Seems pretty risky to spend years in court for this. By the time this suit is finished, some other format may be on the market (HD-DVD, BluRay, whatever..) and the people who could afford this sort of thing will be purchasing newer technology.
Umm, considering the alternative is to go out of business, I'd say it is worth the risk. They are demanding that their DVD storage and consolidations system stops storing and consolidating DVDs. Without the feature to which the DVD consortium is objecting, the system is worthless.
I just loaded my DVD into my Jukebox... I don't need the DVD anymore, so I guess I'll go sell it on ebay or give it away..."
That's what they're afraid of, and they're probably right.?
If you RTFA you would note that they covered this. In the current storage medium, this system costs $40-$60 in hard disk space, per movie. It is cheaper to buy two DVDs. This could be a concern in the future, but don't fool yourself, that is not what this lawsuit is about. This is about a loophole that was not dreamed up by the big media companies when they went with DVD as their DRM format. The idea is to sell multiple copies of every movie for multiple locations, and multiple new players. If you can just store an exact image of a DVD on a new player, why buy another copy in DVD-purple-ray-extreme-DVD3 format in a few years? And if you can back them up, there goes all the new copies to replace worn, scratched, broken, or misplaced movies.
by moving to OSS office productivity applications (not Star Office), they are limiting themselves for the future. If they figure out that taxpayers money is being wasted in an inefficient process where the application of technology like Office 2003 would help. But that technology does not exist in the basic functionality of Openoffice, then they are stuck.
OK, so you are saying going with an open source project limits you to the functionality of that project, where as going with a commercial, closed source project does not? You have made the logical fallacy of implicit statement, implying that any functionality that would be useful or beneficial is in either both projects or only the commercial one. If you go with open source you can hire someone to add any functionality you want. If you go with closed source, you can beg the vendor to implement it, but if they don't want to you are screwed. I think for just 1 million of that 5 million, you can hire some consultants to add whatever function it is that you feel is lacking, still save millions, and help out any other government agency that is also using the software. That is a win+win+win over closed source.
Which is why in 1978, at the height of the cold war, Arab Nationalism and Hussein's military power, the Israelis unilaterally bombed an Iraqi nuclear reactor under construction.
Yes they did, but as we mentioned before, the Iraqi's did not have a nuclear missile as a deterrent. If they did, the Israelis would likely not have risked it. You seem to be missing the point. The Israelis could nuke or carpet bomb Iran, but they are not going to risk the annihilation of every person in their country to do so.
The Iranians are just too rational and also have some questionable internal loyalties among pretty much everyone under the age of 35. It's one thing to get them to go along with Hezbollah's activities in Lebanon; that's just good regional gamesmanship -- getting them to participate in something that could end Persian culture as we know it is quite another.
And you think the majority of the people will have any say in it? Think of it this way, suppose Italy had nukes. Now suppose Islam took off, and became the most popular religion in the world. Now suppose a coalition of Iran, Egypt, Turkey, and Saudi Arabia, invaded and took over Greece and France, all the while spewing rhetoric about how dangerous all those christian fanatics were. What if it was well known that most of the people in those countries thought christianity was evil. What if those countries then made a big deal about the possibility of invading Italy so that they would not be a threat to freedom.
Do you see where I am going with this? Many Iranians feel that their existence, way of life, and religion are under attack. They could easily be driven to feel desperate enough to use nukes as a threat, and from there, who knows. I don't think many Iranians would object to having nuclear missiles as a deterrent against invasion. Certainly not the ones in power right now.
If Dior put a full-page ad in New York Times encouraging people to buy Dior instead of Louis Vuitton, does that mean that the New York Times is responsible for violating the trademark, or would it be Dior?
I don't know squat about the French legal system. I do know, however, that it is legal to run an ad in the New York Times (American Jurisdiction) encouraging people to use your product over a competitor's and to mention them by name.
Trademark is not copyright. You can still publish a competitor's name, you just can't impersonate them, or use their name/logo/image/sound/etc. as if it were yours.
Previous OS updates have addressed driver issues for Unreal Tournament 2004 as well, so it's not just one game but the big games that most gamers are likely to play.
I strongly suspect the updates are for games the Apple developers like to play. Although it could just be that ID and Blizzard report bugs to Apple, whereas other game companies have not been doing so.
So they felt that by holding the region "hostage" by becoming a nuclear power, they can: One, guarantee thier own hold on power as the US and UN would dare not invade lest Seoul or Tokyo get turned into one big sheet of glass and two, demand food and supply aid to feed and maintain control of its' population.
For the most part, I agree with your analysis. The above, however, I think may be slightly erroneous. Having Nukes does not protect N. Korea from the U.S. China does that all by itself. The U.S. will not march into a country that close to China (again), with close government ties to China. We would get our butts kicked. Having nukes prevents China from marching into N. Korea, which is something the Koreans are probably just as worried about. Aside from that, nukes are a bargaining chip in negotiating aid from both China and the U.S., neither of which want a nuke going off.
Tehran would be a finely-glazed parking lot five minutes after even threatening the Israelis with a nuclear strike.
Bullshit. You are dead wrong. Israel would not fire on any country that would destroy them in retaliation. They may be hard-nosed, but they are not stupid. The same goes for China. The U.S. and U.S.S.R. made it perfectly clear to one another that any invasion would be met with nukes. For some reason neither immediately fired nukes at each other. Maybe it is because the countries were not run by suicidal morons. Neither is China or Britain or Israel.
a not so subtle reminder that anyone getting in our way should consider whether or not they're willing to trigger a nuclear holocaust.
And that is what it is all about. Do you really think Iran or N. Korea would not prefer that everyone on the planet dies, rather than their country being conquered? N. Korea is questionable. Iran is not. They already fear that we are trying to destroy their religion by taking over each country in succession, and they may well be right. They hate what the U.S. has done, fear what the U.S. might do, and would more than likely be happy to take the rest of the world with them if we try to conquer them. Their religion and politics more or less demand it. Moreover, Iranian leaders are not stupid. They know that the U.S., Britain, and China have way too much to lose. None of them will risk starting a nuclear war.
Like it or not, the possession of nukes is the best defense against invasion by the U.S. and a lot of countries feel they need that, given the imperialism of the U.S. in the last decade. Iraq was one big demonstration of what happens if you don't have nukes.
IBM is escaping the consumer and business PC market because they were losing money on it, just like everyone else except Dell. If Apple is to partner with IBM, I foresee it as being a supplier for workstations. IBM may very well start putting macs in all sorts of businesses. They work well with IBMs push towards Linux for their server offerings and will save IBM a bundle in costs, since the support for macs is notoriously cheap.
Will we ever see OS X on any of IBMs offerings? It is possible, maybe as an option along side Linux on workstations and serves. I don't see it happening soon though. I also doubt that IBM will manufacture PCs again anytime soon. The margins are too small. It is a better idea for them to let others assume the risks and let them compete for IBM deals.
Then if we could just get Apple to open up the boot rom (I believe that's what they use to make OSX only boot on genuine apple systems, correct me if I'm wrong here) specs, or stop using it all together and use something like the GNU Bios (whatever it's called).
Apple already uses an implementation of Open Firmware for it's BIOS, as does Sun, IBM, and several other players. I think the boot ROM went away when Apple moved to the G3 chips. I don't think their is anything currently stopping anyone from building a PPC machine that will run OS X except for the cost. The last project I saw to implement such a box ended up using a Apple motherboard (in violation of the sales agreement, it is supposed to be for repairs only) because it was much cheaper than any other supplier.
Basically right now, no one else makes as cheap of PPC machines as Apple. If some company were to do so, I imagine Apple would lock them out with some hardware mechanism.
While many will say it's common knowledge that North Korea had nuclear weapons, this is a big deal in that they admitted it.
Heh, you mean they admitted it, again. This is old news. N. Korea is basically strong arming the U.S. for more aid. The question is do we believe they are desperate enough to do something crazy. They are in rough shape and starvation is a real problem. They currently spend their money on weapons programs rather than food, since weapons programs get them money from the U.S. and China. The U.S. can't invade or nuke them without provoking a war with China. China can't invade without a nuke going off either. Strategically, the best bet is probably for the U.S. to detonate a big nuke there and try to make it look like it was one of N. Koreas. It would kill a lot of our allies as well, but I'm not sure that is problem for the current administration.
I also don't believe that posession of a nuclear weapon is a deterrent to any U.S. military action, either, since these states seldom have the means to produce more than a handful of low-yield weapons and lack the ability to deliver them outside their own theater.
North Korea most likely has delivery mechanisms that can conceivably reach the U.S. Iran probably does not, but they can reach plenty of other countries that can. Assuming Iran puts together or buys a few nukes and couples them with their existing missiles they can then make a press statement, "if we are invaded by U.S. or U.N. forces we will fire nuclear missiles at China, Europe, and Israel. " That would put a lot of pressure on the U.S. to not invade, much more so than pretty much anything short of threatening to fire nukes at the U.S. itself. It is sort of a mini nuclear assured destruction and could easily spark another world war.
This brings back the memories. When I was in high school they tried to change our school mascot. The Devils was a name hated by all the local churches. The proposal was to rename our football team to "The Yodelers." Luckily football is more important than other religions in my home town, and the proposal was crushed.
Re:No trying to troll but is safari ever better?
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Is there anything that safari does better than firefox?
Yes. Safari has a few nice features that have not been pulled into Firefox, as far as I know. The page snap-back feature is one. It simplifies backing out of a series of links, to main index page. On Slashdot, it will take you back to the main article, or the main page depending upon how it is used. It is a bit hard to explain, but it is nice. Firefox also falls down on support for system services. It supports some services, but for some reason my spell checking, grammar checking, and online dictionary services all fail to work in it. They function just fine in Safari and most other applications. I have not checked but they may work in the "Camino" Firefox fork. Aside from that, it is just a matter of preference. Firefox uses more memory per page, but seems to use less CPU time. Both are good browsers and each has pages that it renders better than the other.
Well, you are partially right. The 95% was an estimate off the top of my head, and was probably too high. 60% of profit is from computer sales. Apple also makes money from support, consumer electronics, and hardware. Let's neglect support for now. That leaves 40% to split between consumer electronics and the iPod. We know the revenue from each is close, maybe 80% of their money from hardware sales is a better estimate.
More to the point, if 60% of their money comes from selling computers, and that business goes away, then Apple goes from being profitable to dying. Can they make up that much in new software sales? Maybe. Will they bet the company on it? Not likely.
In the current Windows pre-install dominated market there is no need for boxed OS sales. I think the primary market for a boxed OSX is to current users of Windows who want a better OS for the computer they already own.
Upgrades to OS X are not very different from a customer's perspective as upgrades to a better version of Windows, one that can't run any of their existing software and has only a handful of applications available. Most people buy a new machine when they want an upgrade, and they don't even know what an OS is.
I think you would have a lot of people who would switch to OSX, if only for aesthetic reasons.
A lot of people are switching to OS X, and not just for aesthetics. What advantage does OS X on x86 have over OS X on PPC? Do you think it is the cost that is the stumbling block? It would probably be cheaper to give away hardware to thousands of users than it would to convince developers to port their applications to x86.
You assume the Windows monopoly will never be broken
No, I'm assuming that it currently exists and that MS can buy their way out of legal difficulties. If Apple makes OS X for x86, they are killing their hardware business, and betting the farm that they can break MS's monopoly. How many investors do you think would back such a risky move? If you really think a superior OS can win, why is no one running BeOS?
It is far more likely that Windows will move to PPC (again) than that Apple will move to x86. I'd love for Apple to have hardware competition for OS X, but it is a house of cards. If Apple goes head to head on hardware and loses, then what happens? OS X development grinds to a halt and it all falls apart. I seriously doubt Apple can pay for their development with the cash they make selling software, even were they to grab a large chunk of the market. I seriously doubt developers would port all their applications to two different hardware platforms for OS X. All of this talk of Apple on OS X is interesting, and it is interesting that PC manufacturers would like to make a go of it, but in reality most of the people who think this going to happen, are just saying what they want to happen, not what is in Apple's best interests as a business.
Most components used in macs are compatible with the ones used in PCs (barring boards, CPUs, and some misc.). There are good quality components and cheap components. One major PC manufacturer made a profit on PC sales in 04. That manufacturer was Dell. They did so by buying in volume, buying really cheap components, having little stored inventory, and selling with smaller margins than the competition. To make money selling PCs you have to compete with Dell. If you don't sell as cheap of components as Dell, you will lose on volume and price.
PC versions of OS X will be faster, better and cheaper than Apple branded hardware because of expertise, volume and margins.
It is highly unlikely there will ever be PC versions of OS X (assuming you mean OS X on x86 commercially). If they were to exist, I doubt they would be faster (the system has some optimization for PPC), better (whatever that means), or cheaper (try to spec out something like the mac mini in the PC world). They would have more options, and there would be more hardware incompatibilities.
There is a market for PC based hardware which requires set-up, assembly and mods to run OS X.
Yes there is, a very, very small and inconsequential market. Percentage of boxed, not pre-installed OSs is very small. The percentage that are not stuck on windows, even smaller. You want it to happen for yourself, but the business case is shaky, and that is being generous.
Job's knows Apple's hardware penetration is only 5% so he'll cut OS X loose to have 10X marketshare in the future, gladly. Apple has a life beyond computers and isn't dependent anymore on CPU sales.
Jobs knows 95% of Apple's profit comes from hardware, the other platform is dominated by a monopoly who has "influenced" the government to allow it to break the law with no real punishment, and that the only two companies that made money selling personal computers in 04 were Apple and Dell. I suspect the risk is far too great.
In the normal world, "x86-based systems" are "open" in the sense that anybody can build them
Umm, anyone can buy them from Intel or AMD and resell them. With PPC anyone can build them and sell them.
Apple systems are "proprietary" in that there aren't multiple vendors of OS X-compatible systems
Gee that's great, but we weren't talking about OS X systems, we were talking about PPC and x86. Your statement is like saying x86 is proprietary because MS is the only vendor of Windows.
I have yet to figure out why they havent botherd to make an OS to run on x86 based systems rather then there mostly proprietary hardware
Heh, x86 is proprietary and closed. Intel reverse engineered it. AMD reverse engineered it. Transmeta has an implementation. Contrast this with the PowerPC platform. IBM wrote most of the specs. It is completely open and documented. IBM and Motorola sell large numbers of systems and their is no barrier for any other company to enter.
In Bizarro world "closed but popular" means "open" and "open, but not as popular" means "proprietary."
If apple botherd to try and spread out into the larger PC market they would slaughter MS rather quick and I woudlent mind seeing it happen. Apples software is limited mostly to apple branded hardware and that limits how well the company can compete.
Yeah because so many companies have done well competing with a company convicted of abusing their monopoly to stifle competition. That is why OS2 and BeOS are so popular. It is especially a good idea to destroy 95% of your income by entering into an overpopulated commodity market where all but one player is losing money at the same time as trying to compete with said monopoly. Brilliant!
Microsoft seems to be doing just fine living off of the OS market, why couldn't Apple?
Apple currently makes 95% of its money on hardware. They use that money to fund software development, including OS X. If Apple made a version for Intel, they would be competing head to head with MS's monopoly. MS has partnerships with all the hardware vendors, software developers, and peripheral manufacturer's. All of those companies and the PC manufacturers are completely dependent upon MS's goodwill to survive. How many do you think will agree to ship OS X by default when it means they are suddenly paying double or triple the software cost to their competitors not only on those boxes, but also on the rest of their boxes? Do you know how small the margins are right now?
They could sell independent of the PC manufacturers, but really how many boxed OS's are sold? Almost all OS sales are pre-installs. Basically, you can't fight an established monopoly with more money than god. Especially while destroying what is currently your main revenue stream.
if he's changing his tune, maybe that's a sign that OS X could make an x86 debut?
This is very, very doubtful. I think their current strategy is to clone the strengths of the Intel platform with their own product line. Intel has really cheap systems, very fast systems, and an enormous number of different offerings. The mini-mac is an attempt to cater to the really cheap crowd. The G5 is the current best shot at speed (and it is pretty damn fast). Apple will never be able to offer as wide a range of products as is available on Intel, but they try with customization.
I think you will see Windows on commodity PPC before you see OS X on Intel. If anything, I can see Apple licensing OS X on the PPC. This would still cut into their hardware sales drastically, but it would be "home turf" and the architecture is at least open for any and all comers. The Intel platform is open to Intel and anyone with the millions it costs to reverse engineer it, which so far is pretty much AMD and sort of Transmeta. Even so, I don't see Apple trying to fight it out in a commodity hardware market. The competition would be good, but what happens if Apple loses? Suddenly everyone is screwed since OS X development slows or grinds to a halt. Alternately, Apple could become a software company, like MS. It is possible, but as you said, doubtful.
The most interesting part of the Fortune article is where they reveal that three leading PC manufacturers have been attempting to license OS X for the Intel platform. I'm of two minds about it personally. Choice is good for the consumers, but, Apple being undercut badly in the commodity PC market could kill the goose who lays the golden OS eggs. They don't have the volume to compete with Dell, nor the willingness to use really cheap components from whoever is the low-bidder this week.
If you want to make a comparison with the Titanic, you should carry it all the way. This reactor is meltdown proof, the way the titanic would be unsinkable had it been placed in a desert. That is to say, it is possible it could sink beneath the sand and vanish, but there is not any scientific support for a theory as to how it could happen.
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Seems pretty risky to spend years in court for this. By the time this suit is finished, some other format may be on the market (HD-DVD, BluRay, whatever..) and the people who could afford this sort of thing will be purchasing newer technology.
Umm, considering the alternative is to go out of business, I'd say it is worth the risk. They are demanding that their DVD storage and consolidations system stops storing and consolidating DVDs. Without the feature to which the DVD consortium is objecting, the system is worthless.
I just loaded my DVD into my Jukebox... I don't need the DVD anymore, so I guess I'll go sell it on ebay or give it away..." That's what they're afraid of, and they're probably right.?
If you RTFA you would note that they covered this. In the current storage medium, this system costs $40-$60 in hard disk space, per movie. It is cheaper to buy two DVDs. This could be a concern in the future, but don't fool yourself, that is not what this lawsuit is about. This is about a loophole that was not dreamed up by the big media companies when they went with DVD as their DRM format. The idea is to sell multiple copies of every movie for multiple locations, and multiple new players. If you can just store an exact image of a DVD on a new player, why buy another copy in DVD-purple-ray-extreme-DVD3 format in a few years? And if you can back them up, there goes all the new copies to replace worn, scratched, broken, or misplaced movies.
by moving to OSS office productivity applications (not Star Office), they are limiting themselves for the future. If they figure out that taxpayers money is being wasted in an inefficient process where the application of technology like Office 2003 would help. But that technology does not exist in the basic functionality of Openoffice, then they are stuck.
OK, so you are saying going with an open source project limits you to the functionality of that project, where as going with a commercial, closed source project does not? You have made the logical fallacy of implicit statement, implying that any functionality that would be useful or beneficial is in either both projects or only the commercial one. If you go with open source you can hire someone to add any functionality you want. If you go with closed source, you can beg the vendor to implement it, but if they don't want to you are screwed. I think for just 1 million of that 5 million, you can hire some consultants to add whatever function it is that you feel is lacking, still save millions, and help out any other government agency that is also using the software. That is a win+win+win over closed source.
Which is why in 1978, at the height of the cold war, Arab Nationalism and Hussein's military power, the Israelis unilaterally bombed an Iraqi nuclear reactor under construction.
Yes they did, but as we mentioned before, the Iraqi's did not have a nuclear missile as a deterrent. If they did, the Israelis would likely not have risked it. You seem to be missing the point. The Israelis could nuke or carpet bomb Iran, but they are not going to risk the annihilation of every person in their country to do so.
The Iranians are just too rational and also have some questionable internal loyalties among pretty much everyone under the age of 35. It's one thing to get them to go along with Hezbollah's activities in Lebanon; that's just good regional gamesmanship -- getting them to participate in something that could end Persian culture as we know it is quite another.
And you think the majority of the people will have any say in it? Think of it this way, suppose Italy had nukes. Now suppose Islam took off, and became the most popular religion in the world. Now suppose a coalition of Iran, Egypt, Turkey, and Saudi Arabia, invaded and took over Greece and France, all the while spewing rhetoric about how dangerous all those christian fanatics were. What if it was well known that most of the people in those countries thought christianity was evil. What if those countries then made a big deal about the possibility of invading Italy so that they would not be a threat to freedom.
Do you see where I am going with this? Many Iranians feel that their existence, way of life, and religion are under attack. They could easily be driven to feel desperate enough to use nukes as a threat, and from there, who knows. I don't think many Iranians would object to having nuclear missiles as a deterrent against invasion. Certainly not the ones in power right now.
If Dior put a full-page ad in New York Times encouraging people to buy Dior instead of Louis Vuitton, does that mean that the New York Times is responsible for violating the trademark, or would it be Dior?
I don't know squat about the French legal system. I do know, however, that it is legal to run an ad in the New York Times (American Jurisdiction) encouraging people to use your product over a competitor's and to mention them by name.
Trademark is not copyright. You can still publish a competitor's name, you just can't impersonate them, or use their name/logo/image/sound/etc. as if it were yours.
Previous OS updates have addressed driver issues for Unreal Tournament 2004 as well, so it's not just one game but the big games that most gamers are likely to play.
I strongly suspect the updates are for games the Apple developers like to play. Although it could just be that ID and Blizzard report bugs to Apple, whereas other game companies have not been doing so.
So they felt that by holding the region "hostage" by becoming a nuclear power, they can: One, guarantee thier own hold on power as the US and UN would dare not invade lest Seoul or Tokyo get turned into one big sheet of glass and two, demand food and supply aid to feed and maintain control of its' population.
For the most part, I agree with your analysis. The above, however, I think may be slightly erroneous. Having Nukes does not protect N. Korea from the U.S. China does that all by itself. The U.S. will not march into a country that close to China (again), with close government ties to China. We would get our butts kicked. Having nukes prevents China from marching into N. Korea, which is something the Koreans are probably just as worried about. Aside from that, nukes are a bargaining chip in negotiating aid from both China and the U.S., neither of which want a nuke going off.
Tehran would be a finely-glazed parking lot five minutes after even threatening the Israelis with a nuclear strike.
Bullshit. You are dead wrong. Israel would not fire on any country that would destroy them in retaliation. They may be hard-nosed, but they are not stupid. The same goes for China. The U.S. and U.S.S.R. made it perfectly clear to one another that any invasion would be met with nukes. For some reason neither immediately fired nukes at each other. Maybe it is because the countries were not run by suicidal morons. Neither is China or Britain or Israel.
a not so subtle reminder that anyone getting in our way should consider whether or not they're willing to trigger a nuclear holocaust.
And that is what it is all about. Do you really think Iran or N. Korea would not prefer that everyone on the planet dies, rather than their country being conquered? N. Korea is questionable. Iran is not. They already fear that we are trying to destroy their religion by taking over each country in succession, and they may well be right. They hate what the U.S. has done, fear what the U.S. might do, and would more than likely be happy to take the rest of the world with them if we try to conquer them. Their religion and politics more or less demand it. Moreover, Iranian leaders are not stupid. They know that the U.S., Britain, and China have way too much to lose. None of them will risk starting a nuclear war.
Like it or not, the possession of nukes is the best defense against invasion by the U.S. and a lot of countries feel they need that, given the imperialism of the U.S. in the last decade. Iraq was one big demonstration of what happens if you don't have nukes.
IBM is escaping the consumer and business PC market because they were losing money on it, just like everyone else except Dell. If Apple is to partner with IBM, I foresee it as being a supplier for workstations. IBM may very well start putting macs in all sorts of businesses. They work well with IBMs push towards Linux for their server offerings and will save IBM a bundle in costs, since the support for macs is notoriously cheap.
Will we ever see OS X on any of IBMs offerings? It is possible, maybe as an option along side Linux on workstations and serves. I don't see it happening soon though. I also doubt that IBM will manufacture PCs again anytime soon. The margins are too small. It is a better idea for them to let others assume the risks and let them compete for IBM deals.
Then if we could just get Apple to open up the boot rom (I believe that's what they use to make OSX only boot on genuine apple systems, correct me if I'm wrong here) specs, or stop using it all together and use something like the GNU Bios (whatever it's called).
Apple already uses an implementation of Open Firmware for it's BIOS, as does Sun, IBM, and several other players. I think the boot ROM went away when Apple moved to the G3 chips. I don't think their is anything currently stopping anyone from building a PPC machine that will run OS X except for the cost. The last project I saw to implement such a box ended up using a Apple motherboard (in violation of the sales agreement, it is supposed to be for repairs only) because it was much cheaper than any other supplier.
Basically right now, no one else makes as cheap of PPC machines as Apple. If some company were to do so, I imagine Apple would lock them out with some hardware mechanism.
While many will say it's common knowledge that North Korea had nuclear weapons, this is a big deal in that they admitted it.
Heh, you mean they admitted it, again. This is old news. N. Korea is basically strong arming the U.S. for more aid. The question is do we believe they are desperate enough to do something crazy. They are in rough shape and starvation is a real problem. They currently spend their money on weapons programs rather than food, since weapons programs get them money from the U.S. and China. The U.S. can't invade or nuke them without provoking a war with China. China can't invade without a nuke going off either. Strategically, the best bet is probably for the U.S. to detonate a big nuke there and try to make it look like it was one of N. Koreas. It would kill a lot of our allies as well, but I'm not sure that is problem for the current administration.
I also don't believe that posession of a nuclear weapon is a deterrent to any U.S. military action, either, since these states seldom have the means to produce more than a handful of low-yield weapons and lack the ability to deliver them outside their own theater.
North Korea most likely has delivery mechanisms that can conceivably reach the U.S. Iran probably does not, but they can reach plenty of other countries that can. Assuming Iran puts together or buys a few nukes and couples them with their existing missiles they can then make a press statement, "if we are invaded by U.S. or U.N. forces we will fire nuclear missiles at China, Europe, and Israel. " That would put a lot of pressure on the U.S. to not invade, much more so than pretty much anything short of threatening to fire nukes at the U.S. itself. It is sort of a mini nuclear assured destruction and could easily spark another world war.
This brings back the memories. When I was in high school they tried to change our school mascot. The Devils was a name hated by all the local churches. The proposal was to rename our football team to "The Yodelers." Luckily football is more important than other religions in my home town, and the proposal was crushed.
Is there anything that safari does better than firefox?
Yes. Safari has a few nice features that have not been pulled into Firefox, as far as I know. The page snap-back feature is one. It simplifies backing out of a series of links, to main index page. On Slashdot, it will take you back to the main article, or the main page depending upon how it is used. It is a bit hard to explain, but it is nice. Firefox also falls down on support for system services. It supports some services, but for some reason my spell checking, grammar checking, and online dictionary services all fail to work in it. They function just fine in Safari and most other applications. I have not checked but they may work in the "Camino" Firefox fork. Aside from that, it is just a matter of preference. Firefox uses more memory per page, but seems to use less CPU time. Both are good browsers and each has pages that it renders better than the other.
Its[sic] 60% and not 95%. That's a bigger deal.
Well, you are partially right. The 95% was an estimate off the top of my head, and was probably too high. 60% of profit is from computer sales. Apple also makes money from support, consumer electronics, and hardware. Let's neglect support for now. That leaves 40% to split between consumer electronics and the iPod. We know the revenue from each is close, maybe 80% of their money from hardware sales is a better estimate.
More to the point, if 60% of their money comes from selling computers, and that business goes away, then Apple goes from being profitable to dying. Can they make up that much in new software sales? Maybe. Will they bet the company on it? Not likely.
In the current Windows pre-install dominated market there is no need for boxed OS sales. I think the primary market for a boxed OSX is to current users of Windows who want a better OS for the computer they already own.
Upgrades to OS X are not very different from a customer's perspective as upgrades to a better version of Windows, one that can't run any of their existing software and has only a handful of applications available. Most people buy a new machine when they want an upgrade, and they don't even know what an OS is.
I think you would have a lot of people who would switch to OSX, if only for aesthetic reasons.
A lot of people are switching to OS X, and not just for aesthetics. What advantage does OS X on x86 have over OS X on PPC? Do you think it is the cost that is the stumbling block? It would probably be cheaper to give away hardware to thousands of users than it would to convince developers to port their applications to x86.
You assume the Windows monopoly will never be broken
No, I'm assuming that it currently exists and that MS can buy their way out of legal difficulties. If Apple makes OS X for x86, they are killing their hardware business, and betting the farm that they can break MS's monopoly. How many investors do you think would back such a risky move? If you really think a superior OS can win, why is no one running BeOS?
It is far more likely that Windows will move to PPC (again) than that Apple will move to x86. I'd love for Apple to have hardware competition for OS X, but it is a house of cards. If Apple goes head to head on hardware and loses, then what happens? OS X development grinds to a halt and it all falls apart. I seriously doubt Apple can pay for their development with the cash they make selling software, even were they to grab a large chunk of the market. I seriously doubt developers would port all their applications to two different hardware platforms for OS X. All of this talk of Apple on OS X is interesting, and it is interesting that PC manufacturers would like to make a go of it, but in reality most of the people who think this going to happen, are just saying what they want to happen, not what is in Apple's best interests as a business.
"Cheap components" is bogus bullshit.
Most components used in macs are compatible with the ones used in PCs (barring boards, CPUs, and some misc.). There are good quality components and cheap components. One major PC manufacturer made a profit on PC sales in 04. That manufacturer was Dell. They did so by buying in volume, buying really cheap components, having little stored inventory, and selling with smaller margins than the competition. To make money selling PCs you have to compete with Dell. If you don't sell as cheap of components as Dell, you will lose on volume and price.
PC versions of OS X will be faster, better and cheaper than Apple branded hardware because of expertise, volume and margins.
It is highly unlikely there will ever be PC versions of OS X (assuming you mean OS X on x86 commercially). If they were to exist, I doubt they would be faster (the system has some optimization for PPC), better (whatever that means), or cheaper (try to spec out something like the mac mini in the PC world). They would have more options, and there would be more hardware incompatibilities.
There is a market for PC based hardware which requires set-up, assembly and mods to run OS X.
Yes there is, a very, very small and inconsequential market. Percentage of boxed, not pre-installed OSs is very small. The percentage that are not stuck on windows, even smaller. You want it to happen for yourself, but the business case is shaky, and that is being generous.
Job's knows Apple's hardware penetration is only 5% so he'll cut OS X loose to have 10X marketshare in the future, gladly. Apple has a life beyond computers and isn't dependent anymore on CPU sales.
Jobs knows 95% of Apple's profit comes from hardware, the other platform is dominated by a monopoly who has "influenced" the government to allow it to break the law with no real punishment, and that the only two companies that made money selling personal computers in 04 were Apple and Dell. I suspect the risk is far too great.
In the normal world, "x86-based systems" are "open" in the sense that anybody can build them
Umm, anyone can buy them from Intel or AMD and resell them. With PPC anyone can build them and sell them.
Apple systems are "proprietary" in that there aren't multiple vendors of OS X-compatible systems
Gee that's great, but we weren't talking about OS X systems, we were talking about PPC and x86. Your statement is like saying x86 is proprietary because MS is the only vendor of Windows.
We already did. There were versions of NT released for PPC back in the day.
True enough. I think you will see Windows back on commodity PPC before you see OS X on Intel.
the Titanic is useless in the middle of the desert
I guess it depends if you consider the Titanic to be a vacation resort, or a method of transportation. I see your point.
I have yet to figure out why they havent botherd to make an OS to run on x86 based systems rather then there mostly proprietary hardware
Heh, x86 is proprietary and closed. Intel reverse engineered it. AMD reverse engineered it. Transmeta has an implementation. Contrast this with the PowerPC platform. IBM wrote most of the specs. It is completely open and documented. IBM and Motorola sell large numbers of systems and their is no barrier for any other company to enter.
In Bizarro world "closed but popular" means "open" and "open, but not as popular" means "proprietary."
If apple botherd to try and spread out into the larger PC market they would slaughter MS rather quick and I woudlent mind seeing it happen. Apples software is limited mostly to apple branded hardware and that limits how well the company can compete.
Yeah because so many companies have done well competing with a company convicted of abusing their monopoly to stifle competition. That is why OS2 and BeOS are so popular. It is especially a good idea to destroy 95% of your income by entering into an overpopulated commodity market where all but one player is losing money at the same time as trying to compete with said monopoly. Brilliant!
Jobs keeps claiming Apple is a software company.
He does?
Microsoft seems to be doing just fine living off of the OS market, why couldn't Apple?
Apple currently makes 95% of its money on hardware. They use that money to fund software development, including OS X. If Apple made a version for Intel, they would be competing head to head with MS's monopoly. MS has partnerships with all the hardware vendors, software developers, and peripheral manufacturer's. All of those companies and the PC manufacturers are completely dependent upon MS's goodwill to survive. How many do you think will agree to ship OS X by default when it means they are suddenly paying double or triple the software cost to their competitors not only on those boxes, but also on the rest of their boxes? Do you know how small the margins are right now?
They could sell independent of the PC manufacturers, but really how many boxed OS's are sold? Almost all OS sales are pre-installs. Basically, you can't fight an established monopoly with more money than god. Especially while destroying what is currently your main revenue stream.
if he's changing his tune, maybe that's a sign that OS X could make an x86 debut?
This is very, very doubtful. I think their current strategy is to clone the strengths of the Intel platform with their own product line. Intel has really cheap systems, very fast systems, and an enormous number of different offerings. The mini-mac is an attempt to cater to the really cheap crowd. The G5 is the current best shot at speed (and it is pretty damn fast). Apple will never be able to offer as wide a range of products as is available on Intel, but they try with customization.
I think you will see Windows on commodity PPC before you see OS X on Intel. If anything, I can see Apple licensing OS X on the PPC. This would still cut into their hardware sales drastically, but it would be "home turf" and the architecture is at least open for any and all comers. The Intel platform is open to Intel and anyone with the millions it costs to reverse engineer it, which so far is pretty much AMD and sort of Transmeta. Even so, I don't see Apple trying to fight it out in a commodity hardware market. The competition would be good, but what happens if Apple loses? Suddenly everyone is screwed since OS X development slows or grinds to a halt. Alternately, Apple could become a software company, like MS. It is possible, but as you said, doubtful.
The most interesting part of the Fortune article is where they reveal that three leading PC manufacturers have been attempting to license OS X for the Intel platform. I'm of two minds about it personally. Choice is good for the consumers, but, Apple being undercut badly in the commodity PC market could kill the goose who lays the golden OS eggs. They don't have the volume to compete with Dell, nor the willingness to use really cheap components from whoever is the low-bidder this week.
If you want to make a comparison with the Titanic, you should carry it all the way. This reactor is meltdown proof, the way the titanic would be unsinkable had it been placed in a desert. That is to say, it is possible it could sink beneath the sand and vanish, but there is not any scientific support for a theory as to how it could happen.