A very interesting side effect is that MS can no longer dictate platform specs. This is remarkably new phenomena and worth watching.
Explain to me how it is a loss for Microsoft when a major league player in consumer electronics breaks with Sony to enter the HD-DVD market.
Unlike LG's currently released "Super Multi Blue" player, Samsung's deck will have full support for HD DVD's much-touted Interactive Features. LG's player, by comparison, gave the impression of a Blu-ray deck with HD DVD playback included as an afterthought, without full support for HD DVD menus and other "in movie experience" features. Samsung goes format neutral
What Microsoft most wants in an HD drive is mandatory managed copy:
the right to burn backup copies to disk, save HD content to hard drives for distribution through home media servers, download low-res copies to portable players and so on.
It gets the win by keeping Sony's feet to the fire - it gets the win if A-list titles from Disney and Warner begin to enter the market with minimal restrictions.
One of the reasons i am not getting Vista is because S-PDIF is disabled when playing HD-DVD or Blu-Ray
"What about S/PDIF audio connections?
Windows Vista does not require S/PDIF to be turned off, but Windows Vista continues to support the ability to turn it off for certain content -- a capability that has been present on the Windows platform for many years. Additionally, in order to support the requirements of some types of content, Windows Vista supports the ability to constrain the quality of the audio component of that content. Similar to image constraint for video, this quality constraint only applies to the audio from content whose policy requires the constraint, not to any other audio being played concurrently on the system. As a practical matter, these audio restrictions are not widely used today" Windows Vista Content Protection - Twenty Questions (and Answers)
as Intel, Nvidia, and AMD start to implement stuff like this, a market for Via processors and more off the wall graphics ships like S3 and Trident will open up amongst the hacker/enthusiast community.
The consumer market is really, really big.
The hobbyist market is really, really small. Difficult and expensive to service.
OEMs don't manfacture product for the american market that can't be sold in the american market, whether the barriers are legal or economic doesn't in the end make much difference.
The geek can turn his back on the first generation Blu-Ray drive at $800.
But when the price of the 50GB optical drive drops to $90 that underpowered CPU, incompatible motherboard, and no-name video card begins to look like a piss-poor investment.
They know there's no benefit to the public for DRM, so what's their business benefit in doing this?
Sales.
The 50 GB optical drive.
The wide-screen monitor. The HDTV. DTS Audio. Windows Home Server. The portable video player.
Buyers will want - they will expect - to play protected HD media on their computers. Out of the box. So much the better if they can with one click save HD video to their hard drives or download low-res copies for play on their iPod.
Microsoft understands this. Apple understands this. Walmart understands this. Which is why OEM Linux makes a quick exit from big box retail.
I am willing to bet that the June developer release, with it's "top secret" new features will give users something to lust over for a few months while Steve Jobs talks it up in the media. Possibly giving users pause over buying their new Vista machine in favor of waiting for a new Mac.
HP's TouchSmart is a good example of a first-generation Vista PC. If HP has the sense to upgrade the CPU and add a mid-line DX10 card it will look even better.
Windows users tend to like lots of options in hardware, long-term stability in software, and the down and dirty pricing of the OEM bundle of Vista and MS Office. Which is why the Geek wastes everyone's time when he talks retail list or rambles on incomprehensibly about the "Microsoft Tax."
Buzz. Have you ever noticed how well this works for movies, and music for that matter?
Sometimes this works and sometimes it doesn't. Remember Snakes on a Plane?
For example, you could argue that a reasonable person would not believe a MySpace page purporting to be from a school principal admitting to being a paedophile, and so it would not be defamatory.
There is such a thing as "libel per se."
No argument. No excuses.
What is "Libel Per Se"?
When libel is clear on its face, without the need for any explanatory matter, it is called libel per se. The following are often found to be libelous per se:
A statement that falsely:
Charges any person with crime, or with having been indicted, convicted, or punished for crime;
Imputes in him the present existence of an infectious, contagious, or loathsome disease;
Tends directly to injure him in respect to his office, profession, trade or business, either by imputing to him general disqualification in those respects that the office or other occupation peculiarly requires, or by imputing something with reference to his office, profession, trade, or business that has a natural tendency to lessen its profits;
Imputes to him impotence or a want of chastity.Bloggers' FAQ - Online Defamation Law
Preventing cheating in an online game is not a cause worthy of limiting access to general purpose computing for.
World of Warcraft is not general purpose computing.
It is a game - and games have rules. It is a subscription service - sold under a contract of service.
If players cannot be protected from the cheat on the PC platform, developers like Blizzard will move exclusively to the tightly controlled console platform. So much for the gamer-geek's "general purpose computer."
Microsoft's real crime is bundling (if not mashing) their applications with the OS (Internet Explorer as one example) and demanding that hardware vendors bundle Windows OS with all desktop/laptop systems.
The advantages of hardware and software compatibility with the IBM PC were so blindingly obvious that the PC-clone industry took off like a rocket - and never looked back.
It is no less absurd to deny the mass-market appeal and practical advantages of an OEM system install and "integrated" OEM apps like e-mail, a media player and browser.
I can't see any other direction the market could have taken - and as far as the vendors are concerned, Microsoft's so-called "arm-twisting" has left them crying all the way to the bank for the last twenty-five years.
It's not Pigeon - it's 'Pidgin', which refers to a number of English-derived dialects spoken in Vanuatu, Papua New Guinea and the Solomon Islands in the South Pacific.
All well and good.
But the brave and ever-faithful "carrier" pigeon has been in service for over 800 years - and has done his duty in countless cartoons, war movies, spy thrillers, martial arts epics. He had a memorable cameo in Grim Fandango.
It's the perfect logo for an IM, easily understood, easily pronouced - though just as easily mispelled - one that doesn't need the long-winded explanation that is so typical of open source.
Dude, only one in ten people have plans to get Vista. You are talking to an unusual group of people.
It's the first week in April. Vista hit the consumer market in late January. Mid-line DX 10 cards will begin appearing in May. The peak sales season for consumer Vista [and Windows Home Server] begins in September.
Vista doesn't need to be fast out of the gate when it is the default OEM system install.
The only advantage Windows has at this point is availability of various popular applications and games, and that gap is steadily narrowing.
Open Linspire's CNR catalog.
Consider it from the point of view of the home and SOHO user.
Subtract those programs which have been ported to Windows or which began as native Windows apps. Subtract the apps which are missing. Print Shop. QuickBooks. iTunes and a hundred others. Then ask yourself if you are still on the plus side of the ledger.
MS didnt write anything they currently sell. They acquired it and revised it and added stuff to it
Uh huh...
That is how an entrepreneur thinks.
What is most important to Microsoft when making acquisition decisions? People are the most important factor in any acquisition. Microsoft looks for talented engineering teams with vision and passion and experienced management teams. Second is technology and IP that can add value to an existing Microsoft product. Third is the opportunity to acquire stand alone products for existing customers. Examples include Visio, Hotmail, and Vermeer. Another, more rare, decision point is the opportunity to enter whole new markets. Great Plains and PlaceWare are excellent examples.
How does Microsoft decide to acquire rather than build internally? This is the toughest question in any acquisition discussion. Microsoft has thousands of very talented software engineers that can build just about anything. How can you justify paying hundreds of millions or even billions for something a team of 30 engineers could build in a year or two. That translates to about $12M of development cost versus a huge acquisition cost. Technology is not the issue here. It is all about marketing channels, sales expertise, and market leadership in segments where Microsoft is not strong.
It comes down to this; if the company in question has a product that is squarely in the domain of an existing Microsoft product than the valuation is a small premium over the internal development cost. If the company has market leadership in a new product space or market segment than the valuation goes up significantly.
Entrepreneurs should remember this. The "barriers to entry" are most often market position, not technical brilliance. I have heard start-ups say "we have a two year lead on our closest competitor". In fact, I have said it myself at previous start-ups. I was wrong. Most technologies can be replicated by a talented engineering group within a year or less. Many times a similar technology can be licensed immediately and a new product shipped within months.
Many start-ups have failed by focusing too much on their technology and not enough on the value they bring to customers and the channels they use to service the customer. Many times the early innovator fizzles, and a "fast follower" comes in and makes all the money."Microsoft will acquire my company"
Sure, "Bright and innovative" people only use Macs. Buy a Mac and you can be bright and innovative too!
There are echoes here of one of Parkinson's Laws. The aggressive, innovative, fast-moving, company works out of whatever spaces it can afford and with whatever tools happen to be available. Zero points for comfort and style. Work smarter, not harder. Don't waste your time re-inventing the wheel.
Insightful would be saying that Microsoft never was in touch with the world of computing, only with their own little microcosm.
That little microcosm pretty much defines the limits of the industries that evolved around the commercial computer-on-a-chip.
Thirty years experience in programming for the micro computer.
90% of the world's desktops. Development tools for the PC. An office suite, a server OS.
The U.S. Navy's Off-The-Shelf "Smart Ship" OS. [Stop thinking about the Cruiser Yorktown - decommissioned in 2004 - and start thinking about the Carrier Ronald Reagan, in service now]
Synonymous with PC gaming. Strongly positioned in console gaming. Mobile devices. Etc, etc.
You can't be one of the most hated companies in the world without some negative effects.
The Geek lives in a bubble. Bubbles burst.
Microsoft Corp. founder Bill Gates proved even more appealing than cuddly babies in the eighth-annual Harris Interactive/The Wall Street Journal ranking of the world's best and worst corporate reputations.
Top-ranked Microsoft managed to beat Johnson & Johnson, whose emotionally appealing baby-products business had kept it in first place for a remarkable seven consecutive years. In the Reputation Quotient survey conducted by market-research firm Harris Interactive Inc., respondents gave Microsoft very high marks for leadership and financial results. But Mr. Gates's personal philanthropy also boosted the public's opinion of Microsoft.How Boss's Deeds Buff A Firm's Reputation [January 31, 2007]
How much is down to private homes where someone wanted to "get a computer" without realising there was a choice, or where the major criteria was that it should be "the same as the one at work".
Apple and Microsoft have been in the home market for damn near thirty years. If the "choice" remains invisible to buyers - which I very much doubt - the blame has to fall on Apple.
The geek needs to let go of the idea that adoption in the office drives adoption in the home. These have evolved into two very different markets. The Liverpool school district in central New York is abandoning the use of laptops because students bring their home-usage patterns into the classroom: IM, music and games.
I read some article not long ago about how you can make %'s look like you want to.
--- and the chances are good some garbled version of it will make it to Slashdot.
But you have to be realistic: at any given time there are only a half dozen or so versions of the Mac on the market, compared to the dozens - perhaps hundreds of variants - on the generic Wintel PC. The office workhorse. The PC on the shop floor. The PC at Point-of-Sale. The PC in the military. The PC in the game room...
You can multiply these examples almost endlessly. Market share is what drove Apple to the x86 platform. To NVIDIA and ATI. To Boot Camp. When you need to demonstrate hardware and software compatibility with Windows to remain competitive there is no longer any question about who is in the driver's seat.
but what the hell is wrong with Europe lately? For instance, Germany will soon be attempting to reintroduce legislation into the EU banning swastikas and Holocaust denial (Source: BBC). You can't have selective free speech!
Of course you can.
The meaning of "Free Speech" can't be understood outside its historical, social and legal context.
In the U.S. it begins with open political debate without governmental interference -- or, more narrowly, without prior censorship. That didn't mean you weren't answerable in court later for language that could be taken as slanderous or seditious.
The rules evolve over time and they are not the same in every society.
Point is sound, though - you think 2K and 98 had a slowing effect on XP uptake, I'd say XP will slow Vista much worse.
The argument made here is that migration to Vista would be very slow in business and government. Windows Vista hit the consumer market in late January. In the first week of April, it has a measurable and significant 2% share. This isn't a bad showing for an OS that shows to best advantage on mid-line and high-end hardware -- a point that won't go unnoticed in direct sales and big-box retail. It has taken Linux ten years to claw its way to a bare !% share of the consumer desktop -- if it has even that.
This probably doens't happen in a majority of cases, but I wonder how often one of these new boxes is purchased and for whatever reason Vista is removed.
In the consumer market? The home user? To be realistic, almost never.
He is profoundly allergic to meddling with the installed system software. The chances are very good his favorite programs will install and run under Vista without any significant problems. Windows Vista RTM Software Compatibility List [April 6, 2207]
You've never known someone to avoid a company on principle? I do it all the time and ENJOY voting with my wallet....
I'll take the odds that you are young and single.
For the rest of us, standing on principle eventually gives way to the need to stay within budget.
form follows failure: the pop-top can
on
The End for Vonage?
·
· Score: 2, Informative
How technically difficult is it to produce the opener on the top of a modern soda can, especially once you've seen one? Not very.
I beg to differ:
While the first aluminum cans were noticeably easier to open than steel ones, a separate opener was still required. This was an inconvenience, especially when there was plenty of beer but no church key at the family picnic. It was in such a situation that Ermal Fraze of Dayton, Ohio, found himself in 1959, when he resorted to using a car bumper to open a can. The operation evidently yielded more foam than refreshment, and Fraze is reported to have said that there must be a better way. On a subsequent night, unable to sleep after drinking too much coffee, he went to his basement workshop to tinker with the idea of attaching an opening lever to a can. He was hoping the activity would make him drowsy, but instead "I was up all night and it came to me--just like that. It was all there. I knew how to do it so it would be commercially feasible." Fraze could make such a judgment because he was the owner of the Dayton Reliable Tool and Manufacturing Company, and he had considerable experience with metal forming and scoring, the mastery of which would be essential to developing the pop-top can, for which he obtained the first patent in 1963. "I personally did not invent the easy-open can end," he later asserted. "People have been working on that since 1800. What I did was develop a method of attaching a tab on the can top."
Eventually a ring, which functioned as a lever, was riveted to a pre-scored tear strip. A pull at the ring broke the can's seal and then lifted the attached strip of metal out of the can top along the scored outline. The hole that was left extended a good distance from the edge of the can to (or beyond) the center, and so as the can was tipped for pouring or drinking, air could enter the top of the hole and allow the easy, gurgle-free exit of the contents. The early pop-top or pop-tab worked reasonably well, not only eliminating the need for a church key but also replacing with one smooth motion the action of punching two separate triangular holes. Still, scoring a tear strip in a can top so that it will be easy enough to remove yet strong enough to hold against the internal pressure requires some rather tricky engineering. Some early pull tabs were blown off prematurely by the high pressure of the carbonation rushing out after a consumer's initial cracking of the tear strip, so Fraze and other inventors came up with schemes to benignly direct the first whoosh of escaping gas away from the tab itself. Throughout the mid-1960s numerous patents were awarded for improvements in pull-tab devices. Then a new problem arose: environmental pollution.
By the mid-1970s those tabs that pulled completely off the can top were coming under increasing attack from environmentalists, and with good reason. 1 recall stopping at traffic lights in those days and trying to count up all the pull tabs (by then looking like little curledup tongues on key rings) among the cigarette butts beside the road. I could never finish counting before the light changed. Picnic sites and beaches were disastrously prone to the sharp litter, which was especially difficult to clean up because the small tabs passed easily through the tines of rakes. Animals, fish, and children were swallowing the tabs, and bathers were cutting their feet on them. Some conscientious people would drop the tab into the can after opening it; and some of them required operations when they swallowed the tab with their drink. In short, there was growing concern over the failure of the pull tab to function as well as desired in that regard, and this led to another rash of patent applications for easy-open cans without removable tabs. Form Follows Failure
A geek laughed at this story. Therefore, all geeks must be men
Do I have that right?
When the geek is the only one laughing. perhaps it is time to take a look around and ask why. I doubt anyone unaccustomed to Slashdot could follow these threads without being reminded of the stereotypical geek - the poorly socialized, forever-adolescent, male.
Slashdot Mirror
Explain to me how it is a loss for Microsoft when a major league player in consumer electronics breaks with Sony to enter the HD-DVD market.
Unlike LG's currently released "Super Multi Blue" player, Samsung's deck will have full support for HD DVD's much-touted Interactive Features. LG's player, by comparison, gave the impression of a Blu-ray deck with HD DVD playback included as an afterthought, without full support for HD DVD menus and other "in movie experience" features. Samsung goes format neutral
What Microsoft most wants in an HD drive is mandatory managed copy:
the right to burn backup copies to disk, save HD content to hard drives for distribution through home media servers, download low-res copies to portable players and so on.
It gets the win by keeping Sony's feet to the fire - it gets the win if A-list titles from Disney and Warner begin to enter the market with minimal restrictions.
"What about S/PDIF audio connections?
Windows Vista does not require S/PDIF to be turned off, but Windows Vista continues to support the ability to turn it off for certain content -- a capability that has been present on the Windows platform for many years. Additionally, in order to support the requirements of some types of content, Windows Vista supports the ability to constrain the quality of the audio component of that content. Similar to image constraint for video, this quality constraint only applies to the audio from content whose policy requires the constraint, not to any other audio being played concurrently on the system. As a practical matter, these audio restrictions are not widely used today" Windows Vista Content Protection - Twenty Questions (and Answers)
The consumer market is really, really big.
The hobbyist market is really, really small. Difficult and expensive to service.
OEMs don't manfacture product for the american market that can't be sold in the american market, whether the barriers are legal or economic doesn't in the end make much difference.
The geek can turn his back on the first generation Blu-Ray drive at $800.
But when the price of the 50GB optical drive drops to $90 that underpowered CPU, incompatible motherboard, and no-name video card begins to look like a piss-poor investment.
Sales.
The 50 GB optical drive.
The wide-screen monitor. The HDTV. DTS Audio. Windows Home Server. The portable video player.
Buyers will want - they will expect - to play protected HD media on their computers. Out of the box. So much the better if they can with one click save HD video to their hard drives or download low-res copies for play on their iPod.
Microsoft understands this. Apple understands this. Walmart understands this. Which is why OEM Linux makes a quick exit from big box retail.
HP's TouchSmart is a good example of a first-generation Vista PC. If HP has the sense to upgrade the CPU and add a mid-line DX10 card it will look even better.
Windows users tend to like lots of options in hardware, long-term stability in software, and the down and dirty pricing of the OEM bundle of Vista and MS Office. Which is why the Geek wastes everyone's time when he talks retail list or rambles on incomprehensibly about the "Microsoft Tax."
Buzz. Have you ever noticed how well this works for movies, and music for that matter?
Sometimes this works and sometimes it doesn't. Remember Snakes on a Plane?
There is such a thing as "libel per se."
No argument. No excuses.
What is "Libel Per Se"? When libel is clear on its face, without the need for any explanatory matter, it is called libel per se. The following are often found to be libelous per se:
A statement that falsely:
Charges any person with crime, or with having been indicted, convicted, or punished for crime;
Imputes in him the present existence of an infectious, contagious, or loathsome disease;
Tends directly to injure him in respect to his office, profession, trade or business, either by imputing to him general disqualification in those respects that the office or other occupation peculiarly requires, or by imputing something with reference to his office, profession, trade, or business that has a natural tendency to lessen its profits;
Imputes to him impotence or a want of chastity. Bloggers' FAQ - Online Defamation Law
One tenth? Get real. One hundreth would be closer to the truth.
World of Warcraft is not general purpose computing.
It is a game - and games have rules. It is a subscription service - sold under a contract of service.
If players cannot be protected from the cheat on the PC platform, developers like Blizzard will move exclusively to the tightly controlled console platform. So much for the gamer-geek's "general purpose computer."
The advantages of hardware and software compatibility with the IBM PC were so blindingly obvious that the PC-clone industry took off like a rocket - and never looked back.
It is no less absurd to deny the mass-market appeal and practical advantages of an OEM system install and "integrated" OEM apps like e-mail, a media player and browser.
I can't see any other direction the market could have taken - and as far as the vendors are concerned, Microsoft's so-called "arm-twisting" has left them crying all the way to the bank for the last twenty-five years.
All well and good.
But the brave and ever-faithful "carrier" pigeon has been in service for over 800 years - and has done his duty in countless cartoons, war movies, spy thrillers, martial arts epics. He had a memorable cameo in Grim Fandango.
It's the perfect logo for an IM, easily understood, easily pronouced - though just as easily mispelled - one that doesn't need the long-winded explanation that is so typical of open source.
It's the first week in April. Vista hit the consumer market in late January. Mid-line DX 10 cards will begin appearing in May. The peak sales season for consumer Vista [and Windows Home Server] begins in September.
Vista doesn't need to be fast out of the gate when it is the default OEM system install.
Open Linspire's CNR catalog.
Consider it from the point of view of the home and SOHO user.
Subtract those programs which have been ported to Windows or which began as native Windows apps. Subtract the apps which are missing. Print Shop. QuickBooks. iTunes and a hundred others. Then ask yourself if you are still on the plus side of the ledger.
Uh huh...
That is how an entrepreneur thinks.
What is most important to Microsoft when making acquisition decisions? People are the most important factor in any acquisition. Microsoft looks for talented engineering teams with vision and passion and experienced management teams. Second is technology and IP that can add value to an existing Microsoft product. Third is the opportunity to acquire stand alone products for existing customers. Examples include Visio, Hotmail, and Vermeer. Another, more rare, decision point is the opportunity to enter whole new markets. Great Plains and PlaceWare are excellent examples.
How does Microsoft decide to acquire rather than build internally? This is the toughest question in any acquisition discussion. Microsoft has thousands of very talented software engineers that can build just about anything. How can you justify paying hundreds of millions or even billions for something a team of 30 engineers could build in a year or two. That translates to about $12M of development cost versus a huge acquisition cost. Technology is not the issue here. It is all about marketing channels, sales expertise, and market leadership in segments where Microsoft is not strong.
It comes down to this; if the company in question has a product that is squarely in the domain of an existing Microsoft product than the valuation is a small premium over the internal development cost. If the company has market leadership in a new product space or market segment than the valuation goes up significantly.
Entrepreneurs should remember this. The "barriers to entry" are most often market position, not technical brilliance. I have heard start-ups say "we have a two year lead on our closest competitor". In fact, I have said it myself at previous start-ups. I was wrong. Most technologies can be replicated by a talented engineering group within a year or less. Many times a similar technology can be licensed immediately and a new product shipped within months.
Many start-ups have failed by focusing too much on their technology and not enough on the value they bring to customers and the channels they use to service the customer. Many times the early innovator fizzles, and a "fast follower" comes in and makes all the money. "Microsoft will acquire my company"
There are echoes here of one of Parkinson's Laws. The aggressive, innovative, fast-moving, company works out of whatever spaces it can afford and with whatever tools happen to be available. Zero points for comfort and style. Work smarter, not harder. Don't waste your time re-inventing the wheel.
That little microcosm pretty much defines the limits of the industries that evolved around the commercial computer-on-a-chip.
Thirty years experience in programming for the micro computer.
90% of the world's desktops. Development tools for the PC. An office suite, a server OS.
The U.S. Navy's Off-The-Shelf "Smart Ship" OS. [Stop thinking about the Cruiser Yorktown - decommissioned in 2004 - and start thinking about the Carrier Ronald Reagan, in service now]
Synonymous with PC gaming. Strongly positioned in console gaming. Mobile devices. Etc, etc.
How much more "in touch" do you need to be?
The Geek lives in a bubble. Bubbles burst.
Microsoft Corp. founder Bill Gates proved even more appealing than cuddly babies in the eighth-annual Harris Interactive/The Wall Street Journal ranking of the world's best and worst corporate reputations.
Top-ranked Microsoft managed to beat Johnson & Johnson, whose emotionally appealing baby-products business had kept it in first place for a remarkable seven consecutive years. In the Reputation Quotient survey conducted by market-research firm Harris Interactive Inc., respondents gave Microsoft very high marks for leadership and financial results. But Mr. Gates's personal philanthropy also boosted the public's opinion of Microsoft. How Boss's Deeds Buff A Firm's Reputation [January 31, 2007]
Apple and Microsoft have been in the home market for damn near thirty years. If the "choice" remains invisible to buyers - which I very much doubt - the blame has to fall on Apple.
The geek needs to let go of the idea that adoption in the office drives adoption in the home. These have evolved into two very different markets. The Liverpool school district in central New York is abandoning the use of laptops because students bring their home-usage patterns into the classroom: IM, music and games.
--- and the chances are good some garbled version of it will make it to Slashdot.
But you have to be realistic: at any given time there are only a half dozen or so versions of the Mac on the market, compared to the dozens - perhaps hundreds of variants - on the generic Wintel PC. The office workhorse. The PC on the shop floor. The PC at Point-of-Sale. The PC in the military. The PC in the game room...
You can multiply these examples almost endlessly. Market share is what drove Apple to the x86 platform. To NVIDIA and ATI. To Boot Camp. When you need to demonstrate hardware and software compatibility with Windows to remain competitive there is no longer any question about who is in the driver's seat.
Of course you can.
The meaning of "Free Speech" can't be understood outside its historical, social and legal context.
In the U.S. it begins with open political debate without governmental interference -- or, more narrowly, without prior censorship. That didn't mean you weren't answerable in court later for language that could be taken as slanderous or seditious.
The rules evolve over time and they are not the same in every society.
The argument made here is that migration to Vista would be very slow in business and government. Windows Vista hit the consumer market in late January. In the first week of April, it has a measurable and significant 2% share. This isn't a bad showing for an OS that shows to best advantage on mid-line and high-end hardware -- a point that won't go unnoticed in direct sales and big-box retail. It has taken Linux ten years to claw its way to a bare !% share of the consumer desktop -- if it has even that.
In the consumer market? The home user? To be realistic, almost never.
He is profoundly allergic to meddling with the installed system software. The chances are very good his favorite programs will install and run under Vista without any significant problems. Windows Vista RTM Software Compatibility List [April 6, 2207]
That is a pretty big IF.
Win 98 still held a 10% market share in the w3Schools stats for January 2004.
IE5 a 2.5% share in February 2007.Browser and OS Platform Statistics
I'll take the odds that you are young and single.
For the rest of us, standing on principle eventually gives way to the need to stay within budget.
I beg to differ:
While the first aluminum cans were noticeably easier to open than steel ones, a separate opener was still required. This was an inconvenience, especially when there was plenty of beer but no church key at the family picnic. It was in such a situation that Ermal Fraze of Dayton, Ohio, found himself in 1959, when he resorted to using a car bumper to open a can. The operation evidently yielded more foam than refreshment, and Fraze is reported to have said that there must be a better way. On a subsequent night, unable to sleep after drinking too much coffee, he went to his basement workshop to tinker with the idea of attaching an opening lever to a can. He was hoping the activity would make him drowsy, but instead "I was up all night and it came to me--just like that. It was all there. I knew how to do it so it would be commercially feasible." Fraze could make such a judgment because he was the owner of the Dayton Reliable Tool and Manufacturing Company, and he had considerable experience with metal forming and scoring, the mastery of which would be essential to developing the pop-top can, for which he obtained the first patent in 1963. "I personally did not invent the easy-open can end," he later asserted. "People have been working on that since 1800. What I did was develop a method of attaching a tab on the can top."
Eventually a ring, which functioned as a lever, was riveted to a pre-scored tear strip. A pull at the ring broke the can's seal and then lifted the attached strip of metal out of the can top along the scored outline. The hole that was left extended a good distance from the edge of the can to (or beyond) the center, and so as the can was tipped for pouring or drinking, air could enter the top of the hole and allow the easy, gurgle-free exit of the contents. The early pop-top or pop-tab worked reasonably well, not only eliminating the need for a church key but also replacing with one smooth motion the action of punching two separate triangular holes. Still, scoring a tear strip in a can top so that it will be easy enough to remove yet strong enough to hold against the internal pressure requires some rather tricky engineering. Some early pull tabs were blown off prematurely by the high pressure of the carbonation rushing out after a consumer's initial cracking of the tear strip, so Fraze and other inventors came up with schemes to benignly direct the first whoosh of escaping gas away from the tab itself. Throughout the mid-1960s numerous patents were awarded for improvements in pull-tab devices. Then a new problem arose: environmental pollution.
By the mid-1970s those tabs that pulled completely off the can top were coming under increasing attack from environmentalists, and with good reason. 1 recall stopping at traffic lights in those days and trying to count up all the pull tabs (by then looking like little curledup tongues on key rings) among the cigarette butts beside the road. I could never finish counting before the light changed. Picnic sites and beaches were disastrously prone to the sharp litter, which was especially difficult to clean up because the small tabs passed easily through the tines of rakes. Animals, fish, and children were swallowing the tabs, and bathers were cutting their feet on them. Some conscientious people would drop the tab into the can after opening it; and some of them required operations when they swallowed the tab with their drink. In short, there was growing concern over the failure of the pull tab to function as well as desired in that regard, and this led to another rash of patent applications for easy-open cans without removable tabs. Form Follows Failure
A geek laughed at this story. Therefore, all geeks must be men
Do I have that right?
When the geek is the only one laughing. perhaps it is time to take a look around and ask why. I doubt anyone unaccustomed to Slashdot could follow these threads without being reminded of the stereotypical geek - the poorly socialized, forever-adolescent, male.