Drives are getting into the 50 to 60 MB/s range. You can put 2 drives on a channel, and you want a little head room, because you aren't usually using the bandwidth on the bus optimally. That's also today's drives. I'm sure most people plan on keeping their computers a few years, and would like to be able to take advantage of a drive they add a year or two from now. It seems like 133 MB/s is a reasonable amount of bandwidth for today's drives, with a little room to grow.
It doesn't matter if you go with SCSI, IDE, Firewire, or FibreChannel. The limitation is still going to be the drive speed. SCSI drives (which include fibrechannel, and possibly Firewire) may have an advantage in that they can reorder requests to the disk to improve performance. In reality the benefit in most cases is negligable, and there's no requirement that the HBA or disk supported it.
SCSI gives you the ability to connect more disks both internally and externally. Firewire gives you the advantage of hot plugability and easy cabling. If you have a lot of disks, Firewire may not have enough bandwidth. Fibre Channel offers LOTs more disks, LOTs of bandwidth, Multiple protocols (IP and otheres), long cable lengths (10km). Of course you tend to pay more for more features. If you need the features, pay for them.
It's not treating employees like shit to ban the use of company property for illegal activity. Someone at Blizzard was sharing copyrighted material using P2P software. Now that they've been officailly warned they don't have a lot of choice in the matter. They need to prevent such activity or risk being sued. There's just no practical way for them to make sure P2P software isn't being abused without banning it. Monitoring it's use is time consuming and intrusive. Their only real choice is banning it. They tried the honor method, and someone abused it. They could fire that person, and try the honor method again, but it might get them sued if someone abuses it again.
I believe in the philosophy that if someone is getting their work done, and not causing problems, they're doing a good job. You're paid to get a job done, but if you're exposing the company to getting sued, that's a different story.
If it's an admission of guilt, it's an admission that their employee did something wrong, and that when they were made aware, they took appropriate actions. Blizzard wasn't sharing copyrighted material for commercial use. One of their employees was sharing copyrighted material using company equipment. Blizzard is just making sure they aren't liable. THe employee who did this may very well be looking for a new job.
I can agree with you that there are limitations on the freedom of speech. But I'd say that its more of a limitation on who you can have as your audiece. If some one doesn't want to listen to you they should have the ability to walk away. They should also be able to prevent you from sharing forms of "speech" that they feel is obscene with minors who are in their care. I think that you shouldn't be able to show children hard core porn, at least not without the permission of their parents. If an adult is targeting a pornographic web site to children, then I can see a law preventing that is reasonable. However, reducing the whole internet to forms of speech acceptable to children is not reasonable. The internet is not a babysitter for people's kids. The internet is increasingly a method of communication of ideas between people. Adults shouldn't be restricted from communicating with other adults in a reasonable fasion because children may be exposed without their intent or knowledge.
Right, but freedom doesn't mean whatever, whenever, whoever. There is a reason why it is illegal to publish child pornography (yes I know that's not what the ruling was about).
That's true, but the govenment also pretty clearly defines what child pornography is. In this case the definition of the crime is if it's considered obscene by community standards. That's just way too vague, and definately stomps on some forms of free speech that should be protected. I understand that there are some things the parents don't want their children to have easy access to. However, I don't believe that requiring content and communication on the internet to meet those standards is reasonable.
I agree that congress has good intentions. Maybe they should legislate the creation of a browser that will only go to sites that opt in for use by minors. Parents could then only let their children use those browsers. If they let their kids use other browsers, then they are giving consent for their children to view material that may be intended for adults. I'm sure that kids would find a way around this, just like they find a way to get their hands on Playboys and beer now. There isn't a foolproof way of preventing your children from being exposed to "obscene" material unless you're willing to constantly monitor them.
I disagree. I think this is a huge story. The supreme court has just ruled that the standards which make things illegal to place something on the World Wide Web debend on the standards in the community of the viewer. Isn't every thing offensive somewhere. What happens when community standards change? If you're simply not caught up with the latest politically correct trend, can you be arrested and stuck in jail? Many communities consider homosexuality offensive. Is talking about homosexuality on the web illegal? How do you know if something is going to be considered offensive or not? How can you tell if your constitutional right to free speech outweighs this law? There are many religions that may not meet community standards. Do poeple have a right to talk about them on the web? We do have freedom of religion, but maybe some things go to far by community standards. Of course you don't really know what's acceptable or not until you're arrested and tried. This is a horrible ruling. Justice Stevens realized this. Unfortunately he was in the minority.
You also have to take into effect that if you make it hard to get guns, that doesn't mean violent crime, including murder, will go away. You will however reduce murders involving guns. You also make it harder for people to defend themselves. In urban areas, the police may have decent response time, and they may be able to do a decent job of protecting you. In rural areas, the police aren't going to show up until after the issue is resolved. If you're attacked, you're on your own.
Statements like this one are ridiculas trolls. If you support the fascist conservatives who oppose gun control, these deaths are on your head.
Those deaths are on the heads of the people who killed them. Simply taking away all the guns doesn't prevent violent crime. Murder existed long before guns were invented. A gun is a tool that can be used to assualt or defend. It's the person who uses it that's to blame for how it's used, not the gun.
My personal opinion is that this law would be bad for consumers, because the price of software products would be driven up to pay for new houses for liability lawyers.
It would be bad for business because their software costs would go up dramatically. If these companies want more reliablitiy, they have ways of achieving it now. It costs money, but it appears they are willing to live with a level or software problems as long as the software is less expensive.
It's bad for the software industry because much of the software would have to be radically redisigned in order to be "bug free". This is a tremendous effort, and they can't get a return on the investment until the development is done. A large percentage of the companies wouldn't be able to afford to redesign their software and would simply go out of business. That would trash the tech sector, and put the stock market into yet another crash.
These politicians don't want this law to pass. They're just trying to take advantage of anti-Microsoft and anti big business sentiments to get votes.
Why couldn't one limit the maximum liability to, say, 10 times the license / distribution price?
Why would the govenment want to do this? Why cap the liability based on a software purchase price, when the costs of a system can be shifted to other components by some companies and not others? What's the benefit to consumers? If SUN gives away their OS for free with their computers, would they have zero liability for software problems? Why screw the laws to protect some types of software?
What about products like video card drivers. A large protion of computer crashes can be traced back to drivers. How would you limit the liability there? What if you're running reference drivers from the chip manufacturer, rather than drivers from the card vendor? Who has liability there?
Companies have all kinds of ways to move costs around. Hardware, maintence contracts, training are just a few ways companies can shift the costs of the software. Other companies, including Microsoft, mainly just sell software. Microsoft could shift this by only selling software to OEMs who then produce systems that are properly tested. That mostly just hurts those of us who like to build our own systems. If also shifts a tremendous burden upon OEMs who gain a tremendous amount of liability, and have to charge considerably more for thier products. Which means the consumers end up paying a lot more for systems.
No one really wants to pay the extra costs to make software bug free. It just costs too much, and people are willing to live with some bugs for a system that is good enough and much less expensive. If the market has shown this to be true over and over again, why are legislators trying to pass this stupid law. Either they're clueless, they think they'll gain political favor for proposing this law, but don't expect it to ever pass, or they're doing it gain favor with a group that will benefit from this law, which doesn't really benefit consumers.
These are consumer protection laws. Consumers in general can't look at millions of lines of code and determine if a product is usable. Acutally, programmers aren't likely able to determine if a software product is going to be reliable in anything like a practical period of time even if they have the source. They might be able to determine that some software is really bad, but having source code shouldn't be a way to get out of liability. All software should be held to the same standards.
Well, maybe I didn't explain it that well. We paid by the number of computers we had, not the number running Windows. We did have computers running Linux, and we were paying for Windows on those comoputers even though we weren't running it. However, in the end our total licensing costs and especially the costs of making sure our licenses were in order were much lower.
For most businesses, labor expenses are so much more expensive than the licensing costs Microsoft is asking. If Microsoft's OS and applications meet your needs, including reliability and security well enough, then you have to look real close to make sure another option is really going to save you money.
Of course, open source software also offers the same advantage of not having to track the licenses. I don't work in IS anymore, but at the time open source software was nowhere near a reasonable subsitute, even though MS software was much worse in terms of reliability then than it is now. Maybe that is changing. A little competition would do us some good.
I have to agree that Microsoft's per computer licensing options do in practice unfairly push out the use of other OSs. However, there is also a justifiable reason for them to offer them. Keeping tracke of licenses for a large organization and making sure that legale software is on each computer is a big job. The result is that it costs a lot of money to track the licenses. Offering a license on a per computer basis makes auditing your software as simple as counting the number of computers. Microsoft is willing to give discounts for going with this method as well, since it makes things easier for them and encourages customers to only use their products. In the end, even if you run another OS on some of the computers, your total licensing costs are lower, and the cost of maintaining the licenses is MUCH lower.
At a previous job, going with this kind of license ended up saving us money and a lot of headaches, but over 95% of our desktops ran some form of Windows. If you run a lot of PCs with other OSs, then it maight not be a good value for you.
It's not just seperating IE. It's sepearting many, many features. Pulling those products appart, and supporting a version that can have those items seperated is going to be a huge effort. Support is going to be a nightmare. The support costs for that type of product are an order of magnitude higher. Who's going to pay for this? In the end, the "modular" version is going to cost more to develope and support than the combined version. Who's going to pay for the development and support costs? You're asking Microsoft to develop a product that makes no business sense because some customres and some OEMs may perfer it. The problem is that your creating a product that costs more, and delivers less value so that competitors can compete. It just isn't practical.
Actually it's the States' job to look after the interests of consumers. There are many ways they can attempt to enforce the antitrust laws. How is forcing Micorsoft to create a modular version of Windows which the States' don't even know is practical in consumers best interests? Consumers like Windows because its well integrated. That's been one of the main attractions of Windows since it was created many years ago. Tight integration is what consumers want. Why do you think AOL is so popular with the masses? The govenment shouldn't be telling software companies how to design software. Microsoft should be able to integrate whatever middleware they want into windows. That will definately mean that competitors get run out of business. But as long as integrating that middleware into windows make Windows a more desireable product to consumers they should be able to do it.
This definately brushes up agains what may or may not be legal under antitrust law. If it's against antitrust law, then the law needs to be changed. This issue goes beyond Microsoft. The govenment shouldn't be preventing the creation of product that better meet customers needs just because it harms competitors. Competition is good, but preventing good product development to help competition is not progress.
They used a cludgy help interface that differed from application to application. The idea of integrating the same functionality throughout the operatin environment is what has made windows an exelent CONSUMER OS. Over the years they have done a better job of making the different parts of the OS seamless. This is good product design. If you strip out that functionality and let other vendors try and stick their version in you end up with a mess. You end up with dozens of versions of Windows that all work differently. You also end up with OSs that are much harder to support. Consumers don't want this. It's a horrible thing to do to consumers.
If you think that a functional OS can't be built without the level of integration Microsoft has used, you need to go back to CS 301.
There are plenty of functional OSs that are difficult to use and support. Who is making a modular OS going to really help? I can't believe that there are this many open source advocates that are so blinded by hate for Microsoft that they want the government determining how software is designed. Microsoft has done some nasty things, but they have also made their OS very easy for consumers to use. They have done that through integrating the parts together so well. There has got to be a better solution than to try and force Microsoft to undo that integration.
These hearings aren't supposed to be a new trial. The govenment isn't supposed to be submitting new evidence. The judge chose to allow them to demonstrate this to rebut Microsoft's claims. However, Microsoft does have a right to examine what the government is doing and rebutt it. However that does take some time. Microsoft can ask for as much time as they want, but the judge can limit that time. Judge Jackson limited the amount of time Microsoft had to prepare for many things.
Why are the states presenting this at the 11th hour? Why are they now backing down? If they can really strip pices out of Windows and have a working consumer grade OS using Embedded XP then that pretty important to show. They can get the judge to limit how long MS has to respond. It sound more like their demo isn't as strong as they thought, so there's no benefit to draggin out the trial.
Yes. It is unquestionably the responsibility of anyone creating software not to include other people's work that they don't have the rights to use. I'm not disputing that point.
However, in the real world mistakes do get made. Your opinion that Microsoft knowingly came in and told the company they bought to back out of the licensing deal and steal the code isn't based on any evidence that came from the article.
If the major components of Character were still in the application, and it was obvious that Softimage, which was owned by Microsoft at the time, stole that intelectual property, don't you think there'd be a huge setlement or verdict? The article is definately opinionated, which doesn't make it wrong. It's also one sided. It only takes one short quote snippit, the one you just threw at me. Do you think that if that quote is in context and representative of the case that the verdict makes any sense. It doesn't even say who at Microsoft made that statement. The article says that the author was able to put together the timeline in which that comment is included in from the reference article that's linked to. However, the quote isn't in that reference article. Where did the quote come from? If the author has information from another source, why isn't it mentioned? Why isn't there more facts brought in other than this one quote? Everything else seems to come directly from the article.
The article leaves too much out. It also tries to make a case that actions of a tiny company that Microsoft had recently acquired, actions that apparently aren't even worth investigating carefully, are representative of an intent from all of Microsoft to steal other people's code. Can you honestly tell me that doesn't rate pretty high on the FUD meter? Microsoft definately deservers to have their actions questioned. That doesn't mean that streching the facts to try and justify an opinion is justified.
If a journalist wants to convince me of something, they should present you with facts, and a clear line of reasoning to how they come at their conclusion. That Newsforge article isn't journalism. It's an attempt to either advocate a position or simply sell more advertising. Advocating a position or even trying to sell more advertising are honorable goals, it done in an honorable fasion, but only if done in an honorable fasion.
See, the problem with that theory, is that Microsoft knew what the deal was before they bought SoftImage. Right before MS bought SoftImage, they sent them over to Syn'X to present this new deal, i.e., hand over the rights to your code or it's no go.
Interesting theory. The articles didn't say that Micorsoft did this. Do you have some other source or are you just making this up as you go? It's possible that what you're saying is true, but you'd think that if Microsoft so blatently stole this code there's be a large financial verdict. The amount was tiny. Maybe the one function that was pulled out contained most of the functionality, and the ones that remained were relatively insignificant. The article is very vague on what Microsoft was found guilty of. Actually about the only thing the articl really shows is that Microsoft bought a company, that company broke the law, and then Microsoft sole the company.
The French govenment has always seemed to like to take shots at Microsoft. Why didn't they do it in this case? If this is a case where Microsoft did something really bad, why not put the details of what Microsoft was found guilty of in the article? I want facts, not spin and FUD.
For Engineers in the United States the National Society of Engineers. You should have heard about this when you were in school, and had an oppertunity to the the EIT (Engineer in Training) exam around when you graduated. After passing the EIT you have to have so many years of practical engineering work experience, and then take the PE (Professional Engineer) exam. After all that you get to call yourself a Professional Engineer. Most of us don't bother, thought I did take and pass the EIT many years ago.
Are the EU countries going to collect sales tax for the individual states in the US when US residents but goods from companies in the EU? How are they going to track where the purchaser is? The sales tax varies not only from state to state, but often from county to county within the states. The EU has no intention of having their companies collect sales taxes for the States in the US. This is one sided legislation on people over which they have no authority.
For the $300 registration fee, the people registering get a domain name regiestered that tells people that they are an actual professional in their field. In order to provide this the registar needs to do research to verify that the person registering the domain is an actual accredited professional, and verify that they maintain that accreditation. The $300 isn't an unreasonable fee for this added service. If people don't think the price is worth it, they will register a non.pro domain name, which mean that there is competition in the market. The registar has found a way to differenciate the domain by adding value. Great business idea.
THere's significant differences between a game like Diablo II and a MMORPG. MMORPGs are much. much more complex worlds. The character classes, skills, and economies are much more complex. The servers need to be much more powerful to handle the load. Also, because the worlds are much more complex, much more work needs to be done on a routine basis to rebalance the game and patch bugs. In some games significant new content is also added on a regular basis without a sepreate expansion pack that you have to purchase.
You also have to realize that the game manufacturer doesn't see all that $50 for that game. If they're luck they might see half. If they can attract 100,000 players then they might bring in 2.5 million dollars. They have to pay a team of deveolpers to work for years on the game. They need to pay for the servers. They need to maintain the servers. They need to pay a customre support staff which not only supports the game, but has to deal with issues like cheating, hacking the game, grief play, harrasment between players. This doesn't even include ongoing developemnt costs. How much do you want to pay for this game up front? Hundreds of dollars?
I personally like the monthly fee way of paying. I pay a lower amount for the game up front, and it includes the first month payment. If I don't like the game, I'm not out a lot of money. If I enjoy the game I continue to pay for it. If the developers don't manage to keep the game interesting, I quit playing and quit paying. You get what you pay for, if you don't think it's worth the money, you stop.
Maybe I've got my history wrong, but it seems like the Romans and the British fell out of power mainly from internal problems. Both Empires were very concerned with events outside of their empire.
You points about America are true about some Americans and untrue about others. Polititions which are strong isolationists don't do well in elections in most of the US, because the US is a nation of immigrants. The US gives out Billions in aid to other nations each year. Many Americans do feel that we should take care of our domestic problems before we stick our noses in other countries problems. But many others, especially those with greater knowledge of world events, realize that we can't just ignore the outside world and need to work with other nations to our mutual benefit.
ethnocentrism Pronunciation Key (thn-sntrzm) n. Belief in the superiority of one's own ethnic group. Overriding concern with race.
Racism is still a problem in the US, and it's definatley worse in some areas of the country than others, but I do believe that progress is being made.
I believe that you weren't trolling, but I don't think you're right. The US is a place where everyone has a right to voice their opinions. If you're looking for examples of ethnocentric people in the US I'm sure you will find them. It's this freedom of speech which allows not only the ethnocentrics to voice their opinions, but also the immigrants, and people from other nations. Freedom of expression allows people to put forth their views, and keeps the US engaged with the world around US.
I'm not saying that I think the US will be the most powerful nation in the world forever, but I think we're more likely to crumble from moral decay like our predecessors did, than from ethnocentrism.
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Drives are getting into the 50 to 60 MB/s range. You can put 2 drives on a channel, and you want a little head room, because you aren't usually using the bandwidth on the bus optimally. That's also today's drives. I'm sure most people plan on keeping their computers a few years, and would like to be able to take advantage of a drive they add a year or two from now. It seems like 133 MB/s is a reasonable amount of bandwidth for today's drives, with a little room to grow.
It doesn't matter if you go with SCSI, IDE, Firewire, or FibreChannel. The limitation is still going to be the drive speed. SCSI drives (which include fibrechannel, and possibly Firewire) may have an advantage in that they can reorder requests to the disk to improve performance. In reality the benefit in most cases is negligable, and there's no requirement that the HBA or disk supported it.
SCSI gives you the ability to connect more disks both internally and externally. Firewire gives you the advantage of hot plugability and easy cabling. If you have a lot of disks, Firewire may not have enough bandwidth. Fibre Channel offers LOTs more disks, LOTs of bandwidth, Multiple protocols (IP and otheres), long cable lengths (10km). Of course you tend to pay more for more features. If you need the features, pay for them.
It's not treating employees like shit to ban the use of company property for illegal activity. Someone at Blizzard was sharing copyrighted material using P2P software. Now that they've been officailly warned they don't have a lot of choice in the matter. They need to prevent such activity or risk being sued. There's just no practical way for them to make sure P2P software isn't being abused without banning it. Monitoring it's use is time consuming and intrusive. Their only real choice is banning it. They tried the honor method, and someone abused it. They could fire that person, and try the honor method again, but it might get them sued if someone abuses it again.
I believe in the philosophy that if someone is getting their work done, and not causing problems, they're doing a good job. You're paid to get a job done, but if you're exposing the company to getting sued, that's a different story.
If it's an admission of guilt, it's an admission that their employee did something wrong, and that when they were made aware, they took appropriate actions. Blizzard wasn't sharing copyrighted material for commercial use. One of their employees was sharing copyrighted material using company equipment. Blizzard is just making sure they aren't liable. THe employee who did this may very well be looking for a new job.
I can agree with you that there are limitations on the freedom of speech. But I'd say that its more of a limitation on who you can have as your audiece. If some one doesn't want to listen to you they should have the ability to walk away. They should also be able to prevent you from sharing forms of "speech" that they feel is obscene with minors who are in their care. I think that you shouldn't be able to show children hard core porn, at least not without the permission of their parents. If an adult is targeting a pornographic web site to children, then I can see a law preventing that is reasonable. However, reducing the whole internet to forms of speech acceptable to children is not reasonable. The internet is not a babysitter for people's kids. The internet is increasingly a method of communication of ideas between people. Adults shouldn't be restricted from communicating with other adults in a reasonable fasion because children may be exposed without their intent or knowledge.
Right, but freedom doesn't mean whatever, whenever, whoever. There is a reason why it is illegal to publish child pornography (yes I know that's not what the ruling was about).
That's true, but the govenment also pretty clearly defines what child pornography is. In this case the definition of the crime is if it's considered obscene by community standards. That's just way too vague, and definately stomps on some forms of free speech that should be protected. I understand that there are some things the parents don't want their children to have easy access to. However, I don't believe that requiring content and communication on the internet to meet those standards is reasonable.
I agree that congress has good intentions. Maybe they should legislate the creation of a browser that will only go to sites that opt in for use by minors. Parents could then only let their children use those browsers. If they let their kids use other browsers, then they are giving consent for their children to view material that may be intended for adults. I'm sure that kids would find a way around this, just like they find a way to get their hands on Playboys and beer now. There isn't a foolproof way of preventing your children from being exposed to "obscene" material unless you're willing to constantly monitor them.
I disagree. I think this is a huge story. The supreme court has just ruled that the standards which make things illegal to place something on the World Wide Web debend on the standards in the community of the viewer. Isn't every thing offensive somewhere. What happens when community standards change? If you're simply not caught up with the latest politically correct trend, can you be arrested and stuck in jail? Many communities consider homosexuality offensive. Is talking about homosexuality on the web illegal? How do you know if something is going to be considered offensive or not? How can you tell if your constitutional right to free speech outweighs this law? There are many religions that may not meet community standards. Do poeple have a right to talk about them on the web? We do have freedom of religion, but maybe some things go to far by community standards. Of course you don't really know what's acceptable or not until you're arrested and tried. This is a horrible ruling. Justice Stevens realized this. Unfortunately he was in the minority.
You also have to take into effect that if you make it hard to get guns, that doesn't mean violent crime, including murder, will go away. You will however reduce murders involving guns. You also make it harder for people to defend themselves. In urban areas, the police may have decent response time, and they may be able to do a decent job of protecting you. In rural areas, the police aren't going to show up until after the issue is resolved. If you're attacked, you're on your own.
Statements like this one are ridiculas trolls.
If you support the fascist conservatives who oppose gun control, these deaths are on your head.
Those deaths are on the heads of the people who killed them. Simply taking away all the guns doesn't prevent violent crime. Murder existed long before guns were invented. A gun is a tool that can be used to assualt or defend. It's the person who uses it that's to blame for how it's used, not the gun.
My personal opinion is that this law would be bad for consumers, because the price of software products would be driven up to pay for new houses for liability lawyers.
It would be bad for business because their software costs would go up dramatically. If these companies want more reliablitiy, they have ways of achieving it now. It costs money, but it appears they are willing to live with a level or software problems as long as the software is less expensive.
It's bad for the software industry because much of the software would have to be radically redisigned in order to be "bug free". This is a tremendous effort, and they can't get a return on the investment until the development is done. A large percentage of the companies wouldn't be able to afford to redesign their software and would simply go out of business. That would trash the tech sector, and put the stock market into yet another crash.
These politicians don't want this law to pass. They're just trying to take advantage of anti-Microsoft and anti big business sentiments to get votes.
Why couldn't one limit the maximum liability to, say, 10 times the license / distribution price?
Why would the govenment want to do this? Why cap the liability based on a software purchase price, when the costs of a system can be shifted to other components by some companies and not others? What's the benefit to consumers? If SUN gives away their OS for free with their computers, would they have zero liability for software problems? Why screw the laws to protect some types of software?
What about products like video card drivers. A large protion of computer crashes can be traced back to drivers. How would you limit the liability there? What if you're running reference drivers from the chip manufacturer, rather than drivers from the card vendor? Who has liability there?
Companies have all kinds of ways to move costs around. Hardware, maintence contracts, training are just a few ways companies can shift the costs of the software. Other companies, including Microsoft, mainly just sell software. Microsoft could shift this by only selling software to OEMs who then produce systems that are properly tested. That mostly just hurts those of us who like to build our own systems. If also shifts a tremendous burden upon OEMs who gain a tremendous amount of liability, and have to charge considerably more for thier products. Which means the consumers end up paying a lot more for systems.
No one really wants to pay the extra costs to make software bug free. It just costs too much, and people are willing to live with some bugs for a system that is good enough and much less expensive. If the market has shown this to be true over and over again, why are legislators trying to pass this stupid law. Either they're clueless, they think they'll gain political favor for proposing this law, but don't expect it to ever pass, or they're doing it gain favor with a group that will benefit from this law, which doesn't really benefit consumers.
These are consumer protection laws. Consumers in general can't look at millions of lines of code and determine if a product is usable. Acutally, programmers aren't likely able to determine if a software product is going to be reliable in anything like a practical period of time even if they have the source. They might be able to determine that some software is really bad, but having source code shouldn't be a way to get out of liability. All software should be held to the same standards.
Well, maybe I didn't explain it that well. We paid by the number of computers we had, not the number running Windows. We did have computers running Linux, and we were paying for Windows on those comoputers even though we weren't running it. However, in the end our total licensing costs and especially the costs of making sure our licenses were in order were much lower.
For most businesses, labor expenses are so much more expensive than the licensing costs Microsoft is asking. If Microsoft's OS and applications meet your needs, including reliability and security well enough, then you have to look real close to make sure another option is really going to save you money.
Of course, open source software also offers the same advantage of not having to track the licenses. I don't work in IS anymore, but at the time open source software was nowhere near a reasonable subsitute, even though MS software was much worse in terms of reliability then than it is now. Maybe that is changing. A little competition would do us some good.
I have to agree that Microsoft's per computer licensing options do in practice unfairly push out the use of other OSs. However, there is also a justifiable reason for them to offer them. Keeping tracke of licenses for a large organization and making sure that legale software is on each computer is a big job. The result is that it costs a lot of money to track the licenses. Offering a license on a per computer basis makes auditing your software as simple as counting the number of computers. Microsoft is willing to give discounts for going with this method as well, since it makes things easier for them and encourages customers to only use their products. In the end, even if you run another OS on some of the computers, your total licensing costs are lower, and the cost of maintaining the licenses is MUCH lower.
At a previous job, going with this kind of license ended up saving us money and a lot of headaches, but over 95% of our desktops ran some form of Windows. If you run a lot of PCs with other OSs, then it maight not be a good value for you.
It's not just seperating IE. It's sepearting many, many features. Pulling those products appart, and supporting a version that can have those items seperated is going to be a huge effort. Support is going to be a nightmare. The support costs for that type of product are an order of magnitude higher. Who's going to pay for this? In the end, the "modular" version is going to cost more to develope and support than the combined version. Who's going to pay for the development and support costs? You're asking Microsoft to develop a product that makes no business sense because some customres and some OEMs may perfer it. The problem is that your creating a product that costs more, and delivers less value so that competitors can compete. It just isn't practical.
Actually it's the States' job to look after the interests of consumers. There are many ways they can attempt to enforce the antitrust laws. How is forcing Micorsoft to create a modular version of Windows which the States' don't even know is practical in consumers best interests? Consumers like Windows because its well integrated. That's been one of the main attractions of Windows since it was created many years ago. Tight integration is what consumers want. Why do you think AOL is so popular with the masses? The govenment shouldn't be telling software companies how to design software. Microsoft should be able to integrate whatever middleware they want into windows. That will definately mean that competitors get run out of business. But as long as integrating that middleware into windows make Windows a more desireable product to consumers they should be able to do it.
This definately brushes up agains what may or may not be legal under antitrust law. If it's against antitrust law, then the law needs to be changed. This issue goes beyond Microsoft. The govenment shouldn't be preventing the creation of product that better meet customers needs just because it harms competitors. Competition is good, but preventing good product development to help competition is not progress.
They used a cludgy help interface that differed from application to application. The idea of integrating the same functionality throughout the operatin environment is what has made windows an exelent CONSUMER OS. Over the years they have done a better job of making the different parts of the OS seamless. This is good product design. If you strip out that functionality and let other vendors try and stick their version in you end up with a mess. You end up with dozens of versions of Windows that all work differently. You also end up with OSs that are much harder to support. Consumers don't want this. It's a horrible thing to do to consumers.
If you think that a functional OS can't be built without the level of integration Microsoft has used, you need to go back to CS 301.
There are plenty of functional OSs that are difficult to use and support. Who is making a modular OS going to really help? I can't believe that there are this many open source advocates that are so blinded by hate for Microsoft that they want the government determining how software is designed. Microsoft has done some nasty things, but they have also made their OS very easy for consumers to use. They have done that through integrating the parts together so well. There has got to be a better solution than to try and force Microsoft to undo that integration.
These hearings aren't supposed to be a new trial. The govenment isn't supposed to be submitting new evidence. The judge chose to allow them to demonstrate this to rebut Microsoft's claims. However, Microsoft does have a right to examine what the government is doing and rebutt it. However that does take some time. Microsoft can ask for as much time as they want, but the judge can limit that time. Judge Jackson limited the amount of time Microsoft had to prepare for many things.
Why are the states presenting this at the 11th hour? Why are they now backing down? If they can really strip pices out of Windows and have a working consumer grade OS using Embedded XP then that pretty important to show. They can get the judge to limit how long MS has to respond. It sound more like their demo isn't as strong as they thought, so there's no benefit to draggin out the trial.
Yes. It is unquestionably the responsibility of anyone creating software not to include other people's work that they don't have the rights to use. I'm not disputing that point.
However, in the real world mistakes do get made. Your opinion that Microsoft knowingly came in and told the company they bought to back out of the licensing deal and steal the code isn't based on any evidence that came from the article.
If the major components of Character were still in the application, and it was obvious that Softimage, which was owned by Microsoft at the time, stole that intelectual property, don't you think there'd be a huge setlement or verdict? The article is definately opinionated, which doesn't make it wrong. It's also one sided. It only takes one short quote snippit, the one you just threw at me. Do you think that if that quote is in context and representative of the case that the verdict makes any sense. It doesn't even say who at Microsoft made that statement. The article says that the author was able to put together the timeline in which that comment is included in from the reference article that's linked to. However, the quote isn't in that reference article. Where did the quote come from? If the author has information from another source, why isn't it mentioned? Why isn't there more facts brought in other than this one quote? Everything else seems to come directly from the article.
The article leaves too much out. It also tries to make a case that actions of a tiny company that Microsoft had recently acquired, actions that apparently aren't even worth investigating carefully, are representative of an intent from all of Microsoft to steal other people's code. Can you honestly tell me that doesn't rate pretty high on the FUD meter? Microsoft definately deservers to have their actions questioned. That doesn't mean that streching the facts to try and justify an opinion is justified.
If a journalist wants to convince me of something, they should present you with facts, and a clear line of reasoning to how they come at their conclusion. That Newsforge article isn't journalism. It's an attempt to either advocate a position or simply sell more advertising. Advocating a position or even trying to sell more advertising are honorable goals, it done in an honorable fasion, but only if done in an honorable fasion.
See, the problem with that theory, is that Microsoft knew what the deal was before they bought SoftImage. Right before MS bought SoftImage, they sent them over to Syn'X to present this new deal, i.e., hand over the rights to your code or it's no go.
Interesting theory. The articles didn't say that Micorsoft did this. Do you have some other source or are you just making this up as you go? It's possible that what you're saying is true, but you'd think that if Microsoft so blatently stole this code there's be a large financial verdict. The amount was tiny. Maybe the one function that was pulled out contained most of the functionality, and the ones that remained were relatively insignificant. The article is very vague on what Microsoft was found guilty of. Actually about the only thing the articl really shows is that Microsoft bought a company, that company broke the law, and then Microsoft sole the company.
The French govenment has always seemed to like to take shots at Microsoft. Why didn't they do it in this case? If this is a case where Microsoft did something really bad, why not put the details of what Microsoft was found guilty of in the article? I want facts, not spin and FUD.
For Engineers in the United States the National Society of Engineers. You should have heard about this when you were in school, and had an oppertunity to the the EIT (Engineer in Training) exam around when you graduated. After passing the EIT you have to have so many years of practical engineering work experience, and then take the PE (Professional Engineer) exam. After all that you get to call yourself a Professional Engineer. Most of us don't bother, thought I did take and pass the EIT many years ago.
Are the EU countries going to collect sales tax for the individual states in the US when US residents but goods from companies in the EU? How are they going to track where the purchaser is? The sales tax varies not only from state to state, but often from county to county within the states. The EU has no intention of having their companies collect sales taxes for the States in the US. This is one sided legislation on people over which they have no authority.
For the $300 registration fee, the people registering get a domain name regiestered that tells people that they are an actual professional in their field. In order to provide this the registar needs to do research to verify that the person registering the domain is an actual accredited professional, and verify that they maintain that accreditation. The $300 isn't an unreasonable fee for this added service. If people don't think the price is worth it, they will register a non .pro domain name, which mean that there is competition in the market. The registar has found a way to differenciate the domain by adding value. Great business idea.
THere's significant differences between a game like Diablo II and a MMORPG. MMORPGs are much. much more complex worlds. The character classes, skills, and economies are much more complex. The servers need to be much more powerful to handle the load. Also, because the worlds are much more complex, much more work needs to be done on a routine basis to rebalance the game and patch bugs. In some games significant new content is also added on a regular basis without a sepreate expansion pack that you have to purchase.
You also have to realize that the game manufacturer doesn't see all that $50 for that game. If they're luck they might see half. If they can attract 100,000 players then they might bring in 2.5 million dollars. They have to pay a team of deveolpers to work for years on the game. They need to pay for the servers. They need to maintain the servers. They need to pay a customre support staff which not only supports the game, but has to deal with issues like cheating, hacking the game, grief play, harrasment between players. This doesn't even include ongoing developemnt costs. How much do you want to pay for this game up front? Hundreds of dollars?
I personally like the monthly fee way of paying. I pay a lower amount for the game up front, and it includes the first month payment. If I don't like the game, I'm not out a lot of money. If I enjoy the game I continue to pay for it. If the developers don't manage to keep the game interesting, I quit playing and quit paying. You get what you pay for, if you don't think it's worth the money, you stop.
A lot of the lower end Sun systems use IDE.
Maybe I've got my history wrong, but it seems like the Romans and the British fell out of power mainly from internal problems. Both Empires were very concerned with events outside of their empire.
You points about America are true about some Americans and untrue about others. Polititions which are strong isolationists don't do well in elections in most of the US, because the US is a nation of immigrants. The US gives out Billions in aid to other nations each year. Many Americans do feel that we should take care of our domestic problems before we stick our noses in other countries problems. But many others, especially those with greater knowledge of world events, realize that we can't just ignore the outside world and need to work with other nations to our mutual benefit.
ethnocentrism Pronunciation Key (thn-sntrzm)
n.
Belief in the superiority of one's own ethnic group.
Overriding concern with race.
Racism is still a problem in the US, and it's definatley worse in some areas of the country than others, but I do believe that progress is being made.
I believe that you weren't trolling, but I don't think you're right. The US is a place where everyone has a right to voice their opinions. If you're looking for examples of ethnocentric people in the US I'm sure you will find them. It's this freedom of speech which allows not only the ethnocentrics to voice their opinions, but also the immigrants, and people from other nations. Freedom of expression allows people to put forth their views, and keeps the US engaged with the world around US.
I'm not saying that I think the US will be the most powerful nation in the world forever, but I think we're more likely to crumble from moral decay like our predecessors did, than from ethnocentrism.