Oh what a time it was. First...I like to play the market. I made a lot of money for myself and for friends and coworkers keeping tabs on these dotcom-era mysteries. I made one coworker a whoppin' $50k on some of my insight. Of course...the big pin came to pop the bubble and I lost $11k in one damn day (I wasn't even in town that day to watch the market so imagine my surprise when I got back).
I got called it from @work/@home for an interview. They flew me across the country, gave me a car, interviewed me. They had the foosball tables around. Totally chill place. I remembered reading about all the other companies that had pool tables, video games, stocked fridges, company cars, etc for their employees. Sounded fun. I didn't make the cut. A year later, the company didn't make the cut either.
I got a call to work for Alta Vista (remember them?) to do some HTML work. I had JUST received an offer to work at a more stable, multi-national company as a web developer but I was willing to entertain their offer. I asked what they wanted and they wanted nothing more than HTML coding. They were willing to pay $60k or so to do that. It was much more than my current offer but I took into consideration the fact I'd have to move the family across the country and still wasn't sure it was the safest thing to do. I'm glad I didn't because within five months the company had gone under. Go figure.
As a CMU grad right about the time the net bubble was growing, I saw A LOT of "and we're the coolest company on the planet" propoganda. I watched Cramer on CNBC talk about how all these companies (of course, Amazon, Yahoo, eBay were some of them too) had nothing to stand on. "Get out! It's gonna crash!" It did. Still...it's interesting to see what survived and what didn't.
That's it. That's all it said. "The operating system has also yet to be clarified. The integrated Cell processor will be able to support a variety of operating systems (such as Linux or Apple's Tiger)."
The companies (MS, Sony) know their machines are being hacked to run Linux and such. Those two sentences up there are worse than the rumor sites and the speculation is even worse. Of course it could run an OS. That's a no brainer. It could probably run any flavor of Mac OS X (being UNIX-based) and also Linux. So...what's the news? It's speculation, hype, and a bit of marketing to get all the geeks all giddy, wondering what Sony has up its sleeve.
What DOES Sony have in mind? Have you noticed how many commercials for the PSP aren't specific to the gaming platform but more to the video capabilities? Or new videos released "available on DVD and PSP"? Match that with Sony's pissiness about being manhandled by the iPod and it only makes sense that Sony will do what it takes to get itself in the limelight. Mention Apple and heads will turn...
Wow. It's funny...albeit scary...that not only do I remember most of those but I actually used them. Webvan wasn't a bad idea, it just wasn't implemented correctly (or was ahead of its time like the Newton was). Kozmo just plain rocked. I was in Atlanta at the time and that was one of its markets. I didn't fully grasp it's model, but I had their magnet on my fridge and used them at the local burrito place. Oh yeah...back to the question. So for those of us that actually used these things, are we early adoptors or dumbasses? I will admit that Webvan had some damn good prices on some things if you did your shopping.
Not insulted at all. In fact, ready for a good laugh? Here's what the setup was (I have since realized I need to keep all my goods near me). Wireless router located in roomie's room because she needed to be wired. She had a rockin' WinME setup. My PBook had AirPort up and running so I didn't care about cables...hence me putting the router in her room.
When problems arose and she wasn't home, I'd check the router's lights and see what was up. Later I started logging on to the router and seeing just what was going on and what she was slurping up.
To us geeks, this is all quite "duh" and easy to fix. To the hordes of home users out there (ie, people running WinME, etc), they may have no clue what's going on when their kids are slurpin' stuff off the net, when someone's roomie is doing this, etc.
Very good point. After one (ie, me) finds out about the usage it's easy to fix. I couldn't for the life of me figure out why our connection had gone so slow. I was the only one home. And then you sneak into your roomie's room and notice she left the computer on and is sucking up all the bandwith. Point being, A) get a decent router and B) make sure you know what your roommates are up to.
Oh geeze...I can only imagine the roommate hell that will surface if this becomes more commonplace. Roomies slurping stuff off the net in p2p networks was bad enough. When my one roomie discovered the joys of Bit Torrent, oh my poor router...
I feel for all the self-appointed sys admin roommates who are supporting their roomie's habits.
Why? Because they ARE the standard and they know it. In a perfect world, they would conform to the standards that everyone else is striving to hit. But MS knows they own the market. They know that there are a bazillion web pages written specifically for IE. They know there are lazy coders out there that don't bother checking for web standard conformity and only care that their pages work on IE. So why should they rethink their IE development? It's much easier this way (for them). It's a shame, and maybe some day it'll kick 'em in the ass, but for now, they know they're in the driver's seat.
I think there should be a Tech Support Day. For 365 days a year the only reason Tech Support gets calls is because something is broken and the user is pissy. For once a little appreciation would be nice. And a new computer. And a beer.
Considering that there are a vast majority of folks promoting piracy (opps, sorry, I mean the folks protesting business by taking merchandise for free) are also pro-Linux...why would this indicate sales of MS-Office?
Remember when snagging mp3s illegally was the in thing to do? Everyone said "nobody will pay for online music". Look how successful iTMS has become. It's not a direct comparison, but just because the current trend leans toward piracy (errr..."evaluation copies") doesn't mean there can't be a market with a suitable business model or case. If Linux was able to be generally more accepted in the enterprise environment one way or another (a better desktop, better support, more compatible software, etc), then what I spoke of above may just happen.
As a business traveler, finding WiFi is key. Being the frugal businessman that I am, I of course prefer free. I've kept tabs on which location provide free WiFi and those are the places I will frequent. This, of course leads to more money to the establishments I frequent.
Case in point: When I moved back to CA I was waiting for my cable (Internet) to be set up. I asked a friend which nearby coffee shop had free WiFi and I found myself there every day checking emails (and deleting spam) and taking care of business. They certainly made a pretty penny off my coffee purchases (I generally make my own coffee and tea at home when I'm not needing a coffee shop for a specific reason).
That was obviously a case FOR. By simply having free WiFi, they collected money from me and countless others. I use the same methodology when booking hotels. HOWEVER, the system can be abused. I didn't have to buy coffee. The place could have been loaded with freeloaders who wanted free WiFi but didn't want to buy anything.
I would start by offering free WiFi. That's it, no required purchase or anything. Watch to see how the traffic grows and what kind of traffic it is. If you're lucky, you won't have to place any restrictions on it. If you're getting loads of freeloaders, implement a "purchase required" policy or have some sort of time limit (one hour? Two hours? Only the shop owner will really know what's best for their particular shop).
Ok...let's try to explain this again. See if you can stick with me here. Remember back in the day, before Apple was widely accepted as an enterprise machine (not that it's what you immediately think of now as a work machine but at least you're not laughed at when you mention using a Mac at the office)? Remember that? "Boss, let's use Macs here". "No Timmy, we need everyone to be able to use Word, Excel, Powerpoint, etc". Macs had Word, but it still wasn't fully compatible with PCs until M$ decided to work hard to get Office to be fairly platform independent. And what-ho, you started seeing more Macs in the business environment. Most Mac users don't like MS (thus owning a Mac) but with Office being more robust, they bought it, the Mac became a viable option to use in the office, and Microsoft made money from all the sales of Office to Mac users.
Here's where we make the jump. Still with me? Linux is out there. We have sys admins pushing hard to get Linux more widely used. Coders everywhere are working on apps left and right for Linux. "Boss, let's switch our machines over to Linux". "No Timmy, we need our users to be able to use Word, Excel, Powerpoint, etc". Sound familiar? Yeah, we have OpenOffice, but it's still not the same. Many CEOs, CTOs, small business owners, etc just don't feel comfortable going complete Open Source just yet. But if they know the Word document produced in Payables is readable to their clients, that eases their mind.
I'm not the biggest M$ fan around, but as a business-minded geek, I think M$ would be incredibly dumb NOT to warm up to Linux. If they were to sell Office for Linux distros, think of how much money they could make. It would make the Open Source movement more viable, making more people take it seriously, leading to yet more Office sales...So why not? Look at all the extra cash M$ got from selling to Apple's "measly" user base.
The Open Source movement is just another source of competition for software developers. Just because this software is "given away" doesn't mean it turns commercial software into a commodity item. For the lower value items such as a basic text editor, I can see how a commercial developer may freak out because an Open Source text editor alternative may be viewed as a viable replacement to the commercial version. When you get to the higher priced items though, you (generally) get what you pay for. For example, people are still shelling out hundreds and hundreds of dollars for Photoshop, FinalCut Pro, other specialized apps that require some real programming know-how. Is there an alternative to these apps? Possibly. But it's the commercial developers that went through the painstaking process to write the code, make sure it fulfilled specific requirements, and delivered it to the marketplace giving end users a quality product and a sense of security that this product will work on their machine. Maybe there are some Open Source alternatives to these high priced items, but until they work as flawlessly and seemlessly as the commercial versions, the commercial developers have nothing to worry about. Until then, they just need to keep looking over their shoulders and making sure they are staying ahead of all the developments the Open Source projects are making. It's a healthy form of competition that ultimately gives us all better products and more choices to choose from.
Whatever happened to parents taking an active role in raising their kids? How about the parents take responsibility of their kids being little terrors. The behavior starts at a young age people. Instead of blaming your kid's bad behavior on video games, football, TV, etc...take a good look in the mirror and go "did I raise Junior in a way to respect other people?" Is this THAT hard of a concept to grasp? Have we become THAT lazy as a society?
I agree with you on many points. A consumer COULD leave McDonalds if they wanted. But if they want that Big Mac, they gotta drink Coke. Or they could get the Big Mac at McDonald's and then run to Taco Bell for their Pepsi. In the real world, that simply doesn't happen too much...but it certainly is an option. The same is true for the computer builders. For the longest time, the ONLY OS you could get on a PC from Gateway, Acer, Dell, etc was Windows. It's slowly starting to open up, but it hasn't opened up completely just yet.
I have to agree with you on the "It's not Microsoft's fault" too. As much as I dislike their monopoly, they signed deals. Perhaps they thew their weight around to get these deals (which isn't very ethical), but they did sign the deals.
Users do seem to be getting a bit wiser and realizing they have choices. Let's see if they actually make their voices heard.
It's quite similar actually. When you go to McDonald's, do you see any Pepsi products? No. Coke has a deal with McDonald's to sell Coke products, thus locking out Pepsi. Now if you head to Taco Bell, you can't get a Coke, but you can get Pepsi and other Pepsi products like Mtn Dew, Code Red, etc.
Sadly, you are very correct. I don't see an end to this monopoly anytime soon. Microsoft seems to be held to a completely different set of standards than other companies. It's either their market dominance that scares people, their deep pockets (which are filling other pockets), or a combination of these and more variables.
The really sad part about it all is how Apple gets sued for the Tiger name or for "Apple" in cahoots with iTunes. Intel and AMD are going after each other. These are instances of competetition that is allowed to thrive and it's carrying over to the courts. Then you've got Microsoft getting pissy at Google and suing because Google is getting an ex-Microsoft employee (rumor has it, they're getting quite a few employees actually). And then you've got this monopoly business. This current administration in office doesn't care about Microsoft's anti-competitive practices. Microsoft has to get slapped pretty damn hard to stop...and I just don't think that will happen anytime soon.
I agree. This is a giant coup for Apple. To have your development and test machines all in one. Apple already has such a high profit margin on their boxes while PCs are such commodity items now. If this really does work, you get three machines on your Mac. Yet Steve said you couldn't just drop OS X on any PC (I'm sure there will be hacks out there for it...but still). Thus, any developer that wants a variety of environmens on just one machine will see the Mac as the only choice. Touche!
This looks dandy and all...I'd love to have a developer machine to do this to. But...will it run Linux and Windows on the actual machines in production that we'll see in a couple years?
Duh...I completely forgot about the fact our PowerBook will need to send a signal back to the AP. This makes total sense now. Done correctly, you could build one rather powerful antenna. I'd hate to see the dB readings shootin' out of that thing.
I'm not an expert here in terms of regulations and such so take my question/opinion with a grain of salt (and please answer if you know the answer).
I can understand how putting a more powerful TRANSMITTING antenna on an access point would be bad. The FCC is actually looking out for us, making sure we don't scramble our brains with too much power. However, how can having an antenna that simply boosts a weak signal to your computer be regulated? The power from the transmitter is the same...this receiving antenna is simply taking this weak signal and making it a bit more usable for your computer. How is this illegal?
Let's take a closer look at this. Yahoo! started as a portal and search engine. Remember the search engine wars? Then Google came along. Back then it was just another search engine (that kinda rocked). However, while we saw search engines come and go (shall we list all the search engines that came to be...and how most of them are gone?) Google didn't sit on it's laurels. They found a profitable way to make money from its searches. Not content with that, they went into other services (maps, blogs, Picasa, toolbars, etc) so people will think of Google for more than searches (sort of like their own "halo effect"...Google is always on their mind). More success for Google. More obscurity for Yahoo. Yahoo, once the Internet's poster child, is not pleased with this and certainly doesn't want to go the way of the other dotcoms, figures adding a whole slew of new features (toolbar, Konfabulator, etc) and mimicking Google is a good way to go. Thus, a new era of "wars" is born.
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Oh what a time it was. First...I like to play the market. I made a lot of money for myself and for friends and coworkers keeping tabs on these dotcom-era mysteries. I made one coworker a whoppin' $50k on some of my insight. Of course...the big pin came to pop the bubble and I lost $11k in one damn day (I wasn't even in town that day to watch the market so imagine my surprise when I got back).
I got called it from @work/@home for an interview. They flew me across the country, gave me a car, interviewed me. They had the foosball tables around. Totally chill place. I remembered reading about all the other companies that had pool tables, video games, stocked fridges, company cars, etc for their employees. Sounded fun. I didn't make the cut. A year later, the company didn't make the cut either.
I got a call to work for Alta Vista (remember them?) to do some HTML work. I had JUST received an offer to work at a more stable, multi-national company as a web developer but I was willing to entertain their offer. I asked what they wanted and they wanted nothing more than HTML coding. They were willing to pay $60k or so to do that. It was much more than my current offer but I took into consideration the fact I'd have to move the family across the country and still wasn't sure it was the safest thing to do. I'm glad I didn't because within five months the company had gone under. Go figure.
As a CMU grad right about the time the net bubble was growing, I saw A LOT of "and we're the coolest company on the planet" propoganda. I watched Cramer on CNBC talk about how all these companies (of course, Amazon, Yahoo, eBay were some of them too) had nothing to stand on. "Get out! It's gonna crash!" It did. Still...it's interesting to see what survived and what didn't.
That's it. That's all it said. "The operating system has also yet to be clarified. The integrated Cell processor will be able to support a variety of operating systems (such as Linux or Apple's Tiger)."
The companies (MS, Sony) know their machines are being hacked to run Linux and such. Those two sentences up there are worse than the rumor sites and the speculation is even worse. Of course it could run an OS. That's a no brainer. It could probably run any flavor of Mac OS X (being UNIX-based) and also Linux. So...what's the news? It's speculation, hype, and a bit of marketing to get all the geeks all giddy, wondering what Sony has up its sleeve.
What DOES Sony have in mind? Have you noticed how many commercials for the PSP aren't specific to the gaming platform but more to the video capabilities? Or new videos released "available on DVD and PSP"? Match that with Sony's pissiness about being manhandled by the iPod and it only makes sense that Sony will do what it takes to get itself in the limelight. Mention Apple and heads will turn...
Wow. It's funny...albeit scary...that not only do I remember most of those but I actually used them. Webvan wasn't a bad idea, it just wasn't implemented correctly (or was ahead of its time like the Newton was). Kozmo just plain rocked. I was in Atlanta at the time and that was one of its markets. I didn't fully grasp it's model, but I had their magnet on my fridge and used them at the local burrito place. Oh yeah...back to the question. So for those of us that actually used these things, are we early adoptors or dumbasses? I will admit that Webvan had some damn good prices on some things if you did your shopping.
Not insulted at all. In fact, ready for a good laugh? Here's what the setup was (I have since realized I need to keep all my goods near me). Wireless router located in roomie's room because she needed to be wired. She had a rockin' WinME setup. My PBook had AirPort up and running so I didn't care about cables...hence me putting the router in her room.
When problems arose and she wasn't home, I'd check the router's lights and see what was up. Later I started logging on to the router and seeing just what was going on and what she was slurping up.
To us geeks, this is all quite "duh" and easy to fix. To the hordes of home users out there (ie, people running WinME, etc), they may have no clue what's going on when their kids are slurpin' stuff off the net, when someone's roomie is doing this, etc.
Very good point. After one (ie, me) finds out about the usage it's easy to fix. I couldn't for the life of me figure out why our connection had gone so slow. I was the only one home. And then you sneak into your roomie's room and notice she left the computer on and is sucking up all the bandwith. Point being, A) get a decent router and B) make sure you know what your roommates are up to.
Oh geeze...I can only imagine the roommate hell that will surface if this becomes more commonplace. Roomies slurping stuff off the net in p2p networks was bad enough. When my one roomie discovered the joys of Bit Torrent, oh my poor router...
I feel for all the self-appointed sys admin roommates who are supporting their roomie's habits.
Why? Because they ARE the standard and they know it. In a perfect world, they would conform to the standards that everyone else is striving to hit. But MS knows they own the market. They know that there are a bazillion web pages written specifically for IE. They know there are lazy coders out there that don't bother checking for web standard conformity and only care that their pages work on IE. So why should they rethink their IE development? It's much easier this way (for them). It's a shame, and maybe some day it'll kick 'em in the ass, but for now, they know they're in the driver's seat.
And all this time when they said "future wars will be fought by computer", I had a totally other idea in mind.
I think there should be a Tech Support Day. For 365 days a year the only reason Tech Support gets calls is because something is broken and the user is pissy. For once a little appreciation would be nice. And a new computer. And a beer.
Considering that there are a vast majority of folks promoting piracy (opps, sorry, I mean the folks protesting business by taking merchandise for free) are also pro-Linux...why would this indicate sales of MS-Office?
Remember when snagging mp3s illegally was the in thing to do? Everyone said "nobody will pay for online music". Look how successful iTMS has become. It's not a direct comparison, but just because the current trend leans toward piracy (errr..."evaluation copies") doesn't mean there can't be a market with a suitable business model or case. If Linux was able to be generally more accepted in the enterprise environment one way or another (a better desktop, better support, more compatible software, etc), then what I spoke of above may just happen.
As a business traveler, finding WiFi is key. Being the frugal businessman that I am, I of course prefer free. I've kept tabs on which location provide free WiFi and those are the places I will frequent. This, of course leads to more money to the establishments I frequent.
Case in point: When I moved back to CA I was waiting for my cable (Internet) to be set up. I asked a friend which nearby coffee shop had free WiFi and I found myself there every day checking emails (and deleting spam) and taking care of business. They certainly made a pretty penny off my coffee purchases (I generally make my own coffee and tea at home when I'm not needing a coffee shop for a specific reason).
That was obviously a case FOR. By simply having free WiFi, they collected money from me and countless others. I use the same methodology when booking hotels. HOWEVER, the system can be abused. I didn't have to buy coffee. The place could have been loaded with freeloaders who wanted free WiFi but didn't want to buy anything.
I would start by offering free WiFi. That's it, no required purchase or anything. Watch to see how the traffic grows and what kind of traffic it is. If you're lucky, you won't have to place any restrictions on it. If you're getting loads of freeloaders, implement a "purchase required" policy or have some sort of time limit (one hour? Two hours? Only the shop owner will really know what's best for their particular shop).
Ok...let's try to explain this again. See if you can stick with me here. Remember back in the day, before Apple was widely accepted as an enterprise machine (not that it's what you immediately think of now as a work machine but at least you're not laughed at when you mention using a Mac at the office)? Remember that? "Boss, let's use Macs here". "No Timmy, we need everyone to be able to use Word, Excel, Powerpoint, etc". Macs had Word, but it still wasn't fully compatible with PCs until M$ decided to work hard to get Office to be fairly platform independent. And what-ho, you started seeing more Macs in the business environment. Most Mac users don't like MS (thus owning a Mac) but with Office being more robust, they bought it, the Mac became a viable option to use in the office, and Microsoft made money from all the sales of Office to Mac users.
Here's where we make the jump. Still with me? Linux is out there. We have sys admins pushing hard to get Linux more widely used. Coders everywhere are working on apps left and right for Linux. "Boss, let's switch our machines over to Linux". "No Timmy, we need our users to be able to use Word, Excel, Powerpoint, etc". Sound familiar? Yeah, we have OpenOffice, but it's still not the same. Many CEOs, CTOs, small business owners, etc just don't feel comfortable going complete Open Source just yet. But if they know the Word document produced in Payables is readable to their clients, that eases their mind.
I'm not the biggest M$ fan around, but as a business-minded geek, I think M$ would be incredibly dumb NOT to warm up to Linux. If they were to sell Office for Linux distros, think of how much money they could make. It would make the Open Source movement more viable, making more people take it seriously, leading to yet more Office sales...So why not? Look at all the extra cash M$ got from selling to Apple's "measly" user base.
The Open Source movement is just another source of competition for software developers. Just because this software is "given away" doesn't mean it turns commercial software into a commodity item. For the lower value items such as a basic text editor, I can see how a commercial developer may freak out because an Open Source text editor alternative may be viewed as a viable replacement to the commercial version. When you get to the higher priced items though, you (generally) get what you pay for. For example, people are still shelling out hundreds and hundreds of dollars for Photoshop, FinalCut Pro, other specialized apps that require some real programming know-how. Is there an alternative to these apps? Possibly. But it's the commercial developers that went through the painstaking process to write the code, make sure it fulfilled specific requirements, and delivered it to the marketplace giving end users a quality product and a sense of security that this product will work on their machine. Maybe there are some Open Source alternatives to these high priced items, but until they work as flawlessly and seemlessly as the commercial versions, the commercial developers have nothing to worry about. Until then, they just need to keep looking over their shoulders and making sure they are staying ahead of all the developments the Open Source projects are making. It's a healthy form of competition that ultimately gives us all better products and more choices to choose from.
Who would have guessed that the shady people who build sites to send their crap around wouldn't want to pay for a legit hosting setup? Profound!
Whatever happened to parents taking an active role in raising their kids? How about the parents take responsibility of their kids being little terrors. The behavior starts at a young age people. Instead of blaming your kid's bad behavior on video games, football, TV, etc...take a good look in the mirror and go "did I raise Junior in a way to respect other people?" Is this THAT hard of a concept to grasp? Have we become THAT lazy as a society?
Sony...with their Pr0n Station Portable. Now you can get pr0n wherever you are.
I agree with you on many points. A consumer COULD leave McDonalds if they wanted. But if they want that Big Mac, they gotta drink Coke. Or they could get the Big Mac at McDonald's and then run to Taco Bell for their Pepsi. In the real world, that simply doesn't happen too much...but it certainly is an option. The same is true for the computer builders. For the longest time, the ONLY OS you could get on a PC from Gateway, Acer, Dell, etc was Windows. It's slowly starting to open up, but it hasn't opened up completely just yet.
I have to agree with you on the "It's not Microsoft's fault" too. As much as I dislike their monopoly, they signed deals. Perhaps they thew their weight around to get these deals (which isn't very ethical), but they did sign the deals.
Users do seem to be getting a bit wiser and realizing they have choices. Let's see if they actually make their voices heard.
It's quite similar actually. When you go to McDonald's, do you see any Pepsi products? No. Coke has a deal with McDonald's to sell Coke products, thus locking out Pepsi. Now if you head to Taco Bell, you can't get a Coke, but you can get Pepsi and other Pepsi products like Mtn Dew, Code Red, etc.
Sadly, you are very correct. I don't see an end to this monopoly anytime soon. Microsoft seems to be held to a completely different set of standards than other companies. It's either their market dominance that scares people, their deep pockets (which are filling other pockets), or a combination of these and more variables.
The really sad part about it all is how Apple gets sued for the Tiger name or for "Apple" in cahoots with iTunes. Intel and AMD are going after each other. These are instances of competetition that is allowed to thrive and it's carrying over to the courts. Then you've got Microsoft getting pissy at Google and suing because Google is getting an ex-Microsoft employee (rumor has it, they're getting quite a few employees actually). And then you've got this monopoly business. This current administration in office doesn't care about Microsoft's anti-competitive practices. Microsoft has to get slapped pretty damn hard to stop...and I just don't think that will happen anytime soon.
I agree. This is a giant coup for Apple. To have your development and test machines all in one. Apple already has such a high profit margin on their boxes while PCs are such commodity items now. If this really does work, you get three machines on your Mac. Yet Steve said you couldn't just drop OS X on any PC (I'm sure there will be hacks out there for it...but still). Thus, any developer that wants a variety of environmens on just one machine will see the Mac as the only choice. Touche!
This looks dandy and all...I'd love to have a developer machine to do this to. But...will it run Linux and Windows on the actual machines in production that we'll see in a couple years?
Duh...I completely forgot about the fact our PowerBook will need to send a signal back to the AP. This makes total sense now. Done correctly, you could build one rather powerful antenna. I'd hate to see the dB readings shootin' out of that thing.
I'm not an expert here in terms of regulations and such so take my question/opinion with a grain of salt (and please answer if you know the answer).
I can understand how putting a more powerful TRANSMITTING antenna on an access point would be bad. The FCC is actually looking out for us, making sure we don't scramble our brains with too much power. However, how can having an antenna that simply boosts a weak signal to your computer be regulated? The power from the transmitter is the same...this receiving antenna is simply taking this weak signal and making it a bit more usable for your computer. How is this illegal?
Let's take a closer look at this. Yahoo! started as a portal and search engine. Remember the search engine wars? Then Google came along. Back then it was just another search engine (that kinda rocked). However, while we saw search engines come and go (shall we list all the search engines that came to be...and how most of them are gone?) Google didn't sit on it's laurels. They found a profitable way to make money from its searches. Not content with that, they went into other services (maps, blogs, Picasa, toolbars, etc) so people will think of Google for more than searches (sort of like their own "halo effect"...Google is always on their mind). More success for Google. More obscurity for Yahoo. Yahoo, once the Internet's poster child, is not pleased with this and certainly doesn't want to go the way of the other dotcoms, figures adding a whole slew of new features (toolbar, Konfabulator, etc) and mimicking Google is a good way to go. Thus, a new era of "wars" is born.