It's more than cool. It's a great project to demonstrate to people that they can get from Open Source projects what they won't get from MicroSoft because they can hire someone to do the work themselves.
The price of the box would be much cheaper without Redmond's contribution.
But not so much cheaper that anyone would notice. There are economies of scale. Windows sells. Windows systems sell in such numbers that even Walmart has given up on the Linux PC as a mass-market product.
I collect the Brittanica, Brittanica yearbooks, etc., each is like an opening a time capsule. It is fascinating to come across an author whose life and work still resonates after fifty-years, seventy-five years, a hundred.
I quite agree that interactive content, videos, animations, sounds and maps, can be wonderfully helpful and a pleasure in themselves. I wish you could retrieve more than just snippets, everyone has seen the newsreel footage of the Hindenberg crash, but not what it was like to make the Atlantic crossing in an airship.
Oh, I have the assurance of a corporation that it's correct. OK
Brittanica's articles are signed by authors who credentials are right there before you. I'd go out a limb and say that an encyclopedia whose contributers have included many of the best minds of the last 200 years has earned some measure of trust.
As a promotion goes, it's a good idea, except it seems like trying to sell horse & buggy carts to 1920s urbanites. It's a product that is past it's prime and will dissapear soon.
The Encarta 2005 DVD set ranks #124 in software sales on Amazon.com, which is by no means bad. The problem with Google is that there is no straightforward way of finding a source that is authoritative, well-written, and appropriate for a particular age group or non-specialist reader.
BTW, "Britannica" no longer hails from the Royal Isles -- it's just a cheap American brand name, no different from Encarta.
The 11th Edition, the high-water mark of Edwardian scholarship, was published under american ownership in 1910, and by 1929 the encyclopedia was based in Chicago, under the ownership of Sears, Roebuck. So much more than a cheap american brand name, the Brittanica has been in print for 236 years, and at least since the 1960s contributers have not been confined to an anglo-american imperial elite. The Brittanica is a prime example of the emergence of English as a world language.
Unless there's been a hidden human population on Mars for the last ten thousand years to help those bugs adapt to us, there's no analog between those scenarios.
Could something simple, like a self-replicating protein, be fundamentally so different, so alien, that it could not take root here?
Any foreign bacteria would not be adapted to our natural defences against diseases, let alone some of our more complex immune system responses.
Smallpox decimated the native American population, which had no exposure to the disease since their migration from Asia. It is not safe to assume that we have effective defenses aqainst an alien bacteria, virus or other proto-life form.
Except that the Internet was already growing at this time with many Mom and Pop ISP's, and that Al Gore's legislation seemed only to be designed to give control of the Internet to four major national companies.
Growing at what rate and at what level of service? The Mom & Pop ISPs here were never more than barely visible alteratives to dial-up AOL.
Counting on competitors being unable to reproduce our features is a sure way to fail.
Entering a market where financially stronger competitors can match your product feature-for-feature in six months doesn't sound like the path to success.
Edison thought he could provide affordable middle class housing. But his designs had to be drastically simplified and scaled down for the castings and assembly process to be practical. The results were dispiriting, even by tract-home standards, remodeling was impossible, electrical and plumbing work a nightmare.
You want to afford poor people the opportunity to own their own homes, give them the freedom to do with their own property as they see fit. Set appropriate national MIMIMUM standards for sanitation and structural integrity and set barriers to local communities mandating higher, purely politically motivated, standards.
The U.S. climate ranges from the sub-tropical to the high Attic. The Gulf Coast does not present the same problems for a builder as the desert Southwest. San Francisco is not New York. There is no one-size-fits-all solution.
It looks like the IT department has disabled USB devices under W2K (I'm guessing they're worried I might be too productive).
or they might be worried about security and administration of the network. two weeks before Christmas isn't the best time to learn not to piss off your boss.
If it was just one person writing each article, then maybe you'd have a legitimate complaint, but the fact that it's a collaborative thing means that most of the problems presented by 'the second-rate' fix themselves.
Essays carelessly written will be carelessly edited. Problems never fix themselves.
I don't have to be a professional biographer to write a paragraph on where and when Winston Churchill was born, for example, and with the resources of the Internet at my disposal that's even more the case.
Big whoop. You are telling me you can answer a triva question by clicking on Google.
Maybe it's not as prestigious or serious as being a Marconi or Einstein, but it gets the job done.
It does not get the job done.
You have discovered the time and place of Churchill's birth, but you haven't placed your facts in any context or seen their significance. Churchill was Victorian by birth and in thought and feeling, his family had significance in English history, something he sought to live up to and ultimately surpass, and strong connections to America. His paternal grandfather was an editor of the New York Times and used a cannon to defend the Times in the Draft Riots of 1863.
And supposing i do get it wrong, well, there's a good chance that there is some expert on Winston Churchill on Wikipedia that will fix it.
You allow yourself an excuse to be lazy. That is by definition second-rate.
Not to mention, you don't necessarily have to contribute substance. Usually when i see something on Wikipedia that i can contribute, it comes in the form of grammar or organisation corrections (like maybe a misplaced comma or a repeated word or an out-of-order sentence or something). Certainly doesn't make me the most valuable person there, but every bit helps.
There is nothing dishonorable in simply proof-reading. Wikipedia would be all the better if more of it's contributers showed an similiar awareness of their real talents and limitations.
i don't see why you'd have to be an expert on anything to contribute to an encyclopaedia.
The Brittanica defines itself as an authoritative reference for the general reader. It has in the past commissioned essays from Malthus on Population Control, Marconi on wireless telegraphy, T. E. Lawrence, the Lawrence of Arabia, on Guerilla Warfare, Einstein on Relativity, Bruno Bettelheim on the psychology of the Nazi death camps. Serious minds and accomplished writers. What I object to in the Wikipedia is it's celebration of the second-rate.
officials decided what they wanted built, asked private companies to bid on building it, then awarded a contract to the lower acceptable bidder - who often was located in an important Congressional district
Did you ever stop to ask why that Congressional district had become important? It just might be because a Lockheed, a Boeing or Donald Douglas had built a plant there in the thirties or forties.
contests in aero-space projects have been tried before. but on this scale, a loss can be devastating financially. congress has never been wildly enthusiastic about a process that could flush a major employer with specialist skills down the tubes.
I'm just curious, since I started contributing to Wikipedia just days ago. I'm not an expert in any field, and don't have enough time to look up random topics and do real source comparisons
You are not an expert in any field. You have no time for research, and, on the face of it, no ambition or curiosity, no willingness to work. Tell me why I should think you have anything useful to contribute to an encyclopedia.
OpenOffice and Firefox have proprietary roots and megabucks of development money behind them. The Gimp is far from being a drop-in replacement for Photoshop. But these are not bleeding-edge technologies.
I doubt the picture changes much if you look at the single, marketable, feature your product does not have and your own development team cannot give you. Let me know when you can deliver a CYMK plug-in overnight.
The only place where your argument would be valid -might- be in areas like 3-D modeling/animation, audio/video/data compression, and audio/video effects processing, since there's still some algorithmic work being done in those narrow fields. That said, those things make up only a very tiny percentage of software development, and most of it will never be used by the general public (outside of games).
The general public presumably excluding those heading off to see The Incredibles, those who own cell phones, digicams, camcorders, digital tv, home computers, (think Avalon and it's successors) home theater sound systems, portable media players, subscribe to broadband cable, digital cable, TiVO, XM Radio, VoIP and other services, download music, videos, etc.
however, open source will generate better software in the long run..
And it's more sustainable / better quality
"Better quality," "more sustainable" and "in the long run" are suspiciously subjective, if not content-free. In the long run, we are all dead, as Keynes reminded his critics.
Slashdot Mirror
Microsoft to launch in Kiswahili (June 17, 2004), Microsoft Launches Its Kiswahili Edition (October 29, 2004)
The BBC was reporting in June that Microsoft was expanding it's localization program to include Kiswahili,100 million speakers, Hausa and Yoruba in West Africa, Amharic and Somali in the Horn of Africa. Microsoft to launch in Kiswahili, Microsoft's Kiswahili Edition: An Advance for African Language, Programming Africans' linguistic needs
But not so much cheaper that anyone would notice. There are economies of scale. Windows sells. Windows systems sell in such numbers that even Walmart has given up on the Linux PC as a mass-market product.
I quite agree that interactive content, videos, animations, sounds and maps, can be wonderfully helpful and a pleasure in themselves. I wish you could retrieve more than just snippets, everyone has seen the newsreel footage of the Hindenberg crash, but not what it was like to make the Atlantic crossing in an airship.
Brittanica's articles are signed by authors who credentials are right there before you. I'd go out a limb and say that an encyclopedia whose contributers have included many of the best minds of the last 200 years has earned some measure of trust.
MS rakes in $9 billion each quarter from software sales and services. It is not a hardware company.
somehow this doesn't inspire confidence in the editorial standards of the Wikipedia
The Encarta 2005 DVD set ranks #124 in software sales on Amazon.com, which is by no means bad.
The problem with Google is that there is no straightforward way of finding a source that is authoritative, well-written, and appropriate for a particular age group or non-specialist reader.
The 11th Edition, the high-water mark of Edwardian scholarship, was published under american ownership in 1910, and by 1929 the encyclopedia was based in Chicago, under the ownership of Sears, Roebuck. So much more than a cheap american brand name, the Brittanica has been in print for 236 years, and at least since the 1960s contributers have not been confined to an anglo-american imperial elite. The Brittanica is a prime example of the emergence of English as a world language.
A fine and noble sentiment. Do you suppose we could make a beginning here on Slashdot?
Could something simple, like a self-replicating protein, be fundamentally so different, so alien, that it could not take root here?
Smallpox decimated the native American population, which had no exposure to the disease since their migration from Asia. It is not safe to assume that we have effective defenses aqainst an alien bacteria, virus or other proto-life form.
Growing at what rate and at what level of service?
The Mom & Pop ISPs here were never more than barely visible alteratives to dial-up AOL.
Entering a market where financially stronger competitors can match your product feature-for-feature in six months doesn't sound like the path to success.
Edison thought he could provide affordable middle class housing. But his designs had to be drastically simplified and scaled down for the castings and assembly process to be practical. The results were dispiriting, even by tract-home standards, remodeling was impossible, electrical and plumbing work a nightmare.
There is also a history of entire mud brick communities being wiped out by earthquakes. Deaths in the tens of thousands.Better Mud Bricks To Save Lives, Iran Asks: Why Are Our Earthquakes So Deadly?
You want to afford poor people the opportunity to own their own homes, give them the freedom to do with their own property as they see fit. Set appropriate national MIMIMUM standards for sanitation and structural integrity and set barriers to local communities mandating higher, purely politically motivated, standards.
The U.S. climate ranges from the sub-tropical to the high Attic. The Gulf Coast does not present the same problems for a builder as the desert Southwest. San Francisco is not New York. There is no one-size-fits-all solution.
or they might be worried about security and administration of the network. two weeks before Christmas isn't the best time to learn not to piss off your boss.
Essays carelessly written will be carelessly edited. Problems never fix themselves.
I don't have to be a professional biographer to write a paragraph on where and when Winston Churchill was born, for example, and with the resources of the Internet at my disposal that's even more the case.
Big whoop. You are telling me you can answer a triva question by clicking on Google.
Maybe it's not as prestigious or serious as being a Marconi or Einstein, but it gets the job done.
It does not get the job done.
You have discovered the time and place of Churchill's birth, but you haven't placed your facts in any context or seen their significance. Churchill was Victorian by birth and in thought and feeling, his family had significance in English history, something he sought to live up to and ultimately surpass, and strong connections to America. His paternal grandfather was an editor of the New York Times and used a cannon to defend the Times in the Draft Riots of 1863.
And supposing i do get it wrong, well, there's a good chance that there is some expert on Winston Churchill on Wikipedia that will fix it.
You allow yourself an excuse to be lazy. That is by definition second-rate.
Not to mention, you don't necessarily have to contribute substance. Usually when i see something on Wikipedia that i can contribute, it comes in the form of grammar or organisation corrections (like maybe a misplaced comma or a repeated word or an out-of-order sentence or something). Certainly doesn't make me the most valuable person there, but every bit helps.
There is nothing dishonorable in simply proof-reading. Wikipedia would be all the better if more of it's contributers showed an similiar awareness of their real talents and limitations.
The Brittanica defines itself as an authoritative reference for the general reader. It has in the past commissioned essays from Malthus on Population Control, Marconi on wireless telegraphy, T. E. Lawrence, the Lawrence of Arabia, on Guerilla Warfare, Einstein on Relativity, Bruno Bettelheim on the psychology of the Nazi death camps. Serious minds and accomplished writers. What I object to in the Wikipedia is it's celebration of the second-rate.
Did you ever stop to ask why that Congressional district had become important? It just might be because a Lockheed, a Boeing or Donald Douglas had built a plant there in the thirties or forties.
contests in aero-space projects have been tried before. but on this scale, a loss can be devastating financially. congress has never been wildly enthusiastic about a process that could flush a major employer with specialist skills down the tubes.
I'm not an expert in any field, and don't have enough time to look up random topics and do real source comparisons
You are not an expert in any field. You have no time for research, and, on the face of it, no ambition or curiosity, no willingness to work. Tell me why I should think you have anything useful to contribute to an encyclopedia.
Utter nonsense.
OpenOffice and Firefox have proprietary roots and megabucks of development money behind them. The Gimp is far from being a drop-in replacement for Photoshop. But these are not bleeding-edge technologies.
I doubt the picture changes much if you look at the single, marketable, feature your product does not have and your own development team cannot give you. Let me know when you can deliver a CYMK plug-in overnight.
The only place where your argument would be valid -might- be in areas like 3-D modeling/animation, audio/video/data compression, and audio/video effects processing, since there's still some algorithmic work being done in those narrow fields. That said, those things make up only a very tiny percentage of software development, and most of it will never be used by the general public (outside of games).
The general public presumably excluding those heading off to see The Incredibles, those who own cell phones, digicams, camcorders, digital tv, home computers, (think Avalon and it's successors) home theater sound systems, portable media players, subscribe to broadband cable, digital cable, TiVO, XM Radio, VoIP and other services, download music, videos, etc.
a niche operating system does not have a 90% share of the PC market, and deep penetration elsewhere, in the server room, embedded systems, etc.
And it's more sustainable / better quality
"Better quality," "more sustainable" and "in the long run" are suspiciously subjective, if not content-free. In the long run, we are all dead, as Keynes reminded his critics.