This doesn't seem strange to me. It's like everything besides voice that you can think of to use your mobile phone for costs way too much. The telcos just love to milk those extra features. Well, not me! Until they decide to give me a fixed IP address for my mobile phone and flat-rates for both voice and Internet access, I refuse to use my mobile phone for anything other than local phone calls. Once they give in, I can image a real revolution taking place, with an explosion of new functionality and smart phones quickly becoming more popular than PCs. I'll be the first in line for a deal like that, but at the moment this idea is hamstrung due to high cost of use.
As far as I'm concerned, I've just about had it with the fact that the geographic north pole is where the magnetic south pole is. It's damned confusing! I say we change things right away: the sooner the poles are in the right place, the better!
One huge difference is that the Microsoft tech support guys are paid to listen to your stupidities....
In principle I agree with that statement, but it doesn't always make a difference. For example, the last time I looked Microsoft didn't offer more than 90 (or was it 30?) days technical support after Windows license registration. Any more and you have to pay, pay, pay.
And Microsoft's support isn't all that great either. Last time I tried them out, all I got was lots of scripted answers from people who weren't actually capable of understanding my problem. Of course, there are people at Microsoft who could have helped me -- people who know a hell of a lot more than the average MCSE -- but they're only available if you have a really expensive support contract. In other words, you only get the technical support that you pay for. So, to hell with the bastards: so far I've had a lot better luck with Linux and the open source crowd than I ever had with Windows.
I used to be a CNE 3/4/5 before Novell became almost irrelevant, but this is the first news I've heard that they might be bought out by another company. Many people have said that Novell's fall from grace was their own fault, but knowing Microsoft, in the end I don't think their was anything Novell could have done about it.
If Novell does get relegated to the history books, I'll be sorry to see them go. I still like the way NDS (um, eDirectory) works and would love to see an open source alternative to it appear. Well, I suppose LDAP could do the trick, but it's still comparatively fiddly to work with and support for it needs to be much more widespread.
As for Oracle, they've got lots of money, so if Larry wants to acquire Novell in order to use their expertise to start building Linux systems using SuSE, eDirectory and Oracle, that sounds fine to me!
So what if it doesn't take you as long to park your car when most of the time we're stuck in traffic anyway. What we really need is a system that will allow cars to drive themselves and that there be some overall level of coordination between them... at least on the highways. That's probably not what a lot of drivers would like to hear, but it sure would beat being stuck in traffic.
VMWare has been giving away their product for a while now. MS is late to the game.
Huh? That would be nice, but I just looked and they're still selling VMware Workstation 5 for $189.00 to $199.00. So, what is it that VMware are supposed to be giving away for free? Only their virtual machine disk format, as far as I can see.
Giving away products for free in order to kill off another ISV that they decide to compete with. Of course, VMware has only itself to blame: this is what you get when you grow your market share enough to attract Microsoft's attention.
But seriously, in a normal market with healthy competition among OS makers, Microsoft would leave VMware alone and be happy that they're doing so well, selling products that work with Windows. However, this is not a normal market and Microsoft is a monopolist by any definition but their own. Therefore, VMware must die. Ho-hum.
Now I feel all warm and fuzzy inside. And to think that now even amateurs can contact Voyager 1, even though it's almost 100AU away. This makes me want to build my own compact, high-performance radio telescope, with a superconducting receiver, just so that I can commune with V'ger before I go to bed at night.:-)
...Microsoft goes to court later this year in what might well be its last-ever anti-trust trial.... I confidently predict that Microsoft is going down.
That's at the end of the article. I sure do hope Cringely is proved right when Iowa wins and Microsoft's style gets crimped.
...for firms that are focused on only one of those problem areas, analysts said, Vista and the other Microsoft security products could pose a significant threat.
Perhaps, but experience tells me that it will probably be a long time before most businesses upgrade to Vista. Why, even after five years, there are still many that haven't yet upgraded to Windows XP.
Actually, the worst thing that could happen to the anti-mailware vendors is if companies end up rejecting Vista and move to *nix platforms instead.
You might be able to say that BSD and Linux distros also come bundled with media and communications applications, but the point is that this is free software and many distros usually come pre-installed with many 'competing' applications (multiple browsers, multiple mail clients).
With Windows, Microsoft always bundles one browser and one mail client, and both are made by Microsoft. They never include browsers or mail clients made by their competitors; if they did, other companies wouldn't be dragging them into court so often.
The result is that in the vast majority of all cases, the users will not go looking for any alternatives. They just use the applications that come with Windows, even though these applications are many years old and full of flaws. Therefore, the competition suffers and innovation is stifled.
Good point, although I was thinking more about users in general than business users in particular. Furthermore, those costs you mention will also include retraining (or replacing) the sysadmins and other support staff (unless you consider most Windows administrators to just be users with extra privileges).
But, of course they can! They're a monopoly, and there's nothing that Steve Jobs, the Open Source community or anybody else can do about it (well, the US Justice Dept. tried before Bush stopped 'em).
Unfortunately, Microsoft's customers (i.e. most of the world) are willing to wait a really long time before they give up on the Redmond giant. It's that damned critical mass that they've built up over the years: everything's geared to supporting Windows before anything else, from hardware manufacturers to ISVs to ISPs to media companies, etc. Even Google doesn't support anything but Windows for Google Earth! (okay, there's a Mac beta for it now too, but you get my drift).
Therefore, I figure that Microsoft's monopoly position can only be threatened if one of their next new operating systems turns out to be a total failure. If Microsoft aren't able to dump it and replace it soon enough with something better, only then will significant numbers of their customers begin to loose faith in them and move on to alternative operating systems.
Not really. As far as I can remember, major releases from MS have always been delayed. In case you forgot, MS were one of the first companies that the term vaporware was invented for. This the from the Free On-line Dictionary of Computing:
vaporware
/vay'pr-weir/ Products announced far in advance of
any release (which may or may not actually take place). The
term came from Atari users and was later applied by
Infoworld to Microsoft's continuous lying about Microsoft
Windows.
When it finally arrives, the faithful will take to it like flies to shit while others like myself will simply ignore it. Many big corporations will take years to warm up to it, even though Dell will soon be selling Vista and an Office 2007 license with almost every other PC that people buy from them.
Whoa, hey! Kurzweil is definitely out there, huh?:-)
Back here on Earth, I'm not so sure things are going to move along so quickly. For instance, a concept I would love to see developed in my lifetime is a wearable computer with:
AI
voice interface
persistent wireless connection to the Internet
lots of memory
It would also come with (optional) things like:
HUD (glasses or contact lenses)
miniature cameras (possibly infrared)
GPS
Think of what you could do with a device like this and how it would profoundly change society! However, even if we were able to develop a good enough voice interface without the AI, the damn telecos could still end up rendering these devices less than half as useful if they were never to offer people flat-rate, broadband, wireless Internet connections for these devices. It's the same problem as with those mobile phones that you can't buy in the States because the profit margins for them aren't considered to be high enough. High-tech costs a lot of money, and I fear that a lot of interesting concepts like this may never reach the market because they don't make good enough business sense to the dominant players.
In another situation, suppose good old Microsoft were to develop the wearable computer I outlined above. Would you still want one? I'm not so sure I would: the potential for abuse is too great to ignore. This could lead to these devices not only being mistrusted, but even outlawed. And what would we have to thank for the death of this wonderful concept... Microsoft? Uh, uh: market forces. The market giveth, and the market taketh away.
In other words, I feel that, due to market forces, the road to Kurzweil's digital utopia is probably going to be a little longer and bumpier than he'd like to believe.
It's not like every copy of Windows will be upgraded to Vista overnight. And from what I've heard so far, there will be plenty of reasons *not* to upgrade (DRM, etc).
What's more, it's stupid to simultaneously underestimate the resourcefulness of the spyware industry, underestimate user stupidity, and overestimate Microsoft's likelyhood of success in this area.
So no, Vista is not a threat to the anti-spyware business.
This won't work until Microsoft has completely changed Windows to be Unix-like.
Maybe, but then they'll still be an uncooperative, vendor-lock-in, embrace-and-extend, non-standards-compliant, only-compatible-with-their-own-stuff, expensive-as-hell technology company. With a bad track record for security and stability and a reputation for draconian licensing practices (there's more, but you get the picture).
The whole thread is worrying because it presumes that the press is currently free and is under some new threat. Horseshit.
I disagree. I find this view overly paranoid and pessimistic. Although there are plenty of news organizations around that seem to produce nothing more than gossip, infotainment, one-sided news and even misleading press -- not just because they're often too commercially oriented, but also because of who owns them (like Rupert Murdoch) -- luckily there are always others that do attempt to speak the truth. Our task as citizens is to decided which sources to trust. It's always been like to to some degree or another.
The problem now is that it may soon actually become illegal for journalists to reveal certain truths about the government, such as if our rights are being trampled on by the government. If this bill becomes law, it would suddenly become that much harder to discover the truth about the government. America would no longer have a truly free press.
... is what the US government spends annually on spying: obviously way too much. I mean, do we really need zombie sharks? A real hair-brained idea if I ever heard one. It'll never work. Most likely it's just a way to keep a couple of unimaginative researchers from loosing their jobs. I say leave the poor animals be; with the shark fin industry and everything they have it hard enough as it is these days.
If Microsoft knows that most of the hardware out there now is not going to meet Vista's minimum requirements, perhaps this is actually a suggestion for how to squeak by if you've already maxed out your RAM. Other than that, it sounds like a good way to wear out flash memory in a hurry.
Is it just me or does anyone else feel all these "governments" view Microsoft as a cash cow and are trying to milk it for all it's worth.
Forget it. Microsoft has been in court for monopolistic business practices for as long as I can remember. They wrote the book on software bundling and how to use it to destroy the competition. Microsoft continues to do this, despite all of the lawsuites and the fines they've had to pay, simply because they've always gained more from this practice than they've ever lost because of it. As long as they remain the dominant player in the market and continue to do things this way, we can expect to see them as permanent fixtures in courts around the world. The courts are only doing what they're meant to do, but compared to Microsoft's profits, the fines involved will always be inadequate, even though they may amount to hundreds of millions of dollars.
Honestly, the definition needs to be redifined. What Linux, Apple and Microsoft is selling (or giving away for free) is not just an OS, but a complete package. Would anyone even bother buying an OS that doesn't come with a media player, a internet browser, or internet messenger in nowadays?
Oh, so now we should view Microsoft's bundling practices as normal?? FYI: those technologies were all developed by other people and companies, and now what do they have to show for it? For instance, did Netscape deserve to die just because the folks at Microsoft decided Windows should come with a pre-installed, competitive, native browser? You would think differently if Netscape had been your baby. There are probably lots of folks out there who are still too scared to market their ideas for fear that Microsoft might "pull a Netscape" on them.
To be fair, one could argue that for a manufacturer to produce an operating system -- today or even ten years ago -- without some kind of a browser to start with would in effect cripple it. However, if Microsoft had stopped doing any major development work on their bundled version of Internet Explorer, for example by leaving it simple (HTML 2.0-4.01 compatible), modular, as secure as possible, and making it just good enough to allow the user to go out and download a proper replacement (which might be better version of Internet Explorer), then I don't think anybody would have complained. The problem is that they went out of their way to make their bundled browser the "Best browser in the world" (haw), with the specific intent to kill Netscape and thereby strengthen their market position.
Comparing Microsoft's bundling practices to a Linux distribution is ridiculous. Commercial Linux distributions are collections free software packages compiled almost exclusively for the benefit of the user, while Microsoft bundles its software together with Windows almost exclusively for its own benefit, mostly by screwing the competition.
... It's not like they're PREVENTING you from installing another software to replace it....
Of course not. If that were the case, Firefox would not be the #2 browser. But it is the reason why the vast majority of Windows users never go looking for an alternative browser or media player or whatever. This is what killed Netscape. This is what stifles innovation.
... By restricting one company from putting these software in, but allowing everyone else to do it, in my opinion, is what's unfair...
Nobody ever said Microsoft should not be allowed to make browsers, media players, chat software, etc. for their own operating systems, or even give these packages away for free. The point is that it's unfair for them to include this software pre-installed with Windows. When they do that, the average user is simply very unlikely to ever go looking for any alternatives. That's the only reason why crap software products like Internet Explorer and Outlook are still the perennial favorites.
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This doesn't seem strange to me. It's like everything besides voice that you can think of to use your mobile phone for costs way too much. The telcos just love to milk those extra features. Well, not me! Until they decide to give me a fixed IP address for my mobile phone and flat-rates for both voice and Internet access, I refuse to use my mobile phone for anything other than local phone calls. Once they give in, I can image a real revolution taking place, with an explosion of new functionality and smart phones quickly becoming more popular than PCs. I'll be the first in line for a deal like that, but at the moment this idea is hamstrung due to high cost of use.
As far as I'm concerned, I've just about had it with the fact that the geographic north pole is where the magnetic south pole is. It's damned confusing! I say we change things right away: the sooner the poles are in the right place, the better!
I think Megatrial of the year would make more sense in this context.
Doesn't anybody read over what they write before pressing SBUMIT? Doh!
And Microsoft's support isn't all that great either. Last time I tried them out, all I got was lots of scripted answers from people who weren't actually capable of understanding my problem. Of course, there are people at Microsoft who could have helped me -- people who know a hell of a lot more than the average MCSE -- but they're only available if you have a really expensive support contract. In other words, you only get the technical support that you pay for. So, to hell with the bastards: so far I've had a lot better luck with Linux and the open source crowd than I ever had with Windows.
I used to be a CNE 3/4/5 before Novell became almost irrelevant, but this is the first news I've heard that they might be bought out by another company. Many people have said that Novell's fall from grace was their own fault, but knowing Microsoft, in the end I don't think their was anything Novell could have done about it.
If Novell does get relegated to the history books, I'll be sorry to see them go. I still like the way NDS (um, eDirectory) works and would love to see an open source alternative to it appear. Well, I suppose LDAP could do the trick, but it's still comparatively fiddly to work with and support for it needs to be much more widespread.
As for Oracle, they've got lots of money, so if Larry wants to acquire Novell in order to use their expertise to start building Linux systems using SuSE, eDirectory and Oracle, that sounds fine to me!
So what if it doesn't take you as long to park your car when most of the time we're stuck in traffic anyway. What we really need is a system that will allow cars to drive themselves and that there be some overall level of coordination between them... at least on the highways. That's probably not what a lot of drivers would like to hear, but it sure would beat being stuck in traffic.
Giving away products for free in order to kill off another ISV that they decide to compete with. Of course, VMware has only itself to blame: this is what you get when you grow your market share enough to attract Microsoft's attention.
But seriously, in a normal market with healthy competition among OS makers, Microsoft would leave VMware alone and be happy that they're doing so well, selling products that work with Windows. However, this is not a normal market and Microsoft is a monopolist by any definition but their own. Therefore, VMware must die. Ho-hum.
Let's hope that nice lawyer lady from Iowa that Cringely was talking about last week drags them into court again soon.
Now I feel all warm and fuzzy inside. And to think that now even amateurs can contact Voyager 1, even though it's almost 100AU away. This makes me want to build my own compact, high-performance radio telescope, with a superconducting receiver, just so that I can commune with V'ger before I go to bed at night. :-)
Actually, the worst thing that could happen to the anti-mailware vendors is if companies end up rejecting Vista and move to *nix platforms instead.
You might be able to say that BSD and Linux distros also come bundled with media and communications applications, but the point is that this is free software and many distros usually come pre-installed with many 'competing' applications (multiple browsers, multiple mail clients).
With Windows, Microsoft always bundles one browser and one mail client, and both are made by Microsoft. They never include browsers or mail clients made by their competitors; if they did, other companies wouldn't be dragging them into court so often.
The result is that in the vast majority of all cases, the users will not go looking for any alternatives. They just use the applications that come with Windows, even though these applications are many years old and full of flaws. Therefore, the competition suffers and innovation is stifled.
Good point, although I was thinking more about users in general than business users in particular. Furthermore, those costs you mention will also include retraining (or replacing) the sysadmins and other support staff (unless you consider most Windows administrators to just be users with extra privileges).
But, of course they can! They're a monopoly, and there's nothing that Steve Jobs, the Open Source community or anybody else can do about it (well, the US Justice Dept. tried before Bush stopped 'em).
Unfortunately, Microsoft's customers (i.e. most of the world) are willing to wait a really long time before they give up on the Redmond giant. It's that damned critical mass that they've built up over the years: everything's geared to supporting Windows before anything else, from hardware manufacturers to ISVs to ISPs to media companies, etc. Even Google doesn't support anything but Windows for Google Earth! (okay, there's a Mac beta for it now too, but you get my drift).
Therefore, I figure that Microsoft's monopoly position can only be threatened if one of their next new operating systems turns out to be a total failure. If Microsoft aren't able to dump it and replace it soon enough with something better, only then will significant numbers of their customers begin to loose faith in them and move on to alternative operating systems.
Let's hope Vista turns out to be that dog.
vaporware
When it finally arrives, the faithful will take to it like flies to shit while others like myself will simply ignore it. Many big corporations will take years to warm up to it, even though Dell will soon be selling Vista and an Office 2007 license with almost every other PC that people buy from them.
Back here on Earth, I'm not so sure things are going to move along so quickly. For instance, a concept I would love to see developed in my lifetime is a wearable computer with:
It would also come with (optional) things like:
Think of what you could do with a device like this and how it would profoundly change society! However, even if we were able to develop a good enough voice interface without the AI, the damn telecos could still end up rendering these devices less than half as useful if they were never to offer people flat-rate, broadband, wireless Internet connections for these devices. It's the same problem as with those mobile phones that you can't buy in the States because the profit margins for them aren't considered to be high enough. High-tech costs a lot of money, and I fear that a lot of interesting concepts like this may never reach the market because they don't make good enough business sense to the dominant players.
In another situation, suppose good old Microsoft were to develop the wearable computer I outlined above. Would you still want one? I'm not so sure I would: the potential for abuse is too great to ignore. This could lead to these devices not only being mistrusted, but even outlawed. And what would we have to thank for the death of this wonderful concept... Microsoft? Uh, uh: market forces. The market giveth, and the market taketh away.
In other words, I feel that, due to market forces, the road to Kurzweil's digital utopia is probably going to be a little longer and bumpier than he'd like to believe.
"Comprehensible"?
;-)
Well, as opposed to the old changelog, which was so muddled and complex as to be incomprehensible. The new version is a definite improvement.
It's not like every copy of Windows will be upgraded to Vista overnight. And from what I've heard so far, there will be plenty of reasons *not* to upgrade (DRM, etc).
What's more, it's stupid to simultaneously underestimate the resourcefulness of the spyware industry, underestimate user stupidity, and overestimate Microsoft's likelyhood of success in this area.
So no, Vista is not a threat to the anti-spyware business.
This won't work until Microsoft has completely changed Windows to be Unix-like.
Maybe, but then they'll still be an uncooperative, vendor-lock-in, embrace-and-extend, non-standards-compliant, only-compatible-with-their-own-stuff, expensive-as-hell technology company. With a bad track record for security and stability and a reputation for draconian licensing practices (there's more, but you get the picture).
Trust 'em? No way.
If you want privacy, run your own mail server. Don't rely on an ISP.
The whole thread is worrying because it presumes that the press is currently free and is under some new threat. Horseshit.
I disagree. I find this view overly paranoid and pessimistic. Although there are plenty of news organizations around that seem to produce nothing more than gossip, infotainment, one-sided news and even misleading press -- not just because they're often too commercially oriented, but also because of who owns them (like Rupert Murdoch) -- luckily there are always others that do attempt to speak the truth. Our task as citizens is to decided which sources to trust. It's always been like to to some degree or another.
The problem now is that it may soon actually become illegal for journalists to reveal certain truths about the government, such as if our rights are being trampled on by the government. If this bill becomes law, it would suddenly become that much harder to discover the truth about the government. America would no longer have a truly free press.
The Soviet States of America indeed.
... is what the US government spends annually on spying: obviously way too much. I mean, do we really need zombie sharks? A real hair-brained idea if I ever heard one. It'll never work. Most likely it's just a way to keep a couple of unimaginative researchers from loosing their jobs. I say leave the poor animals be; with the shark fin industry and everything they have it hard enough as it is these days.
If Microsoft knows that most of the hardware out there now is not going to meet Vista's minimum requirements, perhaps this is actually a suggestion for how to squeak by if you've already maxed out your RAM. Other than that, it sounds like a good way to wear out flash memory in a hurry.
Is it just me or does anyone else feel all these "governments" view Microsoft as a cash cow and are trying to milk it for all it's worth.
... It's not like they're PREVENTING you from installing another software to replace it. ...
... By restricting one company from putting these software in, but allowing everyone else to do it, in my opinion, is what's unfair ...
Forget it. Microsoft has been in court for monopolistic business practices for as long as I can remember. They wrote the book on software bundling and how to use it to destroy the competition. Microsoft continues to do this, despite all of the lawsuites and the fines they've had to pay, simply because they've always gained more from this practice than they've ever lost because of it. As long as they remain the dominant player in the market and continue to do things this way, we can expect to see them as permanent fixtures in courts around the world. The courts are only doing what they're meant to do, but compared to Microsoft's profits, the fines involved will always be inadequate, even though they may amount to hundreds of millions of dollars.
Honestly, the definition needs to be redifined. What Linux, Apple and Microsoft is selling (or giving away for free) is not just an OS, but a complete package. Would anyone even bother buying an OS that doesn't come with a media player, a internet browser, or internet messenger in nowadays?
Oh, so now we should view Microsoft's bundling practices as normal?? FYI: those technologies were all developed by other people and companies, and now what do they have to show for it? For instance, did Netscape deserve to die just because the folks at Microsoft decided Windows should come with a pre-installed, competitive, native browser? You would think differently if Netscape had been your baby. There are probably lots of folks out there who are still too scared to market their ideas for fear that Microsoft might "pull a Netscape" on them.
To be fair, one could argue that for a manufacturer to produce an operating system -- today or even ten years ago -- without some kind of a browser to start with would in effect cripple it. However, if Microsoft had stopped doing any major development work on their bundled version of Internet Explorer, for example by leaving it simple (HTML 2.0-4.01 compatible), modular, as secure as possible, and making it just good enough to allow the user to go out and download a proper replacement (which might be better version of Internet Explorer), then I don't think anybody would have complained. The problem is that they went out of their way to make their bundled browser the "Best browser in the world" (haw), with the specific intent to kill Netscape and thereby strengthen their market position.
Comparing Microsoft's bundling practices to a Linux distribution is ridiculous. Commercial Linux distributions are collections free software packages compiled almost exclusively for the benefit of the user, while Microsoft bundles its software together with Windows almost exclusively for its own benefit, mostly by screwing the competition.
Of course not. If that were the case, Firefox would not be the #2 browser. But it is the reason why the vast majority of Windows users never go looking for an alternative browser or media player or whatever. This is what killed Netscape. This is what stifles innovation.
Nobody ever said Microsoft should not be allowed to make browsers, media players, chat software, etc. for their own operating systems, or even give these packages away for free. The point is that it's unfair for them to include this software pre-installed with Windows. When they do that, the average user is simply very unlikely to ever go looking for any alternatives. That's the only reason why crap software products like Internet Explorer and Outlook are still the perennial favorites.
And while we're
... By the way, I wasn't aware the Terrestrial Planet Finder had been cancelled. ...
Perhaps not, but "indefinitely deferred" is almost as bad (as stated in NASA's 2007 budget).