There are, by some estimates, one billion Windows users.
To claim 14% of a market that size in one year would be pure fantasy in any other context.
MS Vista was the only OS showing significant growth in 2007. Linux has gained absolutely no traction in the w3Schools stats in the better part of five years.
Vista's strength has been in OEM sales of Vista Premium and Ultimate in the consumer market.
That is good news for Dell, HP and the big box retailer.
The el cheapo $200 Linux box - the "network appliance" - makes headlines on Slashdot. But that isn't the only price point that interests Walmart - or the Walmart shopper: HP TouchSmart Desktop PC
Not only that, but the brand name multifunction color printer-scanner with a Vista driver will set him back less than $50. HP All-In-Printer & HP 21 Ink
The Geek tries to frame the "Microsoft Tax" as a percentage of the price of the computer. But the ordinary user - the middle class buyer - is looking at the price of the system bundle, the cost of services and consumables.
OEM Vista is a one-time expense.
The ink jet cartridge or the monthly bill for Roadrunner won't come any cheaper if he migrates to Linux.
Since microsoft has screwed up more and more stuff lately, if they don't come on track again, more and more users will start looking towards the alternatives. Since they have a PC computer already, installing linux could be a nice step to take before scrapping the compouter and go Apple
I have heard this mantra repeated almost daily on Slashdot for five years, but where is the evidence to support it?
The Ww3Schools stats have the virtue of being easily accessible and track long-term trends. No one here complains when you quote the adoption rates for Firefox.
But Vista will end the year in the w3Schools stats with a 6% to 7% market share. Linux at 3% - little changed since the dawn of time. OS Platform Stats
Vista's strength has been in OEM consumer sales of Premium and Ultimate editions.
Which means its share of the inherently middle class home and SOHO markets is probably much greater than its presence on this developer's site would suggest.
How then do you make the argument that Linux is in track and Microsoft is not?
1 The Geek had to defend the sale of a Linux PC without a working modem.
Walmart services the poorest outland suburbs and rural areas where broadband penetration is weak and costs are high. Walmart still sells AOL Essential Services, dial-up at $9.95 a month.
Locally, we have seen a come-back for the home town based dial-up ISP, an aging demographic, higher prices for basic needs, may be a part of it.
2 The Geek gave the gPC the five-star rating.
The novice PC shopper struggling with patchwork hardware and an OS still in beta reluctantly awarded one star.
3 The Geek fumed that the newcomer had to be warned that a Linux PC wouldn't run the software written for the OS with 90% of the home market.
While the Half-Life Anthology for Windows sells retail boxed at the bargain bin price of $15. The Geek still obviously entranced by the notion that the "network appliance" is a marketable product.
The Walmart shopper would probably have been even more pissed off by the fact this alleged "system" wasn't being sold with a matching printer and monitor, The HP multifunction printer for the Mac and Windows was $50.
Since 60% of more of people in the US have broadband, the modem is irrelevant.
It is more like 40% than 60%.
Walmart is still associated with low income shoppers in outland suburbs and rural areas where broadband penetration is weak.
That is one reason why there has been a resurgence in the mom & pop dial-up ISP.
Why Walmart.com still advertises dial-up AOL. AOL Essential Service $9.95 a month.
But the killer phrase: "Programs written for Mac or Windows will not run."
DUH! No shit, Dick Tracy! It's fucking LINUX, you MORONS!
But that is the killer phrase, the deal breaker for most Walmart shoppers. There are hundreds of bargain bin games and other apps that will run on a Windows PC that you can find anywhere at garage sale prices.
The original Half-Life is approaching ten years in print.
Print Shop has been around since the Apple II and there is still nothing in FOSS to replace it.
It certainly does support Windows apps much better than Windows supports Linux apps.
It is trivially easy to find Windows ports for FOSS apps that are even remotely of interest to the mass consumer market. In that sense, Windows - even Windows Vista - does have broad support for "Linux" apps.
Okay-- the linux PC SOLD OUT. How can you argue with a product selling out?
How many units did Walmart sell? How many were returned?
Who were the buyers? Walmart's core lower and middle class customers? The Geek in the market for a Christmas toy? A kit of parts?
How did Linux at $200 perform sales-wise and profit-wise in competition with Windows Vista?
If Vista sales and profits were stronger at two or three times the price, consider this experiment a failure --- and don't slide over the potential for after-market sales of Windows hardware, software and peripherals.
If Vista sucks rocks why is it that in the W3Schools stats Vista is the only OS that has shown consistent growth in market share all year? While Linux shows all the movement in the last four years of a snail on a salt lick?
This computer was an interesting experiment, and we'll see many more in the years to come.
This isn't the first - or even the second time - Walmart has slapped a $200 price tag on an OEM Linux box with bottom-feeder specs and tried to make it mass-market.
Nothing ever comes of it. The poor aren't buying PCs at any price. The middle class can afford better.
The OffficeMax Christmas special was an $800 HP bundle: HP Dual Core Laptop with Vista Premium. HP multifunction color printer-scanner, 6.2 megapixel HP digital camera.
Yeah, that MS-Paint has GIMP beat somethin' fierce. If you're thinking Adobe, enjoy paying $649 for functionality the average Ubuntu user has built-in.
The Geek weights the dice by quoting retail list for the most expensive incarnation of a program in its class.
But the truth is that the GIMP doesn't compete with Photoshop. If you are thinking Photoshop you are the guy who doesn't go into sticker stock when he sees the $1500 price tag for a Sigma lens.
The GIMP competes with Paint.NET. Paint Pro Pro. Photoshop Elements. Etc.
Programs which are easily mastered and easily affordable.
Implementation is cheap, once the idea is understood
If this is true, why does RCA spend fantastic sums in developing first black and white and later color television? The first all-electronic color TV sets appear in 1954 but color TV does not reach the commercial take-off point until 1965.
the geeks lose and the businessmen who can't actually do anything on their own win.
The Geek was building a multiplex telegraph.
Bell was learning how speech and music could be carried over a wire. The fax machine and mechanical television await only the invention of a practical photocell. Bell lived long enough to witness the beginning of radio broadcasting.
The breakthrough with the lightbulb wasn't knowing how to make a lightbulb -- everyone in the field had the basic idea already -- it was findng a filament that didn't burn out after ten seconds
The problem wasn't simply in finding a durable filament.
The problem was in devising an entire system that would be safe, practical and economic for home use.
It was not realized [as late as] 1879 that the solution of the great problem of subdivision of the electric current would not, however, be found merely in the production of a durable incandescent electric lamp.... The other principal features necessary to subdivide the electric current successfully were: the burning of an indefinite number of lights on the same circuit; each light to give a useful and economical degree of illumination; and each light to be independent of all the others in regard to its operation and extinguishment.The Invention of the Incandescent Lamp
You need switches that won't electrocute the child who touches an exposed copper bar and not the insulated handle.
the Gray patent was for sending multiple telegraph signals over one wire, nowadays known as analog frequency-division multiplexing. Bell either had the same idea, or borrowed parts of Gray's ideas, and by accident, made a telephone
In the 1870s everyone and his brother was working on the "harmonic telegraph." No invention was closer or more urgently needed.
That was how he got funding for his research.
But it is not accidental that a man who had spent his life working with the deaf had become expert in the transmission of speech and sound.
Not accidental that he understood what had become possible when multiple tuning forks could be set vibrating by a single electrical current.
Bell's patent was filed February 14, 1876. In March the first sentence is transmitted over Bell's telephone. In June of 1876 he is exhibiting the telephone at the Philadelphia Centennial Exposition:
The Emperor of Brazil, Dom Pedro was in attendance. Dom Pedro was an acquaintance of Bell, meeting him at the Boston School for the Deaf.
Apparently the judges were going to ignore Bell and his telephone. But Dom Pedro attracted their attention by going to the exhibit and greeting Bell. Bell gave Dom Pedro the receiver. As Dom Pedro listened to Bell recite Hamlet, Dom Pedro heard every word and exclaimed "My God, it talks!" The papers covered this historic event and the telephone was launched.
How disenchanting for Elisha Gray. He was at Dom Pedro's side at the Centennial Exposition.
On this same day of Bell's demonstration to Dom Pedro, June 25, General George Custer met his unfortunate death in the hills of Little Big Horn, Montana.Alexander Graham Bell
So there you have it.
Bell was reading Hamlet from the the main building one hundred yards away,
If Elisha Gray has a telephone ready for public demonstration in the spring of 76 why is he standing on the sidelines when Bell strikes gold at America's first World's Fair?
In June of 1877 the future AT&T is not only a viable commercial enterprise but a clear threat to Western Union. If Gray hasn't spent the year sleeping at the switch why doesn't he have a marketable product to compete with Bell?
To the Wrights, the central problem of flight was control in three dimensions, an insight that evolved naturally from their work with bicycles, and eluded others like Langley with far greater resources. Elisha Gray was an electrical engineer. Bell an expert in speech and hearing. Bell needed a technician to construct his apparatus.
But there is no question that he was headed in the right direction and moving very quickly near the end.
An obvious solution would be to release these old films into the public domain... then i'm sure any number of operations or groups would be more than happy to spend the money maintaining these films.
Name one.
You need serious money, specialist skills and significant technical resources to do any of this stuff.
Eastman, MoMA, The Smithsonian... all hold prints or negatives of films they know urgently need conservation and will likely never get it.
The only studio whose prodeuctions are in no immediate danger is Disney:
We should really put a term limit on every office. That way no one stays in control for too long.
Nonsense.
The lobbyist, the bureaucrat, and committee staff become all the more powerful.
Because they are ones who have the experience, knowledge, and resources to frame legislation that cannot wait until your first-term Congressman gets up to speed.
I would also like to remind everyone that intellectual property is a new concept, and had we had it years ago, we wouldn't have the works of Shakespeare and Newton.
It would have surprised Shakespeare to learn that his plays were not the property of his theatrical company. It would have surprised him even more to see them performed by a rival.
You do not need to go to law when your patron is Elizabeth or James.
Copyright gave voice to writers of lower and middle class origins. Writers who were not independently wealthy, Writers who were not tenured professors or clerics.
"Those who would sacrifice freedom for a little added security deserve neither freedom nor security."
Franklin also said that he who cannot obey cannot command.
Franklin is the lone Founder identified with the life and welfare, the governance, of the city:
The reform of the postal service. Fire Insurance. The first volunteer fire Department. The first public library. The first American hospital.
He would as a diplomat in France have been exposed to the recklessness and arrogance of the nobles who traveled anonymously in closed carriages and were answerable to no one.
Freedom in his mind meant something larger than freedom from responsibility for the consequences of your actions. That is why he joins in signing the Declaration of Independence, rather than take the safer course of posting it anonymously to a blog.
He was a JP in 1749. The President of Pennsylvania in 1785. He was throughout his public career a significant and powerful centralizing force in American life and politics.
They know that 99% of people over the age of 30 think "Pong", "Pac-man", and "Space Invaders" when they think video games, and are exploiting them wanting to make sure the industry stays that way. It's a cheap political ploy, nothing more.
Quickly, now. Name the PC or video game - other than a sports simulation - in which the Hispanic or the Haitian is not a gangster.
The gamer-geek is kidding himself if he thinks that putting the brakes on video game violence doesn't appeal to both the inner city and suburban voter.
Clinton's strength is in finding common ground both on smaller issues like these and the larger, like health care.
I have a feeling this forced switchover is going to be the death of a lot of broadcast stations.
The digital broadcaster can offer multiple channels and services. There may be profitable niche markets. Our local PBS station makes a point of advertising its availability [in HD] to Canadian audiences.
it was a stupid idea to sue university students, especially universities with law schools.
You have your law degree. Where do you find gainful employment? The answer for most will be the private corporation or the government agency.
The employer who has his own IP to defend and is least likely to feel sympathy for the kid who lost his free movie fix after the RIAA had a word with his school.
The law students who begin these cases will have graduated before they reach the higher appellate courts, a full third may be gone before their cases go to trial.
There is a world of difference between the law school and the law office.
How about we wait until we get definitive victories on appeal and in Congress?
The federal criminal code was revised to remove any doubt that an infringer could be prosecuted even when there was no financial gain.
The statues could be just as easily revised so that "making files available" to the P2P nets becomes sufficient to establish infringement as a matter of law.
If I had been the guy's lawyer, the first thing I would have argued is that since the evidence was not uncovered by a sworn police officer, it could have been planted. What if this guy was a rude on the clerk, who was a vindictive bastard and decided to frame him?
The geek in court contrieves scenarios that become progressively more improbable.
But the standard the jury is held to is simply proof beyond a "reasonable" doubt - and the jury tends to be much more "reasonable" than the geek.
Slashdot Mirror
You see the much same thing in the w3Schools OS Platform Stats.
There are, by some estimates, one billion Windows users.
To claim 14% of a market that size in one year would be pure fantasy in any other context.
MS Vista was the only OS showing significant growth in 2007. Linux has gained absolutely no traction in the w3Schools stats in the better part of five years.
Vista's strength has been in OEM sales of Vista Premium and Ultimate in the consumer market.
That is good news for Dell, HP and the big box retailer.
The el cheapo $200 Linux box - the "network appliance" - makes headlines on Slashdot. But that isn't the only price point that interests Walmart - or the Walmart shopper: HP TouchSmart Desktop PC
Not only that, but the brand name multifunction color printer-scanner with a Vista driver will set him back less than $50. HP All-In-Printer & HP 21 Ink
The Geek tries to frame the "Microsoft Tax" as a percentage of the price of the computer. But the ordinary user - the middle class buyer - is looking at the price of the system bundle, the cost of services and consumables.
OEM Vista is a one-time expense.
The ink jet cartridge or the monthly bill for Roadrunner won't come any cheaper if he migrates to Linux.
I have heard this mantra repeated almost daily on Slashdot for five years, but where is the evidence to support it?
The Ww3Schools stats have the virtue of being easily accessible and track long-term trends. No one here complains when you quote the adoption rates for Firefox.
But Vista will end the year in the w3Schools stats with a 6% to 7% market share. Linux at 3% - little changed since the dawn of time. OS Platform Stats
Vista's strength has been in OEM consumer sales of Premium and Ultimate editions.
Which means its share of the inherently middle class home and SOHO markets is probably much greater than its presence on this developer's site would suggest.
How then do you make the argument that Linux is in track and Microsoft is not?
Three things struck me as significant in Friday's story on the budget Linux Walmart PC. PC Mag Slams Cheap Wal-Mart Linux Desktop
1 The Geek had to defend the sale of a Linux PC without a working modem.
Walmart services the poorest outland suburbs and rural areas where broadband penetration is weak and costs are high. Walmart still sells AOL Essential Services, dial-up at $9.95 a month.
Locally, we have seen a come-back for the home town based dial-up ISP, an aging demographic, higher prices for basic needs, may be a part of it.
2 The Geek gave the gPC the five-star rating.
The novice PC shopper struggling with patchwork hardware and an OS still in beta reluctantly awarded one star.
3 The Geek fumed that the newcomer had to be warned that a Linux PC wouldn't run the software written for the OS with 90% of the home market.
While the Half-Life Anthology for Windows sells retail boxed at the bargain bin price of $15. The Geek still obviously entranced by the notion that the "network appliance" is a marketable product.
The Walmart shopper would probably have been even more pissed off by the fact this alleged "system" wasn't being sold with a matching printer and monitor, The HP multifunction printer for the Mac and Windows was $50.
It is more like 40% than 60%.
Walmart is still associated with low income shoppers in outland suburbs and rural areas where broadband penetration is weak.
That is one reason why there has been a resurgence in the mom & pop dial-up ISP. Why Walmart.com still advertises dial-up AOL. AOL Essential Service $9.95 a month.
But the killer phrase: "Programs written for Mac or Windows will not run."
DUH! No shit, Dick Tracy! It's fucking LINUX, you MORONS!
But that is the killer phrase, the deal breaker for most Walmart shoppers. There are hundreds of bargain bin games and other apps that will run on a Windows PC that you can find anywhere at garage sale prices.
The original Half-Life is approaching ten years in print.
Print Shop has been around since the Apple II and there is still nothing in FOSS to replace it.
He is saying you could find a better PC at the Salvation Army's Thrift Shop or your neighbor's garage sale.
It is trivially easy to find Windows ports for FOSS apps that are even remotely of interest to the mass consumer market. In that sense, Windows - even Windows Vista - does have broad support for "Linux" apps.
How many units did Walmart sell? How many were returned?
Who were the buyers? Walmart's core lower and middle class customers? The Geek in the market for a Christmas toy? A kit of parts?
How did Linux at $200 perform sales-wise and profit-wise in competition with Windows Vista?
If Vista sales and profits were stronger at two or three times the price, consider this experiment a failure --- and don't slide over the potential for after-market sales of Windows hardware, software and peripherals.
If Vista sucks rocks why is it that in the W3Schools stats Vista is the only OS that has shown consistent growth in market share all year? While Linux shows all the movement in the last four years of a snail on a salt lick?
This isn't the first - or even the second time - Walmart has slapped a $200 price tag on an OEM Linux box with bottom-feeder specs and tried to make it mass-market.
Nothing ever comes of it. The poor aren't buying PCs at any price. The middle class can afford better.
The OffficeMax Christmas special was an $800 HP bundle: HP Dual Core Laptop with Vista Premium. HP multifunction color printer-scanner, 6.2 megapixel HP digital camera.
The Geek weights the dice by quoting retail list for the most expensive incarnation of a program in its class.
But the truth is that the GIMP doesn't compete with Photoshop. If you are thinking Photoshop you are the guy who doesn't go into sticker stock when he sees the $1500 price tag for a Sigma lens.
The GIMP competes with Paint.NET. Paint Pro Pro. Photoshop Elements. Etc.
Programs which are easily mastered and easily affordable.
If this is true, why does RCA spend fantastic sums in developing first black and white and later color television? The first all-electronic color TV sets appear in 1954 but color TV does not reach the commercial take-off point until 1965.
The Geek was building a multiplex telegraph.
Bell was learning how speech and music could be carried over a wire. The fax machine and mechanical television await only the invention of a practical photocell. Bell lived long enough to witness the beginning of radio broadcasting.
The problem wasn't simply in finding a durable filament.
The problem was in devising an entire system that would be safe, practical and economic for home use.
It was not realized [as late as] 1879 that the solution of the great problem of subdivision of the electric current would not, however, be found merely in the production of a durable incandescent electric lamp. ... The other principal features necessary to subdivide the electric current successfully were: the burning of an indefinite number of lights on the same circuit; each light to give a useful and economical degree of illumination; and each light to be independent of all the others in regard to its operation and extinguishment. The Invention of the Incandescent Lamp
You need switches that won't electrocute the child who touches an exposed copper bar and not the insulated handle.
Fuses to prevent fire.
In the 1870s everyone and his brother was working on the "harmonic telegraph." No invention was closer or more urgently needed.
That was how he got funding for his research.
But it is not accidental that a man who had spent his life working with the deaf had become expert in the transmission of speech and sound.
Not accidental that he understood what had become possible when multiple tuning forks could be set vibrating by a single electrical current.
The Emperor of Brazil, Dom Pedro was in attendance. Dom Pedro was an acquaintance of Bell, meeting him at the Boston School for the Deaf.
Apparently the judges were going to ignore Bell and his telephone. But Dom Pedro attracted their attention by going to the exhibit and greeting Bell. Bell gave Dom Pedro the receiver. As Dom Pedro listened to Bell recite Hamlet, Dom Pedro heard every word and exclaimed "My God, it talks!" The papers covered this historic event and the telephone was launched.
How disenchanting for Elisha Gray. He was at Dom Pedro's side at the Centennial Exposition.
On this same day of Bell's demonstration to Dom Pedro, June 25, General George Custer met his unfortunate death in the hills of Little Big Horn, Montana. Alexander Graham Bell
So there you have it.
Bell was reading Hamlet from the the main building one hundred yards away,
If Elisha Gray has a telephone ready for public demonstration in the spring of 76 why is he standing on the sidelines when Bell strikes gold at America's first World's Fair?
In June of 1877 the future AT&T is not only a viable commercial enterprise but a clear threat to Western Union. If Gray hasn't spent the year sleeping at the switch why doesn't he have a marketable product to compete with Bell?
To the Wrights, the central problem of flight was control in three dimensions, an insight that evolved naturally from their work with bicycles, and eluded others like Langley with far greater resources. Elisha Gray was an electrical engineer. Bell an expert in speech and hearing. Bell needed a technician to construct his apparatus.
But there is no question that he was headed in the right direction and moving very quickly near the end.
Name one.
You need serious money, specialist skills and significant technical resources to do any of this stuff.
Eastman, MoMA, The Smithsonian... all hold prints or negatives of films they know urgently need conservation and will likely never get it.
The only studio whose prodeuctions are in no immediate danger is Disney:
Walt Disney Treasures [December 25]
Nonsense.
The lobbyist, the bureaucrat, and committee staff become all the more powerful.
Because they are ones who have the experience, knowledge, and resources to frame legislation that cannot wait until your first-term Congressman gets up to speed.
That explains perfectly why I see 500 seeds for High School Musical 2.
It would have surprised Shakespeare to learn that his plays were not the property of his theatrical company. It would have surprised him even more to see them performed by a rival.
You do not need to go to law when your patron is Elizabeth or James.
Copyright gave voice to writers of lower and middle class origins. Writers who were not independently wealthy, Writers who were not tenured professors or clerics.
Franklin also said that he who cannot obey cannot command.
Franklin is the lone Founder identified with the life and welfare, the governance, of the city:
The reform of the postal service. Fire Insurance. The first volunteer fire Department. The first public library. The first American hospital.
He would as a diplomat in France have been exposed to the recklessness and arrogance of the nobles who traveled anonymously in closed carriages and were answerable to no one.
Freedom in his mind meant something larger than freedom from responsibility for the consequences of your actions. That is why he joins in signing the Declaration of Independence, rather than take the safer course of posting it anonymously to a blog.
He was a JP in 1749. The President of Pennsylvania in 1785. He was throughout his public career a significant and powerful centralizing force in American life and politics.
The bootlegger was not known for his charitable impulses. You paid his bill or he broke your legs.
Quickly, now. Name the PC or video game - other than a sports simulation - in which the Hispanic or the Haitian is not a gangster.
The gamer-geek is kidding himself if he thinks that putting the brakes on video game violence doesn't appeal to both the inner city and suburban voter. Clinton's strength is in finding common ground both on smaller issues like these and the larger, like health care.
The digital broadcaster can offer multiple channels and services. There may be profitable niche markets. Our local PBS station makes a point of advertising its availability [in HD] to Canadian audiences.
The digital signal is being transmitted at greatly reduced power. The solution may be as simple as upgrading to a better antenna.
You have your law degree. Where do you find gainful employment? The answer for most will be the private corporation or the government agency.
The employer who has his own IP to defend and is least likely to feel sympathy for the kid who lost his free movie fix after the RIAA had a word with his school.
There is a world of difference between the law school and the law office.
How about we wait until we get definitive victories on appeal and in Congress?
The federal criminal code was revised to remove any doubt that an infringer could be prosecuted even when there was no financial gain.
The statues could be just as easily revised so that "making files available" to the P2P nets becomes sufficient to establish infringement as a matter of law.
The geek in court contrieves scenarios that become progressively more improbable.
But the standard the jury is held to is simply proof beyond a "reasonable" doubt - and the jury tends to be much more "reasonable" than the geek.