This all just really goes to show that knowing who sponsored the study is more important often than the results. I took a journalism course once and had an assignment to check out a study about how milk sold in plastic bags went bad faster than in opaque cartons. Thing is, I found that it took a couple of days to go bad, had to be exposed to light (yeah, the fridge light does go out when you shut the door) and only two per cent of the milk sold at the time as sold in these plastic sacks. The study was, however, sponsored by ex-cello who just happen to make - opaque milk cartons.
A lot of these studies a crap and presented as fact and are not to be taken seriously. They exist to push an organization's viewpoint while deceiving the public as to their true nature.
Look no further than the tobacco company studies that show nicotine is not addictive. Yeah right, and beer causes cancer in asbestos workers.
The formats wars never really ended. While ultimately betamax died out in the consumer world, in professional circles it continued (and is still used in many quarters). Ditto for the DVD format wars. Name your poison -R, +R, +RW, -RW or Ram. Most drives now on the market support all or most formats. While blu-ray may be different than HD-DVD, you will ultimately see dual drives (and burners) if blu-ray makes it to market.
This is a fights for dollars at the corporate level. As a consumer you can either wait for a dominant consumer player, or for a multi-unit. As for game machines, you buy those for the games you want to play and not necessarily for the label on the box.
The answer to the question asked is: (paraphrase) If you lost functionality on a device would you stop using it? The answer is: Of course. Why would you not? I especially would not buy the product. The same goes for expiring DVD's and CD's, drm radio etc
These techniques will not lead to more sales. I would bet money on that.
Actually, so many of the responses to this article more or less prove one of the guy's points which is that macheads (linuxheads too) believe it can never, will never, ever happen to them. Now, a Mac OSX virus may never be written, but that doesn't mean it can't be done and if it happens such attitudes will be what allows the virus to spread.
Maybe wintel people might be vulnerable, but most of them know it, acknowledge it and most take some steps to deal with it.
Actually, all I've seen the internet do is teach kids to copy and modify slightly which is not creative at all. I've also seen a fair bit of plagarism.
If you're creative, you're creative and the internet is just a tool to allow you to express that creativity. It will not make you creative.
A 250 meg drive and decent content. Really this smacks to me of one of those 100 CD jukeboxes. Nice to impress your friends for 35 seconds, but after that...
You made the decisions, which is what you were paid for, and it all worked out. Good for you. On the other hand, if it had all blown up through bad decision making, you would have been history. In supervisory/managerial positions, you get paid for the success of your decisions and the ensuing success of your subordinates.
As Toranaga says to Blackthorne in Shogun, "everything is all right, if you win"
Why all the upset? This is trash talking just like in sports. So what if Balmer said he's going to f**king kill Google. I want to hear how Google's people are going to take Balmer behind the shed and open a can of whoop-ass on him. Or better still, have Balmer make a "guaranteed win" statement where everyone wins a xbox if they lose.
I think it's great. We need more of this. Who wouldn't go for a Gate-Jobs bare-knuckle! Wouldn't you love to see Stevie give a knee to the groin of Bill? How about the solar panel guys in a cage match against the coal burners?
Business is just like sports to these guys. A left to the head and a right to the billfold! MBA? NBA? What's the Diff?
In a world where the where the national weather service can be scrutinized for giving away free weather information because it impinges supposedly on private weather services and where the post office can come under fire for competing with fed ex, why would you be surprised that Hollywood, software companies and other groups would go after those who would entertain, inform or help for free.
Next up, private hospitals going after the red cross for giving away blood.
MS does not have to accept linux. I hear the phrase "so and so has to..." and I shudder almost each time.
Unless it is legally mandated, they don't have to accept anything. Hell, the can say gravity doesn't exist. You can think of them as stupid, but they don't have to accept it. They can go and live with my ex who is queen of the region. You know de Nile.
As I said in reply to someone else, the number was an exaggeration. However, I see a lot of people make the assumption that because a lot of companies did not upgrade from win2k to XP, they won't upgrade to vista.
Simply, it has more to doing with the corporate hardware aging cycle than to a repudiation of xp. If you go back to the year 2000, a lot of companies just upgraded hardware and software because of the Y2K fears. XP came out a year later so it is not unreasonable to assume xp came out too early in the aging cycle to motivate companies to upgrade.
My company didn't upgrade to win2k. We went from nt and win 98 to 2003 on the server side and xp with new desktop hardware leapfrogging win2k. Count on a lot of companies leapfrogging xp to vista as longhorn has been hyped for a couple of years now.
Whatever happens though, they won't be upgrading to OSX products.
Vista will also have 1000X+ the number of users one week after launch than apple will accumulate in the time since it was released until vista comes out. Just the reality of the situation. Rip-off or no, vista will dominate.
Gee, the proposed law seems to me to work very much like the do not call list of telemarketing. I.E. Do not call unless you've been asked. That works better than voluntary do not spam lists don't you think?
ITAR predates the present administration. The sad reality is that many groups do try to buy dual use tech and then redirect it to other places and uses. It's more common than you think.
The present solution is not very good I grant, but it is better than nothing.
I said low tech, not inferior. The fact is that these types of projects drive development of technologies. Not just in electronics, but in materials and in techniques. The fact that Russian stuff may have not have had the technical finesse that western stuff had may been the reason Russian tech in a number of fields did not advance as quickly in the west. That will now change.
Right now the Chinese, for example, see space tech development as the fastest way of achieving technical parity with the west.
Just as a foonote, the Russians too had some spectacular disasters related to their space program.
I wasn't suggesting that the Europeans and Russians were living in tents, nor was I suggesting they had no space experience. Technologically speaking though, the US has been the dominant player in space for the last few decades. The Russian stuff for the most part, while functional, was comparatively speaking - low tech.
That is changing. And it is a good thing. They will bring a new approach to the table. As for the Chinese, time will tell.
If this goes like other discussions on this and similar topics about advanced technologies appearing in various parts of the world, it will split into two camps.
One camp that thinks it will be cool because new tech is always cool. The other camp will lament that North America is falling behind. To the latter I say that it is not North America falling behind, but rather the rest of the world is catching up. That's inevitable and that's good. Don't doubt that we don't have a new shuttle on the board somewhere too.
The the other camp. I say this new shuttle will be cool. It will be interesting to see what approach they take in designing it based on years of observing the North American program.
The most interesting thing I find about these reactions to this story is the pervasive ignorance of, and discomfiture regarding mental illness as evidenced by some of the comments. If you look at most of the checklists regarding checks for most mental disorders, what strikes you is how similar they all are and how much of diagnosis is a result of painstaking cross-referencing by therapists to arrive at a "pretty good idea" of where the problem lies.
If you had a broken leg, you would go to the doctor, tell the doctor what the problem is and follow the prescribed treatments. People with disorders don't tend to do that. They get referred by authorities and then do all they can to present themselves as not having a problem. If anyone has confronted an alcoholic, or has dealt with them, they have no doubt been told that they are the alcoholic, not the alcoholic themselves. This makes treating people with disorders highly problematic.
If you had a broken leg, you wouldn't think twice about seeing a doctor, yet when significant trauma hits someone's life, the notion of seeking professional help is almost seen as a weakness in a lot of quarters. Sad for the 21rst century really.
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This all just really goes to show that knowing who sponsored the study is more important often than the results. I took a journalism course once and had an assignment to check out a study about how milk sold in plastic bags went bad faster than in opaque cartons. Thing is, I found that it took a couple of days to go bad, had to be exposed to light (yeah, the fridge light does go out when you shut the door) and only two per cent of the milk sold at the time as sold in these plastic sacks. The study was, however, sponsored by ex-cello who just happen to make - opaque milk cartons.
A lot of these studies a crap and presented as fact and are not to be taken seriously. They exist to push an organization's viewpoint while deceiving the public as to their true nature.
Look no further than the tobacco company studies that show nicotine is not addictive. Yeah right, and beer causes cancer in asbestos workers.
Actually, a hero would be better.
The formats wars never really ended. While ultimately betamax died out in the consumer world, in professional circles it continued (and is still used in many quarters). Ditto for the DVD format wars. Name your poison -R, +R, +RW, -RW or Ram. Most drives now on the market support all or most formats. While blu-ray may be different than HD-DVD, you will ultimately see dual drives (and burners) if blu-ray makes it to market.
This is a fights for dollars at the corporate level. As a consumer you can either wait for a dominant consumer player, or for a multi-unit. As for game machines, you buy those for the games you want to play and not necessarily for the label on the box.
The answer to the question asked is: (paraphrase) If you lost functionality on a device would you stop using it? The answer is: Of course. Why would you not? I especially would not buy the product. The same goes for expiring DVD's and CD's, drm radio etc
These techniques will not lead to more sales. I would bet money on that.
I am from the "keep a compressed air-type boat horn near the phone" school of telemarketing repulsion.
Actually, so many of the responses to this article more or less prove one of the guy's points which is that macheads (linuxheads too) believe it can never, will never, ever happen to them. Now, a Mac OSX virus may never be written, but that doesn't mean it can't be done and if it happens such attitudes will be what allows the virus to spread.
Maybe wintel people might be vulnerable, but most of them know it, acknowledge it and most take some steps to deal with it.
Actually, all I've seen the internet do is teach kids to copy and modify slightly which is not creative at all. I've also seen a fair bit of plagarism.
If you're creative, you're creative and the internet is just a tool to allow you to express that creativity. It will not make you creative.
A 250 meg drive and decent content. Really this smacks to me of one of those 100 CD jukeboxes. Nice to impress your friends for 35 seconds, but after that...
A good manager is like a good coach or parent. When they are doing really well, they are taken for granted.
You made the decisions, which is what you were paid for, and it all worked out. Good for you. On the other hand, if it had all blown up through bad decision making, you would have been history. In supervisory/managerial positions, you get paid for the success of your decisions and the ensuing success of your subordinates.
As Toranaga says to Blackthorne in Shogun, "everything is all right, if you win"
Why all the upset? This is trash talking just like in sports. So what if Balmer said he's going to f**king kill Google. I want to hear how Google's people are going to take Balmer behind the shed and open a can of whoop-ass on him. Or better still, have Balmer make a "guaranteed win" statement where everyone wins a xbox if they lose.
I think it's great. We need more of this. Who wouldn't go for a Gate-Jobs bare-knuckle! Wouldn't you love to see Stevie give a knee to the groin of Bill? How about the solar panel guys in a cage match against the coal burners?
Business is just like sports to these guys. A left to the head and a right to the billfold! MBA? NBA? What's the Diff?
In a world where the where the national weather service can be scrutinized for giving away free weather information because it impinges supposedly on private weather services and where the post office can come under fire for competing with fed ex, why would you be surprised that Hollywood, software companies and other groups would go after those who would entertain, inform or help for free.
Next up, private hospitals going after the red cross for giving away blood.
MS does not have to accept linux. I hear the phrase "so and so has to..." and I shudder almost each time.
Unless it is legally mandated, they don't have to accept anything. Hell, the can say gravity doesn't exist. You can think of them as stupid, but they don't have to accept it. They can go and live with my ex who is queen of the region. You know de Nile.
As I said in reply to someone else, the number was an exaggeration. However, I see a lot of people make the assumption that because a lot of companies did not upgrade from win2k to XP, they won't upgrade to vista.
Simply, it has more to doing with the corporate hardware aging cycle than to a repudiation of xp. If you go back to the year 2000, a lot of companies just upgraded hardware and software because of the Y2K fears. XP came out a year later so it is not unreasonable to assume xp came out too early in the aging cycle to motivate companies to upgrade.
My company didn't upgrade to win2k. We went from nt and win 98 to 2003 on the server side and xp with new desktop hardware leapfrogging win2k. Count on a lot of companies leapfrogging xp to vista as longhorn has been hyped for a couple of years now.
Whatever happens though, they won't be upgrading to OSX products.
The math is an exaggeration to be sure, but the point is after one week vista will have a larger installed base than OSX.
Vista will also have 1000X+ the number of users one week after launch than apple will accumulate in the time since it was released until vista comes out. Just the reality of the situation. Rip-off or no, vista will dominate.
Even if true, it would still be a generality. It doesn't mean that you are smarter than whoever is in the car beside you at the stop light.
In Britain, they can't call unless you give them permission ahead of time.
Gee, the proposed law seems to me to work very much like the do not call list of telemarketing. I.E. Do not call unless you've been asked. That works better than voluntary do not spam lists don't you think?
ITAR predates the present administration. The sad reality is that many groups do try to buy dual use tech and then redirect it to other places and uses. It's more common than you think. The present solution is not very good I grant, but it is better than nothing.
I said low tech, not inferior. The fact is that these types of projects drive development of technologies. Not just in electronics, but in materials and in techniques. The fact that Russian stuff may have not have had the technical finesse that western stuff had may been the reason Russian tech in a number of fields did not advance as quickly in the west. That will now change.
Right now the Chinese, for example, see space tech development as the fastest way of achieving technical parity with the west.
Just as a foonote, the Russians too had some spectacular disasters related to their space program.
There was a new design on board that Bush killed as someone else mentioned, but this development will probably revive it.
I wasn't suggesting that the Europeans and Russians were living in tents, nor was I suggesting they had no space experience. Technologically speaking though, the US has been the dominant player in space for the last few decades. The Russian stuff for the most part, while functional, was comparatively speaking - low tech.
That is changing. And it is a good thing. They will bring a new approach to the table. As for the Chinese, time will tell.
If this goes like other discussions on this and similar topics about advanced technologies appearing in various parts of the world, it will split into two camps. One camp that thinks it will be cool because new tech is always cool. The other camp will lament that North America is falling behind. To the latter I say that it is not North America falling behind, but rather the rest of the world is catching up. That's inevitable and that's good. Don't doubt that we don't have a new shuttle on the board somewhere too. The the other camp. I say this new shuttle will be cool. It will be interesting to see what approach they take in designing it based on years of observing the North American program.
The most interesting thing I find about these reactions to this story is the pervasive ignorance of, and discomfiture regarding mental illness as evidenced by some of the comments. If you look at most of the checklists regarding checks for most mental disorders, what strikes you is how similar they all are and how much of diagnosis is a result of painstaking cross-referencing by therapists to arrive at a "pretty good idea" of where the problem lies.
If you had a broken leg, you would go to the doctor, tell the doctor what the problem is and follow the prescribed treatments. People with disorders don't tend to do that. They get referred by authorities and then do all they can to present themselves as not having a problem. If anyone has confronted an alcoholic, or has dealt with them, they have no doubt been told that they are the alcoholic, not the alcoholic themselves. This makes treating people with disorders highly problematic.
If you had a broken leg, you wouldn't think twice about seeing a doctor, yet when significant trauma hits someone's life, the notion of seeking professional help is almost seen as a weakness in a lot of quarters. Sad for the 21rst century really.