I do not understand this online Music bubble. The only ones who make money right now are the Pigopolists record companies.
These online companies provide this service. The iTunes and Walmarts do not get cut in for much.
We pay as much or more for music. And we have to supply the media. We save the Pigopolists the distribution costs too. We do not even get the liner notes.
All these music download outfits must be hoping the pigopolists lower their price some day!
Delivering good products not the goal of a software company; making money is.
Netscape was doomed either way. They had their main business model shot out from under them. They could no longer sell the web brower. They were forced to give it away.
This whole book looks a lot like an attempt to rewrite the history of Microsoft disguised as a management lesson book. Look at the titles of the chapters. Look at the stereotype of a Linux geek in the introduction:
That said, there are plenty of good examples of people putting code beautiness over business or project needs. A lot of those companies really did do themselves in!
I see that a lot where I work. Some people are carefull about what they design and it just works.
Some people slop something together. There are lots of bugs and problems. They then jump on solving the problems they created and get the attaboys. They are then credited with being responsive to action items.
Re:Linux written to compete with SCO?
on
SCO News Roundup
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· Score: 2, Insightful
Linux Is Not UniX, any more so than BSD, BeOS, or MacOSX. Better double check the wording of that contract Darl.
We better start calling it GNU/Linux. After all GNU stands for GNU is Not Unix! This will make Stallman happy.
If MS were to pull out of Europe, the damage would be huge.
There is no way MS will pull out of Europe. If they did, non Windows and non MS-Office would reach critical mass in a large part of the world. That would be a disaster.
If that happened we would have side by side competition of Office Suits and OSes where we would compare products and prices and choose. There is no way Microsoft would let that happen if they could stop it.
The problem appears to be in the Microsoft development model
From afar it looks like Microsoft has a lack of partitioning of functionality. Everything is embeded in everything else. It is so bad that ( According to Gates under oath at least --Gates would not lie to us would he? ) if you remove the media player you break the OS.
Open source has partioning of functionality forced on them. The code is written by volunteers all over the world. Functionaly has to be cleanly partitioned to make this work.
Sure, among uber-geeks and/.'ers. John Q. Public who purchased these Routers was doubtless annoyed by it, but John Q. Public who is still in the market and who (likely) hasn't heard about it will still consider buying Belken products.
1) John Q. Public goes to the uberGeeks for advice on what to buy.
2) John Q. Public then goes to the uberGeeks to get the stuff to work. Those who do not go to the uberGeeks then put in calls for support that cost way more the the $5 of profit Belkin is likely to make on these products.
This is an attempt to adress the fact that copyright law is not working out that well in age of Internet, hard drives and CD burners. This is an attempt to come up with a solution that does not require subjecting 12 year olds to million dollar law suits.
Second. Copyright law is major government intervention in the free market! The government says who can and can not make and distribute certain things. If one thinks government intervention in the free market is bad, then one must be suspicious of copyright law.
I think government intervention in the free market is needed sometimes and I think copyrigth law ( In moderation) is a good thing.
Third. This attempts to come up with a parallel system to our present copyright law. It does not do away with it.
Fourth. There is no way this kind of thing will happen. The suits in Hollywood who get almost all the bucks from CD purchases, iTunes downloads etc. will never let this happen. They will pay the best congress money can buy to make sure it does not happen.
-------------- If we want a sensible solution to the copyright problem we first have to do something about the suits in Hollywood. We have to cut off their "air supply". Then they have no money to buy congress. We have to stop buying RIAA music. Buy from unsigned artist. This takes more work but it is guilt free music.
Matthew Szulik had a very difficult decision to make. Does Red Hat continue to lose money in the home market or leave that market.
I think in the back of his mind he is not sure he made the right decision! He put his company in a position where it is now not in position to ride the desktop Linux wave if it happens. So he is over compensating here. He has convinced himself that he believes the Linux Desktop will not be ready for years.
Interesting comments about the U.S. patent system slowing innovation!
"Grove also criticized the nation's overburdened patent system, which he said is causing an abundance of innovation-slowing litigation.
"He said that the inability of patent examiners to handle the workload has led to a backlog of important applications, but also less than thorough vetting of patents that perhaps should not be granted. "
I have worked on hard drives and shock sensors. The retract time is far longer than the impact time. The impact of hitting the floor will be over in milliseconds. In that time, the heads will not even reach the ramp.
The only thing that would offer real protection is to sense the 0 G condition when the computer is falling. It cost bucks to be sensitive enough to sense 0 G. It costs more bucks than anyone is willing to put into a mobo.
Robertson realy pushes the legal envelope. I think he wanted Microsoft to sue him over the "Lindows" name and they did. I think he wants Microsoft to sue him over this web site too. It gives them a lot of visibility.
Slashdot Mirror
Much of what goes on in real politics looks childish to me. Perhaps if the electorate was not alliterate the politicians would grow up or move on.
- Is Jennefer Lopez showing her boobs too much?
- Is Brittany Spears showing her boobs too much?
- When is Ben Affleck getting engaged again.
There is only so much space in a newspaper. They have to set priorities on what stories are important!
These online companies provide this service. The iTunes and Walmarts do not get cut in for much.
We pay as much or more for music. And we have to supply the media. We save the Pigopolists the distribution costs too. We do not even get the liner notes.
All these music download outfits must be hoping the pigopolists lower their price some day!
If the customer bails after 1 year I bet they break even. Those that stick around provide the gravy.
These printer outfits have a similar business model to AOL. Sell the hardware at a slight loss but make it up in the subscription or the ink.
$299 + 12*$23.90 = $585.80
I do not think they are losing money supplying a low end computer for over $500.
Netscape was doomed either way. They had their main business model shot out from under them. They could no longer sell the web brower. They were forced to give it away.
This whole book looks a lot like an attempt to rewrite the history of Microsoft disguised as a management lesson book. Look at the titles of the chapters. Look at the stereotype of a Linux geek in the introduction:
That said, there are plenty of good examples of people putting code beautiness over business or project needs. A lot of those companies really did do themselves in!
Some people slop something together. There are lots of bugs and problems. They then jump on solving the problems they created and get the attaboys. They are then credited with being responsive to action items.
We better start calling it GNU/Linux. After all GNU stands for GNU is Not Unix! This will make Stallman happy.
There is no way MS will pull out of Europe. If they did, non Windows and non MS-Office would reach critical mass in a large part of the world. That would be a disaster.
If that happened we would have side by side competition of Office Suits and OSes where we would compare products and prices and choose. There is no way Microsoft would let that happen if they could stop it.
From afar it looks like Microsoft has a lack of partitioning of functionality. Everything is embeded in everything else. It is so bad that ( According to Gates under oath at least --Gates would not lie to us would he? ) if you remove the media player you break the OS.
Open source has partioning of functionality forced on them. The code is written by volunteers all over the world. Functionaly has to be cleanly partitioned to make this work.
1) John Q. Public goes to the uberGeeks for advice on what to buy.
2) John Q. Public then goes to the uberGeeks to get the stuff to work. Those who do not go to the uberGeeks then put in calls for support that cost way more the the $5 of profit Belkin is likely to make on these products.
Is this a good sign for Qtopia? Trolltech may get some business here.
First RTFA.
This is an attempt to adress the fact that copyright law is not working out that well in age of Internet, hard drives and CD burners. This is an attempt to come up with a solution that does not require subjecting 12 year olds to million dollar law suits.
Second.
Copyright law is major government intervention in the free market! The government says who can and can not make and distribute certain things. If one thinks government intervention in the free market is bad, then one must be suspicious of copyright law.
I think government intervention in the free market is needed sometimes and I think copyrigth law ( In moderation) is a good thing.
Third.
This attempts to come up with a parallel system to our present copyright law. It does not do away with it.
Fourth.
There is no way this kind of thing will happen. The suits in Hollywood who get almost all the bucks from CD purchases, iTunes downloads etc. will never let this happen. They will pay the best congress money can buy to make sure it does not happen.
--------------
If we want a sensible solution to the copyright problem we first have to do something about the suits in Hollywood. We have to cut off their "air supply". Then they have no money to buy congress. We have to stop buying RIAA music. Buy from unsigned artist. This takes more work but it is guilt free music.
Matthew Szulik had a very difficult decision to make. Does Red Hat continue to lose money in the home market or leave that market.
I think in the back of his mind he is not sure he made the right decision! He put his company in a position where it is now not in position to ride the desktop Linux wave if it happens. So he is over compensating here. He has convinced himself that he believes the Linux Desktop will not be ready for years.
If you just wanted a useable desktop, other distros such as SuSE are much better.
If you want to then download and build stuff from source things were easier with Red Hat.
I am surprised they are giving up on the desktop just as it is showing signs of life. Are they just going to concede that market to SuSE.
The Linux desktop is happening in Germany first so maybe Red Hat does not have a chance. We are kind of backward here in the U.S.A.
This has been out in the non-mainstream press for quite some time.
This is a big story too. The reliability of our voting system is a very big story.
The mainstream media is very very slow picking up on this. More and more I find the mainstream media to be pathetic reporting the news.
They still are not reporting about the Diebold memos. They are still not reporting about Diebold's strong Republical ties and donations either.
Time to get a new judge!
It is fun to watch Ballmer sweat!!
I will assume we can read the XLS file with Open Office. I will check this out when I get home.
Interesting comments about the U.S. patent system slowing innovation!
"Grove also criticized the nation's overburdened patent system, which he said is causing an abundance of innovation-slowing litigation.
"He said that the inability of patent examiners to handle the workload has led to a backlog of important applications, but also less than thorough vetting of patents that perhaps should not be granted. "
I have worked on hard drives and shock sensors. The retract time is far longer than the impact time. The impact of hitting the floor will be over in milliseconds. In that time, the heads will not even reach the ramp.
The only thing that would offer real protection is to sense the 0 G condition when the computer is falling. It cost bucks to be sensitive enough to sense 0 G. It costs more bucks than anyone is willing to put into a mobo.
Robertson realy pushes the legal envelope. I think he wanted Microsoft to sue him over the "Lindows" name and they did. I think he wants Microsoft to sue him over this web site too. It gives them a lot of visibility.
CISCO owns Linksys. Inside CISCO people have the option of using a Linux desktop! We should give CISCO some good karma just for that.
Maybe 'industry standards' was not the right term. Maybe we need another name for technolgy supplied by multiple venders.
Still it was obvious these questions were about how Sun will do in a world where people go for solutions with multiple suppliers.
Scott showed a lot of candor on some issues but just danced around this one.