It's pretty hard to threaten a company with, what, $40 bn in cash?
Google in my experience makes better products, but that won't get them past shady business practices and a multi-billion dollar monster attempting to utterly crush them.
Of course, I think that Google still has quite a ways to go before they really pose a threat to Microsoft.
This may be true, but that isn't a court case. Proving what they need to with this system would be nearly impossible without the MPAA storming people's houses...
How would any media corporation of any kind fight something like this on any principal but that they think all their users are lying, cheating bastards?
And even then... would companied like Paramount have to sue themselves for owning something like Blockbuster?
Reducing the number of divisions was a good thing, yes. The more important thing, in my opinion, is removing seperation between idea & concept generation and the people who actually implement them.
Many implementers arent good ideas workers, but they can save a lot of company time and money by telling you which ideas will cost how much time and money, and how it will affect other ideas.
Many small start up companies succeed because they do nothing but what they do best. That was why MS succeeded at first, (among other things).
But they lose that when they add management. Some people think that its inevitable that such a thing happens to large companies, but I give you a counter example: Pixar.
Pixar has become the number one name in computer animated movies, and have had at least half a dozen box office toppers. But they continue to produce quality and quantity quickly because they have relatively few mangement positions which do their jobs well, and there are fewer seperations between ideas and implementations.
That is the problem that needs to be addressed, not only in MS, but in other companies like Yahoo and even some non-profit projects.
I've learned that whenever an industry tries to resist progress/technology they always get the short end of the stick.
People want things faster and easier, and what people want ultimately will force, especially in a capitalist society (or something close to it), even non-profit industries to adapt.
RIAA resisted technology, and look what happened. Apple did not, and as such iTunes has been one of the greatest success stories in a while.
Books have been books for a very long time. I enjoy having a book in my hand, and that's how I would prefer to read it, but you wouldn't believe how many times I have been reading or re-reading a book and wished that I had a search function to look up this specific phrase that I remembered.
Google may get flak from Universities and publishers for its project, but ultimately, they are filling a void in a way that has been much needed for a very long time. It's an improvement, and that in itself will perpetuate the progress of Google's project, whether or not its Google who continues it.
I work in my jobs IT Dept... and I use a laptop... my solution? I asked them for an Apple laptop.
Never have to fuss about my wireless card, never have worries about viruses, never have to fret about updating... best thing that IT ever did for me.
I was just doing it and is totally confused by the new Explorer UI, and I'm pretty used to working with Windows.
Yeah, but Opera does that to people by switching to a different skin. Changing the UI is not worth a new OS release.
For example, if you go to Documents from the Start Menu, you're seamlessly put in a virtual folder. Not really a physical one where the files are, but a folder based on a file search. The files there can be in several different places, but you don't really notice easily as the searches are now instnataneous thanks to the new indexer (a good thing in all this mess). So then you try to go to your *real* documents folder and find it's in a completely restructured place (hint: Documents and Settings is no more in Vista). And there you have the changes involved when you just try to go to a folder.
Ummm... isn't that just a rehash of "Recent Documents" in 98? Maybe I misunderstood you. A new indexing system is good, but again, that was something I was expecting in SP2.
And that's just the end-user thing. What's in there for devs? Well, an entirely new development API from scratch -- WinFX is there to succeed Win32, and it's anything but similar, don't even think of having it being backwards compatible.
But WinFX isn't even coming with Vista... its coming two years later in a patch that goes on Vista, XP AND 2000....
I don't think they'll even have to know what they're "supposed to get"... they'll understand that $50 for download on software they already bought once = bad.
I'm pretty sure that MS was originally going to check keys on SP2 then decided against it in favor of securing the most computers possible to reduce the amount of malicious network traffic as much as possible. All I'm saying is that it will be a lot less headache on the rest of us if our networks aren't being bombarded with 2 year old exploits because two computers are using OEM copies or something like that.
It's not really that Vista was delayed so much or that its improvements are cosmetic and minimal... but its more that I can't see them using the same business model with smaller releases. People intrinsically will not pay $200 for something they download. There is a percieved value issue that happens when people say "What did I pay for... the right to download something on the internet? I already pay Comcast/AOL/MSN/etc. for that..."
People don't want to pay for downloads, and they don't want to go to the store every month to pick up an update. I'm not sure that MSs business model will survive a change like this.
You know, as long as they use things like DRM to manage updates, they're going to have trouble. It's the dubious copies of Windows that need the updates the most, and it would be a shame if MS excluded them to spite them, and in turn, spited every other computer on the same network.
Slashdot Mirror
Opera, my favorite browser, supported by Google, my favorite search...
It's paid placement, and I realize that, but I would probably end up at google anyways, even without the placement. For me, its a feature.
It's pretty hard to threaten a company with, what, $40 bn in cash?
Google in my experience makes better products, but that won't get them past shady business practices and a multi-billion dollar monster attempting to utterly crush them.
Of course, I think that Google still has quite a ways to go before they really pose a threat to Microsoft.
Ummm.... ...
When did I talk about Google?
No thanks, I'm quite happy with my Opera 8.5
This may be true, but that isn't a court case. Proving what they need to with this system would be nearly impossible without the MPAA storming people's houses...
How would any media corporation of any kind fight something like this on any principal but that they think all their users are lying, cheating bastards?
And even then... would companied like Paramount have to sue themselves for owning something like Blockbuster?
Being two different industries hardly makes the basic rules of business different.
Reducing the number of divisions was a good thing, yes. The more important thing, in my opinion, is removing seperation between idea & concept generation and the people who actually implement them.
Many implementers arent good ideas workers, but they can save a lot of company time and money by telling you which ideas will cost how much time and money, and how it will affect other ideas.
But what I was really saying is that MS might still innovate if only their company model was more like Pixar's.
Many small start up companies succeed because they do nothing but what they do best. That was why MS succeeded at first, (among other things).
But they lose that when they add management. Some people think that its inevitable that such a thing happens to large companies, but I give you a counter example: Pixar.
Pixar has become the number one name in computer animated movies, and have had at least half a dozen box office toppers. But they continue to produce quality and quantity quickly because they have relatively few mangement positions which do their jobs well, and there are fewer seperations between ideas and implementations.
That is the problem that needs to be addressed, not only in MS, but in other companies like Yahoo and even some non-profit projects.
I never said that it was perfect, I said that they only had success when they stopped fighting technology.
I never said that controlling it was much better than fighting it either.
I've learned that whenever an industry tries to resist progress/technology they always get the short end of the stick.
People want things faster and easier, and what people want ultimately will force, especially in a capitalist society (or something close to it), even non-profit industries to adapt.
RIAA resisted technology, and look what happened. Apple did not, and as such iTunes has been one of the greatest success stories in a while.
Books have been books for a very long time. I enjoy having a book in my hand, and that's how I would prefer to read it, but you wouldn't believe how many times I have been reading or re-reading a book and wished that I had a search function to look up this specific phrase that I remembered.
Google may get flak from Universities and publishers for its project, but ultimately, they are filling a void in a way that has been much needed for a very long time. It's an improvement, and that in itself will perpetuate the progress of Google's project, whether or not its Google who continues it.
I work in my jobs IT Dept... and I use a laptop... my solution? I asked them for an Apple laptop. Never have to fuss about my wireless card, never have worries about viruses, never have to fret about updating... best thing that IT ever did for me.
Microsoft has to want people to develop for their OS, right? Are you confusing with WinFS? That's been said to come later, and also being backported.
:P
Ah, yes I was. My mistake. Didn't pay attention.
I was just doing it and is totally confused by the new Explorer UI, and I'm pretty used to working with Windows. Yeah, but Opera does that to people by switching to a different skin. Changing the UI is not worth a new OS release. For example, if you go to Documents from the Start Menu, you're seamlessly put in a virtual folder. Not really a physical one where the files are, but a folder based on a file search. The files there can be in several different places, but you don't really notice easily as the searches are now instnataneous thanks to the new indexer (a good thing in all this mess). So then you try to go to your *real* documents folder and find it's in a completely restructured place (hint: Documents and Settings is no more in Vista). And there you have the changes involved when you just try to go to a folder. Ummm... isn't that just a rehash of "Recent Documents" in 98? Maybe I misunderstood you. A new indexing system is good, but again, that was something I was expecting in SP2. And that's just the end-user thing. What's in there for devs? Well, an entirely new development API from scratch -- WinFX is there to succeed Win32, and it's anything but similar, don't even think of having it being backwards compatible. But WinFX isn't even coming with Vista... its coming two years later in a patch that goes on Vista, XP AND 2000....
I don't think they'll even have to know what they're "supposed to get"... they'll understand that $50 for download on software they already bought once = bad.
I'm pretty sure that MS was originally going to check keys on SP2 then decided against it in favor of securing the most computers possible to reduce the amount of malicious network traffic as much as possible. All I'm saying is that it will be a lot less headache on the rest of us if our networks aren't being bombarded with 2 year old exploits because two computers are using OEM copies or something like that.
It's not really that Vista was delayed so much or that its improvements are cosmetic and minimal... but its more that I can't see them using the same business model with smaller releases. People intrinsically will not pay $200 for something they download. There is a percieved value issue that happens when people say "What did I pay for... the right to download something on the internet? I already pay Comcast/AOL/MSN/etc. for that..." People don't want to pay for downloads, and they don't want to go to the store every month to pick up an update. I'm not sure that MSs business model will survive a change like this.
You know, as long as they use things like DRM to manage updates, they're going to have trouble. It's the dubious copies of Windows that need the updates the most, and it would be a shame if MS excluded them to spite them, and in turn, spited every other computer on the same network.
I don't think they can get much smaller than the changes planned in Vista.