'Libertarian leaning' doesn't quite describe Cato. Catonians are true believers, ideologues and as such should be taken no more seriously than your mechanic discussing the intricacies of brain surgery. Cato is also an almost-paid mouthpiece for big business. And, as dcollins points out, they were very in the wrong about Wall Street and the financial markets. One of the examples of self-regulation that Tim Lee sites is AOL going under. AOL and those like it, only went under because no one else was using their model. AOL, Compuserve, and Prodigy for example, provided a closed model to their customers, which collapsed once their customers discovered they could go anywhere with the Web browser. If the on-line service provider model became institutionalized, everyone would adopt it and we'd be back to a closed off network in which we'd all pay a premium to leave your providers network.
Difference is, you can get a vending machine from a third party machine supplier and put what you want in it. It would be different if coke would only permit inclusion of its drinks in its own vending machines.
Coke only permits Coke products (that may include Sprite or Fanta or whatever else they brand) in it's machines; unless it decides to allow another manufacturer to sell product from it's Coke brand machines. But Coke has exclusive use over machines it's licensed to be exclusive.
And, you missed the part about the business entity making an exclusive agreement to carry only Coke products. Apple's suppliers have agreed to only play on Apple's machines. Apple has only said certain vendors can "put Coke" into their players. There's nothing wrong with this arrangement (so far) anywhere else but Norway. And as I said, there's precedent for arrangements of this type elsewhere.
What Apple isn't doing is limiting Norway to only iPod. Users in Norway have other player options; the third party ones you mention. Get a third party player if you don't like Apple's agreement (I'm not a rabid supporter of DRM by the way, but so far, Apple isn't doing anything that's not being done elsewhere given the description by the articles on Norway's ruling.).
The analogy I made is quite appropriate. And I'm not sure Norway's attack gives a clear path for attacking DRM given that there is precedent for these arrangements.
Several posters have suggested other monopolies that compare to Apples iPod, but halfway decent counter-posts have cast doubt on the examples still leaving Apple as the only perpetrator of the kind of monopoly Norway abhors.
The examples that compare to Apples monopoly issue in Norway are those involving the large soft drink companies. Try putting Pepsi in a Coke machine. You can't. And, further, we've all heard and read about colleges making exclusive deals with Coke or Pepsi to be the exclusive provider of said soft drink makers product to those campuses often to the disdane of the losing soft drink makers fans. Movie theaters also contract with sole providers of soft drinks, popcorn and candy manufacturers.
The deals are allowed because the purchasing entity is willfully entering the contract; not limited by the lack of competition of another similar product on the market.
These deals also get around those that argue that with other products, the razor blade example above comes to mind, have other choices to fill brand name vendors handles with knock-off blades; therefore getting around any monopoly issues.
The examples in posts above just doesn't apply. The Coke-only/on my campus/in my favorite theater/ is the exact example that applies in Apples case.
So, as much as I dislike DRM, Norway is on the wrong side of precedent. Apple can choose to be the one and only one stuff their brand of can in their iPod. While a few countries may follow, I doubt this will cause a landslide of imitators as most will realize the same thing - letting Pepsi or Coke race to the bottom for exclusive vendor pricing - is good for everyone. And after a while, Norway will probably too.
We have legitimately licensed volume license systems that are being nagged. We have to fix them. This amounts to a DOS attack instigated by Microsoft. Imagine the hours spent cleaning up large numbers of systems.
Ridiculous.
I see several people wonder why management often forces IT to move to NetWare. It's combination of several reasons. First, managers/CEO's/owners themselves are familiar with the environment. When they ask around, the get anectdotal confirmation from their peers that Windows is the way to go. Second, it's an environment in which there are a lot of other users that are familiar with it. It's easy to get someone trained, and managers figure that it will be easier to find a replacement for the IT guy that left for the next job, or got fired (Young lazy IT'er's don't realize that this combination of factors hurts their pay and chances of longevity too). Third, Microsoft both intentionlly and unintentionally greatly reduced managers expectations for reliability. In a Wall Street investment bank that wouldn't tolerate any downtime on their financial servers except what was planned, Windows isn't found crunching numbers - Unix is. But the front desk, which isn't mission critical, uses Windows. Small businesses have no experience with reliable IT so they don't even know what it looks like to begin with. It doesn't matter if it fails for a day or so - no, really it doesn't.
So, management is familiar with the looks, gets anedotal confirmation about the product from non-IT friends, and doesn't care if the server goes down once in a while. Sounds like Windows. And a Windows world it is.
I've managed NetWare for over a decade. It was great stuff. It fell behind. The culture at Novell and it's rabid fan base failed to examine NetWare and it's future critically before it really suffered. It still has great parts - eDirectory, Zenworks, NMAS, NetStorage, and iFolder (now open source) and I'm hoping it makes it on Linux. I'm not convinced yet as they still have some doubtful management in place. We'll see how they handle that hopefully sooner rather than later.
Sure there are weaknesses in shredding, but a reasonable way for "civilians" to shred and dispose of documents using cross-cut shredders and a method I use: mix cuttings by hand in the bin for a bit, and then separate the parts into different bags to be disposed of at different times or locations. It's the poor man's way and adds management hassle, but it's effective.
The few above the have noted that MS is positioning Sparkle as a UI developer for XP/Vista, not a Flash killer per se, are probably closest to the truth. However, this is one of those softpeddle things the MS is good at (Think NT as a server back in the early 90's - that soda hurts when it rockets through your nose as you guffaw loudly doesn't it? But here it is, 2006 and Windows Server exists.) if Sparkle were to say, gain a wider reputation and kill Flash, Bill and Company won't complain.
TT
Ditto regarding comments to the effect that your off topic...
But to address your chicken and egg question - the answer would simply be that flying is probably an adaptation itself.
Someone else in the list went down this track but didn't state the conclusion up front.
Catapillar may have figured out a way to start hopping (most likely) or jumping (falling) from branch to branch. Legs may have developed skin flaps which were precursor to wings.
Eventually a point probably arose in the process which the large amounts of energy were required to make "modifications" to the catapillar exoskeleton. Hibernation may have been required and a hard exoskeleton needed to protect the pupae during the process - especially to prevent dehydration and conserve energy due to heat loss.
Flies, moths, and June bugs may all have come about the process in a similar fashion.
While flying certainly could help broaden access to resources, I'm guessing it's main function is to prevent inbreeding. Flying allows mates to cover larger areas and have a better chance of finding a mate from another gene pool.
TTC
With the provisio that Stone may be going somewhere, the posters indication office politics are probably correct.
The "Shootout at O.K. Corral" probably went along the lines of "Stone thinks he's responsible for the recent upswing in interest Novell products." And therefore threatens Messman tenure. Yet, "Messman thinks he made the right choice bringing Stone back and will make further right choices pertatining to the future of Novell."
This probably went before the board. The board would have to decide in favor of Messman as he was there first. Messman gets the first chance to show that he is the one responsible for the turnaround. So Stone gets walking papers. Messman is on his own now.
If Messman can't sustain the momentum, look for Stone to replace him (if isn't getting rich beating up Novell somewhere else). In the past Novell's boards have shown criminal neglect in monitoring their CEO's perfomances and thus slow to act when removing them. I mean, the rest of the world new Microsoft was wiping Novell off the face of the LAN, but no one at Novell seemed to. Novell fans can hope the board has learned how to read and do math by now.
Personally, from some of the speeches Messman has given, I don't hold much out for him (Either Brainshare 2002 or 2003 I think). Not only does he not seem to know what open source is, but what Novell's role in it is either. He's been roundly ridiculed in the trade press for such gaffs and coming off as an opportunist rather than at a minimum, a convinced advocate.
We should know in the next year or so.
TT
Slashdot Mirror
'Libertarian leaning' doesn't quite describe Cato. Catonians are true believers, ideologues and as such should be taken no more seriously than your mechanic discussing the intricacies of brain surgery. Cato is also an almost-paid mouthpiece for big business. And, as dcollins points out, they were very in the wrong about Wall Street and the financial markets. One of the examples of self-regulation that Tim Lee sites is AOL going under. AOL and those like it, only went under because no one else was using their model. AOL, Compuserve, and Prodigy for example, provided a closed model to their customers, which collapsed once their customers discovered they could go anywhere with the Web browser. If the on-line service provider model became institutionalized, everyone would adopt it and we'd be back to a closed off network in which we'd all pay a premium to leave your providers network.
Coke only permits Coke products (that may include Sprite or Fanta or whatever else they brand) in it's machines; unless it decides to allow another manufacturer to sell product from it's Coke brand machines. But Coke has exclusive use over machines it's licensed to be exclusive.
And, you missed the part about the business entity making an exclusive agreement to carry only Coke products. Apple's suppliers have agreed to only play on Apple's machines. Apple has only said certain vendors can "put Coke" into their players. There's nothing wrong with this arrangement (so far) anywhere else but Norway. And as I said, there's precedent for arrangements of this type elsewhere.
What Apple isn't doing is limiting Norway to only iPod. Users in Norway have other player options; the third party ones you mention. Get a third party player if you don't like Apple's agreement (I'm not a rabid supporter of DRM by the way, but so far, Apple isn't doing anything that's not being done elsewhere given the description by the articles on Norway's ruling.).
The analogy I made is quite appropriate. And I'm not sure Norway's attack gives a clear path for attacking DRM given that there is precedent for these arrangements.
Several posters have suggested other monopolies that compare to Apples iPod, but halfway decent counter-posts have cast doubt on the examples still leaving Apple as the only perpetrator of the kind of monopoly Norway abhors. The examples that compare to Apples monopoly issue in Norway are those involving the large soft drink companies. Try putting Pepsi in a Coke machine. You can't. And, further, we've all heard and read about colleges making exclusive deals with Coke or Pepsi to be the exclusive provider of said soft drink makers product to those campuses often to the disdane of the losing soft drink makers fans. Movie theaters also contract with sole providers of soft drinks, popcorn and candy manufacturers. The deals are allowed because the purchasing entity is willfully entering the contract; not limited by the lack of competition of another similar product on the market. These deals also get around those that argue that with other products, the razor blade example above comes to mind, have other choices to fill brand name vendors handles with knock-off blades; therefore getting around any monopoly issues. The examples in posts above just doesn't apply. The Coke-only/on my campus/in my favorite theater/ is the exact example that applies in Apples case. So, as much as I dislike DRM, Norway is on the wrong side of precedent. Apple can choose to be the one and only one stuff their brand of can in their iPod. While a few countries may follow, I doubt this will cause a landslide of imitators as most will realize the same thing - letting Pepsi or Coke race to the bottom for exclusive vendor pricing - is good for everyone. And after a while, Norway will probably too.
We have legitimately licensed volume license systems that are being nagged. We have to fix them. This amounts to a DOS attack instigated by Microsoft. Imagine the hours spent cleaning up large numbers of systems. Ridiculous.
So, management is familiar with the looks, gets anedotal confirmation about the product from non-IT friends, and doesn't care if the server goes down once in a while. Sounds like Windows. And a Windows world it is.
I've managed NetWare for over a decade. It was great stuff. It fell behind. The culture at Novell and it's rabid fan base failed to examine NetWare and it's future critically before it really suffered. It still has great parts - eDirectory, Zenworks, NMAS, NetStorage, and iFolder (now open source) and I'm hoping it makes it on Linux. I'm not convinced yet as they still have some doubtful management in place. We'll see how they handle that hopefully sooner rather than later.
Sure there are weaknesses in shredding, but a reasonable way for "civilians" to shred and dispose of documents using cross-cut shredders and a method I use: mix cuttings by hand in the bin for a bit, and then separate the parts into different bags to be disposed of at different times or locations. It's the poor man's way and adds management hassle, but it's effective.
The few above the have noted that MS is positioning Sparkle as a UI developer for XP/Vista, not a Flash killer per se, are probably closest to the truth. However, this is one of those softpeddle things the MS is good at (Think NT as a server back in the early 90's - that soda hurts when it rockets through your nose as you guffaw loudly doesn't it? But here it is, 2006 and Windows Server exists.) if Sparkle were to say, gain a wider reputation and kill Flash, Bill and Company won't complain. TT
Ditto regarding comments to the effect that your off topic... But to address your chicken and egg question - the answer would simply be that flying is probably an adaptation itself. Someone else in the list went down this track but didn't state the conclusion up front. Catapillar may have figured out a way to start hopping (most likely) or jumping (falling) from branch to branch. Legs may have developed skin flaps which were precursor to wings. Eventually a point probably arose in the process which the large amounts of energy were required to make "modifications" to the catapillar exoskeleton. Hibernation may have been required and a hard exoskeleton needed to protect the pupae during the process - especially to prevent dehydration and conserve energy due to heat loss. Flies, moths, and June bugs may all have come about the process in a similar fashion. While flying certainly could help broaden access to resources, I'm guessing it's main function is to prevent inbreeding. Flying allows mates to cover larger areas and have a better chance of finding a mate from another gene pool. TTC
With the provisio that Stone may be going somewhere, the posters indication office politics are probably correct. The "Shootout at O.K. Corral" probably went along the lines of "Stone thinks he's responsible for the recent upswing in interest Novell products." And therefore threatens Messman tenure. Yet, "Messman thinks he made the right choice bringing Stone back and will make further right choices pertatining to the future of Novell." This probably went before the board. The board would have to decide in favor of Messman as he was there first. Messman gets the first chance to show that he is the one responsible for the turnaround. So Stone gets walking papers. Messman is on his own now. If Messman can't sustain the momentum, look for Stone to replace him (if isn't getting rich beating up Novell somewhere else). In the past Novell's boards have shown criminal neglect in monitoring their CEO's perfomances and thus slow to act when removing them. I mean, the rest of the world new Microsoft was wiping Novell off the face of the LAN, but no one at Novell seemed to. Novell fans can hope the board has learned how to read and do math by now. Personally, from some of the speeches Messman has given, I don't hold much out for him (Either Brainshare 2002 or 2003 I think). Not only does he not seem to know what open source is, but what Novell's role in it is either. He's been roundly ridiculed in the trade press for such gaffs and coming off as an opportunist rather than at a minimum, a convinced advocate. We should know in the next year or so. TT