Re:The original Macintosh had no SCSI port.
on
Macintosh 2004 Case Mod
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· Score: 3, Informative
The connector was usually routed out through either the external floppy hole or the battery compartment using a ribbon cable - it wasn't pretty.
The SCSI port has the same hardware addresses as the one in the Plus, and Plus ROMS were available as an upgrade for older Macs, so no special drivers were required - any SCSI drive that worked on the Plus would work on these cards.
Many of the memory upgrades of the day for the older Macs included a SCSI ports. A few vendors didn't route the cable out of the box and instead provided an internal drive - the GCC HyperDrive and Levco Prodigy did this.
Re:The original Macintosh had no SCSI port.
on
Macintosh 2004 Case Mod
·
· Score: 4, Informative
A couple of third-party vendors popped up back in those days that managed to retrofit a SCSI port into old pre-Plus Macs using little daughterboards that fit in the ROM sockets. You'd move the ROMS onto the daughterboard. I know this because I was one of those vendors.
Perhaps you should stop buying consumer goods. Or do you also complain when you buy a shirt at JCPenney for $30 that actually cost $2.5 to make in some sweatshop in Thailand?
I'm not arguing against Microsoft charging consumers whatever they like for software independent of their hard costs - I'm merely saying they should not be able to write off that value for donations on their taxes.
What makes it more galling is that the amount that Microsoft writes off is the full retail value, not the wholesale value they normally receive from their distributers or OEMS, nor the typical discounted price that a typical consumer actually pay at a retail or mail order store, nor the site price an institution would pay for a similar number of seats as the donation.
Actually, I do write software for a living - I have personally written two retail software products that have sold over a million units in the retail software channel (actual physical boxes in stores), along with dozens of other lower-volume products, and some open source software. I've been in the software industry for over 25 years - I am fully aware of the costs of development.
Even taking all of the development costs into account, Microsoft's margin is still on the order of 80-90% for their OS and Office products. I would love to be able to donate a $1,000 car to charity and write off $10,000. Wouldn't you?
If they make 1000 dollars lets say and donated 100 dollars. Their taxable income is 900 dollars. In no way are they 'making' profit here.
Well, the problem is that the hard cost of Microsoft's donation is far less than the value they're writing off. For instance, they can donate $1000 worth of software that costs them $0.10 to manufacture, and end up owing no taxes since they've offset their $1000 of real profit. Other taxpayers don't have the ability to basically manufacture tax writeoffs of arbitrary value. I think you'd see fewer donations of Microsoft products if they were valued at their hard costs instead of the arbitrary retail price.
It really depends upon what you consider the "value" of donated software - is it simply the costs of the media, or the artificially constructed retail price? What Michael was alluding to was not that Microsoft's software is worth only 0.1% of the retail price, but rather that the actual hard cost to Microsoft for the donation is orders of magnitude less than the fake "value". Where this is important is at tax write-off (or press release) time - they donate a CD with Office that costs them $0.05, and can try to write off $300. In some cases it's even less - they donate a single CD and grant a site license.
If you like, I'll give you $1000 worth of software - it's easy because I can arbitrarily set the "value" of a trivial chunk of code at $1000 and be no different that what Microsoft is doing here. This is why Microsoft likes to donate software or vouchers for software (most which usually come back to them) instead of cash.
9. On August 20, 1990, Microsoft applied for the registration of its WINDOWS trademark. United States Trademark Registration No. 1,872,264 was issued on January 10, 1995. See Exhibit B. The WINDOWS mark is also the subject of United States Trademark Registration Nos. 1,875,069, 2,005,901, and 2,212,784, as well as comparable registrations around the world.
You can find this document here. Lindows.com's primary response is that the trademark should never have been granted in the first place. You can see a collection of court documents on their site, including a history of the interesting steps Microsoft took to get the trademark- basically, it was turned down three times for being generic, but was mysteriously granted without comment later. We don't really know why it was granted because the USPTO will not say. Perhaps that will come out during the Lindows.com trial.
Maybe - perhaps Playboy should have picked a better, more defensible name instead of a generic English word. Just as with the Lindows/Microsoft case, throwing a lot of money at a bad trademark does not make it a good trademark.
As I understand it, trademarks are done on a category-by-category basis. "Apple", for instance, is a defensible trademark in the computer category, but not for food - I cannot trademark the name "apple" for apples.
In the Lindows.com case, Microsoft has somehow trademarked the word "windows" in a category in which the term has a generic meaning, and Lindows.com may be able to win. Even Microsoft is not attempting to claim that the trademark "windows" is defensible outside of the computer category - a search result on "windows" for a window manufacturer won't upset them.
The issue with "playboy" is the scope of the trademark - does it beyond the hard publications and consumer goods, where it may be considered non-generic, into the realm of computer software? Is the Internet itself a form of "publication"? Since virtually all porn magazines have simple, generic words as their titles - "penthouse", "hustler", "oui", etc - rather disjoint subsets of various languages could suddenly be offlimits for search engines.
I'd much rather have the case to continue, but for SCO to get contempt citations from the court. I'm sure IBM will move for dismissal next week, but it would be much more interesting if they didn't - just drag SCO through the entire drawn-out process they started, exposing their lies in a public forum. It might also help to find out what part MS and Sun have been playing in this little drama.
Uh, that thing has *four* closely-spaced wheels - that makes it something that's going to fall over really easily. Stop suddenly and you're going to be singing soprano. There's no gyroscopic balancing going on.
Not a big shock since the Segway's balancing system is patented.
Though that was his original business plan, Robertson is not attempting to make a Windows knockoff. He appears to be making a consumer-oriented Linux distribution. He is not interested in the Linux fanatics at all since they're more trouble than they're worth and there are plenty of alternatives for them - he's targeting entry-level consumers, who for the most part aren't either pro- or anti-Microsoft but are interested in value.
Given some of the distribution deals Lindows.com has been getting lately, I think it's too early to call the game over. In most of those deals, the OS comes bundled with the machine, so people aren't "paying" any more than they "pay" for bundled versions of MS Windows.
Sued for what? Microsoft has not been harmed. Lindows.com has not taken any money from anybody, Microsoft nor consumers. No laws have been broken, and the question of whether or not Lindows was doing conformed to the settlement agreement was up for interpretation, which a court determined.
The only harm to Microsoft, if any, is that people are more aware of the settlement and therefore more likely to file for their piece, which is cash that Microsoft would rather keep.
Lindows.com is not funded by venture capital. Robertson is funding it entirely on his own, from what he made selling MP3.com.
When he started the company in 2001, the venture capital community was too battered to fund anything, let alone something as risky as Lindows, and they certainly would be terrified of Robertson's actions regarding continually baiting Microsoft.
I would expect them to be able to raise capital, and at a pretty good valuation, within the year. Robertson has already funded the riskiest part.
One thing I'm missing in this article is the source of the video content for this device. Is the MPAA going to let you copy your DVDs to this device? I don't think so! Are you going to be downloading multigigabyte movies over your net connection to load it up? I don't think the ISPs will be too thrilled about that.
This is probably the first year in decades where the press hasn't automatically prepended "beleaguered" in front of any mention of Apple. This is most likely thanks to the success of iPod and iTMS that the press simply couldn't ignore - Apple needs to totally dominate a market to be considered successful by the media, whereas other companies merely have to stay in business.
If there's any merging catch phrase this year, it's probably the use of "embattled" and "under siege" to describe Microsoft's ongoing war with Linux and security problems. You'll probably also begin to see the use of "oft-delayed" to describe Longhorn pretty soon.
I didn't say it wasn't a generic word, but that it's fanciful in that particular context - the same way "Apple" and "Amazon" are fanciful in their respective trademark categories.
Also, spending time and money on a trademark does not somehow make a bad trademark a good one.
As to the Mythic vs Mythica issue, there's a "reasonable person" test. If you told your Mom to buy you a role playing computer game made by Mythic Entertainment for Christmas, there's a reasonable chance you'd open your package and find a role-playing computer game with the name "Mythica" plastered across the front.
In the case of Lindows.com, however, the chance of your Mom going into a store looking for Microsoft Windows XP and coming out with a box containing "LindowsOS" is very unlikely.
Actually, you're incorrect on one point - Microsoft has indeed trademarked the single word "Windows", in addition to the combination "Microsoft Windows".
This is the crux of Lindows.com's defense: that that trademark should never have been granted.
Mythic has a much better case than Microsoft has against Lindows.com.
"Window" is a generic term used in the field of computer science to describe an artifact commonly found in graphical user interfaces.
In this case, however, the term "mythic" is fanciful (though Microsoft may argue it's descriptive) in regards to a game, and Microsoft's usage includes the *entire* trademark.
GEORGE BAILEY: No . . . no . . . no . . . no, now wait a minute, here! I don't have to talk to anybody! I know right now, and the answer is no! NO! Doggone it!
(getting madder all the time)
You sit around here and you spin your little webs and you think the whole world revolves around you and your money. Well, it doesn't, Mr. Potter! In the . . . in the whole vast configuration of things, I'd say you were nothing but a scurvy little spider.
I don't think there are any patents on simply rendering the filled bezier outlines - the patents usually have to do with adjustments to improve appearance very small sizes, such as hinting or level-of-detail substitutions, or taking advantage of pixel geometry like in flat panels.
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The SCSI port has the same hardware addresses as the one in the Plus, and Plus ROMS were available as an upgrade for older Macs, so no special drivers were required - any SCSI drive that worked on the Plus would work on these cards.
Many of the memory upgrades of the day for the older Macs included a SCSI ports. A few vendors didn't route the cable out of the box and instead provided an internal drive - the GCC HyperDrive and Levco Prodigy did this.
A couple of third-party vendors popped up back in those days that managed to retrofit a SCSI port into old pre-Plus Macs using little daughterboards that fit in the ROM sockets. You'd move the ROMS onto the daughterboard. I know this because I was one of those vendors.
What makes it more galling is that the amount that Microsoft writes off is the full retail value, not the wholesale value they normally receive from their distributers or OEMS, nor the typical discounted price that a typical consumer actually pay at a retail or mail order store, nor the site price an institution would pay for a similar number of seats as the donation.
Even taking all of the development costs into account, Microsoft's margin is still on the order of 80-90% for their OS and Office products. I would love to be able to donate a $1,000 car to charity and write off $10,000. Wouldn't you?
If you like, I'll give you $1000 worth of software - it's easy because I can arbitrarily set the "value" of a trivial chunk of code at $1000 and be no different that what Microsoft is doing here. This is why Microsoft likes to donate software or vouchers for software (most which usually come back to them) instead of cash.
Not correct - Microsoft *does* have a trademark of the word "windows" by itself, in addition to the combination "Microsoft Windows".
Maybe - perhaps Playboy should have picked a better, more defensible name instead of a generic English word. Just as with the Lindows/Microsoft case, throwing a lot of money at a bad trademark does not make it a good trademark.
The critical difference here is that "Linux" is a fancifal word with no secondary meaning, while "playboy" is a generic English word.
In the Lindows.com case, Microsoft has somehow trademarked the word "windows" in a category in which the term has a generic meaning, and Lindows.com may be able to win. Even Microsoft is not attempting to claim that the trademark "windows" is defensible outside of the computer category - a search result on "windows" for a window manufacturer won't upset them.
The issue with "playboy" is the scope of the trademark - does it beyond the hard publications and consumer goods, where it may be considered non-generic, into the realm of computer software? Is the Internet itself a form of "publication"? Since virtually all porn magazines have simple, generic words as their titles - "penthouse", "hustler", "oui", etc - rather disjoint subsets of various languages could suddenly be offlimits for search engines.
I'd much rather have the case to continue, but for SCO to get contempt citations from the court. I'm sure IBM will move for dismissal next week, but it would be much more interesting if they didn't - just drag SCO through the entire drawn-out process they started, exposing their lies in a public forum. It might also help to find out what part MS and Sun have been playing in this little drama.
Not a big shock since the Segway's balancing system is patented.
Given some of the distribution deals Lindows.com has been getting lately, I think it's too early to call the game over. In most of those deals, the OS comes bundled with the machine, so people aren't "paying" any more than they "pay" for bundled versions of MS Windows.
The only harm to Microsoft, if any, is that people are more aware of the settlement and therefore more likely to file for their piece, which is cash that Microsoft would rather keep.
When he started the company in 2001, the venture capital community was too battered to fund anything, let alone something as risky as Lindows, and they certainly would be terrified of Robertson's actions regarding continually baiting Microsoft.
I would expect them to be able to raise capital, and at a pretty good valuation, within the year. Robertson has already funded the riskiest part.
One thing I'm missing in this article is the source of the video content for this device. Is the MPAA going to let you copy your DVDs to this device? I don't think so! Are you going to be downloading multigigabyte movies over your net connection to load it up? I don't think the ISPs will be too thrilled about that.
If there's any merging catch phrase this year, it's probably the use of "embattled" and "under siege" to describe Microsoft's ongoing war with Linux and security problems. You'll probably also begin to see the use of "oft-delayed" to describe Longhorn pretty soon.
Q. Why do the British drink their beer warm?
A. Because Lucas makes refrigerators.
Q. What are the settings on Lucas headlight switches?
A. Dim, Flicker and Off.
Also, spending time and money on a trademark does not somehow make a bad trademark a good one.
As to the Mythic vs Mythica issue, there's a "reasonable person" test. If you told your Mom to buy you a role playing computer game made by Mythic Entertainment for Christmas, there's a reasonable chance you'd open your package and find a role-playing computer game with the name "Mythica" plastered across the front.
In the case of Lindows.com, however, the chance of your Mom going into a store looking for Microsoft Windows XP and coming out with a box containing "LindowsOS" is very unlikely.
This is the crux of Lindows.com's defense: that that trademark should never have been granted.
"Window" is a generic term used in the field of computer science to describe an artifact commonly found in graphical user interfaces.
In this case, however, the term "mythic" is fanciful (though Microsoft may argue it's descriptive) in regards to a game, and Microsoft's usage includes the *entire* trademark.
(getting madder all the time)
You sit around here and you spin your little webs and you think the whole world revolves around you and your money. Well, it doesn't, Mr. Potter! In the . . . in the whole vast configuration of things, I'd say you were nothing but a scurvy little spider.I don't think there are any patents on simply rendering the filled bezier outlines - the patents usually have to do with adjustments to improve appearance very small sizes, such as hinting or level-of-detail substitutions, or taking advantage of pixel geometry like in flat panels.