Absolutely this would be a real useful feature and could quickly gain strength. The problem for MS is that PS2 is much better positioned to take advantage of this if/ when it takes off.
There are 30mu+ PS2's out there vs for 3.5Mu+- Xbox. Sony have sold more than 1Mu adapters for the PS2 in the last few month, and if they wanted they could team up with a company like IDT and be offering a "Longdistance telephony game" in a few months.
Next year this service could be 20 dollars a month if MS so desired
Not really.
You can only leverage a position in the marketplace if you 1. Provide something that is close to a necessity. 2. There is no real alternative available or total cost of switching is higher than staying with the current setup.
This would hold true for a very minor portion of the online Xbox gamers at any given time. The lock-in is not related to your subscription as you would legally be allowed to continue at the rate you signed up until expiration of said subscription. The lock-in is only your investment in Live enabled games, depreciated by the gamelplay you have had already.
With all the shenanigans coming out of Redmond I think it's grossly unfair to accuse Microsoft of having only one ploy at their disposal.
Def: A stratagem suggested by particular circumstances and employed to gain a calculated advantage; a cunning device or manoeuvre
Excerpted from Oxford Talking Dictionary
Quoting bible scripture as an argument went out the around the Enlightenment, but maybe that specific branch of thinking has not hit you or the current administration.
A "loss" for a business might just mean they didn't gross as much money as they promised their shareholders.
This is nonsense. If the word loss is used in that context then it includes a base line like "loss of revenue from second quarter". Or maybe but rarely "Loss of profit compared with last year". Loss standing alone means just that. Income was less than expenses in the period. We can debate what counts for Income and what needs to be Expensed (Example of avoiding Expenses see Worldcom's $9B fiasco), but not "Less than promised shareholders"
The other day Slashdot had a story about the Lightest of the Linux that were hosted and managed by IBM. There were not even a slight delay in getting the story at any time. Same here. IBM knows how to do these things.
Libraries in the US is a joke and a huge waste of money as it is today. Did you know there is 313,000 libraries in the US, 3 times the numbers of Mc'Donalds and their average book lending rate is 3 (your read this right) Three books per hour. At that cost level it would be as cheap just to hand out the books, Give them away.
Why do we ned to have internet access for children?
If they are not deemed old enought by the parents to navigate the interned sans censure, Hand them a book to read probably better. If they need computer skills make an effort to put the books that is in the libraries on to the net and give them access to that portion via a closed Library network, Using Intennet protocol obviously.
Learning an issue? We can hire a lot of reading teachers for what we spend on feel good libraries.
There is more Oracle news announced. This was just posted over at InfoWorld. Me thinks its as much a blocking move towards.NET, see below.
From article.
:
Linux backers are working to strengthen the OS and bring it closer to competing with the proprietary versions of Unix that currently dominate the data center. Adding a clustered file system into Red Hat Linux is another step toward this larger goal.
The Boycott need to be tagged, otherwise it will either drown in the random fluctuations of the market or as one poster has already pointed out be part of a vicious circle seen from the behemoth's side. "lower sales == more piracy"
If there is an EF equivalent in Germany, maybe they would be willing to accept and publish specific donations. Specific not in the sense that they need to spend the money on so and so, but donations in the name of: F*** EMI or maybe something a little more political correct.
Too late for this guy!
on
Secure PDAs
·
· Score: 4, Interesting
San Jose police have broken up an alleged identity theft crime ring using search warrants to seize and examine the suspects' PDAs.
According to the New York Times the alleged ringleader had the names of more than 20 victims along with their social security, bank account and credit card numbers and other personal information stored on his Sony Clie handheld device.
Included in the To Do list were tasks such as picking up materials at the local office supply store to make fake cheques.
A police spokesman said that it was difficult for the suspect to deny that the Clie was his, as it had his parents' details stored in it under the name 'Mom and Dad'.
But citing a devlopment issue as the reason for pulling the plug just before launch wouldn't fall into any of these categories.
That is correct, however I was only trying to site good business reasons for killing a product just before launch. It happens all the time by the way.
Here is a scenario (pure conjecture) that passes muster as far as "development issues" are concerned and shows good business sense.
During the development of this handset Sendo had to make one accomodation after another on the "useability" of the handset due to OS constrains.
Each one was maybe not so great and each something they felt they could live with. Now they have finally made a few prototypes and have put them in the hands of real users. The uses gave the product failing grades and cites in most of the cases issues that Sendo felt was attributed to the Trade-off's they had to make vis a vis MS and their OS.
Consequently the product gets cancelled. Now who and what would you "blame" if blame has to be portioned out?
I have to question the business heads of those who cancel a product DAYS BEFORE THE LAUNCH...
One of the first things you learn in business school is that cost already expended should have no influence on your future actions.
Failure to understand this is sometime called "Throwing good money after bad".
Lots of reason not to launch springs to mind, Support cost being an obvious one. Once you sell the first unit you need to support it.
Second Economy of scale. If you can't sell enough units you will not reach the required production cost. You loose money (variable cost) on each unit you sell. Better not to sell anything at all.
Lots of other reasons, so I think the people running Sendo has business acumen. It actually takes guts to do what they have done. (Maybe this is a ploy to get code and whatever they else they want. Maybe they want to be acquired by MS and act as their development arm. Who knows)
FYI, If you do that you can use the MS filemanager if you are stuck in on a web site. Just type or Cut and paste the url (incl http:// bit) into filemanager and presto it morphs into IE.
Lately Amazon.com is getting more IE centric on their view content of books and I have to resort to this. FYI, I have complained to Amazon.com
Why so OS centric?
on
Halloween VII
·
· Score: 5, Interesting
I don't really understand why this document is so OS centric? The biggest TCO achilles heel for MS must be their Office Suite franchise, but maybe they don't want to "publicly" say so.
Office account for 60%+ of MS' profit and they are so far up the diminishing return curve that this is where the attack should be. There is a Office 11 beta review today that pretty much says that the user benefits of upgrading is small and more geared at developers and requires total MS on the backend. This is excellent as they are playing right into Open Source's strength: The backend. Foil this and Office 11 will have little to offer over OpenOffice et al.
The is a much better Linux in retail article over at Datamation about the status/ succes of the Burlington Northern useage of Linux
If you remember back in September 1999 they announced the biggest purchase yet of linux stations for Retail. This event is on the LinuxTimeline
This and the telia win in Sweden was one of the first major linux wins. Anyone knows how the latter is doing?
From the Datamation article article.
"We (Burlington)have been very aggressive about moving toward Linux, mostly on small servers or combination server/desktops," says Prince. "The stores all use Linux."
Slashdot Mirror
Absolutely this would be a real useful feature and could quickly gain strength. The problem for MS is that PS2 is much better positioned to take advantage of this if/ when it takes off.
It's the Network effect at play.
There are 30mu+ PS2's out there vs for 3.5Mu+- Xbox. Sony have sold more than 1Mu adapters for the PS2 in the last few month, and if they wanted they could team up with a company like IDT and be offering a "Longdistance telephony game" in a few months.
Not really.
You can only leverage a position in the marketplace if you 1. Provide something that is close to a necessity. 2. There is no real alternative available or total cost of switching is higher than staying with the current setup.
This would hold true for a very minor portion of the online Xbox gamers at any given time. The lock-in is not related to your subscription as you would legally be allowed to continue at the rate you signed up until expiration of said subscription. The lock-in is only your investment in Live enabled games, depreciated by the gamelplay you have had already.
Remember the old joke that the first time MS will make a product that doesn't such is when they enter the vacuum cleaner market.
With all the shenanigans coming out of Redmond I think it's grossly unfair to accuse Microsoft of having only one ploy at their disposal.
Def: A stratagem suggested by particular circumstances and employed to gain a calculated advantage; a cunning device or manoeuvre Excerpted from Oxford Talking Dictionary
In this case Christian, but the problem I see is scripture not the specific variety.
The suicide theory counter argument by the Muslim press is that a Muslim would never commit suicide as it's against their religion.
Maybe this argument has lost a bit of weight lately.
I think that is part of the problem.
Quoting bible scripture as an argument went out the around the Enlightenment, but maybe that specific branch of thinking has not hit you or the current administration.
I agree, and it's a very valid, often overlooked point. Cheers
This is nonsense. If the word loss is used in that context then it includes a base line like "loss of revenue from second quarter". Or maybe but rarely "Loss of profit compared with last year". Loss standing alone means just that. Income was less than expenses in the period. We can debate what counts for Income and what needs to be Expensed (Example of avoiding Expenses see Worldcom's $9B fiasco), but not "Less than promised shareholders"
The other day Slashdot had a story about the Lightest of the Linux that were hosted and managed by IBM. There were not even a slight delay in getting the story at any time. Same here. IBM knows how to do these things.
Why do we ned to have internet access for children? If they are not deemed old enought by the parents to navigate the interned sans censure, Hand them a book to read probably better. If they need computer skills make an effort to put the books that is in the libraries on to the net and give them access to that portion via a closed Library network, Using Intennet protocol obviously.
Learning an issue? We can hire a lot of reading teachers for what we spend on feel good libraries.
From article.
: Linux backers are working to strengthen the OS and bring it closer to competing with the proprietary versions of Unix that currently dominate the data center. Adding a clustered file system into Red Hat Linux is another step toward this larger goal.
This record goes to Emmanuel at the little bistro on Rue de Bach just off Blvd. St. Michel in Paris.
Have you noticed that the server it sits on is unfazed by the onslaught from /. ?
Forget the question I thought your friends were in China not US, Sorry
What method did they use to ask the question? Wouldn't that method per se circumvent the censorship? Albeit not as effective but still circumvention.
If there is an EF equivalent in Germany, maybe they would be willing to accept and publish specific donations. Specific not in the sense that they need to spend the money on so and so, but donations in the name of: F*** EMI or maybe something a little more political correct.
San Jose police have broken up an alleged identity theft crime ring using search warrants to seize and examine the suspects' PDAs.
According to the New York Times the alleged ringleader had the names of more than 20 victims along with their social security, bank account and credit card numbers and other personal information stored on his Sony Clie handheld device.
Included in the To Do list were tasks such as picking up materials at the local office supply store to make fake cheques.
A police spokesman said that it was difficult for the suspect to deny that the Clie was his, as it had his parents' details stored in it under the name 'Mom and Dad'.
That is correct, however I was only trying to site good business reasons for killing a product just before launch. It happens all the time by the way.
Here is a scenario (pure conjecture) that passes muster as far as "development issues" are concerned and shows good business sense.
During the development of this handset Sendo had to make one accomodation after another on the "useability" of the handset due to OS constrains.
Each one was maybe not so great and each something they felt they could live with. Now they have finally made a few prototypes and have put them in the hands of real users. The uses gave the product failing grades and cites in most of the cases issues that Sendo felt was attributed to the Trade-off's they had to make vis a vis MS and their OS.
Consequently the product gets cancelled. Now who and what would you "blame" if blame has to be portioned out?
One of the first things you learn in business school is that cost already expended should have no influence on your future actions.
Failure to understand this is sometime called "Throwing good money after bad".
Lots of reason not to launch springs to mind, Support cost being an obvious one. Once you sell the first unit you need to support it.
Second Economy of scale. If you can't sell enough units you will not reach the required production cost. You loose money (variable cost) on each unit you sell. Better not to sell anything at all. Lots of other reasons, so I think the people running Sendo has business acumen. It actually takes guts to do what they have done. (Maybe this is a ploy to get code and whatever they else they want. Maybe they want to be acquired by MS and act as their development arm. Who knows)
No I didn't realize that! Thanks
FYI, If you do that you can use the MS filemanager if you are stuck in on a web site. Just type or Cut and paste the url (incl http:// bit) into filemanager and presto it morphs into IE.
Lately Amazon.com is getting more IE centric on their view content of books and I have to resort to this. FYI, I have complained to Amazon.com
Office account for 60%+ of MS' profit and they are so far up the diminishing return curve that this is where the attack should be. There is a Office 11 beta review today that pretty much says that the user benefits of upgrading is small and more geared at developers and requires total MS on the backend. This is excellent as they are playing right into Open Source's strength: The backend. Foil this and Office 11 will have little to offer over OpenOffice et al.
If you remember back in September 1999 they announced the biggest purchase yet of linux stations for Retail. This event is on the LinuxTimeline
This and the telia win in Sweden was one of the first major linux wins. Anyone knows how the latter is doing? From the Datamation article article.
"We (Burlington)have been very aggressive about moving toward Linux, mostly on small servers or combination server/desktops," says Prince. "The stores all use Linux."
[A plain starfield. Narrative text draws across the screen:]
"Lone escape pod from SS Hermes - Survivors one.
Ship destroyed by Chameleonic Microbe."
[A pause, then the words 'by Chameleonic Microbe.' are deleted, and replaced with:]
"by Chamelionic Mycrobe."
[A second pause, then 'by Chamelionic Mycrobe.' is deleted, and replaced with the much simpler:]
"by shape changing weird space thing.
Non essential electrics all down, including spell checker.
Massage ends."