If you don't like it, don't buy it. If you're a 3rd party developer, then don't develop applications for it. Vote with your wallet. Nobody is forcing you to buy the iPhone. Go buy a different smartphone that allows 3rd-party apps.
"Consumers suffer from this. We suffer from increased prices and decreased competition and innovation."
This might actually make sense if this were a necessity of life, but this is a luxury item we're talking about. I give this a big fat "SO WHAT?" What Apple decided to do with the iPhone was a business decision. Business decisions are made based on the potential to make the company money, either in the short- or long-term. Making customers happy is only important to a company when doing so will help the company make money. If a company makes its customers happy but doesn't make a profit, its competitors will drive it into the ground. This is the whole basis for capitalism: if you don't like one company's product, take your money elsewhere. Besides, everyone was warned well in advance that the iPhone would be closed to third-party apps. There was no surprise. Now, if the iPhone had originally allowed 3rd party apps, and then through an update removed that ability, then you would have a cause to complain.
But the whining I hear day after day about "oh no, the iPhone doesn't do [insert pet feature]! Woe is me!" has long passed the point of "annoying". Face it, even if all the current complaints about the iPhone were resolved, we'd find something else to complain about.
The instant I heard "We suffer so Apple can make a few more bucks, when Apple is clearly not hurting for money," the article lost all credibility. Nobody is making you suffer. And so what if they have money? Do you know where that money goes? Let's see...it goes to paying all the people who work for the company. It pays the CEO a big fat paycheck, which he then spends on yacht, which creates jobs. Or he invests it, which means that the money goes to fund some other project or initiative which gives other people jobs. Money sitting in a pile does a company no good.
I don't mean to downplay the difficulties of independent bookstores. My post was directed towards the on-campus bookstores that also complain about slim margins. However, there are lots of financial institutions out there that understand very well the cash-flow difficulties for small businesses that deal with short-term, high-dollar sales, and have programs (read: short-term loans) specifically tailored to that need.
Yes, I went to a big school. I did some checking, and I *did* overestimate the number of full-time students--it's actually around 26,000 instead of 30,000. It's a private university, although I don't know the details of the business relationship between the University and the Bookstore.
$500 per semester for books is actually quite accurate. I don't know where you went to school, or what kind of classes you took, but most of the texts for my major (Electrical Engineering) cost well over $100 apiece, even used. The same went for pretty much all of the math- and science-based courses (chemistry, biology, physics). From talking to graduate students, many of them spent up to $900 per semester on books.
Your experience is apparently different from mine, but I found that the bookstore generally stocked fewer than the necessary number of textbooks in order to minimize the inventory costs you mentioned. It was quite common to find that the bookstore was out of a given book for your class, and have to wait a week for a new shipment to arrive. Once that first week or so of classes passes, the shelves in the textbook department of the bookstore are basically empty.
Independent bookstores are certainly at a disadvantage--they have to work harder to get the book lists, they're off campus, and they're not as well-known. They only advantage they can leverage is price.
While boats don't deal with the temperature swings, they sure deal with a lot of very rapidly-changing pressures. Ever taken a boat out over choppy water? That's stress.
Slim margins? I don't think so. How about some hard numbers?
The bookstore at my college is, from what I hear, one of the more generous as far as buyback prices are concerned--they buy back at 60% of retail price and sell used books at 75% (alongside the new books at full price). So their raw profits (before subtracting costs) are approximately 20% of revenue. There are approximately 30,000 students, each paying on average around $500/semester for books. 30,000 students * 500 $/student * 0.2 * 2 semesters/year= $6 million per year. (I'm ignoring summer term for now) That's $6 million that they ring up in approximately four weeks out of the year. Now, add on to that $6m the incredible profits they get on T-shirts (price: $20), sweatshirts ($40 and up), electronics, school supplies, etc.
There's no way in the world that the bookstore's costs come even close to the amount of profit they're making. They just don't want to admit it.
Someone set up a website specifically for students from our university to buy and sell textbooks directly one to another. About the same time, I discovered the wonderful phenomenon of international editions. That semester, I saved about 50% on the cost of my textbooks, and ended up getting almost that entire amount back when I sold my books at the end of the semester.
Frustrated with the cost of textbooks? Buy them online. Set up a website for students to sell books to each other. Post flyers. Bypass the bookstore.
Are my reading skills failing me, or did I see the word Pilates as one of the games listed? Dance Dance Revolution is one thing, but how in the world do you incorporate a game controller into a long series of leg lifts and crunches?
It's also important to keep a few things in mind:
--Violent games were around long before the ESRB ratings
--FPS's are, and have been for a while, the most commonly-produced type of game. Which means that, all other things being equal, more big hits will be FPS's
--The games that are the best-funded and best-hyped (aside from the more recent phenomenon of MMORPGs) are FPS's
--New graphics technology tends to first appear in FPSes
--What red-blooded 16-30-year-old male wouldn't like to run around, blowing everything to smithereens, with no consequences?
I don't think that it's the violence/gore/sex alone that makes these games successful. I, personally, turn the blood and gore all the way to the minimum, and find that the game is no less enjoyable. Perhaps even more enjoyable, because of the boost in framerate. But the fact remains that these games are fun. They let you do something that you would never get to do in real life.
There are a couple other ways these people make money:
--Phishing, with the fake sites hosted on compromised machines
--Racketeering - "That's a nice website you got there. It'd be a shame if something....happened to it, capiche?"
--Mercenary - one company/country/individual pays the botnet owner to DDoS or crack an enemy's machine
Now the first of these leaves a money trail of some sort, as long as the phisher does a wire transfer. If it's a credit-card phishing scheme, it's much harder to trace, particularly if the phisher creates a duplicate card. If the racketeer is smart, he won't leave a money trail from that one--an envelope of cash is difficult to trace. The mercenary side will also be very hard to trace, since the money only changes hands between the botnetter and his customer, leaving the victim with no clues as to the origin of the attack or any idea where the money trail starts.
The problem with cracking down on this sort of crime is one of simple economics: the botnetters are providing a service which some people consider valuable (for whatever reason), and for which these people are willing to pay. As long as that is the case, and as long as the risk of getting caught is low, and as long as the consequences of getting caught remain relatively light, there will continue to be people willing to provide the service, legal or not. The same thing happened with Prohibition, and is common now with respect to things like speeding limits and violating copyright online.
You're right. I'm actually in sub-saharan Africa for a month for work, and Internet connectivity is certainly not the highest priority. The village across the street from me now is constructed mostly of grass huts, with a few clay-brick buildings with corrugated steel roofs. There's no running water or electricity, let alone telephones or internet access. Most of the natives still live in small tribes, herd cattle and sheep, and practice subsistence farming. They plow their land with two cows and a plow.
What Africa needs more than internet access is a few things like, oh, say....
Economic development opportunities for individuals (small businesses)
Less corruption in the government (none of that money from the oil fields makes it down to benefit the common people)
Opportunities for Education (see previous point about corruption)
Of course, there's also the small point about culture as well--the people here seem to be satisfied with their way of life. Yes, it could be better. But it's what they're used to. Thrusting millions and billions of dollars into the country hasn't done jack for it. Neither would Internet access at this point.
XP sales will thrive until businesses switch over, which will take some time. And the more saavy businesses will wait for service pack one before switching.
The only problem is that you can't get a site license for XP any more. You can only get Vista site licenses that allow you to alternatively install XP. So no matter what you do, it still counts as a sale of Vista. In other words, the new 4:1 forecast is...ah....optimistic at best.
The other difference between the 2000->XP migration and today's XP->Vista migration is that there was XP was released only three years after Win98 and less than two years after Win2k. Businesses who had recently bought computers (or upgraded old ones) weren't willing to pay more money when the old stuff still worked fine and was still supported by MS. By that standard, the migration rate from XP to Vista should be much, much higher.
You're right that it's a good position to be in. It can also be dangerous. And this isn't the first time Microsoft have been in this situation--it was similar back when Windows XP was released.
There are a few key differences this time, however. Firstly, for hardware and software companies, making old hardware and applications work on XP was relatively simple, as it was based on the same code as Windows 2000. Now, it is a much tougher proposition to make old stuff work on the new OS, and many well-known companies (like HP and Creative) are either deferring or outright abandoning driver development for existing hardware. Secondly, this time there are a couple of very viable competitors. Apple is steadily gaining marketshare (and perhaps more importantly, mindshare). And Linux is definitely on the rise. The fact of the matter is that for most users, it's now actually easier to do a clean install and get your hardware working under Linux than it is for Vista. Thirdly, lots of people are quite happy with the computers they bought any time in the last, oh say, five years at least, so there's little motivation to upgrade.
Timing has a lot to do with it--Linux maturing sufficiently and Apple gaining ground at the same time Microsoft is faltering. Yes, Vista will eventually gain a large share of the market. I suspect, however, that all of that marketshare will come at the expense of XP. In the meantime, Linux and Apple will continue to chip away.
Incidentally, I just talked a co-worker into trying out Ubuntu. He had never heard of it, but you should have seen the look on his face when I told him it was free, and that he didn't need an anti-virus program for it.
For the lazy, the chart shows Vista at 2.53% and XP as 84%ish. That means that one out of forty internet-connected computers is running Vista, six months after release. Extrapolating a bit, that means another 15 years or so until Vista reaches the popularity that XP now enjoys.
It will be interesting to see if Vista continues at a 5%-per-year pace or whether it will pick up.
I suspect that what your business does with the machines is conveniently ignored for the purpose of the 4:1 statistic. If it shipped with Vista, it counted as a sale of Vista, regardless of what you did with the machines.
Keep in mind, however, that the 4:1 ratio is a number released by Microsoft. Considering the amount of effort and money they are expending to promote Vista, I find even this number hard to believe. Remember the vouchers Microsoft gave out at the end of last year? The ones they gave out before Christmas because Vista wouldn't be released by then? They counted every one of those as a sale of Vista, despite the fact that very few of those vouchers have been or will be redeemed. They also count every machine shipped with Vista today, regardless of its eventual fate. That means that all the computers sold to big companies (that receive these computers and immediately image them to XP or 2000 or Linux) count as sales of Vista.
Look at it this way: even after spending millions and millions of dollars on marketing, and then...ah... "massaging" the statistics, the best they could come up with was still less than what they expected.
Sorry I gave that impression. What I meant to convey in point #1 is that people who are building new computers for themselves/friends/family or who want to upgrade to a Windows OS will want to get XP while it's still available, and also to people buying from Dell/HP/whoever and who want to get a computer with XP while it's still supported. Point #2 was meant to apply to people buying a new computer on which Vista is the only option, and switching to XP. I'll grant that I didn't word it very clearly, and didn't define the categories in the best way, but hopefully the point still stands.
I imagine there are quite a few people out there who are either building new machines or have older machines, who want to run Windows but don't want to install Vista for various reasons (hardware compatibility, software compatibility, performance, DRM, take your pick). Or people who are planning on buying a computer from the Tier 1 OEMs, but don't want Vista, so they're getting XP while it's still offered and supported.
I can think of a couple reasons why XP sales would be higher, both related to the release of Vista. First, you have people who don't want to switch (rather than "upgrade" or "downgrade"--I'm trying not to troll) to Vista, and so they're buying XP while they still can. Secondly, you have people buying computers with Vista, deciding they don't like it, and buying a license of XP instead. And on top of that, many of the Tier 1 OEMs still offer XP as an option. Sometimes it's the default option. And sometimes it's the only option.
I'll admit that this is pure speculation, but if true, I find it interesting that the release of the new, "better than ever" version of a product is driving sales of the old (but still serviceable) version. It kinda reminds me of when Linksys came out with their WRT54G v.5.
Bingo! It's important to keep in mind a few things on this very touchy subject:
Exxon (or whatever other oil company) are not the ones burning the hundreds of millions of barrels of oil/gasoline/natural gas every year.
Even if they were burning so much fossil fuel, Exxon only represents about 2% of the global oil production. They're the biggest private (i.e. not state-owned) oil company.
Who's burning all that gas? Well, as I drive to work (in my 35 MPG civic), I'm surrounded by people driving Tahoe's, F150's, Escalades, Explorers, Durangos, enormous Dodge Rams, Tundras, etc. By some divine decree, every building in Houston is kept at a temperature around 70F (which most people agree is too cool for the summer). That's who's causing the 150k deaths per year.
Chances are good that Exxon was responsible, but you're right--there's no proof at this point.
Of course, that doesn't change the fact that the statement "Exxon's policies do already contribute to 150,000 climate-change related deaths each year" is, at best, ingenuous. It's not as if Exxon is burning the hundreds of millions of barrels of gasoline/oil/natural gas per year--they're just supplying a commodity for which there is a large global demand. Blaming Exxon for global warming is worse than blaming gun manufacturers for crime.
I agree--how many US-based airlines are in bankruptcy protection now, or have been in the recent past? There are already enormous inefficiencies in our airline industry, many caused by government regulation. Adding more regulation just means that it'll be harder for the airlines to survive. Yes, it's important to worry about the environment, but we can't go off forcing 'solutions' that create even worse problems.
No amount of begging will convince people that they have a problem when they don't.
Tell that to the pharmaceutical companies who market prescription drugs to the common person who has as much medical knowledge as a turnip. "Ask your doctor about [insert drug name here]" Granted, that's advertising vs. outright begging, but even begging works if you look pitiful enough (telethons).
There's a big difference here, though. Windows ME was released less than two years after Win98. So there was only a couple years' worth of development involved. Vista, however, is six years after XP. There's a lot more investment involved here.
When ME was released, Microsoft had two very-recent codebases to work with--the NT and 9x series. Both were recent, and both had strengths and weaknesses. There was nothing wrong with picking bits and pieces from each in order to meld XP. Not so with Vista. Now they have the Server 2003 codebase and the XP codebase, four and six years old respectively. And Microsoft are trying to get away from the XP codebase.
So now they're stuck between a rock and a hard place. On the one hand, they have this new, shiny, potentially-better platform in Vista, but it is plagued with average hardware support and multitudes of teething problems. On the other hand, they have the old and busted but very compatible XP. If they were to rush out a new OS, they'd have to base it on one or the other. To base it on Vista would be pointless, as Vista will be updated/patched anyway. To base it on XP would be a humongous step backwards, particularly because of all the money invested in Vista. In other words, I don't think they'll come out with a WinXP SE. I sure wouldn't mind the big laugh we'll all have at their expense if they do, though...
We can at least be grateful our auto industry doesn't has as great of a hold on the government as the Japanese auto industry has on theirs. It is practically impossible to own a car for more than five years over there, thanks to laws that stipulate rapidly-increasing inspection/registration fees with the age of your car. I've even heard they often pack up their used cars and ship them here to our used market, since they can't be sold over there.
I've heard it said on multiple occasions that in order to replace any significant portion of our gasoline imports with ethanol, it would take up an overwhelming portion of our country's agricultural production. Even if we took the 50% of our crops that we normally export and diverted them into replacing fossil fuels, it wouldn't supply anywhere near enough.
The problem here, in my opinion, lies more on the demand side of the equation than the supply side. Take, for example, gasoline consumption. Around half the vehicles sold in the US are SUVs, trucks, or vans. I'll be conservative and say that half of those vehicles could be easily replaced with vehicles that get 50% better gas mileage. Let's assume that the average MPG for those is 20 MPG, and for the cars that replace them, 30. Roughly speaking, that means that 60% of our fuel consumption is in the bigger vehicles. Replacing half of those vehicles (25% of all vehicles, consuming 30%) would decrease their fuel consumption by a third (from 30% to 20%), and our overall gasoline consumption in the US would decrease by 10%.
10% doesn't sound like much. During the energy crisis of 1979, prices more than doubled, even though supply only dropped by 4%.
The BBC has actually done this at least once in the past. A while ago, they released recordings of the BBC Orchestra playing Beethoven Symphonies Nos. 6-9 in MP3 format, for free on their website. I jumped at the chance and downloaded them, and still listen to those recordings occasionally.
Price gouging can only happen if either 1) a single entity or 2) a group of entities in collusion control enough of the market to significantly affect supply. In the DRAM business, there are relatively few players, and they can easily conspire together. In fact, as you point out, they have a history of colluding specifically to set artificially-inflated prices.
Please don't try to perpetuate the myth of oil price gouging. Yes, OPEC try to artificially restrict supply, but that's different. IIRC, there have actually been around twenty investigations into allegations of price fixing in the oil business in the past few decades, and in every case, no wrongdoing has ever been found. Oil price is simply a matter of supply and demand. Developing countries like China and India are increasing demand. Oil is becoming harder to get, and the cost of building the facilities to recover it are skyrocketing. Steel, for example, has gone up about 50% in price in the last few years, and labor rates are climbing at anywhere from 5-18% per year. And those costs are reflected in the price of oil.
Want lower gas prices? Downsize your vehicle and convince the rest of the stupid SUV owners in the US to do the same.
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If you don't like it, don't buy it. If you're a 3rd party developer, then don't develop applications for it. Vote with your wallet. Nobody is forcing you to buy the iPhone. Go buy a different smartphone that allows 3rd-party apps.
"Consumers suffer from this. We suffer from increased prices and decreased competition and innovation."
This might actually make sense if this were a necessity of life, but this is a luxury item we're talking about. I give this a big fat "SO WHAT?" What Apple decided to do with the iPhone was a business decision. Business decisions are made based on the potential to make the company money, either in the short- or long-term. Making customers happy is only important to a company when doing so will help the company make money. If a company makes its customers happy but doesn't make a profit, its competitors will drive it into the ground. This is the whole basis for capitalism: if you don't like one company's product, take your money elsewhere. Besides, everyone was warned well in advance that the iPhone would be closed to third-party apps. There was no surprise. Now, if the iPhone had originally allowed 3rd party apps, and then through an update removed that ability, then you would have a cause to complain.
But the whining I hear day after day about "oh no, the iPhone doesn't do [insert pet feature]! Woe is me!" has long passed the point of "annoying". Face it, even if all the current complaints about the iPhone were resolved, we'd find something else to complain about.
The instant I heard "We suffer so Apple can make a few more bucks, when Apple is clearly not hurting for money," the article lost all credibility. Nobody is making you suffer. And so what if they have money? Do you know where that money goes? Let's see...it goes to paying all the people who work for the company. It pays the CEO a big fat paycheck, which he then spends on yacht, which creates jobs. Or he invests it, which means that the money goes to fund some other project or initiative which gives other people jobs. Money sitting in a pile does a company no good.
I don't mean to downplay the difficulties of independent bookstores. My post was directed towards the on-campus bookstores that also complain about slim margins. However, there are lots of financial institutions out there that understand very well the cash-flow difficulties for small businesses that deal with short-term, high-dollar sales, and have programs (read: short-term loans) specifically tailored to that need.
Yes, I went to a big school. I did some checking, and I *did* overestimate the number of full-time students--it's actually around 26,000 instead of 30,000. It's a private university, although I don't know the details of the business relationship between the University and the Bookstore.
$500 per semester for books is actually quite accurate. I don't know where you went to school, or what kind of classes you took, but most of the texts for my major (Electrical Engineering) cost well over $100 apiece, even used. The same went for pretty much all of the math- and science-based courses (chemistry, biology, physics). From talking to graduate students, many of them spent up to $900 per semester on books.
Your experience is apparently different from mine, but I found that the bookstore generally stocked fewer than the necessary number of textbooks in order to minimize the inventory costs you mentioned. It was quite common to find that the bookstore was out of a given book for your class, and have to wait a week for a new shipment to arrive. Once that first week or so of classes passes, the shelves in the textbook department of the bookstore are basically empty.
Independent bookstores are certainly at a disadvantage--they have to work harder to get the book lists, they're off campus, and they're not as well-known. They only advantage they can leverage is price.
While boats don't deal with the temperature swings, they sure deal with a lot of very rapidly-changing pressures. Ever taken a boat out over choppy water? That's stress.
Slim margins? I don't think so. How about some hard numbers?
The bookstore at my college is, from what I hear, one of the more generous as far as buyback prices are concerned--they buy back at 60% of retail price and sell used books at 75% (alongside the new books at full price). So their raw profits (before subtracting costs) are approximately 20% of revenue. There are approximately 30,000 students, each paying on average around $500/semester for books. 30,000 students * 500 $/student * 0.2 * 2 semesters/year= $6 million per year. (I'm ignoring summer term for now) That's $6 million that they ring up in approximately four weeks out of the year. Now, add on to that $6m the incredible profits they get on T-shirts (price: $20), sweatshirts ($40 and up), electronics, school supplies, etc.
There's no way in the world that the bookstore's costs come even close to the amount of profit they're making. They just don't want to admit it.
Someone set up a website specifically for students from our university to buy and sell textbooks directly one to another. About the same time, I discovered the wonderful phenomenon of international editions. That semester, I saved about 50% on the cost of my textbooks, and ended up getting almost that entire amount back when I sold my books at the end of the semester.
Frustrated with the cost of textbooks? Buy them online. Set up a website for students to sell books to each other. Post flyers. Bypass the bookstore.
Are my reading skills failing me, or did I see the word Pilates as one of the games listed? Dance Dance Revolution is one thing, but how in the world do you incorporate a game controller into a long series of leg lifts and crunches?
It's also important to keep a few things in mind:
--Violent games were around long before the ESRB ratings
--FPS's are, and have been for a while, the most commonly-produced type of game. Which means that, all other things being equal, more big hits will be FPS's
--The games that are the best-funded and best-hyped (aside from the more recent phenomenon of MMORPGs) are FPS's
--New graphics technology tends to first appear in FPSes
--What red-blooded 16-30-year-old male wouldn't like to run around, blowing everything to smithereens, with no consequences?
I don't think that it's the violence/gore/sex alone that makes these games successful. I, personally, turn the blood and gore all the way to the minimum, and find that the game is no less enjoyable. Perhaps even more enjoyable, because of the boost in framerate. But the fact remains that these games are fun. They let you do something that you would never get to do in real life.
There are a couple other ways these people make money:
--Phishing, with the fake sites hosted on compromised machines
--Racketeering - "That's a nice website you got there. It'd be a shame if something....happened to it, capiche?"
--Mercenary - one company/country/individual pays the botnet owner to DDoS or crack an enemy's machine
Now the first of these leaves a money trail of some sort, as long as the phisher does a wire transfer. If it's a credit-card phishing scheme, it's much harder to trace, particularly if the phisher creates a duplicate card. If the racketeer is smart, he won't leave a money trail from that one--an envelope of cash is difficult to trace. The mercenary side will also be very hard to trace, since the money only changes hands between the botnetter and his customer, leaving the victim with no clues as to the origin of the attack or any idea where the money trail starts.
The problem with cracking down on this sort of crime is one of simple economics: the botnetters are providing a service which some people consider valuable (for whatever reason), and for which these people are willing to pay. As long as that is the case, and as long as the risk of getting caught is low, and as long as the consequences of getting caught remain relatively light, there will continue to be people willing to provide the service, legal or not. The same thing happened with Prohibition, and is common now with respect to things like speeding limits and violating copyright online.
What Africa needs more than internet access is a few things like, oh, say....
- Economic development opportunities for individuals (small businesses)
- Less corruption in the government (none of that money from the oil fields makes it down to benefit the common people)
- Opportunities for Education (see previous point about corruption)
Of course, there's also the small point about culture as well--the people here seem to be satisfied with their way of life. Yes, it could be better. But it's what they're used to. Thrusting millions and billions of dollars into the country hasn't done jack for it. Neither would Internet access at this point.The other difference between the 2000->XP migration and today's XP->Vista migration is that there was XP was released only three years after Win98 and less than two years after Win2k. Businesses who had recently bought computers (or upgraded old ones) weren't willing to pay more money when the old stuff still worked fine and was still supported by MS. By that standard, the migration rate from XP to Vista should be much, much higher.
You're right that it's a good position to be in. It can also be dangerous. And this isn't the first time Microsoft have been in this situation--it was similar back when Windows XP was released.
There are a few key differences this time, however. Firstly, for hardware and software companies, making old hardware and applications work on XP was relatively simple, as it was based on the same code as Windows 2000. Now, it is a much tougher proposition to make old stuff work on the new OS, and many well-known companies (like HP and Creative) are either deferring or outright abandoning driver development for existing hardware. Secondly, this time there are a couple of very viable competitors. Apple is steadily gaining marketshare (and perhaps more importantly, mindshare). And Linux is definitely on the rise. The fact of the matter is that for most users, it's now actually easier to do a clean install and get your hardware working under Linux than it is for Vista. Thirdly, lots of people are quite happy with the computers they bought any time in the last, oh say, five years at least, so there's little motivation to upgrade.
Timing has a lot to do with it--Linux maturing sufficiently and Apple gaining ground at the same time Microsoft is faltering. Yes, Vista will eventually gain a large share of the market. I suspect, however, that all of that marketshare will come at the expense of XP. In the meantime, Linux and Apple will continue to chip away.
Incidentally, I just talked a co-worker into trying out Ubuntu. He had never heard of it, but you should have seen the look on his face when I told him it was free, and that he didn't need an anti-virus program for it.
For the lazy, the chart shows Vista at 2.53% and XP as 84%ish. That means that one out of forty internet-connected computers is running Vista, six months after release. Extrapolating a bit, that means another 15 years or so until Vista reaches the popularity that XP now enjoys.
It will be interesting to see if Vista continues at a 5%-per-year pace or whether it will pick up.
I suspect that what your business does with the machines is conveniently ignored for the purpose of the 4:1 statistic. If it shipped with Vista, it counted as a sale of Vista, regardless of what you did with the machines.
Keep in mind, however, that the 4:1 ratio is a number released by Microsoft. Considering the amount of effort and money they are expending to promote Vista, I find even this number hard to believe. Remember the vouchers Microsoft gave out at the end of last year? The ones they gave out before Christmas because Vista wouldn't be released by then? They counted every one of those as a sale of Vista, despite the fact that very few of those vouchers have been or will be redeemed. They also count every machine shipped with Vista today, regardless of its eventual fate. That means that all the computers sold to big companies (that receive these computers and immediately image them to XP or 2000 or Linux) count as sales of Vista.
...ah... "massaging" the statistics, the best they could come up with was still less than what they expected.
Look at it this way: even after spending millions and millions of dollars on marketing, and then
Sorry I gave that impression. What I meant to convey in point #1 is that people who are building new computers for themselves/friends/family or who want to upgrade to a Windows OS will want to get XP while it's still available, and also to people buying from Dell/HP/whoever and who want to get a computer with XP while it's still supported. Point #2 was meant to apply to people buying a new computer on which Vista is the only option, and switching to XP. I'll grant that I didn't word it very clearly, and didn't define the categories in the best way, but hopefully the point still stands.
I imagine there are quite a few people out there who are either building new machines or have older machines, who want to run Windows but don't want to install Vista for various reasons (hardware compatibility, software compatibility, performance, DRM, take your pick). Or people who are planning on buying a computer from the Tier 1 OEMs, but don't want Vista, so they're getting XP while it's still offered and supported.
I can think of a couple reasons why XP sales would be higher, both related to the release of Vista. First, you have people who don't want to switch (rather than "upgrade" or "downgrade"--I'm trying not to troll) to Vista, and so they're buying XP while they still can. Secondly, you have people buying computers with Vista, deciding they don't like it, and buying a license of XP instead. And on top of that, many of the Tier 1 OEMs still offer XP as an option. Sometimes it's the default option. And sometimes it's the only option.
I'll admit that this is pure speculation, but if true, I find it interesting that the release of the new, "better than ever" version of a product is driving sales of the old (but still serviceable) version. It kinda reminds me of when Linksys came out with their WRT54G v.5.
Chances are good that Exxon was responsible, but you're right--there's no proof at this point.
Of course, that doesn't change the fact that the statement "Exxon's policies do already contribute to 150,000 climate-change related deaths each year" is, at best, ingenuous. It's not as if Exxon is burning the hundreds of millions of barrels of gasoline/oil/natural gas per year--they're just supplying a commodity for which there is a large global demand. Blaming Exxon for global warming is worse than blaming gun manufacturers for crime.
I agree--how many US-based airlines are in bankruptcy protection now, or have been in the recent past? There are already enormous inefficiencies in our airline industry, many caused by government regulation. Adding more regulation just means that it'll be harder for the airlines to survive. Yes, it's important to worry about the environment, but we can't go off forcing 'solutions' that create even worse problems.
No amount of begging will convince people that they have a problem when they don't.
Tell that to the pharmaceutical companies who market prescription drugs to the common person who has as much medical knowledge as a turnip. "Ask your doctor about [insert drug name here]" Granted, that's advertising vs. outright begging, but even begging works if you look pitiful enough (telethons).
There's a big difference here, though. Windows ME was released less than two years after Win98. So there was only a couple years' worth of development involved. Vista, however, is six years after XP. There's a lot more investment involved here.
When ME was released, Microsoft had two very-recent codebases to work with--the NT and 9x series. Both were recent, and both had strengths and weaknesses. There was nothing wrong with picking bits and pieces from each in order to meld XP. Not so with Vista. Now they have the Server 2003 codebase and the XP codebase, four and six years old respectively. And Microsoft are trying to get away from the XP codebase.
So now they're stuck between a rock and a hard place. On the one hand, they have this new, shiny, potentially-better platform in Vista, but it is plagued with average hardware support and multitudes of teething problems. On the other hand, they have the old and busted but very compatible XP. If they were to rush out a new OS, they'd have to base it on one or the other. To base it on Vista would be pointless, as Vista will be updated/patched anyway. To base it on XP would be a humongous step backwards, particularly because of all the money invested in Vista. In other words, I don't think they'll come out with a WinXP SE. I sure wouldn't mind the big laugh we'll all have at their expense if they do, though...
We can at least be grateful our auto industry doesn't has as great of a hold on the government as the Japanese auto industry has on theirs. It is practically impossible to own a car for more than five years over there, thanks to laws that stipulate rapidly-increasing inspection/registration fees with the age of your car. I've even heard they often pack up their used cars and ship them here to our used market, since they can't be sold over there.
You hit the nail on the head.
I've heard it said on multiple occasions that in order to replace any significant portion of our gasoline imports with ethanol, it would take up an overwhelming portion of our country's agricultural production. Even if we took the 50% of our crops that we normally export and diverted them into replacing fossil fuels, it wouldn't supply anywhere near enough.
The problem here, in my opinion, lies more on the demand side of the equation than the supply side. Take, for example, gasoline consumption. Around half the vehicles sold in the US are SUVs, trucks, or vans. I'll be conservative and say that half of those vehicles could be easily replaced with vehicles that get 50% better gas mileage. Let's assume that the average MPG for those is 20 MPG, and for the cars that replace them, 30. Roughly speaking, that means that 60% of our fuel consumption is in the bigger vehicles. Replacing half of those vehicles (25% of all vehicles, consuming 30%) would decrease their fuel consumption by a third (from 30% to 20%), and our overall gasoline consumption in the US would decrease by 10%.
10% doesn't sound like much. During the energy crisis of 1979, prices more than doubled, even though supply only dropped by 4%.
The BBC has actually done this at least once in the past. A while ago, they released recordings of the BBC Orchestra playing Beethoven Symphonies Nos. 6-9 in MP3 format, for free on their website. I jumped at the chance and downloaded them, and still listen to those recordings occasionally.
Price gouging can only happen if either 1) a single entity or 2) a group of entities in collusion control enough of the market to significantly affect supply. In the DRAM business, there are relatively few players, and they can easily conspire together. In fact, as you point out, they have a history of colluding specifically to set artificially-inflated prices.
Please don't try to perpetuate the myth of oil price gouging. Yes, OPEC try to artificially restrict supply, but that's different. IIRC, there have actually been around twenty investigations into allegations of price fixing in the oil business in the past few decades, and in every case, no wrongdoing has ever been found. Oil price is simply a matter of supply and demand. Developing countries like China and India are increasing demand. Oil is becoming harder to get, and the cost of building the facilities to recover it are skyrocketing. Steel, for example, has gone up about 50% in price in the last few years, and labor rates are climbing at anywhere from 5-18% per year. And those costs are reflected in the price of oil.
Want lower gas prices? Downsize your vehicle and convince the rest of the stupid SUV owners in the US to do the same.