M$ zealots(sorry employees) would moderate everything else to death. Any article that didn't praise the Lord God Windows or their divine beings Balmer & Gates would be pulled and any mention of Linux would be marked as a troll. If you even had the temerity to mention OS/X or any other Apple product your account would be disabled forthwith.
5 days after M$ took ownership,./2 would arise from he ashes like the mythical Phoenix and normal service would be resumed.
Why on earth didn't you install Ubuntu on the MacBook if you were so fed up with OS/X
From my experience, OS/X is about the easiest OS to configure especially with 10.5 but hey, everyone is different ok.
As regards printers, I was a a customer the other day and had to print some stuff for him. I just pointed the MAc at the IP Address and OS/X discovered the priner, its type and setup the drivers. no reboots, manual configurations etc. It even told me that the tone was getting low. The customer (a windows shop) was most impressed. Then I booted a Fedora 8 VM on the MAC and it found the printer and sorted out the driver. No reboots. Customer was even more impressed.
More and more people I know are switching from Windows to OS/X. Vista is more like a foggy day on the Dogger Bank compared to OS/X. Linux is getting there but it just needs a little more time.
22ft of Shelf space. All the API's were fully documented and it included proper examples (not like 'man' pages...) The source was also on Microfiche as the poster said. There was even a part number in the price book where you could (for lots of $$$$) buy the sources on MagTape.
However,
The 'Open' in Open VMS Came from the inclusion of a full POSIX Interface & API into VMS.
Those were the days...
I used to work for them and wrote the TSU05 Magtape driver. (well, modded the TS11 driver and added code to do 100 inches/sec )
I see that the poster was doing so as an AC. I do also understand that there are some times when posting like this is required. Comments like this should not be done as an AC. It could be taken as 'Trolling'
Just to clear up any misunderstanding, here is the final paragraph from the boss of JBoss in response to the accusations. "... As a company we are growing rapidly to meet the expert professional services needs of our customers and partners. We want to be role models for open source developers around the world. To do so, we must hold ourselves to a higher standard. Our visibility and success puts our customers and partners in a situation where you expect and demand that employees of JBoss Inc. hold themselves to that higher standard. Let's put the professional back in professional open source. 'Astroturfing' is hereby banned at JBoss, starting with me."
IMHO, if other CEO's took this line then the blogging world would be a better place.
Disclaimer: I do not use or have never knowingly used any JBOSS product nor do I work for any JBOSS/RH related company.
3) Lots of Companies (ie Not IBM) are writing plugins for Eclipse AND/OR basing their product on the Eclipse framework.
doing the last part of the above actually saves them a huge amount of time and money in bringing a product to market.
I was taking part in the Software Freedom day last weekend and one of the visitors to out stand was a CS student. He was writing Eclipse an plug-in as part of his course. This is far more useful than the sort of silly prog I was made to write when I was a student until I got into my final year when I wrote a cross assembler for an early microprocessor (long since defunct). That was a big jump in complexity.
Yes, Eclipse can be slow especially if you load it all into one install. If you take (for example) WebSphere Message Broker, Integration Developer and Rational App Developer and install it into one tree then it takes forever to startup and/or reconfigure (-clean).
A few books (apart from the Asimov, Clark etc SF that has already been mentioned.
Surely You're Joking Mr Fenyman
The Man with No Endorphins
Although technologically quite dated, the SF novels by Fred Hoyle.
I don't know if the transcripts or videos are available in the USA but the UK) Royal Institution Christmas Lectures are great vehicles for stimulating a child's interest in Science and Engineering. They try to pose the 'What if?' question.
However much of the writing I have to do as part of my work is 'dry, technical and totally uninspiring'. (Reports, Specifications etc)
Get your children to express their imagination and be creative in their writing. SF (classical SF anyway) with a sold basis in Science and Fact can be a good platform to get kids to let their imagination run riot. Why not let them have a go at writing a screenplay for a Dr Who episode? or something similar?
I think back in total horror at the 500 word English essays I had to write in School. As I am dyslexic these were a real bind. There was no stimulation of though or any need to be creative. One time I let my imagination run riot and instead of 500 words, I produced over 5000. IT was a proper story with a beginning, middle and end. I thought it was brilliant. I got an 'F' for my efforts (it was not 500 words approx) but won the School prize for best story of the year.
I write stories even today. Mainly they are for my (and my grandkids) enjoyment. They are what can only be classed as in the Classic SF genre. I do it for relaxation and fun. I also write everything in Longhand first.
Let mee see,
1) Wobbly scenery = Bug ridden kernel
2) Dodgy Dialogue = NTSC ( Never twice the same crash )
3) ORAC = Balmer on the phone to B-G trying to find out what to do next.
All Orac can reply is 'Don't Panic' as he morphs into the HitchHikers Guide.
PDF used as a native output format by Open Office. So far Abobe have not sued over this. Just the opposite, they are promoting PDF as an implementable standard.
Now, it is not as if this was not widely known but when the Boss (Gerald Ratner) told the world that it was true then the business bombed.
So, Yes there are bad ideas in the world on Marketing.
IF (And this is a big IF) Microsoft implement this and if they do, it will be bound up in DRM/DMCA stuff then will be IMHO, a big mistake and could result in them "Doing a Ratner"
Just a thought though, Will this be implemented over all version of Windows? If this is in Server then I expect an awful lot of Business Customers will ger very nervous about this 'O/S Resident Spyware' and what sort of information it would send back to Microsoft HQ.
Finally,
What if some enterprising virus/malware writer was to spoof the server that this gets sent to? They could steal all this data and sell it to other Advertisers who have not signed up to the Microsoft Scam.
Result? Profit....
In the UK (As in other places) the same PAL encoded UHF signal can be received and decoded by both Colour & B/W TV sets. Some 80%+ of the signal is actually the B/W information. The remainder is the colour stuff. B/W TV's ignore the colour stuff obviously.
The missing lines (here in the UK) are used for vertical sync data and TELETEXT. I was involved in desiging some of the early text inserter kit back in the early 1980's.
I demo'd a CD-ROM in Cannes in Sept 1985 at a Trade Show. It was connected up to a DEC MicroVAX System and we showed installing software from the disk. We still occassionally use the very high quality Phillips drive (1X speed) to read disks that other drives just give up on.
If they succeed here then it will affect every musicican out there who writes their own songs. Why?
If the write down just TWO Notes then there will most likely be some other works of music that uses those same two notes in that sequence. If that piece of music is copyrighted then tough luck, you are in violation of the prior art's copyright which will pprobably be in violation of a previous piece of work. Repeat this back in time until the legal period of copyright has expired.
IMHO, Any TWO notes is a sequence can pretty well be regarded as a SAMPLE of a previous work. If so then it can be regarded in the strictest opinion of the law a breach of copyright.
As an alternative, think of what this could mean to journalism There you are at a press conference and you write down in shorthand, the words of the person speaking. Those words are thier copyright buy by writting them down, you have then violated that copyright. Gtanted, your copy might not me 100% accurate but shouldn't the same law apply? After all, aren't you writing down the sounds you have heard? What is the differenct between the spoke word and music? They are after all, just vibrations in the atmosphere.
Telewest alas is no more. First is got swalloed up by NTL and now is part of Virgin Media.
NTL has an awful reputation for its DSL service here in the UK. My neighbour is on NTL/Virgin. They are luck to get 250Kb dowloads in the evening.Many times their connections time out. Just recently they were without service (Cable TV, Phone and Internet) for three days. No one at the Virgin help desk could help. They just went through a prepared script which assumed that only ONE service was down. Eventually, I took over and demanded to speak to a supervisor. He was not much better. He asked if your phone is down how come you are calling me from a landline? Duh. I ran an extension cable over the fence into next door. After an hour on the phone, and apparently getting nowhere, suddenly everything started working again. Coincidence or conspiracy theory.
I get called asking me to signup with Cable quite regularly. The callers are often quite offended when I say yes, I don't mind spending more money than you want to charge. At least my service works every day without problem. If there is, then I can dialup using a toll free number until it comes back.
There seem to be a number of ISP's now doing this at peak times. Again this is probably due to the lack of capacity in their infrastructure. Now we see BT (here in the UK), AT&T(USA) and many others starting to offer IPTV. If there is one thing that is guaranteed to burn bandwidth then it is broadcasting TV this way. Other ISP's will sure follow this but win't have the kit in place to handle the traffic.
Therefore, on one hand we have ISP's promoting 'new' services and on the other limiting the amount of data they will let you receive. In the words of a UK Politician, they are most likely "Not Fit for Service"
the 68% was the PREMIUM that Microsoft paid over the closing price of the share the previous day.
For example.
Closing price = $100.00
Microsoft Price = $100.00 + $68.00 = $168.00
Microsoft has bought all the shares paying (IMHO) way over the odds for them. This (again IMHO) something the shareholders should be very suspicious about.
Companies have a statutory duty to their shareholders to operate their business properly. This especially includes their M&A activity. Paying a premium of say 10% is usually as high as you can go before shareholders start asking awkward questions. A premium of 68% is way beyond that level. It is the sort of level that could get shareholders angry. If enough of them sufficiently angry they can force a company to hold an EGM. It does not matter who the company is. One worth Billios or one worth a few Millions. The same rules apply to any company with publicly traded shares. A public Company has to operate according to certain rules. Shareoholders are a huge but largely silent force in the way a company operates. I wish more shareholders stood up and asked the company they own those really awkward questions that can keep a company ethically sound. It is obvious (from their past record) that Microsoft's owners don't really care about how the company operates. In view of the share performance of Microsoft(public record) over the past 3-5 years I think they should do so and with a big degree of urgency.
If I were an analyst (I'm not so don't take this as any form of informed or authorised advice whatsoever) I would not give Microsoft anything but a SELL rating. Naturally you might have other views and opinions. For every seller there has to be a buyer. I would also rate Novell as a Sell but that is another long and complicated saga that has been discussed to death here and in other forums.
IMHO is that since Google bought Doubleclick(Yuk) they have been lookin at getting slice of the Online Advertising Market. However (Dons invertment managers hat) to pay a premium of 68% over yesterday's close for each shae is just plain crazy. Ok, I know that there are billions of dollars in cash sitting in the Bank of Microsoft but really... If I were a Microsoft shareholder (and thankfully, I'm not) I would be looking for some detailed explanations as to why the paid so much over the odds for this business. Its not as if they were in a bidding war (or were they?)
68% is just too heavy a premium to pay.
This has all the signs of panic.
Balmer wants to buy up an Ad company before Google buys them all. but 68%, Really. this is really bad economics and seems like we have returned to the Dot.Com Bubble days.
Yeah,
And it all goes back to M$ wanting to control exactly what I can or can't run on my PC. All it needs is for Microsoft to let the small app vendors register their apps and then Windows can chack to see it the app you are trying to install is listed and has something like an MD5SUM on the main executable that matches that held in the M$ Database. OR Let me set myself up as the Ugber Geek/SuperUser/Smart Alec who knows all and then as long as I am installing from this account then it bypasses these checks. This 'special' account would not be available on most home user versions of Vista but O/S's like Server 2003 Small Business Server? How many non uber geek types will be installing this on their desktop systems?
Their comes a point when the sort of so called security enhancememnts that get put into an O/S are self defeating. People will switch them off just to be able to use the syatem in a realistic way. This does not enhance the overall security of the system.
I agree that M$ does need to improce the OOTB security of the basic/agerage person that installs/uses Vists but there are times when this is just to intrusive into the use of a system such as a server. Let me install stuff and then let me run some scans/checks on the stuff I have installed. If this detects some trojan/visrus/whatever then isolate the offending stuff. Then I can make an informed decision about the stuff it has QT'd. Please M$ let me decide what I want to run or not especially when it comes to installing stuff on Server O/S's
From my albeit limited experience with Vista my opinion is that many of the standard set of application that I ALWAYS INSTALL (you know the sort of thing, the sort of app that you take with you everywhere) is going to be a replication of the old problems we had with DLL Hell back in the old days. This sort of problem even exhibits itself on Server 2003 SBS. For example, it regards Hypersnap 6 as a threat to OS security. I have to specifivally allow it to run. Duh, I'm installing the frigging thing so naturally, I want it to run. Note, that Plain Server 2003 does not regard this application as a threat. The ability of this sort of application to run on the various versions of Vista is going to be a royal pain in the arse of many small application vendors. Microsoft has (IMHO) deliberately made their life hell and actually (Again IMHO) threatens their existance. And its all in the name of security. This all reminds me of the late, great Kenny Everett (From the UK) and his catchphrase "In the Best Possible Taste" I am sure there are many small application makers out there who are really struggling to get the mess of Vista Security sorted out. I guess these guys are too small to even register on M$ radar but I try to support them when they have the sort of app I use regularly.
This is not an AprilFools joke. Jobs is in London and an announcement is due at 14:00BST today. Quite what will be said remains a matter of speculation.
Texas is a great band from Scotland. Amy Winehouse is a singer from the UK So yeah to many people from the USA, they suck because of NIH syndrome.
The Who! They probably are overrated now (since Keith Moon popped his clogs) but when I first saw them in 1967 at the London Roundhouse WOW. Their stage show was brilliant.
Take a listen to "Live at Leeds" recorded 30 years ago last month and you might get some idea about how good they were on stage.
Slashdot Mirror
Then /. would automatically become useless.
./2 would arise from he ashes like the mythical Phoenix and normal service would be resumed.
any reference to
M$
Chairs
Balmer
Monopoly
would automatically become -5
M$ zealots(sorry employees) would moderate everything else to death. Any article that didn't praise the Lord God Windows or their divine beings Balmer & Gates would be pulled and any mention of Linux would be marked as a troll. If you even had the temerity to mention OS/X or any other Apple product your account would be disabled forthwith.
5 days after M$ took ownership,
Why on earth didn't you install Ubuntu on the MacBook if you were so fed up with OS/X
From my experience, OS/X is about the easiest OS to configure especially with 10.5 but hey, everyone is different ok.
As regards printers, I was a a customer the other day and had to print some stuff for him. I just pointed the MAc at the IP Address and OS/X discovered the priner, its type and setup the drivers. no reboots, manual configurations etc. It even told me that the tone was getting low. The customer (a windows shop) was most impressed.
Then I booted a Fedora 8 VM on the MAC and it found the printer and sorted out the driver. No reboots. Customer was even more impressed.
More and more people I know are switching from Windows to OS/X. Vista is more like a foggy day on the Dogger Bank compared to OS/X. Linux is getting there but it just needs a little more time.
22ft of Shelf space. All the API's were fully documented and it included proper examples (not like 'man' pages...)
The source was also on Microfiche as the poster said. There was even a part number in the price book where you could (for lots of $$$$) buy the sources on MagTape.
However,
The 'Open' in Open VMS Came from the inclusion of a full POSIX Interface & API into VMS.
Those were the days...
I used to work for them and wrote the TSU05 Magtape driver. (well, modded the TS11 driver and added code to do 100 inches/sec )
I see that the poster was doing so as an AC. I do also understand that there are some times when posting like this is required. Comments like this should not be done as an AC. It could be taken as 'Trolling'
Just to clear up any misunderstanding, here is the final paragraph from the boss of JBoss in response to the accusations.
"... As a company we are growing rapidly to meet the expert professional services needs of our customers and partners. We want to be role models for open source developers around the world. To do so, we must hold ourselves to a higher standard. Our visibility and success puts our customers and partners in a situation where you expect and demand that employees of JBoss Inc. hold themselves to that higher standard. Let's put the professional back in professional open source. 'Astroturfing' is hereby banned at JBoss, starting with me."
IMHO, if other CEO's took this line then the blogging world would be a better place.
Disclaimer:
I do not use or have never knowingly used any JBOSS product nor do I work for any JBOSS/RH related company.
Eh? Sony dose not have a cellphone? What planet are you from? Zune?
why don't you pop over to
http://www.sonyericsson.com/spg.jsp?cc=global&lc=en&ver=4001&template=pg1&zone=pg
And quite possibly you may at some time in the future, change your mind...
(Sorry if I misunderstood the patent but IANAL)
/S
IANAPL
I am no a Patent Lawyer.
We can't go around giving all Lawyer Critter a bad name can we?
In addition to your two points I would add
3) Lots of Companies (ie Not IBM) are writing plugins for Eclipse AND/OR basing their product on the Eclipse framework.
doing the last part of the above actually saves them a huge amount of time and money in bringing a product to market.
I was taking part in the Software Freedom day last weekend and one of the visitors to out stand was a CS student. He was writing Eclipse an plug-in as part of his course. This is far more useful than the sort of silly prog I was made to write when I was a student until I got into my final year when I wrote a cross assembler for an early microprocessor (long since defunct). That was a big jump in complexity.
Yes, Eclipse can be slow especially if you load it all into one install. If you take (for example) WebSphere Message Broker, Integration Developer and Rational App Developer and install it into one tree then it takes forever to startup and/or reconfigure (-clean).
5 months is not a reasonable lifetime for the Laptop. If it were, then the retailer would only sell you a warranty for that period.
/S
As they plainly don't then no court in the land will side with PC World on this.
Did they try to sell you an extended warranty at the till on the way out?
If they did then they just lost any argument in this area.
What utter bovine excrement. Please give reasons (based upon fact that is) for your statement.
A few books (apart from the Asimov, Clark etc SF that has already been mentioned.
Surely You're Joking Mr Fenyman
The Man with No Endorphins
Although technologically quite dated, the SF novels by Fred Hoyle.
I don't know if the transcripts or videos are available in the USA but the UK) Royal Institution Christmas Lectures are great vehicles for stimulating a child's interest in Science and Engineering.
They try to pose the 'What if?' question.
However much of the writing I have to do as part of my work is 'dry, technical and totally uninspiring'. (Reports, Specifications etc)
Get your children to express their imagination and be creative in their writing. SF (classical SF anyway) with a sold basis in Science and Fact can be a good platform to get kids to let their imagination run riot.
Why not let them have a go at writing a screenplay for a Dr Who episode? or something similar?
I think back in total horror at the 500 word English essays I had to write in School. As I am dyslexic these were a real bind. There was no stimulation of though or any need to be creative. One time I let my imagination run riot and instead of 500 words, I produced over 5000. IT was a proper story with a beginning, middle and end. I thought it was brilliant. I got an 'F' for my efforts (it was not 500 words approx) but won the School prize for best story of the year.
I write stories even today. Mainly they are for my (and my grandkids) enjoyment. They are what can only be classed as in the Classic SF genre. I do it for relaxation and fun. I also write everything in Longhand first.
Good Luck in your quest
Its (IMHO) NOT named after Seven of Nine.
How about Balmers Seven (parody on Blakes-7)
Let mee see,
1) Wobbly scenery = Bug ridden kernel
2) Dodgy Dialogue = NTSC ( Never twice the same crash )
3) ORAC = Balmer on the phone to B-G trying to find out what to do next.
All Orac can reply is 'Don't Panic' as he morphs into the HitchHikers Guide.
PDF is an ISO Standard.
http://www.adobe.com/products/acrobat/standards.ht ml/
And here where thay are woring with ISO on PDF V1.7 and ISO 32000 http://www.adobe.com/products/acrobat/adobepdf.htm l/
PDF used as a native output format by Open Office. So far Abobe have not sued over this. Just the opposite, they are promoting PDF as an implementable standard.
If you go to here http://partners.adobe.com/public/developer/pdf/top ic.html/ you will see that the specification is freely available as is a SDK.
Does this make Adobe sound like Microsoft and especially their attitude to ODF? I think not.
Disclaimer: I don't work for Adobe and think that in some areas their pricing and licensing policy s**ks but here, credit where credit is due.
Check out what happened to Ratners (UK) then thie Boss said that they sold Crap Products. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Signet_Group/
Now, it is not as if this was not widely known but when the Boss (Gerald Ratner) told the world that it was true then the business bombed.
So, Yes there are bad ideas in the world on Marketing.
IF (And this is a big IF) Microsoft implement this and if they do, it will be bound up in DRM/DMCA stuff then will be IMHO, a big mistake and could result in them "Doing a Ratner" Just a thought though, Will this be implemented over all version of Windows? If this is in Server then I expect an awful lot of Business Customers will ger very nervous about this 'O/S Resident Spyware' and what sort of information it would send back to Microsoft HQ. Finally, What if some enterprising virus/malware writer was to spoof the server that this gets sent to? They could steal all this data and sell it to other Advertisers who have not signed up to the Microsoft Scam. Result? Profit....
The last part of your answer is incorrect.
In the UK (As in other places) the same PAL encoded UHF signal can be received and decoded by both Colour & B/W TV sets.
Some 80%+ of the signal is actually the B/W information. The remainder is the colour stuff.
B/W TV's ignore the colour stuff obviously.
The missing lines (here in the UK) are used for vertical sync data and TELETEXT. I was involved in desiging some of the early text inserter kit back in the early 1980's.
I demo'd a CD-ROM in Cannes in Sept 1985 at a Trade Show. It was connected up to a DEC MicroVAX System and we showed installing software from the disk.
We still occassionally use the very high quality Phillips drive (1X speed) to read disks that other drives just give up on.
If they succeed here then it will affect every musicican out there who writes their own songs.
Why?
If the write down just TWO Notes then there will most likely be some other works of music that uses those same two notes in that sequence. If that piece of music is copyrighted then tough luck, you are in violation of the prior art's copyright which will pprobably be in violation of a previous piece of work. Repeat this back in time until the legal period of copyright has expired.
IMHO, Any TWO notes is a sequence can pretty well be regarded as a SAMPLE of a previous work. If so then it can be regarded in the strictest opinion of the law a breach of copyright.
As an alternative, think of what this could mean to journalism
There you are at a press conference and you write down in shorthand, the words of the person speaking. Those words are thier copyright buy by writting them down, you have then violated that copyright. Gtanted, your copy might not me 100% accurate but shouldn't the same law apply?
After all, aren't you writing down the sounds you have heard? What is the differenct between the spoke word and music? They are after all, just vibrations in the atmosphere.
IANAL etc
Telewest alas is no more.
First is got swalloed up by NTL and now is part of Virgin Media.
NTL has an awful reputation for its DSL service here in the UK. My neighbour is on NTL/Virgin. They are luck to get 250Kb dowloads in the evening.Many times their connections time out. Just recently they were without service (Cable TV, Phone and Internet) for three days. No one at the Virgin help desk could help. They just went through a prepared script which assumed that only ONE service was down.
Eventually, I took over and demanded to speak to a supervisor. He was not much better. He asked if your phone is down how come you are calling me from a landline?
Duh. I ran an extension cable over the fence into next door.
After an hour on the phone, and apparently getting nowhere, suddenly everything started working again. Coincidence or conspiracy theory.
I get called asking me to signup with Cable quite regularly. The callers are often quite offended when I say yes, I don't mind spending more money than you want to charge. At least my service works every day without problem. If there is, then I can dialup using a toll free number until it comes back.
There seem to be a number of ISP's now doing this at peak times. Again this is probably due to the lack of capacity in their infrastructure.
Now we see BT (here in the UK), AT&T(USA) and many others starting to offer IPTV. If there is one thing that is guaranteed to burn bandwidth then it is broadcasting TV this way. Other ISP's will sure follow this but win't have the kit in place to handle the traffic.
Therefore, on one hand we have ISP's promoting 'new' services and on the other limiting the amount of data they will let you receive.
In the words of a UK Politician, they are most likely "Not Fit for Service"
Bah Humbug
Just to be clear,
the 68% was the PREMIUM that Microsoft paid over the closing price of the share the previous day.
For example.
Closing price = $100.00
Microsoft Price = $100.00 + $68.00 = $168.00
Microsoft has bought all the shares paying (IMHO) way over the odds for them. This (again IMHO) something the shareholders should be very suspicious about.
Ok?
Companies have a statutory duty to their shareholders to operate their business properly.
This especially includes their M&A activity.
Paying a premium of say 10% is usually as high as you can go before shareholders start asking awkward questions.
A premium of 68% is way beyond that level.
It is the sort of level that could get shareholders angry. If enough of them sufficiently angry they can force a company to hold an EGM.
It does not matter who the company is. One worth Billios or one worth a few Millions. The same rules apply to any company with publicly traded shares.
A public Company has to operate according to certain rules. Shareoholders are a huge but largely silent force in the way a company operates. I wish more shareholders stood up and asked the company they own those really awkward questions that can keep a company ethically sound. It is obvious (from their past record) that Microsoft's owners don't really care about how the company operates. In view of the share performance of Microsoft(public record) over the past 3-5 years I think they should do so and with a big degree of urgency.
If I were an analyst (I'm not so don't take this as any form of informed or authorised advice whatsoever) I would not give Microsoft anything but a SELL rating. Naturally you might have other views and opinions. For every seller there has to be a buyer.
I would also rate Novell as a Sell but that is another long and complicated saga that has been discussed to death here and in other forums.
But I think this is a sign of Microsoft Panicing.
IMHO is that since Google bought Doubleclick(Yuk) they have been lookin at getting slice of the Online Advertising Market.
However (Dons invertment managers hat) to pay a premium of 68% over yesterday's close for each shae is just plain crazy.
Ok, I know that there are billions of dollars in cash sitting in the Bank of Microsoft but really...
If I were a Microsoft shareholder (and thankfully, I'm not) I would be looking for some detailed explanations as to why the paid so much over the odds for this business. Its not as if they were in a bidding war (or were they?)
68% is just too heavy a premium to pay.
This has all the signs of panic.
Balmer wants to buy up an Ad company before Google buys them all. but 68%, Really. this is really bad economics and seems like we have returned to the Dot.Com Bubble days.
Google must be laughing their socks off.
Yeah,
And it all goes back to M$ wanting to control exactly what I can or can't run on my PC.
All it needs is for Microsoft to let the small app vendors register their apps and then Windows can chack to see it the app you are trying to install is listed and has something like an MD5SUM on the main executable that matches that held in the M$ Database.
OR
Let me set myself up as the Ugber Geek/SuperUser/Smart Alec who knows all and then as long as I am installing from this account then it bypasses these checks. This 'special' account would not be available on most home user versions of Vista but O/S's like Server 2003 Small Business Server? How many non uber geek types will be installing this on their desktop systems?
Their comes a point when the sort of so called security enhancememnts that get put into an O/S are self defeating. People will switch them off just to be able to use the syatem in a realistic way. This does not enhance the overall security of the system.
I agree that M$ does need to improce the OOTB security of the basic/agerage person that installs/uses Vists but there are times when this is just to intrusive into the use of a system such as a server.
Let me install stuff and then let me run some scans/checks on the stuff I have installed. If this detects some trojan/visrus/whatever then isolate the offending stuff. Then I can make an informed decision about the stuff it has QT'd. Please M$ let me decide what I want to run or not especially when it comes to installing stuff on Server O/S's
From my albeit limited experience with Vista my opinion is that many of the standard set of application that I ALWAYS INSTALL (you know the sort of thing, the sort of app that you take with you everywhere) is going to be a replication of the old problems we had with DLL Hell back in the old days.
This sort of problem even exhibits itself on Server 2003 SBS. For example, it regards Hypersnap 6 as a threat to OS security. I have to specifivally allow it to run. Duh, I'm installing the frigging thing so naturally, I want it to run. Note, that Plain Server 2003 does not regard this application as a threat.
The ability of this sort of application to run on the various versions of Vista is going to be a royal pain in the arse of many small application vendors. Microsoft has (IMHO) deliberately made their life hell and actually (Again IMHO) threatens their existance. And its all in the name of security.
This all reminds me of the late, great Kenny Everett (From the UK) and his catchphrase "In the Best Possible Taste"
I am sure there are many small application makers out there who are really struggling to get the mess of Vista Security sorted out. I guess these guys are too small to even register on M$ radar but I try to support them when they have the sort of app I use regularly.
Quote
When disc sales of under 1000 can land you on a weekly best-sellers list, you know your format is in its infancy."
End Quote
OR, the format is in its death throws.
This is not an AprilFools joke.
Jobs is in London and an announcement is due at 14:00BST today.
Quite what will be said remains a matter of speculation.
Texas is a great band from Scotland.
Amy Winehouse is a singer from the UK
So yeah to many people from the USA, they suck because of NIH syndrome.
The Who!
They probably are overrated now (since Keith Moon popped his clogs) but when I first saw them in 1967 at the London Roundhouse WOW.
Their stage show was brilliant.
Take a listen to "Live at Leeds" recorded 30 years ago last month and you might get some idea about how good they were on stage.