FYI, Microsoft did not have a license to include the PDF features in their product. And with how Microsoft is treating Adobe, a Windows ISV, why the hell should they let Microsoft get away with improving their product with Adobe technology for free? And on top of that, by not letting Microsoft embed Adobe tech is that product, Microsoft customers are allowed to use Adobe software for that. So, there's nothing the customer is being deprived of, no using one monopoly positioned product to force another into the market. No anti-trust issues.
As far as a recovery disk goes, there is one in the box so maybe that is it. Another 'crap' if that is what it was. I've only booted that OS years later adn only after sucking it into a virtual machine with no network access. Even then, its only been booted a few times for show-and-tell and is pretty much wasted space otherwise.
well, you hit the nail on the head. It is all about Microsoft or Lenovo protecting Microsoft because they have an NDA with Microsoft. Unlike the laptop hardware or other software where the price is listed and itemized, Microsoft does not want you to know what is really getting paid for the Windows right-to-use license.
Did you notice that since Windows Starter Edition a few years ago, Microsoft is willing to go to $5 for Windows when going up against Linux? The pulled Windows XP out of its grave, crippled it and licensed it for $3 or $5 for those tiny laptops. With some 80% of their profits coming from Windows, do you know what $5 for all Windows licenses would do to Microsoft's income? I'm surprised they've not changed their EULA yet to eliminate this whole refund bit.
my itemized invoice for a laptop a number of years ago showed Windows XP SP3 Home at $5. I was going to ask to return license til I saw the invoice. And Windows Starter Edition didn't exist yet so where they got the $5 I don't know. It wasn't worth the hassle for so little.
So they could probably make up a price, claim some expenses for the whole refund thing or something and make it seem like small change. the little people aren't going to have the legal backing to go after them anyways.
It will still be very good to have these listed/itemized right up front. When you look at what OpenOffice brings to the Linux PCs, that in and of itself is a couple hundred bucks worth of Microsoft addons. And easy $300 savings with open source and you just don't see the press talking about this, just the OS.
it promotes the belief that these fuel cell vehicles are a reality and could be a viable replacement for gasoline powered cars. Unfortunately, after 8 years of this, we still only see million dollar prototypes with the exception of the half million dollar Honda F? being leased to a dozen or so people in Los Angeles.
IMO, these go-karts are probably being funded by someones marketing department.
this isn't about electric cars, it is specifically about fuel cell cars. Though fuel cells produce electricity and would be in the same class of cars considered to be "electric" cars, they seem to have an agenda based on fuel cells. Possibly more of the hydrogen hype kicking up again recently. FYI, there are a dozen or so hydrogen powered cars crossing the country on a marketing campaign. Most likely backed by the oil industry to redirect attention away from things which exist today which would have an immediate impact on fuel consumption. ie, EV's and hybrids.
being a monopoly is not always a bad thing. For instance, Adobe Flash got its position not by preventing others but by providing a solution better than others at the time. From what I've seen, they can't block others from providing solution in the market they are in. If and when that happens, I too will be down on them.
Now, Microsoft has a monopoly on the desktop with the OS and they have many times used the power and control that monopoly gives them. Been convicted of it too. So when they come in and start purchasing their way into a market, they are also doing it in a way which blocks others from access to those technologies. IE, they will not support other platforms. Sure they throw a bone to Apple but Apple is not quite a threat to Windows. They make the hardware and their software only works on that hardware. Hardly comparable to how Linux runs on the same hardware almost all Windows systems run on.
And what does Google paying Dell to distribute Google Desktop have to do with anything? Is this because Google has a monopoly position in search engines? Do they have some kind of control in that desktop market which would allow them some control over the OEM's preloading their software? I don't see that kind of control and I've not seen them or heard of them threatening any OEM regarding use of some other product. There is no comparison between Google and Microsoft. None at this time and again, if they start doing evil things to protect their market, I'll be there bashing em.
Microsoft has earned the ire of those who have been around long enough to see what evil things they have done to limit competition. Thing done by using the leverage of their position with the desktop OS.
Before this Flash and Silverlight stuff, wasn't there MPEG streaming? I seem to recall watching streaming video in the mid 90s. IIRC, Flash video hit the big time when they guys who did YouTube used it to show video over dialup to family members. They created YouTube after they realized it was usable and others probably would be interested.
As far as Silverlight goes, from what I've heard, it uses Microsofts VC1 codec which is like streaming WMV files. There is no comparison between Flash FLV streams and Silverlight WMV streams. It seems FLV is light weight and lossy by design while WMV is more akin to standard video streaming.
Move Networks was used with Microsoft's Silverlight to stream the DNC and possibly the Olympics. IIRC, it is an ISP streaming caching system which streams from the ISP network to keep the bandwidth inside that network instead of steaming from the Internet to every client viewer. Could be some UDP or other tech used but the idea is source the stream close to the viewer.
BTW, Microsoft was the first to come up with many things.
There are so many places you are completely wrong I'm just going to go off the top of my head.
They were the first to factor their browser into a component that 3rd parties could use. There were 3rd party plugins for Netscape before this and IBM and Apple had OpenDoc components for their browsers well before Microsoft was forced by the DOJ threat to make IE part of everything in Windows.
They were the first to come up with OLE functionality. They got DDE from IBM and OLE from Wang as later court docs showed. As far as object embedding API's go, I think IBM's SOM( System Object Model ) predates MS/Wang OLE and the OS/2 WorkplaceShell was based on SOM. SOM WPS was the first wide scale production implementation of the CORBA specification. IBM had SOM running on the mainframes, workstations, and OS/2.
They were the first to have fast user switching. Don't know since UNIX had user logins and changing users was just an su command away when there was a reason to do this. So maybe Microsoft made a GUI button for this before anyone cared to.
MS Office includes many firsts (pivot tables, irregular tables, on-the-fly spell and grammar checking, tabbed spreadsheets, modern UI, etc). Quatro Pro had tabbed spreadsheets before Microsoft Excel. OS/2 had a far better UI and component system years before MS and it was far far more responsive because the OS handled threading far better and more often. I don't know about the pivot table stuff or irregular tables but heard they do pivot tables better than anyone else. But there was a spreadsheet for OS/2 which came from the Next platform which ran circles around Microsoft Excel in the days. Mesa or something like that rings a bell. If it had pivot tables it was likely done better but I don't know with certainty.
Photosynth hasn't been done by anyone else (and no, QTVR isn't anything like Photosynth). Isn't Photosynth based on work done by some guys at Washington State U? There's a bunch of open source code posted for Linux and Solaris so I would question that Microsoft did it first. Maybe the first to commercialized it.
And other things that they may not have been the first, but took to the next level and/or delivered to the masses (e.g. Xbox Live, optical mice, ergonomic keyboards, fingerprint readers, Silverlight, Surface, programmable apps). Surface technology was shown by others years before Microsoft built a table and toured around as a Microsoft invention.
Sorry to burst your bubble but there are a handful of things Microsoft did come up with first just they are few and far between. But most of what you think and listed was not theirs.
a year or two ago, Mark Shuttlesworth estimated 8 million Ubuntu users. Since he has access to the Ubuntu servers, he should have a good idea of the number. That is just the Ubuntu numbers a year or so ago. Asus sold over 1 million Eee PCs running Linux and then theres Red Hat, Suse, Xandros, etc, etc, etc.
So the numbers are in the double digit millions easily. Not sure where the US stands but it's probably a few million. I don't know if Linux users are more likely to be votes but neglecting a few million voters is not smart in what is going to be a close election. Not smart at all. IMO.
the Flash problem became an issue when Adobe actively started supporting more platforms. It was bad enough that Adobe is the only ISV with close to 95% of same distribution deals as Microsoft has with it's Windows distribution. ie, Adobe is a threat to Windows because they have a huge distribution channel, they control the APIs to alot of multi-media capabilities on desktops using web technology, and they are doing this in a cross platform way.
This puts a big bulls-eye on their back and in the sights of Microsoft's partner-must-die shooting game.
Java survived Microsofts desktop attack so Microsoft needed to create MS.Net to keep developers from moving to someone elses API's. OpenGL was a threat in the 90s and Microsoft came up with DirectXX stuff to keep control of the APIs. Netscape, same thing. Flash and Silverlight are just the latest threat-response to the protection of the hundreds of billions in profits Microsoft gets from Windows.
the only problem is these were all 10 years after someone else already had product better. they didn't win by being better, they won by locking in the people installing the software, the OEMs. They put Netscape out of business by paying people to shovel MS Internet Explorer on every customer. They are not paying customers to force MS Silverlight on their customers customers computers.
So saying 10 years late that they have good product is the short view because the innovators who initially created most of it were robbed of their profits and just rewards by Microsoft's anti-competitive practices by way of leveraging their position.
Gotta hand it to microsoft, when they lock people out from anything other than their own solution, they go all the way.
That is what they do, that is their business model because they have the customers on the treadmill already and with over 80% of their profits directly from Windows, spending a few million or billion to lock out the other choices is money in the bank.
What sucks is those who keep taking their money and locking out the public, especially when it is a public entity. IMO.
here in the US, there was an unpatched hole in MS IE and the only workaround was to basically disable the OS and so the Department of Homeland Security put out a bulletin the businesses should use another browser. Did any? Not the dozen of business 'partners' we deal with that I checked.
The guy at Hannaford(sp?) who had to resign is the first time I heard of anyone getting fired for Microsoft's crappy security. Most people are just technical morons and do what they think everyone else is doing and that is using Microsoft for everything. I'm sure Seinfeld will touch on this to make sure everyone feels warm and fuzzy if they use Windows Vista. Suckers.
because they decided to tie even their presentation to Windows, I could not see what they were trying to show. Another post to this thread links a video from the University of Washington, where the technology was created. They used a format Windows, Mac, and Linux users can view.
I could only see the one Flash demo which runs on their homepage but no other views work without Windows. Having seen that, it looks like they took existing techniques for stitching together pictures and added a dynamic capability to that. Cool but not really a brand new concept. Photo stitching software has been around for 10 or more years.
So they get 5 points for taking existing tech, making it look like a new web technology, and create another Windows-only technology in todays mix of browsers and computing devices. yawn.
Slashdot Mirror
they had good support and a good product so let's hope they still have a foot in the market. UMPs might be a good place for them to shine again.
LoB
subliminal insults out the sound card? more likely something like this in a soft hush female voice:
"Windows Vista is a great OS! Windows Vista is a great OS! You deserve to have Windows Vista, a great OS!"
You know this is all about forcing XP users to move to Vista and nothing more. Or is it to move those XP users to Linux?
LoB
FYI, Microsoft did not have a license to include the PDF features in their product. And with how Microsoft is treating Adobe, a Windows ISV, why the hell should they let Microsoft get away with improving their product with Adobe technology for free? And on top of that, by not letting Microsoft embed Adobe tech is that product, Microsoft customers are allowed to use Adobe software for that. So, there's nothing the customer is being deprived of, no using one monopoly positioned product to force another into the market. No anti-trust issues.
talk about being clueless.
LoB
crap, XP SP3 was a typo, should have been XP SP2.
As far as a recovery disk goes, there is one in the box so maybe that is it. Another 'crap' if that is what it was. I've only booted that OS years later adn only after sucking it into a virtual machine with no network access. Even then, its only been booted a few times for show-and-tell and is pretty much wasted space otherwise.
LoB
well, you hit the nail on the head. It is all about Microsoft or Lenovo protecting Microsoft because they have an NDA with Microsoft. Unlike the laptop hardware or other software where the price is listed and itemized, Microsoft does not want you to know what is really getting paid for the Windows right-to-use license.
Did you notice that since Windows Starter Edition a few years ago, Microsoft is willing to go to $5 for Windows when going up against Linux? The pulled Windows XP out of its grave, crippled it and licensed it for $3 or $5 for those tiny laptops. With some 80% of their profits coming from Windows, do you know what $5 for all Windows licenses would do to Microsoft's income? I'm surprised they've not changed their EULA yet to eliminate this whole refund bit.
LoB
my itemized invoice for a laptop a number of years ago showed Windows XP SP3 Home at $5. I was going to ask to return license til I saw the invoice. And Windows Starter Edition didn't exist yet so where they got the $5 I don't know. It wasn't worth the hassle for so little.
So they could probably make up a price, claim some expenses for the whole refund thing or something and make it seem like small change. the little people aren't going to have the legal backing to go after them anyways.
It will still be very good to have these listed/itemized right up front. When you look at what OpenOffice brings to the Linux PCs, that in and of itself is a couple hundred bucks worth of Microsoft addons. And easy $300 savings with open source and you just don't see the press talking about this, just the OS.
How the guy got his "refund" cost was great.
LoB
it promotes the belief that these fuel cell vehicles are a reality and could be a viable replacement for gasoline powered cars. Unfortunately, after 8 years of this, we still only see million dollar prototypes with the exception of the half million dollar Honda F? being leased to a dozen or so people in Los Angeles.
IMO, these go-karts are probably being funded by someones marketing department.
LoB
this isn't about electric cars, it is specifically about fuel cell cars. Though fuel cells produce electricity and would be in the same class of cars considered to be "electric" cars, they seem to have an agenda based on fuel cells. Possibly more of the hydrogen hype kicking up again recently. FYI, there are a dozen or so hydrogen powered cars crossing the country on a marketing campaign. Most likely backed by the oil industry to redirect attention away from things which exist today which would have an immediate impact on fuel consumption. ie, EV's and hybrids.
LoB
being a monopoly is not always a bad thing. For instance, Adobe Flash got its position not by preventing others but by providing a solution better than others at the time. From what I've seen, they can't block others from providing solution in the market they are in. If and when that happens, I too will be down on them.
Now, Microsoft has a monopoly on the desktop with the OS and they have many times used the power and control that monopoly gives them. Been convicted of it too. So when they come in and start purchasing their way into a market, they are also doing it in a way which blocks others from access to those technologies. IE, they will not support other platforms. Sure they throw a bone to Apple but Apple is not quite a threat to Windows. They make the hardware and their software only works on that hardware. Hardly comparable to how Linux runs on the same hardware almost all Windows systems run on.
And what does Google paying Dell to distribute Google Desktop have to do with anything? Is this because Google has a monopoly position in search engines? Do they have some kind of control in that desktop market which would allow them some control over the OEM's preloading their software? I don't see that kind of control and I've not seen them or heard of them threatening any OEM regarding use of some other product. There is no comparison between Google and Microsoft. None at this time and again, if they start doing evil things to protect their market, I'll be there bashing em.
Microsoft has earned the ire of those who have been around long enough to see what evil things they have done to limit competition. Thing done by using the leverage of their position with the desktop OS.
LoB
Before this Flash and Silverlight stuff, wasn't there MPEG streaming? I seem to recall watching streaming video in the mid 90s. IIRC, Flash video hit the big time when they guys who did YouTube used it to show video over dialup to family members. They created YouTube after they realized it was usable and others probably would be interested.
As far as Silverlight goes, from what I've heard, it uses Microsofts VC1 codec which is like streaming WMV files. There is no comparison between Flash FLV streams and Silverlight WMV streams. It seems FLV is light weight and lossy by design while WMV is more akin to standard video streaming.
I also recently saw where Move Networks is supporting Linux MID devices with a video player:
http://linuxdevices.com/news/NS8810160105.html
Move Networks was used with Microsoft's Silverlight to stream the DNC and possibly the Olympics. IIRC, it is an ISP streaming caching system which streams from the ISP network to keep the bandwidth inside that network instead of steaming from the Internet to every client viewer. Could be some UDP or other tech used but the idea is source the stream close to the viewer.
LoB
BTW, Microsoft was the first to come up with many things.
There are so many places you are completely wrong I'm just going to go off the top of my head.
They were the first to factor their browser into a component that 3rd parties could use.
There were 3rd party plugins for Netscape before this and IBM and Apple had OpenDoc components for their browsers well before Microsoft was forced by the DOJ threat to make IE part of everything in Windows.
They were the first to come up with OLE functionality.
They got DDE from IBM and OLE from Wang as later court docs showed. As far as object embedding API's go, I think IBM's SOM( System Object Model ) predates MS/Wang OLE and the OS/2 WorkplaceShell was based on SOM. SOM WPS was the first wide scale production implementation of the CORBA specification. IBM had SOM running on the mainframes, workstations, and OS/2.
They were the first to have fast user switching.
Don't know since UNIX had user logins and changing users was just an su command away when there was a reason to do this. So maybe Microsoft made a GUI button for this before anyone cared to.
MS Office includes many firsts (pivot tables, irregular tables, on-the-fly spell and grammar checking, tabbed spreadsheets, modern UI, etc).
Quatro Pro had tabbed spreadsheets before Microsoft Excel. OS/2 had a far better UI and component system years before MS and it was far far more responsive because the OS handled threading far better and more often. I don't know about the pivot table stuff or irregular tables but heard they do pivot tables better than anyone else. But there was a spreadsheet for OS/2 which came from the Next platform which ran circles around Microsoft Excel in the days. Mesa or something like that rings a bell. If it had pivot tables it was likely done better but I don't know with certainty.
Photosynth hasn't been done by anyone else (and no, QTVR isn't anything like Photosynth).
Isn't Photosynth based on work done by some guys at Washington State U? There's a bunch of open source code posted for Linux and Solaris so I would question that Microsoft did it first. Maybe the first to commercialized it.
And other things that they may not have been the first, but took to the next level and/or delivered to the masses (e.g. Xbox Live, optical mice, ergonomic keyboards, fingerprint readers, Silverlight, Surface, programmable apps).
Surface technology was shown by others years before Microsoft built a table and toured around as a Microsoft invention.
Sorry to burst your bubble but there are a handful of things Microsoft did come up with first just they are few and far between. But most of what you think and listed was not theirs.
LoB
a year or two ago, Mark Shuttlesworth estimated 8 million Ubuntu users. Since he has access to the Ubuntu servers, he should have a good idea of the number. That is just the Ubuntu numbers a year or so ago. Asus sold over 1 million Eee PCs running Linux and then theres Red Hat, Suse, Xandros, etc, etc, etc.
So the numbers are in the double digit millions easily. Not sure where the US stands but it's probably a few million. I don't know if Linux users are more likely to be votes but neglecting a few million voters is not smart in what is going to be a close election. Not smart at all. IMO.
LoB
remind them that Dell sells computers with Linux installed on it. Here's the link:
http://www.dell.com/content/topics/segtopic.aspx/ubuntu?c=us&cs=19&l=en&s=dhs
LoB
don't forget the US Library of Congress. Microsoft paid them $3 million to become a Silverlight 'customer'.
LoB
point them to the Dell Linux computer page in your email asking why they don't support Dell computers.
LoB
the Flash problem became an issue when Adobe actively started supporting more platforms. It was bad enough that Adobe is the only ISV with close to 95% of same distribution deals as Microsoft has with it's Windows distribution. ie, Adobe is a threat to Windows because they have a huge distribution channel, they control the APIs to alot of multi-media capabilities on desktops using web technology, and they are doing this in a cross platform way.
This puts a big bulls-eye on their back and in the sights of Microsoft's partner-must-die shooting game.
Java survived Microsofts desktop attack so Microsoft needed to create MS .Net to keep developers from moving to someone elses API's. OpenGL was a threat in the 90s and Microsoft came up with DirectXX stuff to keep control of the APIs. Netscape, same thing. Flash and Silverlight are just the latest threat-response to the protection of the hundreds of billions in profits Microsoft gets from Windows.
No news flash, just history.
LoB
if it is so great why do they have to do things like pay the Library of Congress 3 million to use it. $25 million for MS-NBC to use it?
and where is the revenue stream from this? Oh wait, it is about keeping Windows dominant and keeping 'popular' software tied to the Windows OS.
LoB
the only problem is these were all 10 years after someone else already had product better. they didn't win by being better, they won by locking in the people installing the software, the OEMs. They put Netscape out of business by paying people to shovel MS Internet Explorer on every customer. They are not paying customers to force MS Silverlight on their customers customers computers.
So saying 10 years late that they have good product is the short view because the innovators who initially created most of it were robbed of their profits and just rewards by Microsoft's anti-competitive practices by way of leveraging their position.
Please don't worship false idols.
LoB
Gotta hand it to microsoft, when they lock people out from anything other than their own solution, they go all the way.
That is what they do, that is their business model because they have the customers on the treadmill already and with over 80% of their profits directly from Windows, spending a few million or billion to lock out the other choices is money in the bank.
What sucks is those who keep taking their money and locking out the public, especially when it is a public entity. IMO.
LoB
Seven of Nine and the EMH were the two best characters on the show IMO.
LoB
here in the US, there was an unpatched hole in MS IE and the only workaround was to basically disable the OS and so the Department of Homeland Security put out a bulletin the businesses should use another browser. Did any? Not the dozen of business 'partners' we deal with that I checked.
The guy at Hannaford(sp?) who had to resign is the first time I heard of anyone getting fired for Microsoft's crappy security. Most people are just technical morons and do what they think everyone else is doing and that is using Microsoft for everything. I'm sure Seinfeld will touch on this to make sure everyone feels warm and fuzzy if they use Windows Vista. Suckers.
LoB
I commented on what was on the page which I could see and I stated that.
LoB
because they decided to tie even their presentation to Windows, I could not see what they were trying to show. Another post to this thread links a video from the University of Washington, where the technology was created. They used a format Windows, Mac, and Linux users can view.
LoB
ok, that shows some impressive work being done and what kind of stuff went on behind the scenes.
LoB
I could only see the one Flash demo which runs on their homepage but no other views work without Windows. Having seen that, it looks like they took existing techniques for stitching together pictures and added a dynamic capability to that. Cool but not really a brand new concept. Photo stitching software has been around for 10 or more years.
So they get 5 points for taking existing tech, making it look like a new web technology, and create another Windows-only technology in todays mix of browsers and computing devices. yawn.
LoB