Maybe some others with merchant experience can back me up on this, but most of the fraud is actually assumed by the merchant.
The abuse the banks dole out to retailers is so bad Walmart is setting up their own bank just to get a piece of the scam. http://www.fdic.gov/regulations/laws/walmart/index .html They had to drag the banks to court just to get them to stop abusing them on transaction fees.
In the end, the merchant will pay dearly for the priviledge of accepting a payment made with phished cards. That means the consumer will end up pay slightly more overall for everything.
IPTV is far from a monopoly Yeah, and that's because the bill giving them the "national overlay" monopoly is still wending it's way through the system. http://telephonyonline.com/regulatory/news/congres s_cable_franchise_030906/ First-movers and whatever is left for cable companies in the States are dead as soon as this one passes.
And then there's: VOIP Regulated away to the telcos/cable co's. Proverbial toll roads on the internet will be the final nail in the coffin. CellularIs my service better or cheaper than it was 5 years ago? No. Please explain how they would jam -so- many bits down the average phone connection? Digital Phone ServiceIs this service better or cheaper than my POTS service? As a former subscriber no. Emphatically no.
I agree they are set to see erosion of their customer base, but I would argue that they aren't meeting competitors in the marketplace, they are meeting them in Washington DC, where they have the money to raise barriers to entry. The average quickie-mart economicthink doesn't apply.
As mentioned here: http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=196480&cid=161 06206 the objective is to maintain a level of fear of being labeled a "criminal" so the consumer blindly obeys regardless of any pre-existing well-established legal precedent.
The current zeitgeist in the U.S. is "criminals" are the only people in the U.S. that have anything to worry about. In this environment, your neighbor may be one of these RIAA criminals.... So it's good there is domestic surveilance.
I think you should consider your opinion more carefully.
I think there's a big difference between need and want in the context of your idea.
I would agree that some politicians WANT a terrorist threat to engender an environment of fear. And then use that fear as a controlling mechnanism. It controls just like Joseph McCarthy's grip on the nation way back in the day. Powerful social control of individuals that compels the individuals to trust no one but The Leader on a national scale.
I think no politician NEEDS this kind of psychological abuse. Rather, when the other tools they have don't work, they go with this one. Either that or it's too tempting not to abuse it.
Because it will decimate every other mp3 player brand besides apple, I wonder if this isn't a play to destroy the concept of owning your music entirely.
Yes, I know they claim to play an mp3, but the devil is in the details. As in they will likely make it very inconvenient to use mp3's. Kind of like how easy it is to open may formats in MSWORD, but very difficult to use anything other than.doc.
The thing I'm interested in seeing is the wireless sharing. I don't think the average mp3 player consumer -wants- sharing, but I'd be very interested in them proving me wrong.
What's even more interesting will be the first virus transferred from zune-to-zune.
There's this link where it claims it will do magic with a PDA www.pdastreet.com/articles/2006/5/2006-5-22-Glide- Mobile-Extended.html
I'm not sure how a single library/ies will magically make all of this interoperable because I've seen what it takes from an engineering side to attempt this sort of thing and it ain't pretty. I haven't even mentioned the Legal implications of pulling something off like this.
Oh, and where's the business model supporting all of this development?
I find it hard to consider this seriously when the CEO's bio reads:
"Mr. Leka established strategic partnerships with industry leaders including Apple Computer and Microsoft and throughout the HealthSCOUT Syndicated Network of over 3,000 sites (e.g. Yahoo, USA Today, NBCi, iWon, Juno, AT&T, Prodigy). Previously, Mr. Leka was a co-founder and Executive Director of The Fultz Foundation in Washington, DC where he was instrumental in securing funding from the George Soros Foundation and USAID among others. Mr. Leka developed and directed various international projects focused on business development and management training including telecommunications and the internet." http://www.transmediacorp.com/about/board.htm
Sounds like he's successful at shaking money out of wealthy people's pocket because http://www.fultzfoundation.org/ is little more than a placeholder and the dot-bomb marketing speak is so 1998.
I worked for a company that had implemented a high-priced software package that tied logistics (shipping, BOM's etc.) and accounting together. The promise was streamlining warehouse and accounting across all of their subsidiaries/offices in other countries.
So, the way accounting set things up was that they figuratively disconnected the accounting and logistics BOM/shipping/receiving systems such that the information provided for physical goods could not be accurate. How is that possible you may wonder? Well, if you give unrelated departments the right to change entries, then you never know the right quantity.
Never mind the way stuff would disappear by the pallet from the warehouse, to this day I believe that it was all quite intentional because it was -so- hard to make it that difficult to use. It looks good on paper, "we use giant-accounting-package-XYZ" and yet the implementation allowed for massive accounting irregularities.
Bottom Line: Software is an excellent way to obfuscate processes and create plausible deniability.
Question 2: there is no right answer Question 3: So even making sure to pay for all of your downloads wouldn't protect you from a lawsuit. Question 4: dismember the internet as we know it. Question 5:...And it's being eroded rapidly Question 6: they bring CRIMINAL cases, not civil ones. (their emphasis) Question 7: You shouldn't be trying to educate the younger generation about this stuff. The law is unsettled. Is it? I thought this was resolved years ago with VHS? Question 8: I'm an ordinary lawyer......The US Attorney General is on the RIAA's side. Question 9: the entire underpinning of each case is a joke. Question 10: But if you just want to play hardball, the judge would probably just strike your answer and give the RIAA a money judgment by default
1. An environment of fear of noncompliance has very successfully been created and applied to music consumers, and the lawyers won't rock the boat either. 2. Another example of "I'm not a criminal so I have nothing to fear." Where an artificial fear is created and maintained to enable psychological control on a national scale. 3. I agree that sharing the music is wrong, but the psychology of fear is being used to remove any personal ownership (as in personal copies) whatsoever. I thought personal copies were long ago approved by the courts. Someone please inform me otherwise.
Cut the crap, and donate to the EFF http://www.eff.org/ if you aren't going to spend your personal time making change on the issue yourself.
Symbolic: "Microsoft making a world full of online threats safer for Y-O-U!"
Best case scenario: 1. the guy/organization/whatever claims bankruptcy and it's pennies on the dollar for MS. 2. Microsoft charges you more for their spam security software.
Lately with MS and most mega-corps, it's about maintaining a very high level of fear of non-compliance.
I'm glad I get paid to work on their product because it requires so much babysitting. Thank dog I don't run it at home anymore.
I can offer some first-hand anecdotal evidence which, typical of/. won't matter much but here goes.
My wife and both agreed that we flushed way too much of our youth staring at the TV and our child wasn't going to look back and say the same thing about her life. We also thought quite subjectively there wasn't anything worth watching for kids. If there is, you can get it on VCR/DVD So we:
1. Sold our TV and related furniture, diconnected the cable and bought a 12" tv/vcr. (later added dvd) 2. The TV we had was hard to watch because we got it out of a cabinet, plugged it in and sat at a table to watch it. That was true for -all- of us. 3. REPLACE TV WITH OTHER ACTIVITIES. This meant we -had- to get off our rear-ends, find and do stuff with/for our kid. This can be tough at the end of a work day when you were raised in front of a TV. I later discovered that I depended on TV to "watch" my child and setting up another personal regret where her childhood will fly by in front of the TV.
It's been 5+ years, she loves audio books, excels at school, she's imaginative, interactive, can live without TV, but will watch it when she wants to see something. We also found she doesn't play with kids in our neighborhood who watch alot of tv either. They are boring to her because they can't do imaginative play.
I don't really go for the "end-of-childhood" argument, but I know for a fact my daughter and my relationship with my daughter is richer for less personal electronics. Not to mention the extra dough saved every month.
Examine list of features that are supposed to be great carefully and consider a hypothetical group of 100 consumers.
# Various kernel improvements in scheduling # Completely new TCP/IP stack that offers much greater performance on high latency connections # Resolution/DPI independence # Much better networking UI / auto network discovery - much cooler than I expected # Windows Display Driver Model (virtualization of graphics card memory!) # Dramatic improvements in driver development (can develop a simple driver in 500 instead of 5000 lines of code) Note: These are the one's that must be signed by MS for how much money? # WAY better file operations dialogs # WAY better file operations in general (no more huge lag when accessing network devices, disks, etc.) # DirectX 10 # New audio subsystem with TONS of cool features like being able to adjust audio for individual applications or the system as a whole. # Speech Recognition that really, really works. (Ignore the FUD about that failed demo and TRY it yourself.) # SuperFetch - a much improved version of XPs intelligent caching
Every one of the above mean nothing to 90+ of the 100 end users. They won't see it, they don't know it, they don't care. These users don't like upgrading because they don't like UI changes too.
# Nice UI improvements like Flip3d (works well), taskbar thumbnails # New start menu really is a LOT better than XPs # Composited desktop / Aero prettiness (looks far less childish than XP, imo)
Now you may get 10% of the 90% that don't care for the above three reasons. They won't like the change, and lose their email because they don't have a clue how to transfer anything. (Microsoft makes that so easy right? hint: outlook.pst is a hidden file by default...)
Okay the score is 9 Longwait 91 XP/2000/Linux/OSX (or thereabouts)
You've got some things that sound great. #IE 7+ (Protected Mode IE) - this will virtually eliminate malware via the browser #Revamped security model (UAC, new system services model, etc.) Wait, no. I mean they sound great but we know from all previous versions before this is just happy pretend thinking. The target is too large, the "security" too half-baked and such an afterthought it's made a great career for me.
But then you aren't selling to me, there's probably 80 people out of the 91 left that will get Longwait with the next PC they buy. They won't buy it because they -want- it. But just because it's there. And I'll be making plenty of money off them babysitting their new OS.
Finally, you neglected to mention Longwait is intentionally broken in many ways: http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=195283&cid=160 00296 And then, there's the aftermarket firewall, antivirus software, antispyware software are also required.
In the end, Microsoft loses maybe 10 people out of the 100. But they'll be charging the 90 suckers left more for less and they'll be paying me more too. In the end, it's a win-win.
If I had to guess, I'd say the DVD software does burn DVD's but makes sure you are burning home movies vs. personal backups of your Entertainment MegaCorp owned movies.
Also keep in mind, DVD burning is a premium feature folks. That's right, MS has a product tier for the luxury of burning DVD's. You pay MS extra for the priviledge
As I have said many times over Longwait is broken in many ways.
Sadly, this about the only time critics will get a chance to be critical. Once the PR/media onslaught begins, the roar of fanboys will be intense.
So, I'm thinking most non-windows folks are having a good chuckle right now because I know I've had little thumbnail previews of everything in KDE for going on 3+ years at least on a sleepy old 1GHZ laptop too.
In the Mac world, I seem to recall that working in -early- OSX versions.
And when longwait releases, vista B.S. eye candy like this will be advertised everywhere as teh newest features with MS*NIX security too!
Staying on the MS crack pipe means more work for me....
MS has the luxury of pushing this one out the door on their time schedule unless their is some huge penalty for not doing so. Which I don't see. Investors are happy, PHB's are happy.
Any organization fool enough to buy into their free upgrade license scheme will simply blame it on IT underlings as a bad decision -if- the issue ever came up.
PC manufacturers won't have a great year, but since when does that bother a monopoly?
With that said, I think the more practical solution is to flush another couple million dollars in advertising to compensate for the bad product. The hyperbole machine takes over and every PC mag declares it the best evar!
Good news for me because I'll have another cluster fsck of an OS to babysit here at the office.
This shouldn't be news to anyone in the industry that's been on the recieving end of their litigation. They have done this in the past to bankrupt small-time developer/marketers thereby consolidating their position. Adobe did it to Macromedia years ago.
This is a new kind of hostile business climate in America. The tax environment and regulatory oversight is certainly less than prior decades, but it seems the business environment is even more hostile with big business being able to easily dictate market conditions.
This is a perfect example where they are probably persuing remanufactured ink brands. Why? Because revenue doesn't flow to HP.
vista is the first of many to come for sure. Here's a breakdown of the brokenness of each version
Starter Version: Really REALLY broken (supposedly for developing nations) Home Basic: DVD burning is broken, Eye-candy is half broken. Desktop search is broken Home Premium: Desktop search still broken. Will it be able to join a domain? I bet it won't. You'll have to pay extra for that. FYI: it appears that if the OEM PC has a DVD burner, you *must* buy home premium so they can protect you from your own entertainment media. Ultimate: Media playback is broken. (DRM) Protects you from your own media.
It is reasonable to assume this is the first step towards even more segmentation.
not high that many people will buy a single boxed copy with no hardware, at least at first. The vast majority of sales are "upgrade" licenses or one where they sell the OS plus a keyboard or a case or something.
They quite intentionally want you to buy a new PC with the OS preinstalled. It's where the volume is and it's where the perception "buying a computer" means buying hardware with a windows OS installed.
As another post mentioned, the OEM prices are where the action is. It will be very interesting to see if the Microsoft tax goes up for them a great deal more than the retail prices are showing.
The way it looks now, I don't see where shareholders are going to get the return on investment they are looking for after MS drops major bucks on advertising and stuffing the distribution channel with the release of LongWait.
Most of you will buy your entertainment from the telcos in 10yrs. You'll pay more and get less too.
They are creating a "national overlay" that will allow them to sweep most of the cable/sat companies away because a phone and Internet monopoly isn't enough.
Most of you will be buying your entertainment from telco's in 10 yrs. or less.
Telco's are creating a "national overlay" which will get them into the entertainment business. Here's a hard-spinning link that lays out the so-called "benefits." I'm too lazy to find something more objective http://www.nam.org/s_nam/doc1.asp?CID=161&DID=2371 22
fsck em all. -Sell your giant screen whatever, -tear down the "media center" shelf system -get rid of the ring of couches, And replace it with book shelves and a table you can do -anything- on. (as in even accidentally drilling a hole through the thing)
You'll wonder what in the hell you were wasting your time with.
A 19" tv and dvd is much better, because entertainment is good sometimes and you aren't -drawn- to it as much as a monstrous TV. When you want to watch it, you sit around the table and watch.
Good comments on physical alternatives to the binders. Which I don't think are a -bad- idea in this case.
Where they may get hung up is keeping track of them.
Here's the answer:
You use a method similar to an IP address where each octet is a symbol to their location. customer_number.shelf_number.binder_number.page_nu mber.pocket_number
From there you just fill them chronologically. Then you don't run into logistical problems if you try to arrange thing alphabetically. ex. shelf set 1 has customers a-g shelf-set 2 as h-s, etc.
This looks to me more of a process issue (where humans have to stick to a process) than a physical/technical problem.
As much as I'd like that to be true, when the high-minded theory of efficient allocation of goods interacts with humans, it generally fails. As another post points out wealth-seekers quickly become the inefficient party in an economic system. Telco's are the perfect example. Corn production (ADM) is another example.
Finally, your perspective is quite narrow. Viewing an Internet connection as a luxury item, is quite short-sighted. Instead, try viewing it like the highway system. Highways are something that all can use to make the nation more efficient productive and supposedly making citizens better off. On the weekends, you can get to the country quickly.
Slashdot Mirror
Maybe some others with merchant experience can back me up on this, but most of the fraud is actually assumed by the merchant.
x .html They had to drag the banks to court just to get them to stop abusing them on transaction fees.
The abuse the banks dole out to retailers is so bad Walmart is setting up their own bank just to get a piece of the scam. http://www.fdic.gov/regulations/laws/walmart/inde
In the end, the merchant will pay dearly for the priviledge of accepting a payment made with phished cards. That means the consumer will end up pay slightly more overall for everything.
IPTV is far from a monopolys s_cable_franchise_030906/
Yeah, and that's because the bill giving them the "national overlay" monopoly is still wending it's way through the system. http://telephonyonline.com/regulatory/news/congre
First-movers and whatever is left for cable companies in the States are dead as soon as this one passes.
And then there's:
VOIP Regulated away to the telcos/cable co's. Proverbial toll roads on the internet will be the final nail in the coffin.
CellularIs my service better or cheaper than it was 5 years ago? No. Please explain how they would jam -so- many bits down the average phone connection?
Digital Phone ServiceIs this service better or cheaper than my POTS service? As a former subscriber no. Emphatically no.
I agree they are set to see erosion of their customer base, but I would argue that they aren't meeting competitors in the marketplace, they are meeting them in Washington DC, where they have the money to raise barriers to entry. The average quickie-mart economicthink doesn't apply.
They have Verizon backed so far into a corner that it appears verizon can't walk away. MS is laughing all the way to the bank on this one.
The license costs that one monopoly is paying the other will, no doubt, lead to a -really- expensive set top box.
and their beliefs regarding the media they own.
1 07881 it's an attack on the mp3 file.
1 06206 the objective is to maintain a level of fear of being labeled a "criminal" so the consumer blindly obeys regardless of any pre-existing well-established legal precedent.
As pointed out here: http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=196589&cid=16
As mentioned here: http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=196480&cid=16
The current zeitgeist in the U.S. is "criminals" are the only people in the U.S. that have anything to worry about. In this environment, your neighbor may be one of these RIAA criminals.... So it's good there is domestic surveilance.
I think you should consider your opinion more carefully.
I think there's a big difference between need and want in the context of your idea.
I would agree that some politicians WANT a terrorist threat to engender an environment of fear. And then use that fear as a controlling mechnanism. It controls just like Joseph McCarthy's grip on the nation way back in the day. Powerful social control of individuals that compels the individuals to trust no one but The Leader on a national scale.
I think no politician NEEDS this kind of psychological abuse. Rather, when the other tools they have don't work, they go with this one. Either that or it's too tempting not to abuse it.
I spent a few years as an analyst where I had to review and massage sell-through data on computer stuff in retail and distribution.
Outside of HP, MS decimated the top-3 in a category when they entered. I saw it with keyboards and mice for sure.
MS (apple too) has a habit of killing competition in a category after it becomes big enough for them to enter.
Because it will decimate every other mp3 player brand besides apple, I wonder if this isn't a play to destroy the concept of owning your music entirely.
.doc.
Yes, I know they claim to play an mp3, but the devil is in the details. As in they will likely make it very inconvenient to use mp3's. Kind of like how easy it is to open may formats in MSWORD, but very difficult to use anything other than
The thing I'm interested in seeing is the wireless sharing. I don't think the average mp3 player consumer -wants- sharing, but I'd be very interested in them proving me wrong.
What's even more interesting will be the first virus transferred from zune-to-zune.
It's microsoft. It had to be said.
There's this link from earlier in the year where it claims to be an online storage company:d =TransMedia+Site+Goes+Social
- Mobile-Extended.html
http://www.redherring.com/Article.aspx?a=16146&he
There's this link where it claims it will do magic with a PDA
www.pdastreet.com/articles/2006/5/2006-5-22-Glide
I'm not sure how a single library/ies will magically make all of this interoperable because I've seen what it takes from an engineering side to attempt this sort of thing and it ain't pretty. I haven't even mentioned the Legal implications of pulling something off like this.
Oh, and where's the business model supporting all of this development?
I find it hard to consider this seriously when the CEO's bio reads:
"Mr. Leka established strategic partnerships with industry leaders including Apple Computer and Microsoft and throughout the HealthSCOUT Syndicated Network of over 3,000 sites (e.g. Yahoo, USA Today, NBCi, iWon, Juno, AT&T, Prodigy). Previously, Mr. Leka was a co-founder and Executive Director of The Fultz Foundation in Washington, DC where he was instrumental in securing funding from the George Soros Foundation and USAID among others. Mr. Leka developed and directed various international projects focused on business development and management training including telecommunications and the internet." http://www.transmediacorp.com/about/board.htm
Sounds like he's successful at shaking money out of wealthy people's pocket because http://www.fultzfoundation.org/ is little more than a placeholder and the dot-bomb marketing speak is so 1998.
I worked for a company that had implemented a high-priced software package that tied logistics (shipping, BOM's etc.) and accounting together. The promise was streamlining warehouse and accounting across all of their subsidiaries/offices in other countries.
So, the way accounting set things up was that they figuratively disconnected the accounting and logistics BOM/shipping/receiving systems such that the information provided for physical goods could not be accurate. How is that possible you may wonder? Well, if you give unrelated departments the right to change entries, then you never know the right quantity.
Never mind the way stuff would disappear by the pallet from the warehouse, to this day I believe that it was all quite intentional because it was -so- hard to make it that difficult to use. It looks good on paper, "we use giant-accounting-package-XYZ" and yet the implementation allowed for massive accounting irregularities.
Bottom Line: Software is an excellent way to obfuscate processes and create plausible deniability.
Question 2: there is no right answer ...And it's being eroded rapidly ...The US Attorney General is on the RIAA's side.
Question 3: So even making sure to pay for all of your downloads wouldn't protect you from a lawsuit.
Question 4: dismember the internet as we know it.
Question 5:
Question 6: they bring CRIMINAL cases, not civil ones. (their emphasis)
Question 7: You shouldn't be trying to educate the younger generation about this stuff. The law is unsettled. Is it? I thought this was resolved years ago with VHS?
Question 8: I'm an ordinary lawyer...
Question 9: the entire underpinning of each case is a joke.
Question 10: But if you just want to play hardball, the judge would probably just strike your answer and give the RIAA a money judgment by default
1. An environment of fear of noncompliance has very successfully been created and applied to music consumers, and the lawyers won't rock the boat either.
2. Another example of "I'm not a criminal so I have nothing to fear." Where an artificial fear is created and maintained to enable psychological control on a national scale.
3. I agree that sharing the music is wrong, but the psychology of fear is being used to remove any personal ownership (as in personal copies) whatsoever. I thought personal copies were long ago approved by the courts. Someone please inform me otherwise.
Cut the crap, and donate to the EFF http://www.eff.org/ if you aren't going to spend your personal time making change on the issue yourself.
Symbolic: "Microsoft making a world full of online threats safer for Y-O-U!"
Best case scenario:
1. the guy/organization/whatever claims bankruptcy and it's pennies on the dollar for MS.
2. Microsoft charges you more for their spam security software.
Lately with MS and most mega-corps, it's about maintaining a very high level of fear of non-compliance.
I'm glad I get paid to work on their product because it requires so much babysitting. Thank dog I don't run it at home anymore.
I can offer some first-hand anecdotal evidence which, typical of /. won't matter much but here goes.
My wife and both agreed that we flushed way too much of our youth staring at the TV and our child wasn't going to look back and say the same thing about her life. We also thought quite subjectively there wasn't anything worth watching for kids. If there is, you can get it on VCR/DVD So we:
1. Sold our TV and related furniture, diconnected the cable and bought a 12" tv/vcr. (later added dvd)
2. The TV we had was hard to watch because we got it out of a cabinet, plugged it in and sat at a table to watch it. That was true for -all- of us.
3. REPLACE TV WITH OTHER ACTIVITIES. This meant we -had- to get off our rear-ends, find and do stuff with/for our kid. This can be tough at the end of a work day when you were raised in front of a TV. I later discovered that I depended on TV to "watch" my child and setting up another personal regret where her childhood will fly by in front of the TV.
It's been 5+ years, she loves audio books, excels at school, she's imaginative, interactive, can live without TV, but will watch it when she wants to see something. We also found she doesn't play with kids in our neighborhood who watch alot of tv either. They are boring to her because they can't do imaginative play.
I don't really go for the "end-of-childhood" argument, but I know for a fact my daughter and my relationship with my daughter is richer for less personal electronics. Not to mention the extra dough saved every month.
http:\\www.winehq.org
It's getting better every time I install a new version. It's not a silver bullet, but gets you off the MS crack pipe.
The commercial version for the PHB's: http://www.codeweavers.com/
There's also a nice dos emulator: www.dosemu.org/ That's made some of my clients -very- happy.
Billable time for testing/install is very low compared to license costs on some of these commercial products.
Examine list of features that are supposed to be great carefully and consider a hypothetical group of 100 consumers.
0 00296
# Various kernel improvements in scheduling
# Completely new TCP/IP stack that offers much greater performance on high latency connections
# Resolution/DPI independence
# Much better networking UI / auto network discovery - much cooler than I expected
# Windows Display Driver Model (virtualization of graphics card memory!)
# Dramatic improvements in driver development (can develop a simple driver in 500 instead of 5000 lines of code) Note: These are the one's that must be signed by MS for how much money?
# WAY better file operations dialogs
# WAY better file operations in general (no more huge lag when accessing network devices, disks, etc.)
# DirectX 10
# New audio subsystem with TONS of cool features like being able to adjust audio for individual applications or the system as a whole.
# Speech Recognition that really, really works. (Ignore the FUD about that failed demo and TRY it yourself.)
# SuperFetch - a much improved version of XPs intelligent caching
Every one of the above mean nothing to 90+ of the 100 end users. They won't see it, they don't know it, they don't care. These users don't like upgrading because they don't like UI changes too.
# Nice UI improvements like Flip3d (works well), taskbar thumbnails
# New start menu really is a LOT better than XPs
# Composited desktop / Aero prettiness (looks far less childish than XP, imo)
Now you may get 10% of the 90% that don't care for the above three reasons. They won't like the change, and lose their email because they don't have a clue how to transfer anything. (Microsoft makes that so easy right? hint: outlook.pst is a hidden file by default...)
Okay the score is 9 Longwait 91 XP/2000/Linux/OSX (or thereabouts)
You've got some things that sound great.
#IE 7+ (Protected Mode IE) - this will virtually eliminate malware via the browser
#Revamped security model (UAC, new system services model, etc.)
Wait, no. I mean they sound great but we know from all previous versions before this is just happy pretend thinking. The target is too large, the "security" too half-baked and such an afterthought it's made a great career for me.
But then you aren't selling to me, there's probably 80 people out of the 91 left that will get Longwait with the next PC they buy. They won't buy it because they -want- it. But just because it's there. And I'll be making plenty of money off them babysitting their new OS.
Finally, you neglected to mention Longwait is intentionally broken in many ways: http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=195283&cid=16
And then, there's the aftermarket firewall, antivirus software, antispyware software are also required.
In the end, Microsoft loses maybe 10 people out of the 100. But they'll be charging the 90 suckers left more for less and they'll be paying me more too. In the end, it's a win-win.
If I had to guess, I'd say the DVD software does burn DVD's but makes sure you are burning home movies vs. personal backups of your Entertainment MegaCorp owned movies.
Also keep in mind, DVD burning is a premium feature folks. That's right, MS has a product tier for the luxury of burning DVD's. You pay MS extra for the priviledge
As I have said many times over Longwait is broken in many ways.
Sadly, this about the only time critics will get a chance to be critical. Once the PR/media onslaught begins, the roar of fanboys will be intense.
So, I'm thinking most non-windows folks are having a good chuckle right now because I know I've had little thumbnail previews of everything in KDE for going on 3+ years at least on a sleepy old 1GHZ laptop too.
In the Mac world, I seem to recall that working in -early- OSX versions.
And when longwait releases, vista B.S. eye candy like this will be advertised everywhere as teh newest features with MS*NIX security too!
Staying on the MS crack pipe means more work for me....
MS has the luxury of pushing this one out the door on their time schedule unless their is some huge penalty for not doing so. Which I don't see. Investors are happy, PHB's are happy.
Any organization fool enough to buy into their free upgrade license scheme will simply blame it on IT underlings as a bad decision -if- the issue ever came up.
PC manufacturers won't have a great year, but since when does that bother a monopoly?
With that said, I think the more practical solution is to flush another couple million dollars in advertising to compensate for the bad product. The hyperbole machine takes over and every PC mag declares it the best evar!
Good news for me because I'll have another cluster fsck of an OS to babysit here at the office.
Otherwise, Move along nothing to see here.
This shouldn't be news to anyone in the industry that's been on the recieving end of their litigation. They have done this in the past to bankrupt small-time developer/marketers thereby consolidating their position. Adobe did it to Macromedia years ago.
This is a new kind of hostile business climate in America. The tax environment and regulatory oversight is certainly less than prior decades, but it seems the business environment is even more hostile with big business being able to easily dictate market conditions.
This is a perfect example where they are probably persuing remanufactured ink brands. Why? Because revenue doesn't flow to HP.
vista is the first of many to come for sure. Here's a breakdown of the brokenness of each version
Starter Version: Really REALLY broken (supposedly for developing nations)
Home Basic: DVD burning is broken, Eye-candy is half broken. Desktop search is broken
Home Premium: Desktop search still broken. Will it be able to join a domain? I bet it won't. You'll have to pay extra for that. FYI: it appears that if the OEM PC has a DVD burner, you *must* buy home premium so they can protect you from your own entertainment media.
Ultimate: Media playback is broken. (DRM) Protects you from your own media.
It is reasonable to assume this is the first step towards even more segmentation.
http://blogs.zdnet.com/Bott/?p=12
not high that many people will buy a single boxed copy with no hardware, at least at first. The vast majority of sales are "upgrade" licenses or one where they sell the OS plus a keyboard or a case or something.
They quite intentionally want you to buy a new PC with the OS preinstalled. It's where the volume is and it's where the perception "buying a computer" means buying hardware with a windows OS installed.
As another post mentioned, the OEM prices are where the action is. It will be very interesting to see if the Microsoft tax goes up for them a great deal more than the retail prices are showing.
The way it looks now, I don't see where shareholders are going to get the return on investment they are looking for after MS drops major bucks on advertising and stuffing the distribution channel with the release of LongWait.
Most of you will buy your entertainment from the telcos in 10yrs. You'll pay more and get less too.
_ verizon_uses_rf/
They are creating a "national overlay" that will allow them to sweep most of the cable/sat companies away because a phone and Internet monopoly isn't enough.
http://telephonyonline.com/fttp/marketing/telecom
We all know how -great- telco customer service is.
Who wins here?
Most of you will be buying your entertainment from telco's in 10 yrs. or less.
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Telco's are creating a "national overlay" which will get them into the entertainment business. Here's a hard-spinning link that lays out the so-called "benefits." I'm too lazy to find something more objective http://www.nam.org/s_nam/doc1.asp?CID=161&DID=237
fsck em all.
-Sell your giant screen whatever,
-tear down the "media center" shelf system
-get rid of the ring of couches,
And replace it with book shelves and a table you can do -anything- on. (as in even accidentally drilling a hole through the thing)
You'll wonder what in the hell you were wasting your time with.
A 19" tv and dvd is much better, because entertainment is good sometimes and you aren't -drawn- to it as much as a monstrous TV. When you want to watch it, you sit around the table and watch.
Good comments on physical alternatives to the binders. Which I don't think are a -bad- idea in this case.
u mber.pocket_number
Where they may get hung up is keeping track of them.
Here's the answer:
You use a method similar to an IP address where each octet is a symbol to their location.
customer_number.shelf_number.binder_number.page_n
From there you just fill them chronologically. Then you don't run into logistical problems if you try to arrange thing alphabetically. ex. shelf set 1 has customers a-g shelf-set 2 as h-s, etc.
This looks to me more of a process issue (where humans have to stick to a process) than a physical/technical problem.
As much as I'd like that to be true, when the high-minded theory of efficient allocation of goods interacts with humans, it generally fails. As another post points out wealth-seekers quickly become the inefficient party in an economic system. Telco's are the perfect example. Corn production (ADM) is another example.
Finally, your perspective is quite narrow. Viewing an Internet connection as a luxury item, is quite short-sighted. Instead, try viewing it like the highway system. Highways are something that all can use to make the nation more efficient productive and supposedly making citizens better off. On the weekends, you can get to the country quickly.