You missed the irony in your own post. Adobe sued (actually, *threatened* to sue) Microsoft for implementing PDF, an open standard. Now Opera sues MS to force them to implement open standards. If MS can get sued for implementing standards and sued for not implementing them, then WTF? Make up your minds, MS haters.
ODF is an ISO standard, but ISO doesn't control ODF, Sun/OO.o does thru OASIS. Who do you think is working on ODF 1.1 and 1.2, ISO? Wrong. PDF is an ISO standard, yet ISO doesn't control PDF, Adobe does. Who do you think is working on the next versions of PDF, ISO? Wrong.
It's standard practice that when ISO merely ratifies rather than develops a standard, the entitiy that proposed the standard to ISO is the one that works on future versions, versions that will then have to themselves be submitted to ISO in order to be ratified as ISO standards.
Rob Weir, groklaw, and slashdotters *know* this, yet are pretending not to in order to score political points. Willful and feigned misunderstanding/shock is really the lowest debating tactic there is, and is a tactic deployed when stronger arguments are lacking.
In fact, the last two Rob Weir blog entries have been baseless FUD, because he's scared that the objections to OOXML are going to be addressed sufficiently to be approved by ISO, so rather than dealing with technical issues, he deals with this type of garbage.
OSX retail boxes are essentially "upgrade" packages because they can only be installed on computers that at some point had an earlier version of Mac OS on it (legally, that is; one can install OSX on a non-Mac computer, against Apple's EULA), i.e. computers for which Apple already received payment for an OS at some time in the past (though the cost was hidden in the price of the Mac computer itself). Since OSX retail boxes are defacto "upgrade" packages, then the price of OSX retail boxes should be compared with the price of Vista *upgrade* packages, and those prices are comparable.
"My key question is whether they're selling them for less than they cost to make. If so, then it's probably a dumping case waiting to happen."
A dumping case? Who is going to file it? Apple? Please. Besides, Amazon is the one that discounted their Zunes, not Microsoft. Retailers can sell product for whatever price they want to.
Lastly, both iTunes Music Store and the Zune Marketplace store offer DRM-free music (as well as DRM'ed music), so your accusations of either one trying to lock people in via DRM needs to be put into proper perspective.
"The iPod is so ubiquitous that even the alarm clock in the hotel that I stayed in had an iPod dock on the alarm clock... cars are equipped with iPod docks, I even saw a fireplace with an iPod dock. Why stray from such a big aftermarket?"
So iPod's ecosystem feeds into iPod vendor-lockin. For example, people that own iPod-enabled cars feel compelled to use iPods. Seems similar to the Windows ecosystem/lockin that slashdotters rail against.
The little portable media player that could: According to PriceGrabber, Shopping.com and eBay, the fattie Zunes (30 and 80) were the second-most bought product online during Black Friday, right behind the Wii. The snag in the numbers is that it doesn't include individual retailers like Amazon or Cyber Monday sales, but the chocolate Zune 30 does remain tops in Amazon's portables section, so it might just pull through in the final count. [Wired] "
Lots of wikipedia content is straight copies from other sources. Does Wikipedia have the right to license that material under Creative Commons without the original authors' consent? I know that Wikipedia has been essentially providing that material for free anyway, but it seems strange to "formalize" the giving away of plagiarized content under a particular license that the original author might not agree with.
The "chocolate brown" Zune (as engadget calls it; I know most iPod fanboys call the "turd/shit" brown Zune) has been selling extremely well lately. It was on sale at Amazon during Thanksgiving week and the preceding week, for $150, and was the #1 mp3 player during that time. I'd guess that was due to the low price and the Zune 2.0 software update. Amazon then raised the price to $170 and it remained #1 and sold out. Amazon then began getting its brown Zunes from a new retailer, and charging $190, and it again sold out. Now Amazon is getting their brown zunes from PC Universe, and is selling them for $207 each, and it's still selling like hotcakes. As I write this, there is only "one left in stock", and it's ranked #1 in the "mp3 players/Portable Digital Media Players" and "MP3 Players/Hard Drive-Based" categories. So the price keeps going up, but it keeps right on selling.
Incidentally, I placed an order for a brown Zune at $170, and three days later was notified that my order had been canceled due to running out of Zunes at that price level.:(
"Option 1) This is Ziff-Davis MSFT flamebait. Option 2) The author of the piece is an idiotic fuck who screwed up his install.
My money is on Both."
Option 1 makes no sense. Why would "MSFT" want anyone to run an article saying, "Vista sucks, but Leopard sucks just as badly"? The premise of the article damns both Vista and Leopard, so the article wouldn't be in "MSFT"'s interest. Now, since your "money is on Both", that means you accept Option 1, which shows that your analytical skills are woeful, brining the rest of your post into question as well.
Apple and Microsoft display the same pattern - their products resembles beta for the first few months, and only become mature after a few years. Happened with the iPod, and all successful versions of Windows.
It happened with OSX too. The first version sucked (not even beta quality), but improved over time and finally got great with the 4th version (10.3 Panther), and Apple's been building on that ever since. But it's possible that QA has taken a hit with Leopard. Maybe Apple stretched itself too thin and/or rushed the release (Leopard was a year late as it is; I remember Jobs bragging that Leopard would be released before Vista).
"Many of the author's points dont make any sense in comparison to MS and Vista. SP1 isn't due out (as of now) till Q1 2008... OSX's update is already out... don't see the similarity. "
Um, you do realize that Microsoft has been releasing Vista fixes for months now via Windows Update, right? Fixes don't have to come as SPs or.0.1 updates.
And check out the Apple discussion forums (though Apple has seen fit to lock many of the threads that complain about Leopard's problems, so check out MacinTouch and AppleInsider.com forums too).
Apple's "Vista is crap" ad campaign and using BSOD icons for Windows network shares in Leopard makes this all the more embarrassing for Apple. And comedian Baratunde Thurston has publicly called out Apple on its unjustified smugness (even before Leopard was released). Baratunde Thurston: I Hate the Smugness of Apple
"To destroy Microsoft, all one would need to do is;..."
Sorry, but while some of your suggestions have merit, and some are already in place, antitrust law is not about "destroying Microsoft" so your entire premise is flawed from the start.
Wait. Are you saying the government should've prevented Microsoft from entering the video game console market? Why? I don't see how the world would be better off without Xbox, in fact, quite the contrary. Online gaming would be a joke, consoles wouldn't come with harddrives, and Sony would likely have a monopoly right now.
BTW, you don't think Sony used its profits from their consumer electronic biz to fund the original PlayStation venture? Get real. Business use profits from other products to create new ones; that's the way things work.
OK, how about we change the players:
"Some XP users are having problems with the latest Windows Update, yours truly included. The problem seems to be caused by the presence of a Linux dual boot partition and renders the PC unable to reboot after the update fails. Note that Microsoft is recommending a full disk wipe; but data can be recovered via Firewire."
CNet has a note up that if you fall victim to this "known issue" and need to reformat the disk, you can't reinstall Linux because Microsoft has disallowed dual-booting with XP, so users must upgrade to Vista in order to dual-boot into Linux." Now is it "completely overblown"? Or would you in fact be trashing Microsoft for the next 6 months over this?
Yeah, the iPod video was brilliant, and very well done. But that's because it was done by Microsoft themselves, as it served as a humorous self-deprecating tool to get certain product divisions to use cleaner packaging. This Gmail article, on the other hand, is just the typical Microsoft-bash, and pretty lame too.
If Negreponte's goal is to get cheap laptops in the hands of poor children, why would he be angry? Those poor kids deserve choice, and competition from the Classmate provides that. So fewer kids get the XO, so what? Seems like Negreponte is letting his ego cloud his vision.
A. I've not heard of product placement in *songs*, before. And I did used to hear "Playstation" mentioned in songs a few years ago, but no more. Now its all about Xbox.
B. Some of the 30 Rock appearances of Halo (I think it was actually Halo 2) showed it being played, but it wasn't mentioned explicitly and you'd only know it was Halo if you already knew what Halo looked like on screen. Plus, Halo 2 had been out for years already, so product placement for the game makes no sense.
C. The Scrubs episode I mentioned didn't explicitly mention the Xbox 360, but you could tell they were using a 360 because of the controllers they were using.
These are not what "product placement" is about. Product placement would make it more clear as to what the product was, and deal with products that were newly released.
Now, the Sarah Silverman show had an episode that featured Halo3 and Gears of War, and that episode aired the week after Halo3 came out, so maybe you could argue "product placement" in that case. But Gears had already been out for a year (product placement would make no sense) and Halo3 was already well-known to the public even in the mainstream media. The Sarah Silverman show used Gears and Halo3 not because of product placement, but because those games would be known to and popular with the audience of that show.
I know this is painful for you as a Microsoft hater, but them's the facts.
BTW, Macs appear in so many shows, not due to product placement, but due to its popularity in Hollywood.
I don't get it. If your "friend"'s store doesn't see any demand, why did they order so many? Manufacturers can't stuff a channel on their own, a retailer has to place orders.
And we already know that iPod moves way more units than any other player, and indeed, all other players combined. You're not exactly stating something we don't already know.
"The unfortunate thing about MS is that it has too many heads each with their own visions, mostly going in different directions."
Which is exactly what slashdotters claimed they wanted to achieve by splitting the company. Well, we've got the same thing as we'd have with different companies. Maybe it's bad for Microsoft fanboys, but slashdotters should be thrilled.
Even so, everyone expected PS3 to destroy Xbox 360 in total accumulative sales by March 2007, given how powerful the "Playstation" name brand is (it was nearly as powerful as the "iPod" brand name). Didn't happen. I still expect more PS3s to be eventually sold than Xbox 360s, mainly due to Japan, but outside Japan, Xbox has nearly caught up to Playstation in brandname power and has indeed surpassed it in pop-culture. You see more Xboxes used or referred to in TV shows, songs, movies than Playstations nowadays. (For example, last year, 30 Rock alone had at least 4 episodes where Halo was played and/or referred to (played on Xbox 360s rather than Xbox 1s), and Xbox 360 was used in Scrubs earlier this year.) Given how powerful the Playstation brand is, that's a big accomplishment.
Microsoft has NEVER claimed Zune would kill the iPod. That's something you guys claimed in order to declare Zune a failure after it failed to meet the standard that YOU set. Last year Zune was the #2 selling hard-drive based player. We'll see how they do now that they've released their first flash players.
Wow, a demo of a beta product failed (of course, the video doesn't show that the demo worked perfectly the entire time before and after that incident).
iPods are too common to have much of a "cool" factor. When you see your milkman with iPod earbud chordes coming out of his ears, you know that iPod isn't about "cool" anymore. On the contrary, it's about the "establishment" (aka "The Man"). It's like buying a common car such that you five of yourself coming down the street every day.
Then again, a part of being "cool" for adolescents is indeed following along with the crowd like sheep, but anyone older than that recognizes "sheep-cool" for the shallowness that it is.
Slashdot Mirror
You missed the irony in your own post.
Adobe sued (actually, *threatened* to sue) Microsoft for implementing PDF, an open standard. Now Opera sues MS to force them to implement open standards. If MS can get sued for implementing standards and sued for not implementing them, then WTF? Make up your minds, MS haters.
ODF is an ISO standard, but ISO doesn't control ODF, Sun/OO.o does thru OASIS. Who do you think is working on ODF 1.1 and 1.2, ISO? Wrong.
PDF is an ISO standard, yet ISO doesn't control PDF, Adobe does. Who do you think is working on the next versions of PDF, ISO? Wrong.
It's standard practice that when ISO merely ratifies rather than develops a standard, the entitiy that proposed the standard to ISO is the one that works on future versions, versions that will then have to themselves be submitted to ISO in order to be ratified as ISO standards.
Rob Weir, groklaw, and slashdotters *know* this, yet are pretending not to in order to score political points. Willful and feigned misunderstanding/shock is really the lowest debating tactic there is, and is a tactic deployed when stronger arguments are lacking.
In fact, the last two Rob Weir blog entries have been baseless FUD, because he's scared that the objections to OOXML are going to be addressed sufficiently to be approved by ISO, so rather than dealing with technical issues, he deals with this type of garbage.
OS/X : Hereround 155$.
OSX retail boxes are essentially "upgrade" packages because they can only be installed on computers that at some point had an earlier version of Mac OS on it (legally, that is; one can install OSX on a non-Mac computer, against Apple's EULA), i.e. computers for which Apple already received payment for an OS at some time in the past (though the cost was hidden in the price of the Mac computer itself). Since OSX retail boxes are defacto "upgrade" packages, then the price of OSX retail boxes should be compared with the price of Vista *upgrade* packages, and those prices are comparable.
"My key question is whether they're selling them for less than they cost to make. If so, then it's probably a dumping case waiting to happen."
A dumping case? Who is going to file it? Apple? Please.
Besides, Amazon is the one that discounted their Zunes, not Microsoft. Retailers can sell product for whatever price they want to.
Lastly, both iTunes Music Store and the Zune Marketplace store offer DRM-free music (as well as DRM'ed music), so your accusations of either one trying to lock people in via DRM needs to be put into proper perspective.
LOL :)
Yeah, and I see that the 2nd-gen 80GB Black Zune also has a 1 cent savings at Amazon. Too funny.
"The iPod is so ubiquitous that even the alarm clock in the hotel that I stayed in had an iPod dock on the alarm clock... cars are equipped with iPod docks, I even saw a fireplace with an iPod dock. Why stray from such a big aftermarket?"
So iPod's ecosystem feeds into iPod vendor-lockin. For example, people that own iPod-enabled cars feel compelled to use iPods. Seems similar to the Windows ecosystem/lockin that slashdotters rail against.
http://gizmodo.com/gadgets/zune/pricegrabber-and-ebay-zune-second+most-bought-black-friday-product-326648.php "PriceGrabber and eBay: Zune Second-Most Bought Black Friday Product
The little portable media player that could: According to PriceGrabber, Shopping.com and eBay, the fattie Zunes (30 and 80) were the second-most bought product online during Black Friday, right behind the Wii. The snag in the numbers is that it doesn't include individual retailers like Amazon or Cyber Monday sales, but the chocolate Zune 30 does remain tops in Amazon's portables section, so it might just pull through in the final count. [Wired] "
Lots of wikipedia content is straight copies from other sources. Does Wikipedia have the right to license that material under Creative Commons without the original authors' consent? I know that Wikipedia has been essentially providing that material for free anyway, but it seems strange to "formalize" the giving away of plagiarized content under a particular license that the original author might not agree with.
The "chocolate brown" Zune (as engadget calls it; I know most iPod fanboys call the "turd/shit" brown Zune) has been selling extremely well lately. It was on sale at Amazon during Thanksgiving week and the preceding week, for $150, and was the #1 mp3 player during that time. I'd guess that was due to the low price and the Zune 2.0 software update. Amazon then raised the price to $170 and it remained #1 and sold out. Amazon then began getting its brown Zunes from a new retailer, and charging $190, and it again sold out. Now Amazon is getting their brown zunes from PC Universe, and is selling them for $207 each, and it's still selling like hotcakes. As I write this, there is only "one left in stock", and it's ranked #1 in the "mp3 players/Portable Digital Media Players" and "MP3 Players/Hard Drive-Based" categories. So the price keeps going up, but it keeps right on selling.
:(
Incidentally, I placed an order for a brown Zune at $170, and three days later was notified that my order had been canceled due to running out of Zunes at that price level.
"Option 1) This is Ziff-Davis MSFT flamebait.
Option 2) The author of the piece is an idiotic fuck who screwed up his install.
My money is on Both."
Option 1 makes no sense. Why would "MSFT" want anyone to run an article saying, "Vista sucks, but Leopard sucks just as badly"? The premise of the article damns both Vista and Leopard, so the article wouldn't be in "MSFT"'s interest.
Now, since your "money is on Both", that means you accept Option 1, which shows that your analytical skills are woeful, brining the rest of your post into question as well.
Apple and Microsoft display the same pattern - their products resembles beta for the first few months, and only become mature after a few years. Happened with the iPod, and all successful versions of Windows.
It happened with OSX too. The first version sucked (not even beta quality), but improved over time and finally got great with the 4th version (10.3 Panther), and Apple's been building on that ever since. But it's possible that QA has taken a hit with Leopard. Maybe Apple stretched itself too thin and/or rushed the release (Leopard was a year late as it is; I remember Jobs bragging that Leopard would be released before Vista).
"Many of the author's points dont make any sense in comparison to MS and Vista. SP1 isn't due out (as of now) till Q1 2008... OSX's update is already out... don't see the similarity. "
.0.1 updates.
Um, you do realize that Microsoft has been releasing Vista fixes for months now via Windows Update, right? Fixes don't have to come as SPs or
But you're right, I don't see the similarity either. Vista has to work probably 3 orders of magnitude more configurations than OSX does, yet Leopard is still very buggy, even with 10.5.1, BTW.
And make no mistake: The author's complaints are not an isolated case.
http://www.tomsguide.com/us/update-leopard-problems-apple,review-1028.html
http://www.robhyndman.com/2007/11/14/ive-been-attacked-by-a-leopard/
http://scobleizer.com/2007/11/16/caught-in-apple-restart-hell/
http://scobleizer.com/2007/11/17/the-brand-promise-of-apple/
http://www.digg.com/apple/MacBook_MacBook_Pro_owners_suffer_keyboard_freezing_with_Leopard
And check out the Apple discussion forums (though Apple has seen fit to lock many of the threads that complain about Leopard's problems, so check out MacinTouch and AppleInsider.com forums too).
Apple's "Vista is crap" ad campaign and using BSOD icons for Windows network shares in Leopard makes this all the more embarrassing for Apple. And comedian Baratunde Thurston has publicly called out Apple on its unjustified smugness (even before Leopard was released).
Baratunde Thurston: I Hate the Smugness of Apple
"To destroy Microsoft, all one would need to do is;..."
Sorry, but while some of your suggestions have merit, and some are already in place, antitrust law is not about "destroying Microsoft" so your entire premise is flawed from the start.
Wait.
Are you saying the government should've prevented Microsoft from entering the video game console market? Why? I don't see how the world would be better off without Xbox, in fact, quite the contrary. Online gaming would be a joke, consoles wouldn't come with harddrives, and Sony would likely have a monopoly right now.
BTW, you don't think Sony used its profits from their consumer electronic biz to fund the original PlayStation venture? Get real. Business use profits from other products to create new ones; that's the way things work.
"But unless your running FF as root that really shouldn't be a big a problem."
/sarcasm
Yah, trashing your home directory and/or having private data uploaded from the home directory is no big deal.
OK, how about we change the players: "Some XP users are having problems with the latest Windows Update, yours truly included. The problem seems to be caused by the presence of a Linux dual boot partition and renders the PC unable to reboot after the update fails. Note that Microsoft is recommending a full disk wipe; but data can be recovered via Firewire."
CNet has a note up that if you fall victim to this "known issue" and need to reformat the disk, you can't reinstall Linux because Microsoft has disallowed dual-booting with XP, so users must upgrade to Vista in order to dual-boot into Linux." Now is it "completely overblown"? Or would you in fact be trashing Microsoft for the next 6 months over this?
Yeah, the iPod video was brilliant, and very well done. But that's because it was done by Microsoft themselves, as it served as a humorous self-deprecating tool to get certain product divisions to use cleaner packaging. This Gmail article, on the other hand, is just the typical Microsoft-bash, and pretty lame too.
If Negreponte's goal is to get cheap laptops in the hands of poor children, why would he be angry? Those poor kids deserve choice, and competition from the Classmate provides that. So fewer kids get the XO, so what? Seems like Negreponte is letting his ego cloud his vision.
A. I've not heard of product placement in *songs*, before. And I did used to hear "Playstation" mentioned in songs a few years ago, but no more. Now its all about Xbox.
B. Some of the 30 Rock appearances of Halo (I think it was actually Halo 2) showed it being played, but it wasn't mentioned explicitly and you'd only know it was Halo if you already knew what Halo looked like on screen. Plus, Halo 2 had been out for years already, so product placement for the game makes no sense.
C. The Scrubs episode I mentioned didn't explicitly mention the Xbox 360, but you could tell they were using a 360 because of the controllers they were using.
These are not what "product placement" is about. Product placement would make it more clear as to what the product was, and deal with products that were newly released.
Now, the Sarah Silverman show had an episode that featured Halo3 and Gears of War, and that episode aired the week after Halo3 came out, so maybe you could argue "product placement" in that case. But Gears had already been out for a year (product placement would make no sense) and Halo3 was already well-known to the public even in the mainstream media. The Sarah Silverman show used Gears and Halo3 not because of product placement, but because those games would be known to and popular with the audience of that show.
I know this is painful for you as a Microsoft hater, but them's the facts.
BTW, Macs appear in so many shows, not due to product placement, but due to its popularity in Hollywood.
I don't get it. If your "friend"'s store doesn't see any demand, why did they order so many? Manufacturers can't stuff a channel on their own, a retailer has to place orders.
And we already know that iPod moves way more units than any other player, and indeed, all other players combined. You're not exactly stating something we don't already know.
"The unfortunate thing about MS is that it has too many heads each with their own visions, mostly going in different directions."
Which is exactly what slashdotters claimed they wanted to achieve by splitting the company. Well, we've got the same thing as we'd have with different companies. Maybe it's bad for Microsoft fanboys, but slashdotters should be thrilled.
Even so, everyone expected PS3 to destroy Xbox 360 in total accumulative sales by March 2007, given how powerful the "Playstation" name brand is (it was nearly as powerful as the "iPod" brand name). Didn't happen. I still expect more PS3s to be eventually sold than Xbox 360s, mainly due to Japan, but outside Japan, Xbox has nearly caught up to Playstation in brandname power and has indeed surpassed it in pop-culture. You see more Xboxes used or referred to in TV shows, songs, movies than Playstations nowadays. (For example, last year, 30 Rock alone had at least 4 episodes where Halo was played and/or referred to (played on Xbox 360s rather than Xbox 1s), and Xbox 360 was used in Scrubs earlier this year.) Given how powerful the Playstation brand is, that's a big accomplishment.
"Now I understand why they didn't cut their losses with the Zune months ago and stop pushing it as an iPod killer."
You cite me even ONE instance of a Microsoft person pushing Zune as an "iPod killer".
I'll cite you the very opposite:
Microsoft expects Zune catchup to take five years
Microsoft has NEVER claimed Zune would kill the iPod. That's something you guys claimed in order to declare Zune a failure after it failed to meet the standard that YOU set. Last year Zune was the #2 selling hard-drive based player. We'll see how they do now that they've released their first flash players.
Wow, a demo of a beta product failed (of course, the video doesn't show that the demo worked perfectly the entire time before and after that incident).
BTW, David Pogue, Apple-fanboy in chief, praises Vista's voice recognition:
http://pogue.blogs.nytimes.com/2007/03/01/telling-your-computer-what-to-do/
And here's another article comparing Vista's voice recognition with MacSpeech, the former blowing away the latter.
http://inetsynch.podbean.com/2007/09/26/windows-2-apples-episode-13/
But keep believing your own FUD if it helps you to sleep better at night.
iPods are too common to have much of a "cool" factor. When you see your milkman with iPod earbud chordes coming out of his ears, you know that iPod isn't about "cool" anymore. On the contrary, it's about the "establishment" (aka "The Man"). It's like buying a common car such that you five of yourself coming down the street every day.
Then again, a part of being "cool" for adolescents is indeed following along with the crowd like sheep, but anyone older than that recognizes "sheep-cool" for the shallowness that it is.