Microsoft ensures a competitive ecosystem by favoring a few, and disfavoring the top. In this way they preserve a competitive ecosystem determined to cut each other out of profit. This is how Microsoft and Intel get the lion's share of PC profits, by playing one against the other. No one could become powerful enough to be bold.
This worked until Apple and Google ripped the entire carpet out from under them.
I had this talk with the HP guy as they were moving into services. "We don't make ANY money moving your hardware. We keep the lights on with services margin. Now that you're looking to take our bread and butter, why go with you rather than some other who still lets us stay in business?" Was crickets with the HP guy, and crickets with Dell too.
If that were true they would be making Android devices as fast as they can. Android devices are outselling Windows devices 2:1. Dell's not making ANY profit on Windows devices, so they might as well give Android devices a go. But they don't, which implies that Microsoft has got them by the short curlies.
When we see these Microsoft stories it's really heartwarming to see proponents of one business division pushing the others under the bus - ensuring their counterparts will respond in kind.
It reminds us that Microsoft is a dozen warlords more at war with each other than with us.
While they seek dominance over each other we might have progress.
What's not to like? Facebook and Twitter integration for your Primary Domain Controller and Exchange Server is the next evolution of social networking. Your PDC can tweet for help when it suffers a drive failure. Your Exchange Server can post a message on your timeline about your technical incompetence. Smells like progress to me.
Concur. It is so unfortunate that we have folk like the Westboro Baptist Church to hold up as examples of why speech must be free. Their members should be ashamed of themselves. Their actions are despicable. They appear to be organized to make the worst possible use of free speech.
The law protects them from the government. The government cannot act against them. We, their neighbors, can choose to not associate with them - to not shop in their businesses, to not employ them, to not let them in our homes. So by showing who they are, Anonymous had done us a great service.
But to engage some arm of the government in shutting them up - no, I'm not in favor of that and would never be.
They seem so determined that they will not change. Shunning them might motivate them to behave in a more civilized way.
Publishing the information is free speech. Gathering it in this particular manner is illegal. So as long as the publisher received the information through anonymous sources without knowledge of any specific illegal activity, they are protected. They are protected so much that they are not required to divulge their sources, even if they know it - though they should not. The only risk is that the publisher and the information gatherer is the same person. Anonymous is not so stupid as that.
Because they can be got for $90-150 plus tax, delivered? And hold thousands of books, magazines, reference documents, play games, browse the Internet, provide video chat, play Netflix, work with Office documents and such, have an accessible library of 600,000 apps - most free? For $90?
It's not like the price is a huge barrier to entry. You can get a pretty decent Android tablet for under $150 now. Go ahead: treat yourself.
If automation and technological progress has advanced to the point where the majority of us need not toil to create all the goods and services we want and need, perhaps its time to consider exploiting the vast potential of the idle in some way.
To disprove me you've chosen the most extreme case possible: a geek enclave in Amish country. And this is your argument that most Americans aren't urban and deserving of broadband. Is this the best you can do? Because it's of no value to the average reader. Everybody knows the Amish prefer wireless. It is not representative. But never fear: They'll drag fiber out to you too, whether you want it or not.
We tell ourselves that our explanations of the Universe are right for reasons this, that and the other. And then without an "oops" we turn the rudder 90 degrees.
Look, I'm going to give you an example of what you would consider "not urban": Grant County Washington, US, served with Internet by Grant County PUD. 91,000 citizens. 2,679 square miles. 35 citizens and 10 homes per square mile. 64 acres per home. It is almost the least populated county in the state per square mile. Seriously cow country out here. It turns out the homes are still clustered in nexuses, and the cows roam in the vast areas between. This is the kind of place where your neighbors don't bother you about your personal firing range.
They've had gigabit-capable fiber broadband in Grant County to every home for over a decade, and turned an embarrassing profit at it as they're a nonprofit PUD. And they got into it accidentally, with technology that was then as dear as unicorn blood and has since become as cheap as rice. It was actually originally a project to save money on power meter reading labor using SCADA power meters that didn't work out because the vendor folded/deprecated the device.
Tell me again how population density is an issue. If Grant County WA US PUD can wire their 35 people and 10 homes/square mile folk with gigabit broadband fiber 10 years ago - accidently, surely there's money in giving that to people who don't live in a vast desert wasteland now, given advances in technology that have improved network performance over fiber over 10,000x in the meantime.
For comparison, the population density of Los Angeles County California is now 7,544 people per square mile, not 35. It is over 200 times as dense - and this is now when the tech is cheap, not before when the tech was expensive. How could you NOT make money at that?
Yes, the Netherlands has sparsely populated areas also. But those areas are, like the US, largely uninhabited. For the most part the people who live there live in towns near others, which drives down the cost of bringing their community broadband. Humans like to live hear other humans, and for the most part the outliers don't want broadband.
According to the US Census bureau, 4 out of 5 Americans live in an urban area. Yes, we have some wide open spaces. But that's what they are: open spaces with no people in them. The vast majority of humans live in clusters that would bring the cost of broadband down.
They have to have 5Gbps of Netflix traffic. Based on the figures in TFA, maybe a couple thousand Netflix users. They're load balancing, so target is 5Gbps per box - the boxes can do a peak of 8Gbps. Netflix makes them available for free to reduce the cost of networking and improve the customer experience. Network operators take them for the same reason. There is more here, including an install guide and BOM.
This is the correct answer. We are about to get broadband competition.
BTW: all a network provider has to do to put Netflix's datacenter closer to their customer and improve their score is to call up Netflix and get some of these cool cache boxes modeled after the BackBlaze box. They're FREE.
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Microsoft ensures a competitive ecosystem by favoring a few, and disfavoring the top. In this way they preserve a competitive ecosystem determined to cut each other out of profit. This is how Microsoft and Intel get the lion's share of PC profits, by playing one against the other. No one could become powerful enough to be bold.
This worked until Apple and Google ripped the entire carpet out from under them.
I had this talk with the HP guy as they were moving into services. "We don't make ANY money moving your hardware. We keep the lights on with services margin. Now that you're looking to take our bread and butter, why go with you rather than some other who still lets us stay in business?" Was crickets with the HP guy, and crickets with Dell too.
If that were true they would be making Android devices as fast as they can. Android devices are outselling Windows devices 2:1. Dell's not making ANY profit on Windows devices, so they might as well give Android devices a go. But they don't, which implies that Microsoft has got them by the short curlies.
When we see these Microsoft stories it's really heartwarming to see proponents of one business division pushing the others under the bus - ensuring their counterparts will respond in kind.
It reminds us that Microsoft is a dozen warlords more at war with each other than with us.
While they seek dominance over each other we might have progress.
Um, no.
Please name me a feature that Linux has that Windows doesn't that is useful on the enterprise level.
You can use it any way you want, as much as you want, and you won't fail an audit as long as you don't publish modified code.
What's not to like? Facebook and Twitter integration for your Primary Domain Controller and Exchange Server is the next evolution of social networking. Your PDC can tweet for help when it suffers a drive failure. Your Exchange Server can post a message on your timeline about your technical incompetence. Smells like progress to me.
Concur. It is so unfortunate that we have folk like the Westboro Baptist Church to hold up as examples of why speech must be free. Their members should be ashamed of themselves. Their actions are despicable. They appear to be organized to make the worst possible use of free speech.
The law protects them from the government. The government cannot act against them. We, their neighbors, can choose to not associate with them - to not shop in their businesses, to not employ them, to not let them in our homes. So by showing who they are, Anonymous had done us a great service.
But to engage some arm of the government in shutting them up - no, I'm not in favor of that and would never be.
They seem so determined that they will not change. Shunning them might motivate them to behave in a more civilized way.
Publishing the information is free speech. Gathering it in this particular manner is illegal. So as long as the publisher received the information through anonymous sources without knowledge of any specific illegal activity, they are protected. They are protected so much that they are not required to divulge their sources, even if they know it - though they should not. The only risk is that the publisher and the information gatherer is the same person. Anonymous is not so stupid as that.
Apparently somebody is on it - but not on a tablet; a phone.
Because they can be got for $90-150 plus tax, delivered? And hold thousands of books, magazines, reference documents, play games, browse the Internet, provide video chat, play Netflix, work with Office documents and such, have an accessible library of 600,000 apps - most free? For $90?
It's not like the price is a huge barrier to entry. You can get a pretty decent Android tablet for under $150 now. Go ahead: treat yourself.
Yeah, or maybe we could recognize that in order to feel fullfilled and needed, some people like to work 50-60 hours a week - and let them.
So maybe the right answer is a tablet... with an Epaper screen on the back.
If automation and technological progress has advanced to the point where the majority of us need not toil to create all the goods and services we want and need, perhaps its time to consider exploiting the vast potential of the idle in some way.
To disprove me you've chosen the most extreme case possible: a geek enclave in Amish country. And this is your argument that most Americans aren't urban and deserving of broadband. Is this the best you can do? Because it's of no value to the average reader. Everybody knows the Amish prefer wireless. It is not representative. But never fear: They'll drag fiber out to you too, whether you want it or not.
We tell ourselves that our explanations of the Universe are right for reasons this, that and the other. And then without an "oops" we turn the rudder 90 degrees.
We don't have a lot of photons captured yet from these early galaxies to do spectroscopy on.
Look, I'm going to give you an example of what you would consider "not urban": Grant County Washington, US, served with Internet by Grant County PUD. 91,000 citizens. 2,679 square miles. 35 citizens and 10 homes per square mile. 64 acres per home. It is almost the least populated county in the state per square mile. Seriously cow country out here. It turns out the homes are still clustered in nexuses, and the cows roam in the vast areas between. This is the kind of place where your neighbors don't bother you about your personal firing range.
They've had gigabit-capable fiber broadband in Grant County to every home for over a decade, and turned an embarrassing profit at it as they're a nonprofit PUD. And they got into it accidentally, with technology that was then as dear as unicorn blood and has since become as cheap as rice. It was actually originally a project to save money on power meter reading labor using SCADA power meters that didn't work out because the vendor folded/deprecated the device.
Tell me again how population density is an issue. If Grant County WA US PUD can wire their 35 people and 10 homes/square mile folk with gigabit broadband fiber 10 years ago - accidently, surely there's money in giving that to people who don't live in a vast desert wasteland now, given advances in technology that have improved network performance over fiber over 10,000x in the meantime.
For comparison, the population density of Los Angeles County California is now 7,544 people per square mile, not 35. It is over 200 times as dense - and this is now when the tech is cheap, not before when the tech was expensive. How could you NOT make money at that?
Yes, the Netherlands has sparsely populated areas also. But those areas are, like the US, largely uninhabited. For the most part the people who live there live in towns near others, which drives down the cost of bringing their community broadband. Humans like to live hear other humans, and for the most part the outliers don't want broadband.
According to the US Census bureau, 4 out of 5 Americans live in an urban area. Yes, we have some wide open spaces. But that's what they are: open spaces with no people in them. The vast majority of humans live in clusters that would bring the cost of broadband down.
They have to have 5Gbps of Netflix traffic. Based on the figures in TFA, maybe a couple thousand Netflix users. They're load balancing, so target is 5Gbps per box - the boxes can do a peak of 8Gbps. Netflix makes them available for free to reduce the cost of networking and improve the customer experience. Network operators take them for the same reason. There is more here, including an install guide and BOM.
Also Blu-Ray players and HDTVs have integrated Netflix now. You can't get away from the thing almost.
This is the correct answer. We are about to get broadband competition.
BTW: all a network provider has to do to put Netflix's datacenter closer to their customer and improve their score is to call up Netflix and get some of these cool cache boxes modeled after the BackBlaze box. They're FREE.
Gimme a wee bit of artistic license, won't you? Leaving this ambiguous in the grammar was deliberate. Jebus but grammar Nazis are everywhere.
I'm going to give you the real answer they aren't going to accept or use for many years: "Because it works."
Please don't tell them about this innovative intellectual property. It's my exclusive and I have IP rights to it..