Recent reports show that Microsoft is making ~$75 profit for each Xbox 360 Premium sold and losing ~$25 on each Xbox 360 Core system sold (I can't find the link to that part). More Premiums are sold than Cores, so they're making money on the hardware already. They have a ways to go to make up for the R they're targeting 2008 for that.
You can't just pass a law that says that any intellectual property that happens to come within your borders (no matter how it got there) is fair game to be bought, sold, and copied by anyone who likes without any compensation to the owners of the rights to those properties.
Yes you can. It's called sovereignty. If you don't like it your options are a) destroy that country's government by beating their army with your army or b) convince that government through incentives and international agreements to modify or eliminate that law.
You must have skipped the line of the GP's post that immediately followed what you quoted: "Or, rather, you can, but as Russia has finally come to grips with, you cannot have a situation like this and enter into trade organizations like WTO." So you essentially have the same position as the GP.
Countries have sovereignty, but voluntarily give up some of that when entering into treaties (such as trade agreements). Even the US Constitution has a section saying, "International treaties entered into by the government are the supreme laws of the land" (not an exact quote). When you enter into a treaty, the treaty's "laws" trump your own. And it has to be that way, otherwise treaties would never work.
You're forgetting that during the XP->Vista period, Microsoft released the following OSes: Windows Server 2003 XP64 XP MCE 2003 XP MCE 2005 XP SP2 multiple editions of Windows Moble multiple editions of Tablet PC OS
Not to mention, Microsoft released.NET 1.1,.NET 2.0, multiple editions of SQL Server (the 2005 edition has a nearly flawless security record), multiple editions of Exchange Server, IIS6 (which also has a nearly flawless security record), etc.
It's not like Microsoft was doing nothing regarding OS/platform releases. They released much more than did Apple.
If increasing the stock value were Microsoft's primary mission, you're right that they're too big. They would be better off to split the company into multiple parts. Some of those parts would have their respective stock prices double, triple, quadruple, etc.
But increasing the stock value isn't Microsoft's pimary mission, profits are. And they make record profits every year. Investors are rewarded through dividends (i.e. real money) rather than increased stock price (i.e. paper). Dividends provide steady return, but lack the potential to get rich quick like stock price speculation allows. Those looking for skyrocketing stock price will (and do) stay away from Microsoft shares since they are indeed too big to provide skyrocketing stock prices.
Why don't you give that same tip to Apple, whose DRM is by far the most prevelant, and most restrictive to boot? (It *only* works on Apple hardware/software.)
Weren't they the first to have a web browser component usable by other apps? And they have MCE, which Apple is copying with FrontRow. And now there are rumors that Apple will be copying Tablet PC. Excel had tabbed worksheets long before the concept was added to browsers. Excel introduced pivot tables. Microsoft introduced the "squiggly" line for on-the-fly spell check. Microsoft introduced the ability to embed one app's object into another app's document and allow the user to edit the object inplace using the object app's tools (I refer to OLE). Windows has had that since 1993 while Linux and Mac still have yet to have anything to rival it. Microsoft had Terraserver, which Google ripped off with Google Maps. Microsoft introduced the ability to edit and recompile C code while debugging it. Microsoft introduced the "floating pallette" of Mac Office. They have many innovations in Office 2007.
Microsoft has had many innovations (they have the 2nd largest software patent portfolio (second to IBM)). I won't list them all (you're ignorant ass isn't worth the effort). They have a lot more innovations than does the Linux "community" or Apple.
Win95 was barely on pare with Mac's System 6? Are you that ignorant?
Win95 had pre-emptive multitasking and separate address spaces for each app. Mac OS used co-operative multitasking and shared memory space for all apps and the system until OSX. (I don't even know that System 6 had multitasking at all; iirc it had MultiFinder, which allowed the user to switch between multiple running tasks, but the tasks didn't run simultaneously. System 7 either introduced multitasking (co-operative) or at least vastly improved it over whatever System 6 had).
And the api of Mac OS was horrible; horribly primitive. The api actually relied on publicly accessible system globals. Please!! The api relied on apps to explicitly manipulate fields of system data structures (Window and GrafPort structures, for example). It had ancient concepts like "hi" memory and "low" memory. It had "grow zones" to handle cases where an app used more memory than was allocated to it, which brings up another horrible aspect - the user actually had to explicitly tell the OS how much memory to allocate to each app. This is the system that you're praising! It was good when released in the 80's but by the 1991 and certainly 1995, it was horribly dated. Even Apple knew this, which is why they spent a few years trying to create a modern version of Mac OS in the failed Copland project (not to mention the Pink and Taligent fiascos, which were also failed attempts to create a modern OS). Classic Mac OS was NOT a good OS by any means when Win95 was released.
I think the problem here is that Microsoft should have spoken to some representatives of the tribe before doing the translation.... it's possible that Microsoft has insulted the Mapuches simply by using their language without their consent... perhaps someone down the line should have been aware of the Mapuches' feelings about their language and perhaps suggested a consultation with them...
Microsoft worked with the Chilean government on this, and I'm sure that Microsoft *assumed* that Chile's government would be the legal, social, and knowledgable authority for its citizens and their culture. So Chile's govt is the one that would deal with the tribe, Chile's govt would be the responsible for translations, and if anyone should have been aware of the Mapuches' feelings, it would again, be the Chilean govt.
I don't think it has merit. I think this is a great example of the idiocy of the very idea. But if the Mapuche have good lawyers, it could be very interesting to see Microsofts lawyers sqirm about trying to defeat this case without making Microsoft looking stupid, hypocritical and antisocial.
Why would Microsoft "squrim, look stupid, hypocrytical and antisocial"? All they'd do is pull support for that particular language. The Chillean government worked with MS on this in order to support the language. If some court was idiotic enough to rule that such was illegal, they simply pull support, end of story.
"The EU has judged Microsoft to be abusing a monopoly position in the global european market."
IIRC, the EC (European Commission) judged such. And the EC is not a court of law. They provide no due process, no burdens of proof, no nothing. Microsoft appealed their proclamations to the European Courts (a real court, with due process (supposedly), were evidence must actually be presented and the accused given a chance to refute), which will decide the issue. Don't be surprised to see the EC's proclamations slapped down just like Jackson's were.
First, Office hasn't used standard Windows widgets since at least Office 97. Second, GUI consistency used to be considered a plus, but now is recognized as overrated. This is because of the Web. People are used to browsing sites that have wildly different UIs and they're able to adapt to them without much problem.
What it really says is, "We spent 100's of millions of dollars on the R&D for this stuff, and don't want a competitor to copy the stuff and give it away for free". Seems reasonable to me.
You can be sure that the new Office UI is patented up the wazoo, so MS could simply allow nobody to use it. But instead MS is still allowing anyone to use it royalty-free (including open source devs) as long as the devs that use it aren't competing with Office itself. That would be over 99.9999999% of developers. I don't write code that competes with Office and am glad to be able to use the Office 2007 UI.
"They cannot break legacy code but Apple gambled and did it, and I think it succeeded."
Apple didn't abandon Copeland for Unix, they abanodoned Copeland for NextStep, which happened to run on a bsd variant. Apple didn't give a damn about Unix. If they could have actually completed Copeland, they would have gone with that. If NextStep had been built on top of something else, Apple would have gone with that (and there was some consideration to go with the version of NextStep that ran on NT, but Apple didn't want to be dependend on MS in that way). Unix is a side-effect of the NextStep deal.
And those "moving to Mac OS X" aren't doing it to move to Unix, they're doing it to move to Mac OS X. And what makes OSX OSX isn't Unix, but Cocoa/Carbon, which "real" Mac apps are written to (meaning, the apps that normal people use; normal folks don't use "Mac" apps written against Unix).
I wish that Copeland had succeeded, so there would be at least one mainstream OS that wasn't built atop Unix or NT. More diversity in OS design advances the state of the art. You, on the other hand, are advocating that *every* mainstream OS be a Unix variant, as if Unix is the be-all and end-all, which is fallacy.
It looks like Microsoft's first move in the 'Linux owes us' game is to move a Pawn. A few days ago, a Novell programmer, Noel Power, submitted patches to add VBA compatibility to Open Office's spreadsheet module.
How is this a move in the "Linux owes us" game? OO.o isn't particular to Linux. OO.o itself may be running afoul of MS (and others') patents, but this has nothing to do with Linux.
According to what I've read at various video game sites and forums (such as GAF), Xbox 360's Gears of War cost lest than half to make as did Wii's Red Steel, both of which are shooters. Gears of War blows Red Steel away. I think you're underestimating Microsoft's skill at providing better developer tools than their competition, which lowers development cost. Also, Xbox 360 uses DirectX, which many are already familiar with.
Apple is a member of BDA, the Blu-Ray Disc Association (I'm not exactly sure what the acronym stands for), so Leopard will definitely have DRM. It *has* to in order to play protected Blu-Ray discs.
Ubuntu can't play protected HD-DVDs and Blu-Ray discs at all, so what are you talking about? If you don't like DRM, just don't play DRM content. Vista will play non-DRM'ed content just as well as Ubuntu. But Vista will play DRM'ed content as well, unlike Ubuntu. Seems like Vista has the edge here.
First, you're no Solomon. Second, that you'd dismiss PowerShell with Solomon's "There's nothing new under the sun" shows that you haven't the first clue what PowerShell is about.
Nobody cares about the embedded market (except the companies that are directly involved) because those are closed systems. I can't install programs on those systems or write my own programs for those systems. They could be running DOS for all I care, it makes no difference to me. They are literally "black box" systems. I mean, really, who gives a damn what kind of embedded software a washing machine might be running?
There's no need for voting machines to use "open" source, just as long as the source is available to the government (and public, if desired). That is, there's no need to allow the source to be altered and redistributed by others for free.
Microsoft is still supporting PlaysForSure, but they're now doing it through URGE rather than MSN Music Store. URGE is the default online music store of WMP11, replacing MSN Music Store, which was the default online music store for WMP10. WMP10 and WMP11 also support lots of other PlaysForSure online stores (walmart music, aol music, GiantMusic (which provides its music in WMA Lossles), etc.
Oh, and slashdot's headline for this story is old old old. It's been known for months that Zune is not a PlaysForSure device. The new info is that Microsoft is shutting down the store portion of MSN Music, whose buy links will refer to Rhapsody and Zune. But again, MSN Music isn't going to be WMP's prime online store anyway, URGE is.
That's one thing I like about the subscription model. Regardless of the DRM used, you can switch to a different service at any time without worrying about it, as you have nothing "vested" into a particular DRM.
Slashdot Mirror
Recent reports show that Microsoft is making ~$75 profit for each Xbox 360 Premium sold and losing ~$25 on each Xbox 360 Core system sold (I can't find the link to that part). More Premiums are sold than Cores, so they're making money on the hardware already. They have a ways to go to make up for the R they're targeting 2008 for that.
You must have skipped the line of the GP's post that immediately followed what you quoted: "Or, rather, you can, but as Russia has finally come to grips with, you cannot have a situation like this and enter into trade organizations like WTO." So you essentially have the same position as the GP.
Countries have sovereignty, but voluntarily give up some of that when entering into treaties (such as trade agreements). Even the US Constitution has a section saying, "International treaties entered into by the government are the supreme laws of the land" (not an exact quote). When you enter into a treaty, the treaty's "laws" trump your own. And it has to be that way, otherwise treaties would never work.
You're forgetting that during the XP->Vista period, Microsoft released the following OSes:
.NET 1.1, .NET 2.0, multiple editions of SQL Server (the 2005 edition has a nearly flawless security record), multiple editions of Exchange Server, IIS6 (which also has a nearly flawless security record), etc.
Windows Server 2003
XP64
XP MCE 2003
XP MCE 2005
XP SP2
multiple editions of Windows Moble
multiple editions of Tablet PC OS
Not to mention, Microsoft released
It's not like Microsoft was doing nothing regarding OS/platform releases. They released much more than did Apple.
If increasing the stock value were Microsoft's primary mission, you're right that they're too big. They would be better off to split the company into multiple parts. Some of those parts would have their respective stock prices double, triple, quadruple, etc.
But increasing the stock value isn't Microsoft's pimary mission, profits are. And they make record profits every year. Investors are rewarded through dividends (i.e. real money) rather than increased stock price (i.e. paper). Dividends provide steady return, but lack the potential to get rich quick like stock price speculation allows. Those looking for skyrocketing stock price will (and do) stay away from Microsoft shares since they are indeed too big to provide skyrocketing stock prices.
Why don't you give that same tip to Apple, whose DRM is by far the most prevelant, and most restrictive to boot? (It *only* works on Apple hardware/software.)
"They never innovated a single thing."
Weren't they the first to have a web browser component usable by other apps?
And they have MCE, which Apple is copying with FrontRow. And now there are rumors that Apple will be copying Tablet PC.
Excel had tabbed worksheets long before the concept was added to browsers.
Excel introduced pivot tables.
Microsoft introduced the "squiggly" line for on-the-fly spell check.
Microsoft introduced the ability to embed one app's object into another app's document and allow the user to edit the object inplace using the object app's tools (I refer to OLE). Windows has had that since 1993 while Linux and Mac still have yet to have anything to rival it.
Microsoft had Terraserver, which Google ripped off with Google Maps.
Microsoft introduced the ability to edit and recompile C code while debugging it.
Microsoft introduced the "floating pallette" of Mac Office.
They have many innovations in Office 2007.
Microsoft has had many innovations (they have the 2nd largest software patent portfolio (second to IBM)). I won't list them all (you're ignorant ass isn't worth the effort). They have a lot more innovations than does the Linux "community" or Apple.
Win95 was barely on pare with Mac's System 6? Are you that ignorant?
Win95 had pre-emptive multitasking and separate address spaces for each app. Mac OS used co-operative multitasking and shared memory space for all apps and the system until OSX. (I don't even know that System 6 had multitasking at all; iirc it had MultiFinder, which allowed the user to switch between multiple running tasks, but the tasks didn't run simultaneously. System 7 either introduced multitasking (co-operative) or at least vastly improved it over whatever System 6 had).
And the api of Mac OS was horrible; horribly primitive. The api actually relied on publicly accessible system globals. Please!! The api relied on apps to explicitly manipulate fields of system data structures (Window and GrafPort structures, for example). It had ancient concepts like "hi" memory and "low" memory. It had "grow zones" to handle cases where an app used more memory than was allocated to it, which brings up another horrible aspect - the user actually had to explicitly tell the OS how much memory to allocate to each app. This is the system that you're praising! It was good when released in the 80's but by the 1991 and certainly 1995, it was horribly dated. Even Apple knew this, which is why they spent a few years trying to create a modern version of Mac OS in the failed Copland project (not to mention the Pink and Taligent fiascos, which were also failed attempts to create a modern OS). Classic Mac OS was NOT a good OS by any means when Win95 was released.
Microsoft worked with the Chilean government on this, and I'm sure that Microsoft *assumed* that Chile's government would be the legal, social, and knowledgable authority for its citizens and their culture. So Chile's govt is the one that would deal with the tribe, Chile's govt would be the responsible for translations, and if anyone should have been aware of the Mapuches' feelings, it would again, be the Chilean govt.
Why would Microsoft "squrim, look stupid, hypocrytical and antisocial"? All they'd do is pull support for that particular language. The Chillean government worked with MS on this in order to support the language. If some court was idiotic enough to rule that such was illegal, they simply pull support, end of story.
"The EU has judged Microsoft to be abusing a monopoly position in the global european market."
IIRC, the EC (European Commission) judged such. And the EC is not a court of law. They provide no due process, no burdens of proof, no nothing. Microsoft appealed their proclamations to the European Courts (a real court, with due process (supposedly), were evidence must actually be presented and the accused given a chance to refute), which will decide the issue. Don't be surprised to see the EC's proclamations slapped down just like Jackson's were.
I said "I am glad to be able to use the Office 2007 UI", I didn't say that I would.
First, Office hasn't used standard Windows widgets since at least Office 97.
Second, GUI consistency used to be considered a plus, but now is recognized as overrated. This is because of the Web. People are used to browsing sites that have wildly different UIs and they're able to adapt to them without much problem.
What it really says is, "We spent 100's of millions of dollars on the R&D for this stuff, and don't want a competitor to copy the stuff and give it away for free".
Seems reasonable to me.
You can be sure that the new Office UI is patented up the wazoo, so MS could simply allow nobody to use it. But instead MS is still allowing anyone to use it royalty-free (including open source devs) as long as the devs that use it aren't competing with Office itself. That would be over 99.9999999% of developers. I don't write code that competes with Office and am glad to be able to use the Office 2007 UI.
What you are saying is generally the consenses at osnews.com (having read their version of this thread).
"They cannot break legacy code but Apple gambled and did it, and I think it succeeded."
Apple didn't abandon Copeland for Unix, they abanodoned Copeland for NextStep, which happened to run on a bsd variant. Apple didn't give a damn about Unix. If they could have actually completed Copeland, they would have gone with that. If NextStep had been built on top of something else, Apple would have gone with that (and there was some consideration to go with the version of NextStep that ran on NT, but Apple didn't want to be dependend on MS in that way). Unix is a side-effect of the NextStep deal.
And those "moving to Mac OS X" aren't doing it to move to Unix, they're doing it to move to Mac OS X. And what makes OSX OSX isn't Unix, but Cocoa/Carbon, which "real" Mac apps are written to (meaning, the apps that normal people use; normal folks don't use "Mac" apps written against Unix).
I wish that Copeland had succeeded, so there would be at least one mainstream OS that wasn't built atop Unix or NT. More diversity in OS design advances the state of the art. You, on the other hand, are advocating that *every* mainstream OS be a Unix variant, as if Unix is the be-all and end-all, which is fallacy.
How is this a move in the "Linux owes us" game? OO.o isn't particular to Linux. OO.o itself may be running afoul of MS (and others') patents, but this has nothing to do with Linux.
According to what I've read at various video game sites and forums (such as GAF), Xbox 360's Gears of War cost lest than half to make as did Wii's Red Steel, both of which are shooters. Gears of War blows Red Steel away. I think you're underestimating Microsoft's skill at providing better developer tools than their competition, which lowers development cost. Also, Xbox 360 uses DirectX, which many are already familiar with.
Apple is a member of BDA, the Blu-Ray Disc Association (I'm not exactly sure what the acronym stands for), so Leopard will definitely have DRM. It *has* to in order to play protected Blu-Ray discs.
Ubuntu can't play protected HD-DVDs and Blu-Ray discs at all, so what are you talking about?
If you don't like DRM, just don't play DRM content. Vista will play non-DRM'ed content just as well as Ubuntu. But Vista will play DRM'ed content as well, unlike Ubuntu. Seems like Vista has the edge here.
First, you're no Solomon.
Second, that you'd dismiss PowerShell with Solomon's "There's nothing new under the sun" shows that you haven't the first clue what PowerShell is about.
Nobody cares about the embedded market (except the companies that are directly involved) because those are closed systems. I can't install programs on those systems or write my own programs for those systems. They could be running DOS for all I care, it makes no difference to me. They are literally "black box" systems. I mean, really, who gives a damn what kind of embedded software a washing machine might be running?
There's no need for voting machines to use "open" source, just as long as the source is available to the government (and public, if desired). That is, there's no need to allow the source to be altered and redistributed by others for free.
Oh please.
Microsoft is still supporting PlaysForSure, but they're now doing it through URGE rather than MSN Music Store. URGE is the default online music store of WMP11, replacing MSN Music Store, which was the default online music store for WMP10. WMP10 and WMP11 also support lots of other PlaysForSure online stores (walmart music, aol music, GiantMusic (which provides its music in WMA Lossles), etc.
Oh, and slashdot's headline for this story is old old old. It's been known for months that Zune is not a PlaysForSure device. The new info is that Microsoft is shutting down the store portion of MSN Music, whose buy links will refer to Rhapsody and Zune. But again, MSN Music isn't going to be WMP's prime online store anyway, URGE is.
Depends on how much you infringe.. htm
If you pirate more than $1000 worth of copyrighted works during any $180 day period, then it's criminal. Otherwise it's civil.
See
http://www.usdoj.gov/criminal/cybercrime/17usc506
http://www.copyright.gov/title17/92chap5.html#506
That's one thing I like about the subscription model. Regardless of the DRM used, you can switch to a different service at any time without worrying about it, as you have nothing "vested" into a particular DRM.