Hotmail's only purpose is spam. Sending it, and receiving it, and loving it.
People only use Hotmail to sign up for things when they don't want to clog their real accounts. Spammers only use Hotmail to send spam...mostly to other Hotmail accounts.
So it makes perfect sense not to investigate. Who knows why MSN is even bothering to keep Hotmail around? It's clear that they aren't trying to compete with Yahoo! or GMail.
No, I'm serious. Consider this. They make software explicitly for the purpose of stealing costly visitors from websites. On the internet, that's the only "merchandise" that can be stolen. Visitors are just another, really expensive form of overhead.
But, if you don't want any of your competitor's popups appearing on your website, all you have to do is advertise with them (aka. paying your protection fee). But, doing this, you still look bad to everybody else, even though while spyware is still legal, you have no other recourse.
Doesn't that sound oddly like a protection racket to anybody else?
It seems to me that the Lindows name was a very clever (and maybe rash) way to sound familiar to the non-power users of MS Windows. And in the heads of their legal dept. (and many judges), using the notoriety of Windows was OK because you can't trademark a generic word and call it your own, therefore making the case of trademark infringement moot.
Now, taking a step back, and looking at your statement, you're saying that Lindows did it purely to get the free PR of so many MS victims. This argument lacks any sort of real evidence.
On the contrary, Lindows likely spent thousands upon thousands of dollars in legal fees, over a period of years in order to keep the name. If as you suggest, they were doing it for free PR, doesn't it make more sense to fold under the pressure earlier, before you bankrupt yourself?
Secondly, even though Lindows had a comparatively small brand, any name recognition it did have is now erased, but for a small population. (Like maybe a bunch of Linux nerds.) Beyond that, they no longer have the advantage of using the famiiarity of the Windows name to bring more customers.
In the end, however, I believe this legal battle will have little residual impact on the company. For one, they have a pretty intelligent CEO, and a very nice value offering. For another, they are clearly competing on price first, and everything else second. The way they will develop a brand is by creeping into homes through dirt-cheap PCs from Wal-Mart. Kudos to Linspire!
Every day I hear another hairbrained scheme about what Google is supposedly doing next. Start IM platform? Take over the desktop market? Make their own currency? People, please use your head here!
First off, Google hasn't done anything so far that they can't immediately see the return on investment. Look at their aquisitions:
Deja.com: IMHO they bought this to 1) Remove Usenet from search results to improve quality and, 2) show applicable ads later.
Applied Symantecs: The underlying technology for AdSense, which greatly expanded their contextual marketing market share.
Pyra Labs: IMHO same basic principle as the Deja aquisition.
All of them directly affected their major revenue generator, search marketing, in a positive way. (Though blogger might have more untapped potential.)
Now, in comparison, these other theories have no basis on reality. The fact that Google is in a position to have these wild rumors about their Godlike Power is a direct result of the highly profitable search advertising market.
So what is Google going to do with their money? Not piss it away on the logistical nightmares of "GooOS", or "Google Bucks." In fact, they will be effectively printing money by expanding in their core market with the likes of Froogle, GMail, Orkut, and other future innovations.
Maybe there should be a "open source" (more like open use) project devoted to simply testing open source software for usability. It could be like a pool of open source supporters who don't know how to program, but still want to help. (Like me.)
I myself am a relative newbie to Linux. I like it, it's powerful. And unlike MS, Linux doesn't think it knows what you're trying to accomplish. It doesn't try an do anything for you.
But unfortunately, I haven't made the switch on my personal computer-- The one I use most often. I have no incentive to. Linux is perfect when you don't have to touch it directly to use it well (read: server).
I must say however, Lindows has got it together when it comes to being user-friendly. Now they just have to pump some power back into it, and it'll be perfect! (Did you know that click-and-run solves version dependencies?)
Whenever I do an identical search on Yahoo! and Google, they are vastly different. I am definitely seeing Inktomi results.
It's funny to me because I get paid to make our company show up in the search engines, and practically the same day we made our top rankings, I noticed Yahoo was displaying Inktomi.
"I do not want my attitude to be misunderstood. I shall be glad to state it for the record. . . . I work for nothing but my own profit--which I make by selling a product they need to men who are willing and able to buy it. I do not produce it for their benefit at the expense of mine, and they do not buy it for my benefit at the expense of theirs; I do not sacrifice my interests to them nor do they sacrifice theirs to me; we deal as equals by mutual consent to mutual advantage--and I am proud of every penny I have earned in this manner. I am rich and I am proud of every penny I own. I have made my money by my own effort, in free exchange and through the voluntary consent of every man I dealt with--the voluntary consent of those who employed me when I started, the voluntary consent of those who work for me now, the voluntary consent of those who buy my product. I shall answer all the questions you are afraid to ask me openly. Do I wish to pay my workers more than their services are worth to me? I do not. Do I wish to sell my product for less than my customers are willing to pay me? I do not. Do I wish to sell it at a loss or give it away? I do not. If this is evil, do whatever you please about me, according to whatever standards you hold. These are mine. I am earning my own living, as every honest man must. I refuse to accept as guilt the fact of my own existence and the fact that I must work in order to support it. I refuse to accept as guilt the fact that I am able to do it and to do it well. I refuse to accept as guilt the fact that I am able to do it better than most people--the fact that my work is of greater value than the work of my neighbors and that more men are willing to pay me. I refuse to apologize for my ability--I refuse to apologize for my success--I refuse to apologize for my money. If this is evil, make the most of it. If this is what the public finds harmful to its interests let the public destroy me. This is my code--and I will accept no other. I could say to you that I have done more good for my fellow man than you can ever hope to accomplish--but I will not say it, because I do not seek the good of others as a sanction for my right to exist, nor do I recognize the good of others as a justification for their seizure of my property or their destruction of my life. I will not say that the good of others was the purpose of my work--my own good was my purpose, and I despise the man who surrenders his. I could say to you that you do not serve the public good--that nobody's good can be achieved at the price of human sacrifices--that when you violate the rights of one man, you have violated the rights of all, and a public of rightless creatures is doomed to destruction. I could say to you that you will and can achieve nothing but universal destruction--as any looter must, when he runs out of victims. I could say it, but I won't. It is not your particular policy that I challenge, but your moral premise. If it were true that men could achieve their good by means of turning some men into sacrificial animals, and I were asked to immolate myself for the sake of creatures who wanted to survive at the price of my blood, if I were asked to serve the interests of society apart from, above and against my own--I would refuse, I would reject it as the most contemptible evil, I would fight it with every power I possess, I would fight the whole of mankind, if one minute were all I could last before I were murdered, I would fight in the full confidence of the justice of my battle and of a living being's right to exist. Let there be no misunderstanding about me. If it is now the belief of my fellow men, who call themselves the public, that their good requires victims, then I say: The public good be damned, I will have no part of it!"
No way, I'm sure you buy from their higher priced competition.
Give me a break, you hypocrite. If you read the companies' history, you'll find they got there by the direction of their CEOs' brains.
Anybody who's got a better idea will find a way to compete. That is what capitalism is all about.
Look at Pepsi versus Coke. Pepsi wasn't always there. They had to compete with the likes of a mature and fully funded Coca-Cola in a David-Goliath type of battle. Once Coca-Cola figured out that they had competition, it was too late. Pepsi was there to stay. This scared Coke so much that they changed their recipe.
Maybe you couldn't compete in the real-world. But that's why you don't run a business. So why do you think you know enough to regulate others' businesses?
>"The points are - they can do plenty that wouldn't substantially cost them and just because something is free (as in beer and/or freedom) is no reason to neglect it."
I agree that it wouldn't cost them much. Nobody is arguing that point. I think the key here is that if there was legislation forcing companies to participate, then you've just lost a lot of the openness of open-source.
>"IT managers need to become more aware that furthering OS projects, costs very little and is in their best interest."
Also true, but the end does not justify legislation as a means.
The point of the Open Source movement (at least as I see it) is that you don't need to force contributions.
Those who oppose Open Source, and those who first began trying to shoot it down said that it could not sustain itself. Their argument was that it was impossible to continue releasing free code to the world's eyes and not a) burn out b) go bankrupt.
That is not the case, and I have some reasons why:
The individuals who contribute to open source, while appreciative of donations, do not need them because ultimately the will to have viable software alternatives is the driving force. These individuals acknowledge that alternative pricing, quality, and security is needed throughout the many facets of the software world. The reward is to eventually have what they desire. It is merely icing on the cake when you receive donations.
Once the alternative OS software is available, people will eventually see the benefits of increased quality, and security at a price that cannot be beaten ($0). Any adoption of the software is a movement in the right direction for the individual who contributed. It makes it easier for others to adopt it, and it becomes more of a standard.
It is hoped that companies and individuals who make the switch to open source software will end up contributing, as it is eventually in their best interests. However, to require it would have a negative impact on the growth of open source.
By these premises, forcing or regulating in any way the OS movement would be a severe fallacy.
They say 10% now. Think of the International Space Station...
My point is that free energy is good, but we should have it in our own country for a couple reasons:
We'll still get the free energy forever utopia. Woohoo!
You can't depend on other countries to deliver forever. What if for instance for some reason we went to war with France or Japan (two of the candidates) in 20 years? They just flip a switch and there goes the US fusion power supply. Granted, I doubt it would be something that drastic. Let's say the country didn't have as much security?
In the end it would serve us right if something happened to the power supply we were dependent on because we shouldn't have been stupid enough to depend on others for power.
Don't get me wrong. I like the idea, but principally, I don't think it should be international. We've got the resources to do it. Why aren't we looking out for #1 first?
C'mon, after that fountain of insults, it's very plain that you're jealous. That's ok, we've got a lot to be jealous of...if we'd just stop giving it away for free...;)
If they build an international fusion reactor, there will be endless squabbling about every little detail.
The US should just build one for itself, and leave the others to their own ideas. Why should our scientists, resources, and military, and production benefit other countries? It's a bad deal for us because we never seem to charge for our services.
What's the point of being a sovereign nation these days...
I for one don't feel obligated to donate to a charity just to make a bunch of morons with half-baked theories feel better about my state of mind.
Besides, it wouldn't help anyway. People will believe what they want to.
At my job I boot from the network into linux. So I don't really have the option of using MS apps at work.
It's true, the spreadsheet app is very unforgiving. But I find using Gnumeric and OOo together makes it just about as good as MS Excel. Almost.
If only I knew enough about developing to mix gnumeric and OOo...
Slashdot Mirror
You better hook her up with an extension to copy images:p hp?t=7332 4
http://forums.mozillazine.org/viewtopic.
Hotmail's only purpose is spam. Sending it, and receiving it, and loving it.
People only use Hotmail to sign up for things when they don't want to clog their real accounts. Spammers only use Hotmail to send spam...mostly to other Hotmail accounts.
So it makes perfect sense not to investigate. Who knows why MSN is even bothering to keep Hotmail around? It's clear that they aren't trying to compete with Yahoo! or GMail.
No, I'm serious. Consider this. They make software explicitly for the purpose of stealing costly visitors from websites. On the internet, that's the only "merchandise" that can be stolen. Visitors are just another, really expensive form of overhead.
But, if you don't want any of your competitor's popups appearing on your website, all you have to do is advertise with them (aka. paying your protection fee). But, doing this, you still look bad to everybody else, even though while spyware is still legal, you have no other recourse.
Doesn't that sound oddly like a protection racket to anybody else?
It seems to me that the Lindows name was a very clever (and maybe rash) way to sound familiar to the non-power users of MS Windows. And in the heads of their legal dept. (and many judges), using the notoriety of Windows was OK because you can't trademark a generic word and call it your own, therefore making the case of trademark infringement moot.
Now, taking a step back, and looking at your statement, you're saying that Lindows did it purely to get the free PR of so many MS victims. This argument lacks any sort of real evidence.
On the contrary, Lindows likely spent thousands upon thousands of dollars in legal fees, over a period of years in order to keep the name. If as you suggest, they were doing it for free PR, doesn't it make more sense to fold under the pressure earlier, before you bankrupt yourself?
Secondly, even though Lindows had a comparatively small brand, any name recognition it did have is now erased, but for a small population. (Like maybe a bunch of Linux nerds.) Beyond that, they no longer have the advantage of using the famiiarity of the Windows name to bring more customers.
In the end, however, I believe this legal battle will have little residual impact on the company. For one, they have a pretty intelligent CEO, and a very nice value offering. For another, they are clearly competing on price first, and everything else second. The way they will develop a brand is by creeping into homes through dirt-cheap PCs from Wal-Mart. Kudos to Linspire!
First off, Google hasn't done anything so far that they can't immediately see the return on investment. Look at their aquisitions:
- Deja.com: IMHO they bought this to 1) Remove Usenet from search results to improve quality and, 2) show applicable ads later.
- Applied Symantecs: The underlying technology for AdSense, which greatly expanded their contextual marketing market share.
- Pyra Labs: IMHO same basic principle as the Deja aquisition.
All of them directly affected their major revenue generator, search marketing, in a positive way. (Though blogger might have more untapped potential.)Now, in comparison, these other theories have no basis on reality. The fact that Google is in a position to have these wild rumors about their Godlike Power is a direct result of the highly profitable search advertising market.
So what is Google going to do with their money? Not piss it away on the logistical nightmares of "GooOS", or "Google Bucks." In fact, they will be effectively printing money by expanding in their core market with the likes of Froogle, GMail, Orkut, and other future innovations.
It's easy, just don't browse eBay.
I myself am a relative newbie to Linux. I like it, it's powerful. And unlike MS, Linux doesn't think it knows what you're trying to accomplish. It doesn't try an do anything for you.
But unfortunately, I haven't made the switch on my personal computer-- The one I use most often. I have no incentive to. Linux is perfect when you don't have to touch it directly to use it well (read: server).
I must say however, Lindows has got it together when it comes to being user-friendly. Now they just have to pump some power back into it, and it'll be perfect! (Did you know that click-and-run solves version dependencies?)
...that they already switched.
:(
Whenever I do an identical search on Yahoo! and Google, they are vastly different. I am definitely seeing Inktomi results.
It's funny to me because I get paid to make our company show up in the search engines, and practically the same day we made our top rankings, I noticed Yahoo was displaying Inktomi.
Well, at least there's some competition now...
Do you buy from Dell or Wal-Mart?
No way, I'm sure you buy from their higher priced competition.
Give me a break, you hypocrite. If you read the companies' history, you'll find they got there by the direction of their CEOs' brains.
Anybody who's got a better idea will find a way to compete. That is what capitalism is all about.
Look at Pepsi versus Coke. Pepsi wasn't always there. They had to compete with the likes of a mature and fully funded Coca-Cola in a David-Goliath type of battle. Once Coca-Cola figured out that they had competition, it was too late. Pepsi was there to stay. This scared Coke so much that they changed their recipe.
Maybe you couldn't compete in the real-world. But that's why you don't run a business. So why do you think you know enough to regulate others' businesses?
You need to read Atlas Shrugged, by Ayn Rand.
I agree that it wouldn't cost them much. Nobody is arguing that point. I think the key here is that if there was legislation forcing companies to participate, then you've just lost a lot of the openness of open-source.
Also true, but the end does not justify legislation as a means.
The point of the Open Source movement (at least as I see it) is that you don't need to force contributions.
Those who oppose Open Source, and those who first began trying to shoot it down said that it could not sustain itself. Their argument was that it was impossible to continue releasing free code to the world's eyes and not a) burn out b) go bankrupt.
That is not the case, and I have some reasons why:
By these premises, forcing or regulating in any way the OS movement would be a severe fallacy.
They say 10% now. Think of the International Space Station...
My point is that free energy is good, but we should have it in our own country for a couple reasons:
In the end it would serve us right if something happened to the power supply we were dependent on because we shouldn't have been stupid enough to depend on others for power.
Don't get me wrong. I like the idea, but principally, I don't think it should be international. We've got the resources to do it. Why aren't we looking out for #1 first?
C'mon, after that fountain of insults, it's very plain that you're jealous. That's ok, we've got a lot to be jealous of...if we'd just stop giving it away for free... ;)
Sorry, should've clarified that there would be endless squabbling about it once it was done.
Why doesn't the US just build one for itself?
If they build an international fusion reactor, there will be endless squabbling about every little detail.
The US should just build one for itself, and leave the others to their own ideas. Why should our scientists, resources, and military, and production benefit other countries? It's a bad deal for us because we never seem to charge for our services.
What's the point of being a sovereign nation these days...
Did the guy proceed to steal a police car, and go on vigilante missions?
Seriously folks, this guy can't be the person by which all gamers are judged.
Because, well, he's clearly stupid.
Maybe he just needs a healthy dose of Project Gotham Racing to encourage realistic driving.
Like many emboldened internet forum-posters, you assume you know my entire perspective on life. This is not the case.
I simply find it irritating that people feel they must respond to unfounded claims.
It's very ironic that I seem to be doing just that right now.
I for one don't feel obligated to donate to a charity just to make a bunch of morons with half-baked theories feel better about my state of mind. Besides, it wouldn't help anyway. People will believe what they want to.
At my job I boot from the network into linux. So I don't really have the option of using MS apps at work. It's true, the spreadsheet app is very unforgiving. But I find using Gnumeric and OOo together makes it just about as good as MS Excel. Almost. If only I knew enough about developing to mix gnumeric and OOo...