you want to get outta bed... (Groucho Marx)
Its one thing to present something "new" to the competitive-programming community, but another to present something that's already been solved. If an 8-bit 6502 with 16 _K_ of memory could run a z3 machine and the degree of AI that the early Infocom games provided (on a single floppy, double-sided @ 720 K total space used), then a 32bit cell phone with a meg (much less the 16+ meg that are coming out in palms nowadays and even THAT's considered small by what _should_ be out there) could easily manage a z5-z6 inform-compiled game.
There's already several great languages for "reaction and daemon" based AI "characters" and no contest is gonna come up with something better than the systems that are out there 'cause they evolved over 10+ years to get to where they are. --
You know, you gotta get up real early if you want to get outta bed... (Groucho Marx)
Given the number of platforms it runs on now, and the fact that Sun wants a Java version soon, StarOffice is gonna fit that bill...
Either that or the other suggested remedy (M$ opens up and publishes ALL file formats and changes BEFORE the software that runs those changes is put on retail) will be pushed as part of the consent decree. Its the same sort of thing that the DoJ got for IBM back in the 60s... --
You know, you gotta get up real early if you want to get outta bed... (Groucho Marx)
Uh...lemme remind you -- almost EVERY scripting language (besides shells, and perl was labelled a "shell" language) was originally meant to be used to just add embedded scripting. Tcl/Tk was NEVER meant to actually write whole applications of 20-100Klocs. However, that's exactly what happens. People judge a scripting language based on its limitations to the extreme ends -- how much overhead is involved in the interpretor for "hello world", and how large a program can I really build just relying on the built-in libraries and still be fast enough to be useable.
As for C-like embedded scripting, ECMAScript is darn close (some java-like things such as some OO support, and every object has toString()), and Mozilla has embeddable interpretors of their Javascript implementation for both C and Java.
I prefer ECMA/JavaScript 'cause of its OO. Its not secure encapsulation (e.g., "information-hiding"), but it at least gives me encapsualtion.
Mind you, I'm still in the reading-stages of learning [PJ]ython, 'cause I haven't had the time to really write something yet. --
You know, you gotta get up real early if you want to get outta bed... (Groucho Marx)
uh...if that's the case, then THAT can now get appealed as well. A judge is supposed to decide the merits of a case (or an appeal) based on the evidence presented by the attorneys of the two sides, not by their own observations of the case.
To say "we find no evidence there was a problem" and then effectively "but there was a problem" is absolute garbage. The DOJ will probably appeal this...but they may hold onto that until after they see who the new lower-court judge will be first... --
You know, you gotta get up real early if you want to get outta bed... (Groucho Marx)
Exactly -- they're still guilty. Its only the penalty of being broken up that was overruled. --
You know, you gotta get up real early if you want to get outta bed... (Groucho Marx)
Dell has far vaster resources than VA and has an established corporate name and eventually would have stomped them into the dust
I agree. When the largest hardware vendor in the united states enters your market (in this case, Dell selling Linux pre-installed and semi-supported (support through linuxcare or redhat)) the effect is the same as when the largest software maker (M$) in the world enters your market for software you were selling. --
You know, you gotta get up real early if you want to get outta bed... (Groucho Marx)
Slashdot Mirror
I'd call that an extreme case of biting off too much at one time. XP in and of itself is a cultural change. Turn around and change the language as well is gonna complicate things more. Early XP at a company should be the only "new" thing being done at one time. Once the programmers are truly XP's, THEN you can switch other parts of the environment.
Also, there's enough missing in your description of this that would lead me to think that the company is blaming XP for a true LACK of design. There is still a design that needs to be followed, at the higher level, and an upper manager deciding which parts of that design get implemented in the XP way. Part of that design is in talking about how components done by individual pairs get integrated together again. That requires extreme communication at the early stages of work before you go through pairs together to "do this, do that, test it".
Software is still complex, as much as XP tries to hide that. Non-trivial software still requires division of responsibilities and agreement of component interfaces so that later component integration can take place with relative ease (e.g., again in the XP way with two programmers, one from each component being attached at the time)
Since XP requires extreme levels of communication and feedback, and the company was not achieving communication adequately, then its easily concluded that the company never really used XP, and therefore XP is not to blame.
In fact, most OpenSource 'C' code (we'll leave Perl out of it...), especially if it uses GNU libraries, ends up looking rather hideous by the time its released, and that can easily be blamed on one thing: Unix. Or is that many things, 'cause that's my point. Most OpenSource stuff has to deal with all the multiple versions of Unix out there, including Linux (including multiple versions of Linux), and though Autoconf is a great way to handle that, it leads to rather ugly code in the final deliverable, because of its heavy reliance on the pre-processor.
I'd think with sites out there like f*ckedcompany.com already doing this, you'd have better things to do than keep reporting on dying companies and services out there...
NeXT: The Future Never Happened
And I've been using M$ to represent that company for years now, before /.; Deal.
One could hope. But that may be unlikely. Again, "Not Invented Here" -- the developers who left the dying project might not go to the surviving one. They'd probably be sick of the whole thing and move on to something else entirely.
And what is an objective criteria? Application-development platforms are judged on something that varies greatly : developer opinion. Because that opinion varies greatly, the vendors of them try their damndest to bypass the developers and sell to project managers of companies instead, letting them mandate the platform. And certainly that's objective criteria that manager might use...but its not going to be the most informed because he's not the one who's going to have to use it.
Developers rarely respond well to "marketing". They respond by using the product, then judging "how much easier was my project because of this product?" against "how much did this thing cost, and do my end-users have to pay extra to use my product because I used this thing in it?"
The .NET clones have removed the cost factor (if they actually ever work), but at the same time, nothing M$ has done has shown that .NET itself will make anybody's development job easier.
Actually, as I stated before, Sun has their own environment they're developing, Sun ONE, and I belive it was announced before .NET. .NET is a reactive strike against Sun just as its key language, C#, is a reactive strike against Java.
I take as a prime example the issue of the simple email client for GTK/GNOME. A glance @ the gnome software list shows 25 email clients. Do we really need that many? And are ANY of them solid/robust enough to put on someone's desktop and say "you can do anything you want with this that you could do with Outlook, and at the same time be safer than Outlook".
My opinion: no.
The "Not Invented Here" syndrome is still pretty rampant, and I feel it'll be the same between these two .NET clones as well (as the "PR Snafu" demonstrated), and that will likely kill both projects in the mid-range, so that neither survive in the long term when M$ really gets version 3.0 of .NET going (knowing again, that their 3.0 is always the first version of any M$ product that really actually works...).
Then again, by that point they may realize .NET is a crock of crap and have moved on completely -- .NET is a strategic move to take on Sun and J2EE and ONE, not an effort to really change the world for the better).
It would be better for OpenSource to stop cloning stuff that already exists (or doesn't exist and has no real driving need to exist) and come up with its own killer app. Apache as a spokesman for OpenSource originality only goes so far. The world is waiting for something new, not a rehash of what's old, or a clone of something that isn't even done yet.
E.g., the various CGI scripts out there that 'translate' pages, either to legit languages (babelfish), or to silly languages (using the old jive or swedish chef filters), but the URL is always tainted in that respect to show that this is not the real page.
If there isn't some indicator/reminder, then its changing my code and my content and may potentially slander my work (see my other replies to this story under "heck no").
Web content is copyrighted automatically, like all creations. Some things like the translators I consider fair use and don't get mad at. Some things like image blockers are fair use. Other things that change the links to advertisements are not. Someone else is making advertising money over MY content, and their advertising may or may not slander me and I have no way of knowing what it is unless I buy their service. That is something I can not allow.
--
You know, you gotta get up real early if you want to get outta bed... (Groucho Marx)
Also, some of my site is in a different (and shared) domain for technical reasons (lack of php support on the main site) -- can they respect my request for not tampering with my subpage ("/~acroyear/") on the shared domain, or will they only respect the domain owners (a major ISP with better things to do than argue with software like this)?
--
You know, you gotta get up real early if you want to get outta bed... (Groucho Marx)
With MY web page, if you have software that changes its contents, the user may or may not have any idea what it SHOULD look like. They only see your over-linked version that will lead them to things they aren't looking for. If I have a link to some local DC band's official home page, and I'm explicitly saying "This link will go to the that band's home page", then having that link go ANYWHERE else is making me out to be a liar, regardless of whether or not the user approved the software that changed that link. That software puts my reputation as a reliable source of information at SEVERE risk, and I should have the right to defend my reputation from such slander.
--
You know, you gotta get up real early if you want to get outta bed... (Groucho Marx)
I don't want someone else looking at my page to see anything other than what I put in there. There's reasons I pay for my web hosting instead of just using a geocities-like service.
--
You know, you gotta get up real early if you want to get outta bed... (Groucho Marx)
Someone surmised on the list that he's not even had contact with the Russian consulate, much less a decent bail hearing. So has anyone else tried to contact the Russian Embassy on his behalf to try to get an alternate press coverage (since the press seems to ignore geeks and keep it to geek humor, maybe a statement by the Russian Government will get the mainstream media's attention)?
--
You know, you gotta get up real early if you want to get outta bed... (Groucho Marx)
There is, however, another issue at stake. Its not just his being arrested for a crime whose constitutionality is questionable. Its the fact that his civil rights are SERIOUSLY being violated, and probably because he is a foreign national. He has not been granted bail or even a bail hearing (they keep saying they'll do that when they move him to San Jose, but that hasn't happened either) and he's been in jail for over 11 days. He's probably not been granted full counsel yet, and certainly has likely not been given the chance to talk to Russian diplomats (or else the diplomats would already be going public about protesting the unjustness of this). In other words, we're doing to him EVERYTHING we protest other countries (like China, or the Soviet Union (before the Fall)) have been doing to our citizens over the years.
Our constitution (the 5th ammendment) says that constitutional protection for due process applies to ALL PERSONS, not just to u.s. citizens (the 14th makes exceptions to states prosecuting cases, but does not make an exception for a federal prosecution).
--
You know, you gotta get up real early if you want to get outta bed... (Groucho Marx)
I find that to be the case with a LOT of recent anime that's OAV or theater release -- they put so much into the action that very little goes into the characters, why the characters are who they are, why what they're doing has any importance, and whether or not you should care about them.
Having watched Yamato/Star Blazers, Robotech, etc, as a kid find that most recent anime is very hard to get into because there's very little to relate to. And its not because of cultural differences, is 'cause litterally there is nothing to relate to. A series (e.g., Ranma 1/2) gives time to properly introduce characters and relationships and give you a reason to want a relationship or a character to go one way or the other. OAVs and Movies that don't have series tie-ins tend to be too short and underdeveloped, character-wise, to give that reason to interact.
Its just action in the end. Even (to give non-anime references) Lethal Weapon and Die Hard, both "just action", gave you enough reason to want to follow the characters and support their part of the action. More appropraitely, contrast Akira to Mad Max -- both post-apacolyptic(sp), but with Mad Max, you usually found yourself supporting Max's attempts to change things / make things better. Akira (and most of its OAV clones) never did that for me -- I found nothing to care about, so I didn't care about the movie. The last anime movie that did was Vampire Hunter D.
--
You know, you gotta get up real early if you want to get outta bed... (Groucho Marx)
I tried playing via voice some infocom games (specifically, Enchanter) using WinFrotz and Dragon NaturallySpeaking.
Would have been fine, except Enchanter ONLY took "NE" and "northeast" to mean Go NorthEast (and same for NWSESW) and I couldn't get Dragon NS to think of NorthEast as one word...it kept separating them. And "Spell 'N','E'" didn't seem too much more successful either. I finally gave up on it.
--
You know, you gotta get up real early if you want to get outta bed... (Groucho Marx)
No, but it WOULD be a violation of trademark if they included Sony's "Compact Disc Digital Audio" logo on the disc packaging anywhere. If it isn't compliant, it probably doesn't have the rights to use Sony's logo. Similarly, "cheaper" DVD players out there that can't play cdrs also don't display the sony logo, since cdrs normally follow the standard (Abiet as loosely as they can get away with).
--
You know, you gotta get up real early if you want to get outta bed... (Groucho Marx)
There will be ways around that and hardware makers will upgrade their firmware to adapt. Remember old Atari and Apple games in the 80s and how they used bad sectors to prevent floppy copies? They got around that. Sometimes with bad data (e.g., the bootleg copy of Zork III for Atari was missing a paragraph of text), but most often things were just fine.
--
You know, you gotta get up real early if you want to get outta bed... (Groucho Marx)
There's already several great languages for "reaction and daemon" based AI "characters" and no contest is gonna come up with something better than the systems that are out there 'cause they evolved over 10+ years to get to where they are.
--
You know, you gotta get up real early if you want to get outta bed... (Groucho Marx)
Either that or the other suggested remedy (M$ opens up and publishes ALL file formats and changes BEFORE the software that runs those changes is put on retail) will be pushed as part of the consent decree. Its the same sort of thing that the DoJ got for IBM back in the 60s...
--
You know, you gotta get up real early if you want to get outta bed... (Groucho Marx)
As for C-like embedded scripting, ECMAScript is darn close (some java-like things such as some OO support, and every object has toString()), and Mozilla has embeddable interpretors of their Javascript implementation for both C and Java. I prefer ECMA/JavaScript 'cause of its OO. Its not secure encapsulation (e.g., "information-hiding"), but it at least gives me encapsualtion.
Mind you, I'm still in the reading-stages of learning [PJ]ython, 'cause I haven't had the time to really write something yet.
--
You know, you gotta get up real early if you want to get outta bed... (Groucho Marx)
To say "we find no evidence there was a problem" and then effectively "but there was a problem" is absolute garbage. The DOJ will probably appeal this...but they may hold onto that until after they see who the new lower-court judge will be first...
--
You know, you gotta get up real early if you want to get outta bed... (Groucho Marx)
Exactly -- they're still guilty. Its only the penalty of being broken up that was overruled.
--
You know, you gotta get up real early if you want to get outta bed... (Groucho Marx)
I agree. When the largest hardware vendor in the united states enters your market (in this case, Dell selling Linux pre-installed and semi-supported (support through linuxcare or redhat)) the effect is the same as when the largest software maker (M$) in the world enters your market for software you were selling.
--
You know, you gotta get up real early if you want to get outta bed... (Groucho Marx)