Conversely, discounting the majority of scientific finding because it does not match what a particular group wants does not mean they are right. It does however mean that they have to provide better models then the majority.
Put another way, in science, the majority usually IS right, and there is a well established method for showing otherwise. Thus using majority opinion as an indicator of correctness, while not infallible, is generally pretty good. If nothing else the probability of 3% allowing political belief to influence their conclusions is greater then 97% doing so.
TFA is not talking about majority opinion. It's talking about the majority of published papers. The two are not necessarily the same thing.
Also note that TFA surveyed 1200 authors of the paper to see how their views related to what they published, so it is no surprise the authors thought the same as what they published.
*Hiding* in semantics? Contradiction of your understanding of something by means of explicit definition and clarification is *hiding*?
97% of all published science bolsters a specific theory. How exactly are you missing the fact that this makes it the best and strongest proof?
From the very fact that it doesn't. It just means that 97% of papers are making the same assumption, and 3% are not.
It's either:
1. It's settled
2. There's an overwhelming majority wanting it to be settled a certain way and only publishing papers making that assumption.
#1 is only done through absolute proof that the assumption (that it is man-made) is accurate; otherwise it's #2. And there is by no means absolute proof that the assumption is accurate.
I wasn't aware that OIN was patenting anything, rather that they were just a group that you could join and donate existing patents to or draw from in order to protect yourself when sued over patents - e.g. a patent pool for self defense. Members were required to not sue each other over any patents in the pool. Or did I miss something?
The day Steve Jobs stood in front of a room and introduced the Iphone EVERYONE knew this was a game changer. "Today we're going to introduce a new iPod, a phone, and world class web device" As he repeated that line the graphics on the screen merged and the room realized the leaks about three new products were instead one new device. It was a hell of a mis-direction. It wasn't "the mother of all demos" but it was a close second.
In that way, the iPhone was a lot like the iPod.
The original iPhone was an iPod Touch enhanced with the 3G network and a camera. My wife was looking at getting one but we didn't want the data network. My cousin (an Apple employee at the time) suggested the iPod Touch instead, and then use WiFi+Skype for calls. Now she's looking at an iPad to get the camera (for video calls); but she's been otherwise very happy with her iPod Touch.
In Battlestar Galactica, the humans are facing the Cylons technologically superior force with advanced cyberweaponry.
Doesn't that make us (the USA) the Cylons? Sure China is a threat, but I haven't heard of any damage from any Chinese 'attack.' I have, however, heard of Stuxnet, which had real economic, political and technological consequences.
I think our society mirrors the society of caprica prior the first cylon war. We might not have jump drives or VR that is as "real" but we are working on fixed wing drones that can kill without human intervention. Scary stuff. The UN is recommending a ban on autonomous drones with lethal weapons.
A ban that will never happen as long as the US or at least one other country on the Security Council think that autonomous drones with lethal capabilities are useful. (Hint: It only takes one Security Council member to veto nearly anything in the UN, especially where weapons are concerned.)
I would agree with you, but sometimes the sum of the pieces is greater than the total. I.e. you can test widget/process A for all manner of failures and B, C, D as well. But testing ALL of them for simultaneous failures simply isn't possible. And while I also agree that it won't 'stop' the military, it will significantly degrade it's effectiveness.
Even complete failured it trained of equipment is trained for. The military is taught not to rely on equipment to get the job done. Multiple failures are expected, and can easily happen in any combat situation.
Exactly. If they took down our networks we would... not care and keep working?
People have no idea how little actual military stuff is actually networked.
This is less and less true every year. Without networking, forget about using Predator or Reaper drones, for one thing. Forget about chain of command as well, forget about intelligence...moving in either direction. Most importantly, forget about logistics too.
True, the drones and various functions would be disabled. However, the US Military is by design able to function without access to the chain of command - one thing that has been one of our greatest strengths throughout history.
So losing the network will have some issues, but will not cripple the US Military in any fashion.
Only works if they all run Windows, and the backup software from the phone to laptop to server runs the software taken from the phone, or the process of backuping up the phone (and subsequently the server) can trigger an exploit in the host OS to do so. In a heterogenous environment - e.g. ARM devices to x86 devices as is nearly all Android and all iOS devices - that would be very, very hard to do. In a homogenous environment - e.g. Windows Phone, Windows OS, - it would have some tricks, but it would be within reason of possibilty.
Actually it could be much simpler than that. Supposed it wipes your phone, but leaves a bit of code on the phone so the next time you go to sync, it checks itself and if the flag was set to wipe the phone, it then wipes the synced files or hard drive instead. There is already a product that does exactly that on the market.
Then it wouldn't have been a wipe, and it'd be in violation of their own policy and the agreement.
The wipes work by wiping out everything on the device except the base operating system. All data, settings, etc are wiped, the drive formatted. It's back to factory state.
Still, a company could have quite the legal risk if they did that...so it wouldn't be worth it to most companies for that reason alone. The company could, for instance, be in violation of the CFAA, among other things, for doing that. It would have similar consequences to the HP hacking scandal a few years back.
They wouldn't have any legal risk if you signed an agreement that allowed them to do so. Could be in your employment papers, or employee manual or any number of other places that if you didn't read the whole thing carefully, you wouldn't realize what you were signing away.
An agreement only suffices for the activity that was agreed on, and can only operate within the bounds of the law. It would not allow them to insert software to take over your personal computers when you synchronize a BYOD device with your home computer or anything else. If an agreement is un-lawful, then it is void under the law.
So yes, be careful what you sign; but whatever you sign still has to be within the boundaries of the law. If you sign something saying you will murder someone, then it is a non-lawful agreement (since murder is illegal) and thus you are not bound to it by the law.
Unless you think your company is too stupid to think that you might do this, what makes you think they haven't taken measures that included in your backups is the ability to wipe those same backups from where ever you have copied them?
What makes you think they have access to my personal laptop to do any such thing?
You said you backed up your phone to your personal laptop. If they have access to your phone, they have access to what was copied to your personal laptop because they could have installed anything on your phone that would have been copied over. Depending on how you backed up your phone, you could have a nice little trojan sitting there just waiting and listening and the next time you back up your phone if it doesn't have the proper response it automatically wipes the hard drive it is on.
Basically, if your company has control of your phone and you sync your phone to your computer, your company can put whatever they want on your computer.
Only works if they all run Windows, and the backup software from the phone to laptop to server runs the software taken from the phone, or the process of backuping up the phone (and subsequently the server) can trigger an exploit in the host OS to do so. In a heterogenous environment - e.g. ARM devices to x86 devices as is nearly all Android and all iOS devices - that would be very, very hard to do. In a homogenous environment - e.g. Windows Phone, Windows OS, - it would have some tricks, but it would be within reason of possibilty.
Still, a company could have quite the legal risk if they did that...so it wouldn't be worth it to most companies for that reason alone. The company could, for instance, be in violation of the CFAA, among other things, for doing that. It would have similar consequences to the HP hacking scandal a few years back.
One product that we looked at (but didn't implement) allowed not only monitoring of call logs but copied all text and MMS messages to or from the device up to the server for archiving, something I viewed as far too invasive for BYOD. Even if it was deleted immediately from the device, the software grabbed it and copied it up (or archived it for copying if data wasn't available). But with companies clambering over each other for features, I'm sure it wasn't long before others added it to their own lists
Companies will generally be interested in such a feature to protect themselves against e-Discovery requests, your personal information be damned. Just wait until someone has a BYOD and is accused of a crime personally, and the prosecution serves an e-Discovery for the employees information to their employer...
You left out houses made of "sticks" [there were three little pigs], but otherwise, your analysis is spot-on! But even if they're immune from being blown down, I don't think they'd do a good job of stopping the wolf from getting in.
.
Wait, I retract that. If the light is of a high enough intensity, it'd be life a force-field with enough power to burn or vaporize or plasma-ize anything that tries to come in contact with it. Yes, this mysterious 4th pigs "House of Light" would be impervious to the wolf!
What you don't know is that aliens are all around us and that stars are really just what you described the mysterious fourth pigs house as being...just with aliens inside.
The reason production goes down is because the remaining oil gets more and more difficult to extract. Costly both financially and in terms of energy. And if it cost > 1 joule of energy to extract oil that gives 1 joule, it's not worth it.
And yet here we are using Ethanol that has those exact same properties...
A man walks into a bar and sits down. A woman walks up to him and starts talking. He says "Would you sleep with me for $1 million?". "Sure", she replies. "How about $10,000?", he counters. "What do you think I am, a hooker?", she retorts. He responds, "We've already established that. Now we're just negotiating."
P.S. I will admit that I might have gotten the second number wrong.
Because Aereo also allows time shifting the recording. So I think the original author has a valid point. So lets say I have the array of N antennas, and I pick up a song played by a public station. Do I now have N performances of the song that I can time shift out for free?
Maybe the quality isn't so great so I explicitly create a High Quality Audio radio station (as was suggested) and I pay the fees (or don't depending on the size/law) for a single broadcast (which again are picked up by my antenna array) Do I again have N performances of the song available? At this point if you are creating your own radio station, you probably don't even need to time shift.
It has been policy and (I believe law) that anything transmitted OTA for Radio and TV since its inception is considered a public broadcast when done by the licensed stataions. So what Aero is doing for TV could equally be done for Radio. And the time-shifting argument doesn't apply as VCR/DVR issues have already been resolved and its ultimately no different.
The result may be that more will leave the public OTA TV and Radio services - whether groups like ABC, CBS, FOX, etc want to take their media to regulated technologies only (e.g. Cable, Internet, etc.) where they have more control and fewer requirements, or whether groups like Disney, NASCAR, NFL, etc will refuse to license their stuff to the OTA service providers in favor of doing to so to service providers on controlled mediums - is yet to be seen. But that is the only remedy to content producers - changing whom the license their works to so that it never goes OTA in the public spectrums to start with. (E.g. Sat-TV and Sat-Radio don't have those requirements as they are not part of the public OTA spectrums.)
You mean the minimum wage that sets the poverty level? Raising it only raises the poverty level. It does nothing for actual wealth since real dollar value drops as it goes up. Due to minimum wage and inflation, how we think of a dollar now is how the average citizen thought of a penny 100 years ago.
But it's not the same MS Office that is on Windows.
So the point you're trying to make is that platform-specific software is specific to the platform for which it was written? And actually it's pretty naive to think they would re-write the whole thing for Mac rather than share all the core code.
They a generally shared code-base for the same programs. However, Outlook is not availbale on Mac, and its replacement is not available on Windows. In the end, MS Office for Mac != MS Office for Windows.
The program sets and features are different.
Really? As far as the major components of office go and the features they have it seems pretty much the same to me, that's why there's interoperability between the Windows and Mac versions.
Presently, may be. However, MS Office for Mac has historically been known to not be very compatible with MS Office for Windows. Word would do things differently on Mac than Windows; etc. They may be doing better, but there's very likely still interoperability issues between the two.
...it wouldn't be hard at all to fix the company if you had a CEO with just a sliver of common sense.
It would be a lot harder than you think...mostly because there is a lot of momentum in Microsoft behind their ill business practices and their Windows-only world view. To fix the company you have to change that entire world view, which is not an easy task. Even Gates couldn't stand up and change it; though he'd have the best luck doing so of any of the old guard.
make TIFKAM completely optional and give Win 8 and Win 9 a full Win 7 desktop for those that don't want TIFKAM and that would solve the major hurdle for Windows 8
Yes, it would slow the trend away from Windows, but it would not stop it. Companies started looking at alternatives to Windows back around 2000 when Microsoft changed their Volume Licensing program in a way that benefited Microsoft but hurt their enterprise customers. They've been evaluating alterntives since. Vista gave it a big kick up, and Win8 even more so. So expect more large companies to move off of Windows entirely in the year or so; companies like IBM have already paved the way, as well as municipalities like Berlin.
take a page not from Apple but from IBM and sell services to go with the software, and either spin off or isolate mobile and entertainment from Windows and Office so that there won't be any pressure to try to sell Windows and Office where they just don't fit.
Again, you're not seeing the picture. Microsoft needs services to survive. But the company is dependent on the income from Windows and Office to operate, instead of services like Bing (Advertising), XBox Live (Games), Windows (App) Store, MSN, etc. The Windows and Office products are over the next decade become less and less important and drive less and less revenue to Microsoft. If they don't figure out how to replace that revenue, then it will eventually cause the company to (i) shrink dramatically, and (ii) impode in on itself under its own weight.
And I did come up with an analogy after thinking of it for awhile...AOL. The former head of Nullsoft talked about how AOL just killed the forward momentum of WinAmp by trying to tie everything to "the service" which was not only stupid as WinAmp users weren't gonna want nor use AOHell dialup but by trying to jam it down their throats caused them to abandon WinAmp en masse.
As a former WinAMP user (the late 1990's to 2010) - I stopped using it for one reason: I stopped using Windows and it wasn't available on any other platform. I'd still probably prefer it to Amarok. I never saw any "AOL" tie in or requirement with it.
We are seeing the same thing with MSFT, they are trying to tie their WinPhone UI to a desktop where it not only isn't wanted but likewise is running off customers en masse
They finally decided to do something different for mobile, but then instead of just doing it for mobile they pushed it on all their platforms. They still don't understand the markets, and that is as simple as it is. They live in a bubble that is Microsoft, Windows, and Office where Apple will always be viewed as a niche player and Linux will always be viewed a hobby OS, and nothing else exists.
but you have them trying to fit everything into that Windows/Office mindset
That has always been Microsoft's mindset. Gates instilled in the company the philosophy that everything must be Windows-centric, that the world must revolve around Microsoft and all else be damned. That is why you saw them fight so hard to make OOXML a standard; and fight so hard to keep ODF from becoming the new dominant standard - though they are failing there as countries outside the US are slowly adopting ODF as their official government standard file formats.
just look at how they thought bundling Office into WinRT would be a selling point whe
If you go through my posts and comments enough, you see me say that Microsoft being a "Windows" company is going to kill them. Going back at least 5 years ago, possibly more. Back then, people often made fun of me.
I fully agree it's what is going to kill them.
It is Microsoft's worse trait, because it is what has made them the most money.
I don't agree it's their worst trait though. Their worst trait is part of what drives them to be a "Windows" only company - and that is the insistence that everything be part of their ecosystem. That was true even under DOS before they had Windows. They have a severe case of NIH syndrome; even to the point of partnering with people only to learn about their partner's product enough to replicate it in-house and eventually put their partner out of business if they couldn't fight back. The "Windows" only view is derived from that, and is something that Gates instilled in the company, which is why I have said for years (more than 5 years) that for Microsoft to turn around everyone that was influenced by Gates at the company - everyone that was there when Gates was still in charge - must go - that you have to turn over the top 7 of 15 layers of the company entirely.
Office Web may be doable on Android/iOS. Native versions may be on the road, but not before 2014. And since Microsoft doesn't have a viable OS for Mobile market (RT is DOA, and Win 8 isn't "windows" at all), Microsoft is getting further behind every moment.
Agreed.
If i were MS CEO, I'd put everything I had into getting Office out for Android and iOS, (and linux)., I'd give them to end of 2013 for public beta. By saying Office is "Windows only" (Mac exception of course), they have tied their bread and butter to a dying OS. Problem is, Balmer can't inspire anyone any more. The Flying Chair thing only works once.
Problem is that Ballmer is still under Gates (Chairman of the Board of Directors, IIRC; at very least on the BoD) and thereby still required to present the "Windows only" world that Gates envisioned and is at the core of Microsoft. There are also too many people at Microsoft that think that way still - having grown up under Gates and Ballmer. You have to get rid of each and every one of them to make a turn around possible.
They aren't worthless, someone is willing to pay for them, just not the $399 for Office that MS thinks it is worth. At $25, it is worth it to someone. Problem is, try to get Office for Android...
They are "worthless" on non-Windows platforms as they are non-existent. They may be "worth less" on Windows platforms; but that was not the argument being made.
In 2002 MicroSoft's gross profits were $24 billion. In 2012 they were $59 billion. Someone somewhere is doing something right.
Investors don't care about gross profits (difference between sale price and cost to make it). They care about net profits (difference between expenses and revenues). I could have gross profits of $100 Trillion, but if my net profits are only $1 then it the company is not doing well financially despite selling high margin products.
For comparison:
2002: Microsoft had net profit of $7.83 Billion USD. source
2012: Microsoft had net profit of $16.978 Billion USD. source
Now comparing the numbers - 24/7.83 = 3.065; 59/16.978 = 3.475. So Microsoft is doing only marginly better in now than it was a decade ago.
The reason VL is up is that they raised prices pretty much across the board, about 8% above inflation from our last renewal. It won't take too many renewals like that before companies start to seriously look at alternatives.
That and all the vendors keep moving people over to the VLs.
Seriously...we renewed our MSDN subscription in 2012, and the vendor put it under the VL program. We ordered a copy of Windows Server 2012 for a computer we're shipping to a client, and the vendor put it under the VL program - for a SINGLE license. They even admitted that it would have been cheaper to give me a single copy with DVD but it was faster to provide the VL when I pressed them after the fact. And we seriously do not do enough business to justify using the VL programs.
They cannot do so legally. When a company is found to be inviolation of Antitrust laws, the CEO who precided is also required to be removed from the position and not allowed to a member of the company officers for any company ever again. Gates cannot legally be a corporate officer for any company. His Chairmanship of the Board of Directors for Microsoft is about the most he can do.
Slashdot Mirror
Conversely, discounting the majority of scientific finding because it does not match what a particular group wants does not mean they are right. It does however mean that they have to provide better models then the majority. Put another way, in science, the majority usually IS right, and there is a well established method for showing otherwise. Thus using majority opinion as an indicator of correctness, while not infallible, is generally pretty good. If nothing else the probability of 3% allowing political belief to influence their conclusions is greater then 97% doing so.
TFA is not talking about majority opinion. It's talking about the majority of published papers. The two are not necessarily the same thing. Also note that TFA surveyed 1200 authors of the paper to see how their views related to what they published, so it is no surprise the authors thought the same as what they published.
*Hiding* in semantics? Contradiction of your understanding of something by means of explicit definition and clarification is *hiding*?
97% of all published science bolsters a specific theory. How exactly are you missing the fact that this makes it the best and strongest proof?
From the very fact that it doesn't. It just means that 97% of papers are making the same assumption, and 3% are not.
It's either:
1. It's settled
2. There's an overwhelming majority wanting it to be settled a certain way and only publishing papers making that assumption.
#1 is only done through absolute proof that the assumption (that it is man-made) is accurate; otherwise it's #2. And there is by no means absolute proof that the assumption is accurate.
I wasn't aware that OIN was patenting anything, rather that they were just a group that you could join and donate existing patents to or draw from in order to protect yourself when sued over patents - e.g. a patent pool for self defense. Members were required to not sue each other over any patents in the pool. Or did I miss something?
In that way, the iPhone was a lot like the iPod.
The original iPhone was an iPod Touch enhanced with the 3G network and a camera. My wife was looking at getting one but we didn't want the data network. My cousin (an Apple employee at the time) suggested the iPod Touch instead, and then use WiFi+Skype for calls. Now she's looking at an iPad to get the camera (for video calls); but she's been otherwise very happy with her iPod Touch.
In Battlestar Galactica, the humans are facing the Cylons technologically superior force with advanced cyberweaponry. Doesn't that make us (the USA) the Cylons? Sure China is a threat, but I haven't heard of any damage from any Chinese 'attack.' I have, however, heard of Stuxnet, which had real economic, political and technological consequences.
I think our society mirrors the society of caprica prior the first cylon war. We might not have jump drives or VR that is as "real" but we are working on fixed wing drones that can kill without human intervention. Scary stuff. The UN is recommending a ban on autonomous drones with lethal weapons.
A ban that will never happen as long as the US or at least one other country on the Security Council think that autonomous drones with lethal capabilities are useful. (Hint: It only takes one Security Council member to veto nearly anything in the UN, especially where weapons are concerned.)
I would agree with you, but sometimes the sum of the pieces is greater than the total. I.e. you can test widget/process A for all manner of failures and B, C, D as well. But testing ALL of them for simultaneous failures simply isn't possible. And while I also agree that it won't 'stop' the military, it will significantly degrade it's effectiveness.
Even complete failured it trained of equipment is trained for. The military is taught not to rely on equipment to get the job done. Multiple failures are expected, and can easily happen in any combat situation.
Exactly. If they took down our networks we would... not care and keep working?
People have no idea how little actual military stuff is actually networked.
This is less and less true every year. Without networking, forget about using Predator or Reaper drones, for one thing. Forget about chain of command as well, forget about intelligence...moving in either direction. Most importantly, forget about logistics too.
True, the drones and various functions would be disabled. However, the US Military is by design able to function without access to the chain of command - one thing that has been one of our greatest strengths throughout history.
So losing the network will have some issues, but will not cripple the US Military in any fashion.
Only works if they all run Windows, and the backup software from the phone to laptop to server runs the software taken from the phone, or the process of backuping up the phone (and subsequently the server) can trigger an exploit in the host OS to do so. In a heterogenous environment - e.g. ARM devices to x86 devices as is nearly all Android and all iOS devices - that would be very, very hard to do. In a homogenous environment - e.g. Windows Phone, Windows OS, - it would have some tricks, but it would be within reason of possibilty.
Actually it could be much simpler than that. Supposed it wipes your phone, but leaves a bit of code on the phone so the next time you go to sync, it checks itself and if the flag was set to wipe the phone, it then wipes the synced files or hard drive instead. There is already a product that does exactly that on the market.
Then it wouldn't have been a wipe, and it'd be in violation of their own policy and the agreement.
The wipes work by wiping out everything on the device except the base operating system. All data, settings, etc are wiped, the drive formatted. It's back to factory state.
Still, a company could have quite the legal risk if they did that...so it wouldn't be worth it to most companies for that reason alone. The company could, for instance, be in violation of the CFAA, among other things, for doing that. It would have similar consequences to the HP hacking scandal a few years back.
They wouldn't have any legal risk if you signed an agreement that allowed them to do so. Could be in your employment papers, or employee manual or any number of other places that if you didn't read the whole thing carefully, you wouldn't realize what you were signing away.
An agreement only suffices for the activity that was agreed on, and can only operate within the bounds of the law. It would not allow them to insert software to take over your personal computers when you synchronize a BYOD device with your home computer or anything else. If an agreement is un-lawful, then it is void under the law.
So yes, be careful what you sign; but whatever you sign still has to be within the boundaries of the law. If you sign something saying you will murder someone, then it is a non-lawful agreement (since murder is illegal) and thus you are not bound to it by the law.
Unless you think your company is too stupid to think that you might do this, what makes you think they haven't taken measures that included in your backups is the ability to wipe those same backups from where ever you have copied them?
What makes you think they have access to my personal laptop to do any such thing?
You said you backed up your phone to your personal laptop. If they have access to your phone, they have access to what was copied to your personal laptop because they could have installed anything on your phone that would have been copied over. Depending on how you backed up your phone, you could have a nice little trojan sitting there just waiting and listening and the next time you back up your phone if it doesn't have the proper response it automatically wipes the hard drive it is on.
Basically, if your company has control of your phone and you sync your phone to your computer, your company can put whatever they want on your computer.
Only works if they all run Windows, and the backup software from the phone to laptop to server runs the software taken from the phone, or the process of backuping up the phone (and subsequently the server) can trigger an exploit in the host OS to do so. In a heterogenous environment - e.g. ARM devices to x86 devices as is nearly all Android and all iOS devices - that would be very, very hard to do. In a homogenous environment - e.g. Windows Phone, Windows OS, - it would have some tricks, but it would be within reason of possibilty.
Still, a company could have quite the legal risk if they did that...so it wouldn't be worth it to most companies for that reason alone. The company could, for instance, be in violation of the CFAA, among other things, for doing that. It would have similar consequences to the HP hacking scandal a few years back.
One product that we looked at (but didn't implement) allowed not only monitoring of call logs but copied all text and MMS messages to or from the device up to the server for archiving, something I viewed as far too invasive for BYOD. Even if it was deleted immediately from the device, the software grabbed it and copied it up (or archived it for copying if data wasn't available). But with companies clambering over each other for features, I'm sure it wasn't long before others added it to their own lists
Companies will generally be interested in such a feature to protect themselves against e-Discovery requests, your personal information be damned. Just wait until someone has a BYOD and is accused of a crime personally, and the prosecution serves an e-Discovery for the employees information to their employer...
You left out houses made of "sticks" [there were three little pigs], but otherwise, your analysis is spot-on! But even if they're immune from being blown down, I don't think they'd do a good job of stopping the wolf from getting in. . Wait, I retract that. If the light is of a high enough intensity, it'd be life a force-field with enough power to burn or vaporize or plasma-ize anything that tries to come in contact with it. Yes, this mysterious 4th pigs "House of Light" would be impervious to the wolf!
What you don't know is that aliens are all around us and that stars are really just what you described the mysterious fourth pigs house as being...just with aliens inside.
The reason production goes down is because the remaining oil gets more and more difficult to extract. Costly both financially and in terms of energy. And if it cost > 1 joule of energy to extract oil that gives 1 joule, it's not worth it.
And yet here we are using Ethanol that has those exact same properties...
Reminds me of this joke:
A man walks into a bar and sits down. A woman walks up to him and starts talking. He says "Would you sleep with me for $1 million?". "Sure", she replies. "How about $10,000?", he counters. "What do you think I am, a hooker?", she retorts. He responds, "We've already established that. Now we're just negotiating."
P.S. I will admit that I might have gotten the second number wrong.
Because Aereo also allows time shifting the recording. So I think the original author has a valid point. So lets say I have the array of N antennas, and I pick up a song played by a public station. Do I now have N performances of the song that I can time shift out for free? Maybe the quality isn't so great so I explicitly create a High Quality Audio radio station (as was suggested) and I pay the fees (or don't depending on the size/law) for a single broadcast (which again are picked up by my antenna array) Do I again have N performances of the song available? At this point if you are creating your own radio station, you probably don't even need to time shift.
It has been policy and (I believe law) that anything transmitted OTA for Radio and TV since its inception is considered a public broadcast when done by the licensed stataions. So what Aero is doing for TV could equally be done for Radio. And the time-shifting argument doesn't apply as VCR/DVR issues have already been resolved and its ultimately no different.
The result may be that more will leave the public OTA TV and Radio services - whether groups like ABC, CBS, FOX, etc want to take their media to regulated technologies only (e.g. Cable, Internet, etc.) where they have more control and fewer requirements, or whether groups like Disney, NASCAR, NFL, etc will refuse to license their stuff to the OTA service providers in favor of doing to so to service providers on controlled mediums - is yet to be seen. But that is the only remedy to content producers - changing whom the license their works to so that it never goes OTA in the public spectrums to start with. (E.g. Sat-TV and Sat-Radio don't have those requirements as they are not part of the public OTA spectrums.)
bills intended to raise the minimum wage
You mean the minimum wage that sets the poverty level? Raising it only raises the poverty level. It does nothing for actual wealth since real dollar value drops as it goes up. Due to minimum wage and inflation, how we think of a dollar now is how the average citizen thought of a penny 100 years ago.
But it's not the same MS Office that is on Windows.
So the point you're trying to make is that platform-specific software is specific to the platform for which it was written? And actually it's pretty naive to think they would re-write the whole thing for Mac rather than share all the core code.
They a generally shared code-base for the same programs. However, Outlook is not availbale on Mac, and its replacement is not available on Windows. In the end, MS Office for Mac != MS Office for Windows.
The program sets and features are different.
Really? As far as the major components of office go and the features they have it seems pretty much the same to me, that's why there's interoperability between the Windows and Mac versions.
Presently, may be. However, MS Office for Mac has historically been known to not be very compatible with MS Office for Windows. Word would do things differently on Mac than Windows; etc. They may be doing better, but there's very likely still interoperability issues between the two.
They are "worthless" on non-Windows platforms as they are non-existent.
Yeah i totally don't run office on my mac...oh wait...
But it's not the same MS Office that is on Windows. The program sets and features are different.
...it wouldn't be hard at all to fix the company if you had a CEO with just a sliver of common sense.
It would be a lot harder than you think...mostly because there is a lot of momentum in Microsoft behind their ill business practices and their Windows-only world view. To fix the company you have to change that entire world view, which is not an easy task. Even Gates couldn't stand up and change it; though he'd have the best luck doing so of any of the old guard.
make TIFKAM completely optional and give Win 8 and Win 9 a full Win 7 desktop for those that don't want TIFKAM and that would solve the major hurdle for Windows 8
Yes, it would slow the trend away from Windows, but it would not stop it. Companies started looking at alternatives to Windows back around 2000 when Microsoft changed their Volume Licensing program in a way that benefited Microsoft but hurt their enterprise customers. They've been evaluating alterntives since. Vista gave it a big kick up, and Win8 even more so. So expect more large companies to move off of Windows entirely in the year or so; companies like IBM have already paved the way, as well as municipalities like Berlin.
take a page not from Apple but from IBM and sell services to go with the software, and either spin off or isolate mobile and entertainment from Windows and Office so that there won't be any pressure to try to sell Windows and Office where they just don't fit.
Again, you're not seeing the picture. Microsoft needs services to survive. But the company is dependent on the income from Windows and Office to operate, instead of services like Bing (Advertising), XBox Live (Games), Windows (App) Store, MSN, etc. The Windows and Office products are over the next decade become less and less important and drive less and less revenue to Microsoft. If they don't figure out how to replace that revenue, then it will eventually cause the company to (i) shrink dramatically, and (ii) impode in on itself under its own weight.
And I did come up with an analogy after thinking of it for awhile...AOL. The former head of Nullsoft talked about how AOL just killed the forward momentum of WinAmp by trying to tie everything to "the service" which was not only stupid as WinAmp users weren't gonna want nor use AOHell dialup but by trying to jam it down their throats caused them to abandon WinAmp en masse.
As a former WinAMP user (the late 1990's to 2010) - I stopped using it for one reason: I stopped using Windows and it wasn't available on any other platform. I'd still probably prefer it to Amarok. I never saw any "AOL" tie in or requirement with it.
We are seeing the same thing with MSFT, they are trying to tie their WinPhone UI to a desktop where it not only isn't wanted but likewise is running off customers en masse
They finally decided to do something different for mobile, but then instead of just doing it for mobile they pushed it on all their platforms. They still don't understand the markets, and that is as simple as it is. They live in a bubble that is Microsoft, Windows, and Office where Apple will always be viewed as a niche player and Linux will always be viewed a hobby OS, and nothing else exists.
but you have them trying to fit everything into that Windows/Office mindset
That has always been Microsoft's mindset. Gates instilled in the company the philosophy that everything must be Windows-centric, that the world must revolve around Microsoft and all else be damned. That is why you saw them fight so hard to make OOXML a standard; and fight so hard to keep ODF from becoming the new dominant standard - though they are failing there as countries outside the US are slowly adopting ODF as their official government standard file formats.
just look at how they thought bundling Office into WinRT would be a selling point whe
If you go through my posts and comments enough, you see me say that Microsoft being a "Windows" company is going to kill them. Going back at least 5 years ago, possibly more. Back then, people often made fun of me.
I fully agree it's what is going to kill them.
It is Microsoft's worse trait, because it is what has made them the most money.
I don't agree it's their worst trait though. Their worst trait is part of what drives them to be a "Windows" only company - and that is the insistence that everything be part of their ecosystem. That was true even under DOS before they had Windows. They have a severe case of NIH syndrome; even to the point of partnering with people only to learn about their partner's product enough to replicate it in-house and eventually put their partner out of business if they couldn't fight back. The "Windows" only view is derived from that, and is something that Gates instilled in the company, which is why I have said for years (more than 5 years) that for Microsoft to turn around everyone that was influenced by Gates at the company - everyone that was there when Gates was still in charge - must go - that you have to turn over the top 7 of 15 layers of the company entirely.
Office Web may be doable on Android/iOS. Native versions may be on the road, but not before 2014. And since Microsoft doesn't have a viable OS for Mobile market (RT is DOA, and Win 8 isn't "windows" at all), Microsoft is getting further behind every moment.
Agreed.
If i were MS CEO, I'd put everything I had into getting Office out for Android and iOS, (and linux)., I'd give them to end of 2013 for public beta. By saying Office is "Windows only" (Mac exception of course), they have tied their bread and butter to a dying OS. Problem is, Balmer can't inspire anyone any more. The Flying Chair thing only works once.
Problem is that Ballmer is still under Gates (Chairman of the Board of Directors, IIRC; at very least on the BoD) and thereby still required to present the "Windows only" world that Gates envisioned and is at the core of Microsoft. There are also too many people at Microsoft that think that way still - having grown up under Gates and Ballmer. You have to get rid of each and every one of them to make a turn around possible.
They aren't worthless, someone is willing to pay for them, just not the $399 for Office that MS thinks it is worth. At $25, it is worth it to someone. Problem is, try to get Office for Android ...
They are "worthless" on non-Windows platforms as they are non-existent. They may be "worth less" on Windows platforms; but that was not the argument being made.
In 2002 MicroSoft's gross profits were $24 billion. In 2012 they were $59 billion. Someone somewhere is doing something right.
Investors don't care about gross profits (difference between sale price and cost to make it). They care about net profits (difference between expenses and revenues). I could have gross profits of $100 Trillion, but if my net profits are only $1 then it the company is not doing well financially despite selling high margin products.
For comparison:
Now comparing the numbers - 24/7.83 = 3.065; 59/16.978 = 3.475. So Microsoft is doing only marginly better in now than it was a decade ago.
The reason VL is up is that they raised prices pretty much across the board, about 8% above inflation from our last renewal. It won't take too many renewals like that before companies start to seriously look at alternatives.
That and all the vendors keep moving people over to the VLs. Seriously...we renewed our MSDN subscription in 2012, and the vendor put it under the VL program. We ordered a copy of Windows Server 2012 for a computer we're shipping to a client, and the vendor put it under the VL program - for a SINGLE license. They even admitted that it would have been cheaper to give me a single copy with DVD but it was faster to provide the VL when I pressed them after the fact. And we seriously do not do enough business to justify using the VL programs.
They basically get money for every PC sold..
They get money for every Android device sold!
But we don't really know how much, and it's certainly not enough to replace the Windows+Office income they are slowly losing.
Bring back Bill Gates like Steve Jobs to Apple. :P
They cannot do so legally. When a company is found to be inviolation of Antitrust laws, the CEO who precided is also required to be removed from the position and not allowed to a member of the company officers for any company ever again. Gates cannot legally be a corporate officer for any company. His Chairmanship of the Board of Directors for Microsoft is about the most he can do.