Clearly the West is lining up to becoming service/fast food providers to the East.
US and UK GDPs are largely driven by services (medical or otherwise) or brand royalties (Coke etc) rather than real production. Good healthcare and the ability to pay brand royalties should really be the flab we can pay for by having a strong economy rather than being the driving force behind the economy.
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/08/22/health /policy/22pros.html?ex=1177646400&en=8101d968fbe8b 365&ei=5070 shows the insanity of this all. Paying $10k a day for a hostpital room is insane, but it looks good when the numbers are added up to be able to show that the US has a striong GDP. In India, where many foreigners go for procedures in medical custom facilities, you can likely get the same level of service for $500 per day. That really means that in the US you're paying $10k for a $500 service. That kind of spending cannot be sustained for ever and does nothing to make the country any richer (apart from on the GDP which is a ficticious measure).
As the parent says the NT POSIX was severely sucky.
In the NT3 timeframe (approx 12 years ago now), there was a big effort to sell NT to companies, such as the one I worked for then, supplying back office/server room style products. Many/most products of the time were running on Unix boxes or similar. We were using Unix x86 boxes (SCO etc) for compter tephony applications. NT had to check a few boxes to encourage people to switch: POSIX and streams driver support. This gave people a reasonable porting avenue to a cheaper OS (NT was about half or a third of SCO's cost at the time).
The POSIX and streams drivers were very inefficient, and were dropped within a short while (once the bait and switch had worked).
This ploy was very clever on MS's part. Using ourselves as a benchmark for people in this space, our customers were putting on some pressure to provide NT based products because they were eating the MS blurb and wanted to reduce costs. Our techies looked at NT and figured out what would be needed to port: POSIX-check, streams driver model - check. So we say that on paper it can be done with trivial architectural change. Marketing start hyping the NT-based offering. The business people say make it so, so we do. Unfortunately we find the POSIX and streams driver model are very slow on NT, so end up having to start doing native drivers and non-POSIX code. We start slipping, marketing starts screaming and the portability gets dumped in favour of getting shipping. The bait and switch has worked.
We never got any benefit from NT POSIX or the MS streams driver. Our systems went from requiring low-end (16-25MHz) 386s to 100+MHz 486. Basically a very bad case of bait and switch.
As parent notes, the difference is the bandwidth and QOS guarantee. That's the difference between a phone line and VoIP too, which is why VoIP is still a long way off being a reliable service. If I want the cops or an ambulance, I don't want my call competing with porn browsing.
It is currently on CD, but will likely soon be on DVD (well the name implies that). So how many people have PCs with DVD players but don't have access to the internet? That narrows down the scope somewhat.
It will be interesting to check back in a few months to see how many they sold.
It is easy for heaps of fanboys to say they'll plunk down $500. Doing it is different.
I think security will be the biggest corporate worry. iphone coolness will make them a target for theft which will make corporations concerned about security.
First you test the waters with one infringing company. Get some cash out of it, then chase the others.
This approach has numerous benefits. It reduces your cash outlay (lawyer' fees) and risk. Secondly, once you have a judgement in your favour then it is easier to pick off the others with less court costs etc. It is probably easier to chase Apple than MS, so wait until you have more strength to chase them. Opera is too hard to chase (Offshore)
From a brief read, the patent looks valid and pretty much defines a tabbed interface. Sure I'm not a patent lawyer, but I've spent months sifting through patents tryiung to make sense of them.
People bitch about software patents, but in reality they are not that different from any other patents. In any fast growing field, the people on the cutting edge would see applications that are obvious with any hindsight. Unfortunately they need not be that obvious at the time to the USPTO who likely are not that familiar with the material.
For chocolate thayt is true. Chocolatey only needs to somehow resemble chocolate. Add a few more -ey and you probably have something is vaguely brown. Perhaps recycled Zunes.
Anyone who watches Mythbusters for scientific reasons should maybe start watching Startrek instead. This is all entrtainment, it has nothing to do with scientific accuracy.
WinFS and precursors have been promised in all versions of Windows since the early 1990s (except probablyy ME). It seems that WinFS has two main functions
A) A teaser. A compelling "new age in computing" to get some hype going.
B) A feature to cut when projects run late.
Likely, WinFS will make 20 years old without ever shipping.
Well, to hack/infect/trojan a Vista system you first have to find one. Considering the high switchback rate to XP that's going to be harder than previously expected.
A friend of mine was a plumber in Nigera. He was making approx five times the money he could make in USA or Europe. He had a plan to do this for three years, then quit and retire.
Said this before, and I'll say this again... The biggest failure is not how it is perceived by customers but how it is perceived by the MS shareholders.
$5bn development costs might not be huge for MS, but it is still a wad of money and shareholders are going to want to see some benefit for their investment. Most shareholders will probably be wondering why MS spent $5bn when the masses would rather have XP, and anyone buying a new PC would have bought XP if they didn't buy Vista. In other words, for the shareholders Vista has been pure cost with no benefit.
This comes at the same time as Zune too. It would have been easy to say "Hey we goofed with Zune, but Vista is great". Now they have to admit two major screwups at the same shareholder meeting. Ouch!
Sure, you cannot edit a pdf, but what is important is the design itself rather than being able to modify it directly. An object file hides the source completely and would be the equivalent of getting a PCB.
Still, using geda would definitely help. Shame so few people use it. Perhaps a something like a Protel to geda converter would be a GoodThing.
Slashdot Mirror
Paid under duress.
Do you want your house trashed
Accept Decline
US and UK GDPs are largely driven by services (medical or otherwise) or brand royalties (Coke etc) rather than real production. Good healthcare and the ability to pay brand royalties should really be the flab we can pay for by having a strong economy rather than being the driving force behind the economy.
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/08/22/health /policy/22pros.html?ex=1177646400&en=8101d968fbe8b 365&ei=5070 shows the insanity of this all. Paying $10k a day for a hostpital room is insane, but it looks good when the numbers are added up to be able to show that the US has a striong GDP. In India, where many foreigners go for procedures in medical custom facilities, you can likely get the same level of service for $500 per day. That really means that in the US you're paying $10k for a $500 service. That kind of spending cannot be sustained for ever and does nothing to make the country any richer (apart from on the GDP which is a ficticious measure).
In the NT3 timeframe (approx 12 years ago now), there was a big effort to sell NT to companies, such as the one I worked for then, supplying back office /server room style products. Many/most products of the time were running on Unix boxes or similar. We were using Unix x86 boxes (SCO etc) for compter tephony applications. NT had to check a few boxes to encourage people to switch: POSIX and streams driver support. This gave people a reasonable porting avenue to a cheaper OS (NT was about half or a third of SCO's cost at the time).
The POSIX and streams drivers were very inefficient, and were dropped within a short while (once the bait and switch had worked).
This ploy was very clever on MS's part. Using ourselves as a benchmark for people in this space, our customers were putting on some pressure to provide NT based products because they were eating the MS blurb and wanted to reduce costs. Our techies looked at NT and figured out what would be needed to port: POSIX-check, streams driver model - check. So we say that on paper it can be done with trivial architectural change. Marketing start hyping the NT-based offering. The business people say make it so, so we do. Unfortunately we find the POSIX and streams driver model are very slow on NT, so end up having to start doing native drivers and non-POSIX code. We start slipping, marketing starts screaming and the portability gets dumped in favour of getting shipping. The bait and switch has worked.
We never got any benefit from NT POSIX or the MS streams driver. Our systems went from requiring low-end (16-25MHz) 386s to 100+MHz 486. Basically a very bad case of bait and switch.
As parent notes, the difference is the bandwidth and QOS guarantee. That's the difference between a phone line and VoIP too, which is why VoIP is still a long way off being a reliable service. If I want the cops or an ambulance, I don't want my call competing with porn browsing.
It will be interesting to check back in a few months to see how many they sold.
Do an update and all the CDs will get fixed too.
I think security will be the biggest corporate worry. iphone coolness will make them a target for theft which will make corporations concerned about security.
This approach has numerous benefits. It reduces your cash outlay (lawyer' fees) and risk. Secondly, once you have a judgement in your favour then it is easier to pick off the others with less court costs etc. It is probably easier to chase Apple than MS, so wait until you have more strength to chase them. Opera is too hard to chase (Offshore)
That only applies to trademarks
From a brief read, the patent looks valid and pretty much defines a tabbed interface. Sure I'm not a patent lawyer, but I've spent months sifting through patents tryiung to make sense of them.
People bitch about software patents, but in reality they are not that different from any other patents. In any fast growing field, the people on the cutting edge would see applications that are obvious with any hindsight. Unfortunately they need not be that obvious at the time to the USPTO who likely are not that familiar with the material.
Apple's got money.
France has better electricity than USA.
The surplus sugar will go into making that well known vegetable called ketchup.
For chocolate thayt is true. Chocolatey only needs to somehow resemble chocolate. Add a few more -ey and you probably have something is vaguely brown. Perhaps recycled Zunes.
A site can still get slashdotted even if I don't look at it.
A) A teaser. A compelling "new age in computing" to get some hype going.
B) A feature to cut when projects run late.
Likely, WinFS will make 20 years old without ever shipping.
Well, to hack/infect/trojan a Vista system you first have to find one. Considering the high switchback rate to XP that's going to be harder than previously expected.
He died there in a car crash after 2.5 years.
$5bn development costs might not be huge for MS, but it is still a wad of money and shareholders are going to want to see some benefit for their investment. Most shareholders will probably be wondering why MS spent $5bn when the masses would rather have XP, and anyone buying a new PC would have bought XP if they didn't buy Vista. In other words, for the shareholders Vista has been pure cost with no benefit.
This comes at the same time as Zune too. It would have been easy to say "Hey we goofed with Zune, but Vista is great". Now they have to admit two major screwups at the same shareholder meeting. Ouch!
You have not been "fixed" yet? Just stand in line with the tom cats.
Old saying: a fish rots from the head. If the CEO isn't onboard, then the CIO etc won't give this priority.
Still, using geda would definitely help. Shame so few people use it. Perhaps a something like a Protel to geda converter would be a GoodThing.
wtf? How is this highly compatable? gzip has a much larger install based.