"Good companies have shown us time and time again, too many options confuse people and make them pissed off."
First, remember that most people don't buy operating systems. They buy computers.
Thus, when I go buy my Dell and buy a computer for my home, it will come with Windows Home Basic Edition because that will be cheaper and I know I don't want to buy a "Starter Edition"--I already have a computer. Dell will add Home Premium Edition" as an option with a "Dell Recommended" logo next to it.
If I'm doing the small business buy, I'll have a choice between the Professional Edition and the Small Business Edition. If I'm buying from their corporate store, I'll have a choice between the Professional Edition and the Corporate Edition.
Dell will sell the "Ultimate Edition" separately or with their gaming machines (since it has the games tweaker).
Second, remember that Microsoft makes most of their money selling to OEMs--not to consumers. The OEMs love this idea because it allows them to "upsell" to the consumer. So Dell can make a $199 computer with the Starter Edition and then make back an extra $100 by convincing the customer that they really will want the Basic Home Edition.
Heck, using Dell as an example, go to Dell's TV offer site and look at their $299 PC. Go through and add everything that says "Dell Recommends" (except for the warranty). The price is now $388. So Dell just got me to spend an extra $89.
The OEMs will whittle down the list of options to one or two depending on which store you go to and will make the whole thing palatable to the consumer.
Honestly, I have yet to figure out how this whole Music/Phone convergence is supposed to work.
Consider cameras as an example. Pictures are things we share with others and that fits in with a phone, which is a device for communicating. Needless to say, the RIAA would prefer that we didn't share music, so there goes the whole music sharing part.
So essentially, what has happened is that you've attached an MP3 player to the phone. Why? So you don't have to carry two devices around. Wonderful, I suppose. But when you have things like the iPod shuffle and iPod nano, what's the big deal of carrying two devices? It's not like you're "weighed down" carrying a 1.5 ounce (42 gram) device.
I suppose you can make the argument that you're getting a deal--you're spending $250 for a phone, a crappy 640x480 digital camera, a pocket organizer, and an iPod shuffle. Figure that all of those together would probably run you about $400. I suppose that might be nice, but I'm going to end up gradually ignoring one or more of those features. I'll want a better camera or a music player that holds more songs. So I might buy one of these "converged" devices once--but I'll get smarter when I realize how bad all of the pieces really are. The next phone I buy probably won't have all that stuff attached--or, if it does, it will be because the price came down so dramatically that it was a wash.
Heck, I already hear adults saying all of this is stuff--"I just want a phone." While I don't hear this as much from kids, I'd also point out that kids aren't buying the phone--Mom & Dad are--and when Mom & Dad are pulling out their wallet, you try to get the most out of them that you can. Like the above "deal", it's easier to get Mom & Dad to spring for a cell phone with all that stuff than it is to get Mom & Dad to buy you a phone, PDA, camera, and iPod.
This year, I've gotten a couple of calls from Microsoft.
The first was from one of the managers who had gotten my resumé from a recruiter. We swapped a few e-mails and he sent me the "e-mail interview." Since most of the questions were about Windows, I didn't bother to fill it out. I checked and discovered that I could find most of the answers on Google, but I felt that wouldn't really be a fair way to test my knowledge of Windows--which is essentially nil--and I figured that when I told them that I used Google to answer all the questions, they'd probably not be interested anyway so it would be a waste of time to even reply.
About six months later, I got a call from one of the recruiters at Microsoft. I chatted with him a bit on the phone and discovered that they had found my resumé on-line and that it had appropriate keywords (Network, Kernel, Security, etc.). Essentially, they're looking for people with kernel experience. The fact that my experience is as a Macintosh developer seemed secondary to having the skills and interest in working on kernel programming.
I was polite and told him that I didn't think I'd be a good match because I'm not all that interested in moving to the Pacific Northwest to work on the Windows kernel. I thanked him for the call and said to keep me in mind if anything opens up in the Mac Business Unit.
But the recruiter was a pretty nice guy. He said that he'd gotten lots of calls from people who told him to fuck off and die. Personally, I think that's rude. Even if you hate Microsoft, a simple "Sorry, not interested" would be much better. Act like a jerk now and all you've done is indelibly etched yourself into his mind. Not to mention that recruiters talk to each other. Send back a rude e-mail and he shows it to some friends and they remember the name, too. In ten years, when Microsoft is bankrupt and destroyed and this recruiter or one of his friends is working for a really cool Linux company, how far do you think your resumé is going to get?
I agree that, in the case of Eric Raymond, somebody must have been having a spot of fun with the recruiter. But, as the saying goes, it never hurts to ask. Maybe Eric would be interested in coming to Microsoft and showing them how to do it right.
"[...] if you want to go to McDonalds drive-thru you need to have a car."
I'm not sure if this is off-topic or not, but it reminded me of something that happened once.
Back in 1985, as Hurricane Gloria was bearing down on Long Island, I decided it might not be a bad idea to head to the bank, get some cash, and lay in supplies for the day. I was tasked with keeping an eye on our network hubs which were located in a potentially leaky basement.
In any event, I figured I'd make an early start of it. So I wandered down to the bank. This was before ATMs were particularly widespread, but the drive-thru tellers were in at 7:30. I figured I'd just walk up to the drive-thru teller, since I didn't have a car.
No dice. I was refused service. Even when the cars had left, the teller refused to even go over to walk-up window. I would have to wait until the bank opened at 9:00AM.
So I did. I waited until 9:00AM, got my money, made a bee-line to the store for food, etc. and got into work just as the storm started to hit in earnest.
That weekend, I went into the bank, closed my account, and let them know exactly how I felt about being discriminated against.
Part of my annoyance, of course, came from the fact that we have a hurricane bearing down on us and I have to stand around and wait while others are allowed to go, simply because the bank had some rule. Actually, the person at the bank I talked to agreed with me and the teller was reprimanded.
First, I will point out that I believe we landed on the moon. But a guy I worked with is a definite tinfoil hat conspiracy nut and it was pretty fun to listen to the theories.
To understand them, you have to distrust everything the government says and look for ways that it could be faked.
So how would we do it?
First, the mission would have been entirely unmanned. Land a radio transmitter on the moon and that solves the problem. Communications from NASA are sent directly to the astronauts on earth in "real time." The astronauts send their replies to the moon which echoes them back, thus giving the appropriate time delays. Same thing with the Apollo spacecraft.
I'm not sure about the triangulation properties, but consider that the first missions didn't go very far from the LEM. I'm also not sure if the Lunar Rover actually broadcast back to Earth or whether it sent to the LEM and from there back to Earth. If it's the latter, sure--we landed a transmitter on the moon. But the broadcasts stayed in one place.
Again, NASA had landed on the moon before Apollo--the Surveyor missions. So NASA did show it could land stuff on the moon.
It would be significantly easier to land a transmitter on the moon than it would be to land people there.
I own a zoomy little sports car which I love to drive. The reason I bought it was that, at the time, I was working 40 miles from home (one way) and I wanted a car that I was going to enjoy driving. I kept some slightly odd hours (about 10-7 or so) so that I didn't have deal quite so much with bumper-to-bumper traffic.
That said, I would love the ability to be able to "not drive" on some days. Bad weather? Let the car deal with it. Also, I could see wanting to switch it on and off. Phone call? Let the car drive while I figure out what's going on with dinner.
"Average corporate drone level employees would never be offered these types of provisions or even the opportunity to negotiate."
Frankly, in a contract, you are always able to negotiate. Most of us don't bother--we're happy to have a job that will pay us money so we can eat, etc. If we are going negotiate, it's usually over such things as salary, vacation time, etc.
Last time I worked for a big company, they had one of those "all your work belongs to us" provisions. I went back with a list of things that I was playing with at home that I said would not belong to them. They were fine with that--as long as no company resources were used in it's development (for example, I couldn't work on it while traveling on the company dime using the company laptop). We added that into the contract and I signed it. If they had said, "No, we own those, too," I would have had to consider whether I wanted to work for them. I probably would have tried to figure out which ones they wanted to own and continued negotiating.
Again, these things are negotiable. But most of us are afraid to negotiate because there's a chance we won't get the job. Usually, the best way to get around this is to not make this part of the negotiation to get the job but to, instead, make this part of the negotiation after you get the job. This is when you have to sign the employment agreement anyway (on your first day), so that's when you start negotiating these things. Since, at this point, the company has invested some time and effort into getting you in the building (and telling all those other candidates that they're not getting hired), they'll be more willing to listen to reasonable changes to the employment contract.
Actually, with my TT, I've noticed a similar situation.
First, certain burned CDs (I have yet to see this on a commercial CD) when played on random will only play the first track. However, if it is not played on random, it will play all the tracks. Interestingly enough, though, if I spin the CD in the holder, that will sometimes allow it work correctly.
The other interesting thing is that the CD player will not repeat tracks until all tracks of the CD have been played (Duh), at which point all bets are off. While I have never seen it play the same track back-to-back, I have seen it play a track, another track, and then the first track again. Note that this only happens once the CD has randomly played all tracks.
I told the Audi dealer about this. They pretty much said, "Yeah, so?" I sort of agree with them. Of course, as soon as I have the cash, I'm getting an ice>Link and an iPod and I'll toss the CD player.
"Yeah, it was cooperation and not competition that put a man on the moon!"
Y'know, I'm gonna burn some karma here. But there are times I really hate this attitude.
When I was a kid, say, early 1970s, I picked up an old book on the planets and the "future" of space flight. This book was written probably around 1959 or 1960. It talked about Sputnik and Explorer I. And it talked about how man would get into space. The book started with the "space plane" (what I learned in later years would be considered the X-20). It sat at the top of a rocket, was launched into orbit, and landed again like a normal airplane. The book then talked about the next big step--a space station constructed in orbit. This looked remarkably like the space station shown in 2001. The book ended with what would be the next big step--probably sometime in the late 1980s or early 1990s--of an expedition to explore the moon.
Well, of course, we beat that by 20 years! We landed on the moon in 1969! But what did we get out of it? Are we on the moon now? Could we do more with the moon now, if we were to land on it again, than plant some flags and play some golf?
Your vaunted "competition" to get us to the moon gained us very little in the long run. Yeah, we made it and we developed some pretty impressive technology to do it, which had all sorts of commercial benefits. But we didn't go to the moon to explore. We didn't go to the moon to expand humanity. We went to the moon to beat the Commies. And once that was accomplished, we were done.
I liken it to a 240,000 mile race. We're all excited at the approach of the race. We discuss, debate, and argue about who we think will win. When the race starts, we are glued to our seats. Whoever wins, we cheer, we applaud, slap them on the back and say what a great job they did. But a week after the race, it's business as usual. The winner's name is written in the history books and that's it.
The American Public wasn't behind the Apollo program in order to broaden mankind's knowledge of the universe. We were behind it to whoop some Commie butt and show the world how great the U.S. of A was. And so, when the race was won, the banners were taken down, the streets swept clear of the ticker tape from the parades, and people went back to their own business secure in the knowledge that their country was #1.
That, to me, is what our "competition" to get to the moon got us. Getting to the moon was sold to the people as a race which we had to win. The money spent on Apollo was taken from programs like the X-20. It short-circuited plans for a permanent space station. It put all our resources behind one big "show"--get to the moon. We're only now starting catch up to where we might have been in the late 1970s, if only we had hadn't gotten distracted by beating the commies to the moon.
Consider the concept of "competition": You have an objective--a thing you have to accomplish. If you reach the objective before the others, you win. If you don't, you lose. I'm not interested in that. I'd like to see colonies on the moon. I'd like to see manned exploration of Mars. But these are long-term things--there is no "competition." And if we waste the money on "flags and footprints" kinds of missions so we can thrust our collective index fingers in the air and yell "We're #1!", the long term goal of having my children or my children's children live and work on the moon will never be realized.
Don't get me wrong. I'm not saying Apollo wasn't an amazing achievement. But everyone complains about the fact that we didn't follow-up Apollo with more and better trips to the moon. But as I said, this wasn't how Apollo was sold to the people. It was sold as a competition. And competitions are over when somebody wins. I want the follow-up. And the only way we'll get it is to stop thinking about "beating" other countries and start thinking about how we can do this "for all mankind."
Actually, I remember one of the older viruses that spread quickly (Code Red, maybe?) started randomly picking addresses on the "local" net and would only try a few "random". Then as it exhausted addresses locally, it would do more external addresses.
"Of course, if the market could grow to several million per year after a few years, then it starts to look worth it."
People don't upgrade their operating system. The Windows XP Pro Upgrade is #12 on Amazon's top sellers. Windows XP Home Upgrade is #21. Windows 2000 is #51. Windows XP Pro is #82.
Heck, Mac OS X Tiger is #10. What was it that Steve Jobs said at WWDC? Something like 25% of Mac users are still running Jaguar from two-and-a-half years ago! So even Mac users don't upgrade their operating system!
Let's have some fun with math. Consider that Apple's margins on a computer average 25%--I think the average is slightly higher but we'll go with that. Now, Apple has stopped reporting the breakdowns for the model lines, but in the Second Quarter, Apple shipped 467,000 consumer desktop Macs (iMac, eMac, Mac mini) and made $620 million. A little division tells us that Apple made an average of $1360 per iMac sold. If the margins are 25%, Apple walked away with $340. If Apple sells Mac OS X, they have to sell about 2.6 copies of Mac OS X for every consumer desktop they sell.
Again, in the Second Quarter, Apple shipped 141,000 PowerMac G5s and Xserves. They made $571 million so that works out to $2270 per machine. Do the 25% thing and Apple made $568 per machine. Figure 4.4 copies of Mac OS X for every PowerMac sold.
With the iBook, it works out to 2.1 copies of Mac OS X. For the PowerBooks, it works out to 3.8.
If we average those, just for convenience, Apple would have to sell 16 copies of Mac OS X for every five machines they would have sold or 3.2 copies of Mac OS X for every Mac sold. So, figure that last quarter Apple shipped 1,182,000 Macs. To get the same money, Apple would have to ship 3,782,400 copies of Mac OS X each quarter to make the same money.
Now, just for fun, I wandered back to Amazon and looked at the top sellers. The #4 top seller was Intuit's QuickBooks Pro. So I went over to Intuit's web site and checked. In the most recent quarter, the total number of QuickBooks sold (Basic, Pro, Premier, and Enterprise) was 388,000. (I wanted to check Quicken, which was #2 on Amazon, but I couldn't find the information)
So how the heck is Apple going to ship 3.7 million copies of Mac OS X/86 every quarter to make up for this? Why, bundle it with every PC sold! Now that's volume!
I'm having some trouble getting quarterly results for the big PC makers, but I did see that HP shipped 2.76 million PCs in the second quarter of this year. So if Apple partnered with HP and HP shipped all their PCs with Mac OS X, Apple still wouldn't have enough to be make up for it! (I couldn't find numbers for Dell, but it wasn't a whole lot more)
Now that said, if 50 million PCs are sold every quarter, Apple would have to sell get Mac OS X on 7.5% of them to make the same money. But whether or not they can even do that would be debatable...
One of those things that, in my opinion, NASA should be studying is how much gravity is needed and how often.
For example, could the astronauts sleep in gravity for eight hours? One would assume not, since when you're sleeping you're not moving around (okay, give them uncomfortable mattresses:^). On the other hand, from what I understand, the body "detects" that you don't need such tough bones if you're in zero-G so would being in 1G--even asleep--make the body realize that you do need the bone mass? Maybe all they need is a spinning bedroom?
What about prolonged exposure to 1/8th G, like on the Moon? Will that be attenuated by people going outside in big bulky spacesuits? If I remember my trivia correctly, the astronauts on the moon "weighed" about 180 pounds (moon weight) but were carrying 300 some-odd pounds (earth weight) of equipment to get to that 180. Will people working in "shirt-sleeve" conditions on the moon need to put rocks in their pockets?
This is one of those things that sort of torques me off with NASA. They have done countless studies on the effects of weightlessness on the human body. They've found various problems. But they don't seem to be doing anything to solve the problems.
At the risk of sounding like a conspiracy nut, I sometimes think that NASA hasn't solved this problem "on purpose." Why? Because, hey, let's face it--weightlessness is cool. I caught a little bit of NASA TV over the weekend when they were replaying the video taken when the Shuttle astronauts came aboard ISS. People were floating around, bouncing off the walls, etc. It looked really cool. If everything looked "normal" with people walking around, it's a little less interesting to the TV viewer.
"Actually, duplicating some of a CD or cassette tape for a friend or family member has long been accepted as fair-use - ie not requiring authorization from the copyright holder."
Actually, to the best part of my knowledge, duplicating some of a CD or cassette tape has never been accepted as fair use. However, this kind of copying is pretty much impossible for the RIAA to catch, so it was "safe" to do so.
I think, in general, the effect of "techies" on the market is not as large as we all like to believe. And I think it's getting less and less.
Ten years ago, I would have people ask me about buying a computer. Today I very rarely get asked. Why? Advertising.
More than ten years ago, there wasn't much for mainstream PC advertising. So if people were thinking about getting a PC, about the only place to go was the techies. If you didn't want to talk to the techies, you talked to your friends who did or you bought what the company you worked for bought because you already knew how to use it.
Today, there are plenty of sources for information on computers besides the techie. Heck, it is the rare newspaper that doesn't have a "tech" column appearing at least once-per-week. You can't watch a TV show without seeing an ad for HP, Dell, or Gateway. And then there's always the Internet.
So, with all those sources, it's no longer necessary to go see the guy with the pocket protector and have to sit through boring lectures laced with three letter acronyms and obscure measuring units ("What's the difference between a megabyte and a megahertz?"). The TV will tell me what computer to buy, just like it tells me what clothes to buy and what car to buy.
Actually, what's even worse is that Apple wouldn't even gain market share.
Remember, market share is about units sold. This is why Linux has such a hard time. Someone who downloads Slackware onto his home-built PC isn't counted in any market share measurements because he didn't buy the PC or the OS. This is why you see such odd numbers when you start checking out Windows vs. Linux marketshare--it's difficult to tell how many people are actually using Windows or Linux.
"And we all know that companies that gain nearly 100% of the market share make almost no money."
And, yes, the Internet economy rears it's ugly head. It's not profits that are important! It's marketshare! I remember all the.coms that were gonna be the next Microsoft of the Internet by giving away stuff!
Didn't work too well.
"Apple needs to realize WHY Windows won, if they do that, they'll own the market."
I think Apple understands far better than you do "why Windows won." After all, they were there. From the sounds of it, you were not.
First off, Windows didn't win. DOS won. And the reason DOS won is IBM. IBM came out with the PC which convinced businesses that PCs were useful computing tools and not toys. All IBM PCs shipped with PC-DOS, a branded version of MS-DOS.
IBM didn't really actively pursue the PC market because they didn't really believe in it. Others came along and did stuff that IBM didn't--most notably Compaq. Compaq's claim to fame was a "compact" computer (Compact/Compaq. Get it?). Since IBM didn't have one of these and people wanted one, they figured they'd try Compaq's. They discovered it was "just as good" as the IBM machine and clones were given a big push. Compaq and the rest of the clones shipped with MS-DOS, making Microsoft a name known to everyone.
Microsoft began including Windows with DOS for PC companies to install on hard drives. By the time Windows 3.0 rolled around, Microsoft made the requirement that PCs had to start up with Windows. By this point, Microsoft had all of their applications running under Windows and none of their competitors did, letting them leapfrog their competitors in the application space.
And this is WHY Windows won.
Remember that, by far, the vast majority of people get their Windows when they buy their PC. Apple would need to partner with a PC maker to sell sufficient volumes of Mac OS X/86 to make decent money.
Now the PC makers might be willing to carry Mac OS X. But Apple would probably have to sell it for less than Microsoft charges OEMs for Windows. So Apple is making less money than Microsoft on each product sold. Apple would also probably have to do the marketing themselves, as I'm sure Microsoft has exclusive marketing agreements with the major PC companies. This cuts down Apple's profits even more.
Of course, this assumes that Microsoft just wouldn't underbid Apple for operating system software in a race to the bottom. With Microsoft having about ten times Apple's cash, they could sit on Apple for quite some time until they were completely squashed.
Honestly, I'd love to see Apple do Mac OS X for your typical PC. But if they did this, Apple would finally go out of business.
"[...] you're moving into the realm of problems with the implimentation rather than problems with the idea [...]"
Well, a little of both, really.
First off, I have a problem with the concept that the police should be able to monitor everywhere anyone goes, just in case a crime is committed. It strikes me as bit too "Big Brother is watching you."
Second, I'm not convinced there's really a problem. Several years ago, I and my sweetheart were mugged. I did what I was told to do--make as much of a commotion as can be done safely and stall for time. People who saw the commotion kept an eye on the muggers after they ran off and told the police where they could be found. It took the police a matter of minutes to recover everything and cart them off to jail.
Where I see this being helpful is in the realm of "nuisance crimes." And while, sure, I don't want my car stolen as much as the next person, this is why I buy car insurance. So that if my car is stolen, I can get some money to buy another one. Do I really need to give up my personal freedom to travel anywhere unmonitored just so that the police can recover my car if it's stolen? I value my freedom more than my car.
Third, it feels like it's more an idea to keep the honest people honest. Why should I give up my personal freedom so that the police can track the bad guys?
Finally, how resistant to tampering are these chips? I propose the following scenario: I'm going to rob a bank. A week before the robbery, I'm going to go around and disable lots of RFID chips on cars. Then I will steal a car and disable it's RFID chip. This will be my getaway car for the bank robbery.
The RFID chip in my getaway car will not broadcast information which won't help the police track me. If they try to track me, they will find a bunch of other cars whose RFID chips have been broken leaving a bunch of false trails. And, when the police eventually catch me, I'm sure they'll add "Tampering with RFID chip" to the list of criminal felonies--like it will make a difference next to the bank robbery charge.
It's sort of like the "Felony Evasion" crime here in California. It keeps the honest people who made a mistake from thinking about running.
For example, I ran a stop light right in front of a cop one morning at 2:00AM. I don't know why--I was distracted by something, it was late, it was more of an oops. I was about a block from home when I saw the lights go on. I might have made it, but I have more common sense than to add "Felony Evasion" to running a red light.
But if I just robbed a bank, adding "Felony Evasion" to my list of crimes isn't going to make a heck of a lot of difference.
So, in short, it's one of those cases where it's either (a) a bunch of money spent which will make no difference at all in serious crimes solved or (b) an invasion of privacy which will not make much difference in solving serious crimes.
Just because it can be done doesn't mean it should be done.
"RFID is simply what it stands for: Radio Frequency ID. You hit it with an RF query and it in turn responds with its ID. No one anywhere said anything about it responding with anything more than that."
Now, you see, I don't have a problem with that. And maybe I'm taking the article too literally. But go back and read it. Especially, this part (emphasis mine):
"The British government is preparing to test new high-tech license plates containing microchips capable of
transmitting unique vehicle identification numbers and other data to readers more than 300 feet away."
Now the way I'm reading it, that says that I hit it with the RF query and it will send back the unique vehicle identification numbers and other data. What other data is anybody's guess.
But you may be right. The reporter may not have gotten the details correct or didn't think it was important how it actually worked. I don't know enough about RFID chips, I'll admit. So maybe you can answer a question:
Is it impossible for an RFID to broadcast a license number, name, and address? How much data can an RFID tag broadcast?
"So Mr. Paranoid's little psychotic fear that Joe Somebody will drive by his nice car at the store and suddenly know everything about him is nothing but pure paranoid conspiracy theory."
I know that all you people who are calling me paranoid are just out to get me.:^)
Slashdot Mirror
"Good companies have shown us time and time again, too many options confuse people and make them pissed off."
First, remember that most people don't buy operating systems. They buy computers.
Thus, when I go buy my Dell and buy a computer for my home, it will come with Windows Home Basic Edition because that will be cheaper and I know I don't want to buy a "Starter Edition"--I already have a computer. Dell will add Home Premium Edition" as an option with a "Dell Recommended" logo next to it.
If I'm doing the small business buy, I'll have a choice between the Professional Edition and the Small Business Edition. If I'm buying from their corporate store, I'll have a choice between the Professional Edition and the Corporate Edition.
Dell will sell the "Ultimate Edition" separately or with their gaming machines (since it has the games tweaker).
Second, remember that Microsoft makes most of their money selling to OEMs--not to consumers. The OEMs love this idea because it allows them to "upsell" to the consumer. So Dell can make a $199 computer with the Starter Edition and then make back an extra $100 by convincing the customer that they really will want the Basic Home Edition.
Heck, using Dell as an example, go to Dell's TV offer site and look at their $299 PC. Go through and add everything that says "Dell Recommends" (except for the warranty). The price is now $388. So Dell just got me to spend an extra $89.
The OEMs will whittle down the list of options to one or two depending on which store you go to and will make the whole thing palatable to the consumer.
LUXURY! The company I work does DNA scans and every 30 days, I have to become someone else!
Honestly, I have yet to figure out how this whole Music/Phone convergence is supposed to work.
Consider cameras as an example. Pictures are things we share with others and that fits in with a phone, which is a device for communicating. Needless to say, the RIAA would prefer that we didn't share music, so there goes the whole music sharing part.
So essentially, what has happened is that you've attached an MP3 player to the phone. Why? So you don't have to carry two devices around. Wonderful, I suppose. But when you have things like the iPod shuffle and iPod nano, what's the big deal of carrying two devices? It's not like you're "weighed down" carrying a 1.5 ounce (42 gram) device.
I suppose you can make the argument that you're getting a deal--you're spending $250 for a phone, a crappy 640x480 digital camera, a pocket organizer, and an iPod shuffle. Figure that all of those together would probably run you about $400. I suppose that might be nice, but I'm going to end up gradually ignoring one or more of those features. I'll want a better camera or a music player that holds more songs. So I might buy one of these "converged" devices once--but I'll get smarter when I realize how bad all of the pieces really are. The next phone I buy probably won't have all that stuff attached--or, if it does, it will be because the price came down so dramatically that it was a wash.
Heck, I already hear adults saying all of this is stuff--"I just want a phone." While I don't hear this as much from kids, I'd also point out that kids aren't buying the phone--Mom & Dad are--and when Mom & Dad are pulling out their wallet, you try to get the most out of them that you can. Like the above "deal", it's easier to get Mom & Dad to spring for a cell phone with all that stuff than it is to get Mom & Dad to buy you a phone, PDA, camera, and iPod.
This year, I've gotten a couple of calls from Microsoft.
The first was from one of the managers who had gotten my resumé from a recruiter. We swapped a few e-mails and he sent me the "e-mail interview." Since most of the questions were about Windows, I didn't bother to fill it out. I checked and discovered that I could find most of the answers on Google, but I felt that wouldn't really be a fair way to test my knowledge of Windows--which is essentially nil--and I figured that when I told them that I used Google to answer all the questions, they'd probably not be interested anyway so it would be a waste of time to even reply.
About six months later, I got a call from one of the recruiters at Microsoft. I chatted with him a bit on the phone and discovered that they had found my resumé on-line and that it had appropriate keywords (Network, Kernel, Security, etc.). Essentially, they're looking for people with kernel experience. The fact that my experience is as a Macintosh developer seemed secondary to having the skills and interest in working on kernel programming.
I was polite and told him that I didn't think I'd be a good match because I'm not all that interested in moving to the Pacific Northwest to work on the Windows kernel. I thanked him for the call and said to keep me in mind if anything opens up in the Mac Business Unit.
But the recruiter was a pretty nice guy. He said that he'd gotten lots of calls from people who told him to fuck off and die. Personally, I think that's rude. Even if you hate Microsoft, a simple "Sorry, not interested" would be much better. Act like a jerk now and all you've done is indelibly etched yourself into his mind. Not to mention that recruiters talk to each other. Send back a rude e-mail and he shows it to some friends and they remember the name, too. In ten years, when Microsoft is bankrupt and destroyed and this recruiter or one of his friends is working for a really cool Linux company, how far do you think your resumé is going to get?
I agree that, in the case of Eric Raymond, somebody must have been having a spot of fun with the recruiter. But, as the saying goes, it never hurts to ask. Maybe Eric would be interested in coming to Microsoft and showing them how to do it right.
...and I, for one, welcome our new solar overlords.
(You knew it was coming, didn't you?)
"[...] if you want to go to McDonalds drive-thru you need to have a car."
I'm not sure if this is off-topic or not, but it reminded me of something that happened once.
Back in 1985, as Hurricane Gloria was bearing down on Long Island, I decided it might not be a bad idea to head to the bank, get some cash, and lay in supplies for the day. I was tasked with keeping an eye on our network hubs which were located in a potentially leaky basement.
In any event, I figured I'd make an early start of it. So I wandered down to the bank. This was before ATMs were particularly widespread, but the drive-thru tellers were in at 7:30. I figured I'd just walk up to the drive-thru teller, since I didn't have a car.
No dice. I was refused service. Even when the cars had left, the teller refused to even go over to walk-up window. I would have to wait until the bank opened at 9:00AM.
So I did. I waited until 9:00AM, got my money, made a bee-line to the store for food, etc. and got into work just as the storm started to hit in earnest.
That weekend, I went into the bank, closed my account, and let them know exactly how I felt about being discriminated against.
Part of my annoyance, of course, came from the fact that we have a hurricane bearing down on us and I have to stand around and wait while others are allowed to go, simply because the bank had some rule. Actually, the person at the bank I talked to agreed with me and the teller was reprimanded.
"but as you can see [...] nothing happened"
Except Hollywood produced movies about it.
Well, the three LRVs did over 50 miles...
First, I will point out that I believe we landed on the moon. But a guy I worked with is a definite tinfoil hat conspiracy nut and it was pretty fun to listen to the theories.
To understand them, you have to distrust everything the government says and look for ways that it could be faked.
So how would we do it?
First, the mission would have been entirely unmanned. Land a radio transmitter on the moon and that solves the problem. Communications from NASA are sent directly to the astronauts on earth in "real time." The astronauts send their replies to the moon which echoes them back, thus giving the appropriate time delays. Same thing with the Apollo spacecraft.
I'm not sure about the triangulation properties, but consider that the first missions didn't go very far from the LEM. I'm also not sure if the Lunar Rover actually broadcast back to Earth or whether it sent to the LEM and from there back to Earth. If it's the latter, sure--we landed a transmitter on the moon. But the broadcasts stayed in one place.
Again, NASA had landed on the moon before Apollo--the Surveyor missions. So NASA did show it could land stuff on the moon.
It would be significantly easier to land a transmitter on the moon than it would be to land people there.
Well, I'll add another one.
I own a zoomy little sports car which I love to drive. The reason I bought it was that, at the time, I was working 40 miles from home (one way) and I wanted a car that I was going to enjoy driving. I kept some slightly odd hours (about 10-7 or so) so that I didn't have deal quite so much with bumper-to-bumper traffic.
That said, I would love the ability to be able to "not drive" on some days. Bad weather? Let the car deal with it. Also, I could see wanting to switch it on and off. Phone call? Let the car drive while I figure out what's going on with dinner.
"Average corporate drone level employees would never be offered these types of provisions or even the opportunity to negotiate."
Frankly, in a contract, you are always able to negotiate. Most of us don't bother--we're happy to have a job that will pay us money so we can eat, etc. If we are going negotiate, it's usually over such things as salary, vacation time, etc.
Last time I worked for a big company, they had one of those "all your work belongs to us" provisions. I went back with a list of things that I was playing with at home that I said would not belong to them. They were fine with that--as long as no company resources were used in it's development (for example, I couldn't work on it while traveling on the company dime using the company laptop). We added that into the contract and I signed it. If they had said, "No, we own those, too," I would have had to consider whether I wanted to work for them. I probably would have tried to figure out which ones they wanted to own and continued negotiating.
Again, these things are negotiable. But most of us are afraid to negotiate because there's a chance we won't get the job. Usually, the best way to get around this is to not make this part of the negotiation to get the job but to, instead, make this part of the negotiation after you get the job. This is when you have to sign the employment agreement anyway (on your first day), so that's when you start negotiating these things. Since, at this point, the company has invested some time and effort into getting you in the building (and telling all those other candidates that they're not getting hired), they'll be more willing to listen to reasonable changes to the employment contract.
Actually, with my TT, I've noticed a similar situation.
First, certain burned CDs (I have yet to see this on a commercial CD) when played on random will only play the first track. However, if it is not played on random, it will play all the tracks. Interestingly enough, though, if I spin the CD in the holder, that will sometimes allow it work correctly.
The other interesting thing is that the CD player will not repeat tracks until all tracks of the CD have been played (Duh), at which point all bets are off. While I have never seen it play the same track back-to-back, I have seen it play a track, another track, and then the first track again. Note that this only happens once the CD has randomly played all tracks.
I told the Audi dealer about this. They pretty much said, "Yeah, so?" I sort of agree with them. Of course, as soon as I have the cash, I'm getting an ice>Link and an iPod and I'll toss the CD player.
4. Sue gun manufacturers.
5. Profit!
(Sorry. Couldn't resist.)
"Yeah, it was cooperation and not competition that put a man on the moon!"
Y'know, I'm gonna burn some karma here. But there are times I really hate this attitude.
When I was a kid, say, early 1970s, I picked up an old book on the planets and the "future" of space flight. This book was written probably around 1959 or 1960. It talked about Sputnik and Explorer I. And it talked about how man would get into space. The book started with the "space plane" (what I learned in later years would be considered the X-20). It sat at the top of a rocket, was launched into orbit, and landed again like a normal airplane. The book then talked about the next big step--a space station constructed in orbit. This looked remarkably like the space station shown in 2001. The book ended with what would be the next big step--probably sometime in the late 1980s or early 1990s--of an expedition to explore the moon.
Well, of course, we beat that by 20 years! We landed on the moon in 1969! But what did we get out of it? Are we on the moon now? Could we do more with the moon now, if we were to land on it again, than plant some flags and play some golf?
Your vaunted "competition" to get us to the moon gained us very little in the long run. Yeah, we made it and we developed some pretty impressive technology to do it, which had all sorts of commercial benefits. But we didn't go to the moon to explore. We didn't go to the moon to expand humanity. We went to the moon to beat the Commies. And once that was accomplished, we were done.
I liken it to a 240,000 mile race. We're all excited at the approach of the race. We discuss, debate, and argue about who we think will win. When the race starts, we are glued to our seats. Whoever wins, we cheer, we applaud, slap them on the back and say what a great job they did. But a week after the race, it's business as usual. The winner's name is written in the history books and that's it.
The American Public wasn't behind the Apollo program in order to broaden mankind's knowledge of the universe. We were behind it to whoop some Commie butt and show the world how great the U.S. of A was. And so, when the race was won, the banners were taken down, the streets swept clear of the ticker tape from the parades, and people went back to their own business secure in the knowledge that their country was #1.
That, to me, is what our "competition" to get to the moon got us. Getting to the moon was sold to the people as a race which we had to win. The money spent on Apollo was taken from programs like the X-20. It short-circuited plans for a permanent space station. It put all our resources behind one big "show"--get to the moon. We're only now starting catch up to where we might have been in the late 1970s, if only we had hadn't gotten distracted by beating the commies to the moon.
Consider the concept of "competition": You have an objective--a thing you have to accomplish. If you reach the objective before the others, you win. If you don't, you lose. I'm not interested in that. I'd like to see colonies on the moon. I'd like to see manned exploration of Mars. But these are long-term things--there is no "competition." And if we waste the money on "flags and footprints" kinds of missions so we can thrust our collective index fingers in the air and yell "We're #1!", the long term goal of having my children or my children's children live and work on the moon will never be realized.
Don't get me wrong. I'm not saying Apollo wasn't an amazing achievement. But everyone complains about the fact that we didn't follow-up Apollo with more and better trips to the moon. But as I said, this wasn't how Apollo was sold to the people. It was sold as a competition. And competitions are over when somebody wins. I want the follow-up. And the only way we'll get it is to stop thinking about "beating" other countries and start thinking about how we can do this "for all mankind."
Isn't that what the plaque says it's all about?
"Witty went random, that's much smarter."
Actually, I remember one of the older viruses that spread quickly (Code Red, maybe?) started randomly picking addresses on the "local" net and would only try a few "random". Then as it exhausted addresses locally, it would do more external addresses.
That strikes me as being smarter...
"Of course, if the market could grow to several million per year after a few years, then it starts to look worth it."
People don't upgrade their operating system. The Windows XP Pro Upgrade is #12 on Amazon's top sellers. Windows XP Home Upgrade is #21. Windows 2000 is #51. Windows XP Pro is #82.
Heck, Mac OS X Tiger is #10. What was it that Steve Jobs said at WWDC? Something like 25% of Mac users are still running Jaguar from two-and-a-half years ago! So even Mac users don't upgrade their operating system!
Let's have some fun with math. Consider that Apple's margins on a computer average 25%--I think the average is slightly higher but we'll go with that. Now, Apple has stopped reporting the breakdowns for the model lines, but in the Second Quarter, Apple shipped 467,000 consumer desktop Macs (iMac, eMac, Mac mini) and made $620 million. A little division tells us that Apple made an average of $1360 per iMac sold. If the margins are 25%, Apple walked away with $340. If Apple sells Mac OS X, they have to sell about 2.6 copies of Mac OS X for every consumer desktop they sell.
Again, in the Second Quarter, Apple shipped 141,000 PowerMac G5s and Xserves. They made $571 million so that works out to $2270 per machine. Do the 25% thing and Apple made $568 per machine. Figure 4.4 copies of Mac OS X for every PowerMac sold.
With the iBook, it works out to 2.1 copies of Mac OS X. For the PowerBooks, it works out to 3.8.
If we average those, just for convenience, Apple would have to sell 16 copies of Mac OS X for every five machines they would have sold or 3.2 copies of Mac OS X for every Mac sold. So, figure that last quarter Apple shipped 1,182,000 Macs. To get the same money, Apple would have to ship 3,782,400 copies of Mac OS X each quarter to make the same money.
Now, just for fun, I wandered back to Amazon and looked at the top sellers. The #4 top seller was Intuit's QuickBooks Pro. So I went over to Intuit's web site and checked. In the most recent quarter, the total number of QuickBooks sold (Basic, Pro, Premier, and Enterprise) was 388,000. (I wanted to check Quicken, which was #2 on Amazon, but I couldn't find the information)
So how the heck is Apple going to ship 3.7 million copies of Mac OS X/86 every quarter to make up for this? Why, bundle it with every PC sold! Now that's volume!
I'm having some trouble getting quarterly results for the big PC makers, but I did see that HP shipped 2.76 million PCs in the second quarter of this year. So if Apple partnered with HP and HP shipped all their PCs with Mac OS X, Apple still wouldn't have enough to be make up for it! (I couldn't find numbers for Dell, but it wasn't a whole lot more)
Now that said, if 50 million PCs are sold every quarter, Apple would have to sell get Mac OS X on 7.5% of them to make the same money. But whether or not they can even do that would be debatable...
Back in 1997, Microsoft purchased something like $150 million of non-voting stock in Apple. Thus, they get no votes. Just money.
That said, I think Microsoft has since divested itself of Apple stock.
How about a small spinning doohickey?
:^). On the other hand, from what I understand, the body "detects" that you don't need such tough bones if you're in zero-G so would being in 1G--even asleep--make the body realize that you do need the bone mass? Maybe all they need is a spinning bedroom?
One of those things that, in my opinion, NASA should be studying is how much gravity is needed and how often.
For example, could the astronauts sleep in gravity for eight hours? One would assume not, since when you're sleeping you're not moving around (okay, give them uncomfortable mattresses
What about prolonged exposure to 1/8th G, like on the Moon? Will that be attenuated by people going outside in big bulky spacesuits? If I remember my trivia correctly, the astronauts on the moon "weighed" about 180 pounds (moon weight) but were carrying 300 some-odd pounds (earth weight) of equipment to get to that 180. Will people working in "shirt-sleeve" conditions on the moon need to put rocks in their pockets?
This is one of those things that sort of torques me off with NASA. They have done countless studies on the effects of weightlessness on the human body. They've found various problems. But they don't seem to be doing anything to solve the problems.
At the risk of sounding like a conspiracy nut, I sometimes think that NASA hasn't solved this problem "on purpose." Why? Because, hey, let's face it--weightlessness is cool. I caught a little bit of NASA TV over the weekend when they were replaying the video taken when the Shuttle astronauts came aboard ISS. People were floating around, bouncing off the walls, etc. It looked really cool. If everything looked "normal" with people walking around, it's a little less interesting to the TV viewer.
"Actually, duplicating some of a CD or cassette tape for a friend or family member has long been accepted as fair-use - ie not requiring authorization from the copyright holder."
Actually, to the best part of my knowledge, duplicating some of a CD or cassette tape has never been accepted as fair use. However, this kind of copying is pretty much impossible for the RIAA to catch, so it was "safe" to do so.
Whatever you do, Don't mention the war.
I think, in general, the effect of "techies" on the market is not as large as we all like to believe. And I think it's getting less and less.
Ten years ago, I would have people ask me about buying a computer. Today I very rarely get asked. Why? Advertising.
More than ten years ago, there wasn't much for mainstream PC advertising. So if people were thinking about getting a PC, about the only place to go was the techies. If you didn't want to talk to the techies, you talked to your friends who did or you bought what the company you worked for bought because you already knew how to use it.
Today, there are plenty of sources for information on computers besides the techie. Heck, it is the rare newspaper that doesn't have a "tech" column appearing at least once-per-week. You can't watch a TV show without seeing an ad for HP, Dell, or Gateway. And then there's always the Internet.
So, with all those sources, it's no longer necessary to go see the guy with the pocket protector and have to sit through boring lectures laced with three letter acronyms and obscure measuring units ("What's the difference between a megabyte and a megahertz?"). The TV will tell me what computer to buy, just like it tells me what clothes to buy and what car to buy.
Actually, what's even worse is that Apple wouldn't even gain market share.
Remember, market share is about units sold. This is why Linux has such a hard time. Someone who downloads Slackware onto his home-built PC isn't counted in any market share measurements because he didn't buy the PC or the OS. This is why you see such odd numbers when you start checking out Windows vs. Linux marketshare--it's difficult to tell how many people are actually using Windows or Linux.
"And we all know that companies that gain nearly 100% of the market share make almost no money."
.coms that were gonna be the next Microsoft of the Internet by giving away stuff!
And, yes, the Internet economy rears it's ugly head. It's not profits that are important! It's marketshare! I remember all the
Didn't work too well.
"Apple needs to realize WHY Windows won, if they do that, they'll own the market."
I think Apple understands far better than you do "why Windows won." After all, they were there. From the sounds of it, you were not.
First off, Windows didn't win. DOS won. And the reason DOS won is IBM. IBM came out with the PC which convinced businesses that PCs were useful computing tools and not toys. All IBM PCs shipped with PC-DOS, a branded version of MS-DOS.
IBM didn't really actively pursue the PC market because they didn't really believe in it. Others came along and did stuff that IBM didn't--most notably Compaq. Compaq's claim to fame was a "compact" computer (Compact/Compaq. Get it?). Since IBM didn't have one of these and people wanted one, they figured they'd try Compaq's. They discovered it was "just as good" as the IBM machine and clones were given a big push. Compaq and the rest of the clones shipped with MS-DOS, making Microsoft a name known to everyone.
Microsoft began including Windows with DOS for PC companies to install on hard drives. By the time Windows 3.0 rolled around, Microsoft made the requirement that PCs had to start up with Windows. By this point, Microsoft had all of their applications running under Windows and none of their competitors did, letting them leapfrog their competitors in the application space.
And this is WHY Windows won.
Remember that, by far, the vast majority of people get their Windows when they buy their PC. Apple would need to partner with a PC maker to sell sufficient volumes of Mac OS X/86 to make decent money.
Now the PC makers might be willing to carry Mac OS X. But Apple would probably have to sell it for less than Microsoft charges OEMs for Windows. So Apple is making less money than Microsoft on each product sold. Apple would also probably have to do the marketing themselves, as I'm sure Microsoft has exclusive marketing agreements with the major PC companies. This cuts down Apple's profits even more.
Of course, this assumes that Microsoft just wouldn't underbid Apple for operating system software in a race to the bottom. With Microsoft having about ten times Apple's cash, they could sit on Apple for quite some time until they were completely squashed.
Honestly, I'd love to see Apple do Mac OS X for your typical PC. But if they did this, Apple would finally go out of business.
"[...] you're moving into the realm of problems with the implimentation rather than problems with the idea [...]"
Well, a little of both, really.
First off, I have a problem with the concept that the police should be able to monitor everywhere anyone goes, just in case a crime is committed. It strikes me as bit too "Big Brother is watching you."
Second, I'm not convinced there's really a problem. Several years ago, I and my sweetheart were mugged. I did what I was told to do--make as much of a commotion as can be done safely and stall for time. People who saw the commotion kept an eye on the muggers after they ran off and told the police where they could be found. It took the police a matter of minutes to recover everything and cart them off to jail.
Where I see this being helpful is in the realm of "nuisance crimes." And while, sure, I don't want my car stolen as much as the next person, this is why I buy car insurance. So that if my car is stolen, I can get some money to buy another one. Do I really need to give up my personal freedom to travel anywhere unmonitored just so that the police can recover my car if it's stolen? I value my freedom more than my car.
Third, it feels like it's more an idea to keep the honest people honest. Why should I give up my personal freedom so that the police can track the bad guys?
Finally, how resistant to tampering are these chips? I propose the following scenario: I'm going to rob a bank. A week before the robbery, I'm going to go around and disable lots of RFID chips on cars. Then I will steal a car and disable it's RFID chip. This will be my getaway car for the bank robbery.
The RFID chip in my getaway car will not broadcast information which won't help the police track me. If they try to track me, they will find a bunch of other cars whose RFID chips have been broken leaving a bunch of false trails. And, when the police eventually catch me, I'm sure they'll add "Tampering with RFID chip" to the list of criminal felonies--like it will make a difference next to the bank robbery charge.
It's sort of like the "Felony Evasion" crime here in California. It keeps the honest people who made a mistake from thinking about running.
For example, I ran a stop light right in front of a cop one morning at 2:00AM. I don't know why--I was distracted by something, it was late, it was more of an oops. I was about a block from home when I saw the lights go on. I might have made it, but I have more common sense than to add "Felony Evasion" to running a red light.
But if I just robbed a bank, adding "Felony Evasion" to my list of crimes isn't going to make a heck of a lot of difference.
So, in short, it's one of those cases where it's either (a) a bunch of money spent which will make no difference at all in serious crimes solved or (b) an invasion of privacy which will not make much difference in solving serious crimes.
Just because it can be done doesn't mean it should be done.
Now, you see, I don't have a problem with that. And maybe I'm taking the article too literally. But go back and read it. Especially, this part (emphasis mine):Now the way I'm reading it, that says that I hit it with the RF query and it will send back the unique vehicle identification numbers and other data. What other data is anybody's guess.
But you may be right. The reporter may not have gotten the details correct or didn't think it was important how it actually worked. I don't know enough about RFID chips, I'll admit. So maybe you can answer a question:
Is it impossible for an RFID to broadcast a license number, name, and address? How much data can an RFID tag broadcast?
"So Mr. Paranoid's little psychotic fear that Joe Somebody will drive by his nice car at the store and suddenly know everything about him is nothing but pure paranoid conspiracy theory."
I know that all you people who are calling me paranoid are just out to get me.