surely a company willing to spend billions to purchase customers and developers is no threat to Adobe. After all, there has been not a single example of this company using its vast wealth to purchase support and not a single example of them crossing the legal lines to make sure they get what they desire.
And hey, while we're at it, I've got this really cute little bridge to sell ya at a great price. It's orange in color, only two vertical supports, with a few cables holding everything in place so it's easy to move.
if Microsoft makes a deal with Novell to release a good silverlight player for linux to compete with flash... sounds like a very naive n00b or as you implied, a fan of Microsoft or even a Microserf. Believing anything controlled by Microsoft will be good in any way for Linux users is as believing in Leprechauns. ie foolish, IMO.
but now they are all delivered to a browser onver a network and not shared via BBS or sneakerNet.
One possible reason why everyone is trying to make a browser do all this stuff with what's delivered in the browser: There once was a company who had 80% of the browser marketshare and their browser had a published plugin API. Since plugins are native code, they ran quite fast and all kinds of fun things were happening inside of the browser. Many many plugins were made for this browser and many preload deals were struck. But this all became a threat to the company making the dominant OS the browser and plugins ran on. Companies reselling this OS were threatened and Internet Server Providers(ISPs) were threatened and/or paid to stay away from this one browser and their plugins. The browser soon dropped to single digit marketshare in just a few years. The effect also chilled the market for making plugins as all the work on those browser plugins were mostly lost as the new forced-on-the-market browser used different APIs and only ran on that one OS. Plugin vendors looked for other ways to keep this from happening again and instead built their applications out of the scripting tools already built into all browsers and though slow, they do work on incredibly fast CPUs the new computers have.
Plugins used to be the norm but they now are the exception. Today, the only standard/preloaded 3rd party plugins are Adobe Flash and Adobe Acrobat Reader. Microsoft has also started spending many millions of dollars going after these last two products. MS Silverlight and MS XPS are the Windows-only products being used to get Adobe out of the preloaded browser plugin market. IMO
exactly what I was thinking since the OEMs can require stuff from their suppliers. But then I thought about how Microsoft dictates to the OEMs that they can't "lead with Linux". My guess is that this is the best they can currently do given the pressure from Microsoft and the desire to grow Linux product lines without threatening the million is kickbacks they get from Microsoft marketing programs.
The OEMs are in a tough spot and with Microsoft's Windows revenues down 24% this quarter, they are going to be getting more pressure this quarter and the next.
So they have a very poor record of making profits on everything they've tried outside of the desktop Windows OS. Doesn't MS Office do well? MS Office is not outside of the leverage of desktop Windows OS. This is what was the intent was of the quoted statement. Yes they make money at it and if you want to list two other places they make profits also list Windows Server software and a much smaller profit comes from Microsoft's mouse and keyboard.
Unfortunately for Microsoft, they are all tied to the Windows desktop OS. Microsoft has been a one trick pony for over 20 years and it is why they cross the legal/illegal line over and over keeping the Windows OS protected. So all those billions and after 20 something years, they've only been able to keep others out but have failed time and time again at making any money outside of their desktop OS monopoly. IMO.
Microsoft's value comes from their assets, their market power, their product reach, There physical assets are a tiny part of their "value". CD's and cardboard boxes aren't worth much. Patents might have some value but as we've seen how poorly they've researched their patents, again this is only a tiny part of their "value". Their distribution channel is where all their "value" is. They dictate what their channel partners do day in and day out.
and their ability to throw money at problems until they get something people will buy. The problem here is that for something like 20 years they've not been able to make profits on pretty much everything else they've tried. They did a nice job leveraging the position/power they had with Windows and got MS Office off the ground. But outside of the Windows OS, they've gone no where and losses in the billions annually are the norm. The Xbox division showed a profit of $98 million but that was with a $1 billion write off last year. That $98 million is but 1/10th of the loss they took in one quarter. Windows Mobile, that's lost them over $10 BILLION over its lifetime. So they have a very poor record of making profits on everything they've tried outside of the desktop Windows OS. And didn't they once pay AT&T $5 Billion to use Windows CE? They are now paying people to use Silverlight and there is no direct profit from this product. It's all been market protection expenses and only a tiny tiny blips of declared profits.
Might I remind you that Microsoft keeps something like $30 billion in cash - instant liquidity - at all times. Microsoft can take a stock hit and keep on chugging. Don't make the mistake of underestimating Microsoft's business prowess - again, they are no Enron. They've already been buying their own stock to keep it flat. Not long ago, they had over $40 billion in cash but with the size of Microsoft, billions go out the door quickly. Not instantaneous but fast. And those H1-B visa's are getting more and more important for Microsoft as value to employees has declined and they require more foreign employees who'll work for them because of where they are and a false sense of "who" they are. The Microsoft brand is already falling.
I'm not cheering yet but there are some fundamental changes going on and Vista might have been the trigger pulled to start the long slow decline from market domination. Time will tell.
unless the investment community decides to bail, they'll keep a flat price for a while. But if the investment community has had enough of flat MSFT growth, constant reliance on Windows for the majority of profits, and now a sign of declining sales. Your falling house of cards comment just might have some traction.
What I found very interesting was the Microsoft didn't downplay future pricing valuations, they started pumping the investment community up. THAT is a bad sign and with the fact that the PC OEM market showed close to 15% growth while Microsoft Windows showed a 24% decline says something serious is going on.
Something fundamentally different seems to be afoot in the financial books at Microsoft.
big deal, where is Opera preloaded on PC computers? There are far far more customers running the XO then there are OLPC people running them so if Opera wanted users of the XO to use their browser there is nothing stopping them from doing this.
What I'm getting at is that their open source policy is not restrictive in any way. They just won't ship the products preloaded with someones proprietary software. It is a VERY weak case and should stop. Again, because they are not blocking vendors or customers from using proprietary software. And from what I've seen, the opera.xo activity is 3 years old so they don't have any interest in being part of this project.
And because they believe the best way to provide this device and software is by providing the platform completely open you and others call them fundamentalists. Who is being a fundementalist when they believe this organization should go out of their way to help a for-profit business when they have already gone to extreme levels providing everything needed to work on the hardware and software provided?
Now if they were designing it to restrict the use of proprietary software and forcing customers to reject proprietary software that would be a whole nuther thing. So why is nobody going after the Bill/Melinda Gates Foundation for restricting the use of open source software when they provide 'donations'?
Thanks ahfoo for that look at another pressure Microsoft sees in their attempts at protecting their business/monopoly. Unfortunately, I'd not heard of a supply problem for Windows based laptops. If anything, what you have stated shows a point of control Microsoft could exert pressure to in keeping down non-Windows based devices.
BTW, though I'v been involved with product development and manufacturing and considered Microsoft's ability to ensure their partners products keep on the production lines, I'd not considered they'd be concerned of to opposite happening.
maybe a better example is the Thailand government funded cheap laptops. The ones where HP couldn't keep up with sales of the Linux loaded laptops and when Dell was brought in to help with providing more hardware, Microsoft stepped in and funded a switch to Windows with some big $$$ service deal. It was also that beginning the Windows XP Starter Edition and probably the Microsoft department in charge of fighting off open source in emerging markets.
Even if Microsoft produces a DRM-encumbered operating system for the XO-1, what makes you think a country will choose it over the freely-available Sugar-on-Fedora that the XO currently runs? try offering to pay/offer that government millions of dollars in free( as in beer ) Microsoft software and training centers and/or services.
This is they tactic and it has been used many many times to stall the threat.
These are the things people who have been in the market for years AND had their eyes open to see Microsoft's business tactics in action. Bruce has good reason for his concerns and very little to believe things will play out differently.
Negroponte's point is that if someone wants to get it done, OLPC shouldn't stand in their way, which is entirely different from "let's drop linux." Is there ANY history of OLPC doing anything to block anyone from doing something with the device? Why would the head of the project have to make public statements that they won't block Microsoft?
Well, I don't think you are correct in this thought and OLPC has allowed Microsoft to become involved and the OLPC people have spent time with Microsoft and Microsoft funded contractors. It does not appear to be "we won't block anyone" and instead, appears to be a we're going to actively help Microsoft get Windows and the Windows GUI/desktop on the XO.
You said yourself that Sugar is unlikely to be part of Microsoft's plans for running software on the MS-XO device.
Bruce, IMO, is with good reason for his concerns that MS-XO has alot to do with DRM and ebook control. Also, Windows OS and Windows GUI on MS-XO are just part of the strings needed to pull to derail the advances of the open source and open learning programs. IMO.
but you'll be missing alot of the hardware features the current Redhat kernel and software provide. They could be ported but the problem is not the Linux kernel. One of the problems is that the OLPC Sugar project was only created a short time ago and the developers were under immense pressure to get it out. So much that it was not started like many open source projects and a supportable community around it wasn't built. It's probably getting going now but now we have all this political junk and a possible platform shift to deal with.
The Linux kernel is not the problem from what I've seen. But maybe getting Shuttleworth on this can not only get more kernel developers helping with the power management but also more Sugar developers too. That would be helpful if it were to happen.
it is just now 10 fold more difficult using the device as a "learning to learn" device. I doubt that Microsoft will allow Sugar to be the default desktop and hacking all the Sugar activities to use the Microsoft Explore desktop not only will take a good year but will also add complexity to the learning process.
I've heard someone mention that one of the main reason the Palm OS still exists today is because they built a desktop/launcher which makes getting to the task easy and the database filesystem of the default applications make getting to documents fast and easy too. A general purpose desktop is not helping anybody but Microsoft and puts more load on the teachers and OLPC training personnel, and slows the learning process for the kids. IMO.
Yep, that's why Opera and Flash are not included by default on the OLPC. Sounds "extremist" to me too. The project does nothing to block the adding of non-free software and instead, they publish everything needed from free and non-free vendors to provide software for the XO stack. I've not heard that the OLPC people will not work with non-free vendors who would like to provide support. For proof, Opera installation info is available from the OLPC wiki. From what I've seen, the OLPC project just says they can't ship those pre-installed on the device due to licensing issues.
Did you know that the current OLPC OS/firmware installation does not install any activities at all? So are they now anti-open source because they are not pre-installing open source applications? It does not matter anyways since what they do believe is that the end product of the project( the base XO and the base OS/firmware ) are completely open for the customer to build on. Each customer can do what they want with the software going on top of the base platform. They are not blocked from adding software on top of the open XO software stack.
Ask any of the Microsoft Windows OEM's how come they put no open source software on pre-loaded Windows PCs and laptops. Extremism on the part of the OLPC project is not the case, extremism on the part of the Microsoft somehow gets a pass. Go figure.
and stay away. Over the last 20 something years, many developers have seen one technology after another get subverted and corrupted for the purpose of sustaining a market monopoly. So there are many who just want to stay away from such a 'place'. From these years of experience they know why it is this way and they know that anybody who thinks that somehow they will be the one to emerge from the dead zone is more likely than not, committing technological suicide.
And then you have the press which seems to only remember what happened 3 months ago, if even that. You also have those who only have the inclination or the time to follow what everyone they know is doing and that is playing at the forests edge being completely oblivious to the dangers/costs of doing this.
It's a business choice, it's an intellectual choice, it's a very calculated choice and it is not fundamentalism. There are facts involved and not faith based beliefs. IMO.
And Negroponte is nuts to think he can win anything for his project by letting Microsoft gain power over it. After all, why have we not heard Bill Gates start saying that the OLPC project is a good idea, a noble idea, an idea we will help promote? All we have is a half dozen public statements from Bill putting the project down. And somehow, putting a more costly, a more resource consuming OS on this device along with handing over the ability to control their own platform is good for the project. History and facts say the outcome will be consistent with history.
it was meant as a joke since Microsoft's latest financial report claimed some losses were do to increased piracy of Microsoft software. That was probably stated because the PC industry has been saying that there was around 15% growth in PC sales but Microsofts numbers only claimed something like 11% PC growth. They had to explain that somehow and they picked piracy. Nobody asked what that means but we know that previous statements about white box vendors was that they are for piracy.
I've heard they( BMGF ) typically require no use of open source software in the contracts. So some schools or libraries may have taken money from BMGF for some locations but probably not many or this would be a much smaller effort.
1) It has nothing to do with OLPC so you shouldn't be mentioning it. 2) People will ignorantly mod you up You had one thing right when you said:
Have no idea LoB
I've got the zv6000 and got it working by going to the website the dialog box mentioned, got the two files and ran the script. poof, up came the broadcom wireless card.
It is still much easier than the previous releases though still not a one-click simple install. Close to it and just requires reading a paragraph asking what driver you really want.
Slashdot Mirror
surely a company willing to spend billions to purchase customers and developers is no threat to Adobe. After all, there has been not a single example of this company using its vast wealth to purchase support and not a single example of them crossing the legal lines to make sure they get what they desire.
And hey, while we're at it, I've got this really cute little bridge to sell ya at a great price. It's orange in color, only two vertical supports, with a few cables holding everything in place so it's easy to move.
LoB
LoB
not to start a flame war but I'd like to hear why you wouldn't consider Java for such an application task?
Is it because it is not pre-loaded on as many OEM PCs?
Is it you just like the Flash environment better than the Java env(jvm, lang, etc )?
LoB
but now they are all delivered to a browser onver a network and not shared via BBS or sneakerNet.
One possible reason why everyone is trying to make a browser do all this stuff with what's delivered in the browser: There once was a company who had 80% of the browser marketshare and their browser had a published plugin API. Since plugins are native code, they ran quite fast and all kinds of fun things were happening inside of the browser. Many many plugins were made for this browser and many preload deals were struck. But this all became a threat to the company making the dominant OS the browser and plugins ran on. Companies reselling this OS were threatened and Internet Server Providers(ISPs) were threatened and/or paid to stay away from this one browser and their plugins. The browser soon dropped to single digit marketshare in just a few years. The effect also chilled the market for making plugins as all the work on those browser plugins were mostly lost as the new forced-on-the-market browser used different APIs and only ran on that one OS. Plugin vendors looked for other ways to keep this from happening again and instead built their applications out of the scripting tools already built into all browsers and though slow, they do work on incredibly fast CPUs the new computers have.
Plugins used to be the norm but they now are the exception. Today, the only standard/preloaded 3rd party plugins are Adobe Flash and Adobe Acrobat Reader. Microsoft has also started spending many millions of dollars going after these last two products. MS Silverlight and MS XPS are the Windows-only products being used to get Adobe out of the preloaded browser plugin market. IMO
LoB
the incompetence permeates all levels of this White House.
LoB
exactly what I was thinking since the OEMs can require stuff from their suppliers. But then I thought about how Microsoft dictates to the OEMs that they can't "lead with Linux". My guess is that this is the best they can currently do given the pressure from Microsoft and the desire to grow Linux product lines without threatening the million is kickbacks they get from Microsoft marketing programs.
The OEMs are in a tough spot and with Microsoft's Windows revenues down 24% this quarter, they are going to be getting more pressure this quarter and the next.
LoB
Unfortunately for Microsoft, they are all tied to the Windows desktop OS. Microsoft has been a one trick pony for over 20 years and it is why they cross the legal/illegal line over and over keeping the Windows OS protected. So all those billions and after 20 something years, they've only been able to keep others out but have failed time and time again at making any money outside of their desktop OS monopoly. IMO.
LoB
I'm not cheering yet but there are some fundamental changes going on and Vista might have been the trigger pulled to start the long slow decline from market domination. Time will tell.
LoB
unless the investment community decides to bail, they'll keep a flat price for a while. But if the investment community has had enough of flat MSFT growth, constant reliance on Windows for the majority of profits, and now a sign of declining sales. Your falling house of cards comment just might have some traction.
What I found very interesting was the Microsoft didn't downplay future pricing valuations, they started pumping the investment community up. THAT is a bad sign and with the fact that the PC OEM market showed close to 15% growth while Microsoft Windows showed a 24% decline says something serious is going on.
Something fundamentally different seems to be afoot in the financial books at Microsoft.
LoB
big deal, where is Opera preloaded on PC computers? There are far far more customers running the XO then there are OLPC people running them so if Opera wanted users of the XO to use their browser there is nothing stopping them from doing this.
What I'm getting at is that their open source policy is not restrictive in any way. They just won't ship the products preloaded with someones proprietary software. It is a VERY weak case and should stop. Again, because they are not blocking vendors or customers from using proprietary software. And from what I've seen, the opera.xo activity is 3 years old so they don't have any interest in being part of this project.
And because they believe the best way to provide this device and software is by providing the platform completely open you and others call them fundamentalists. Who is being a fundementalist when they believe this organization should go out of their way to help a for-profit business when they have already gone to extreme levels providing everything needed to work on the hardware and software provided?
Now if they were designing it to restrict the use of proprietary software and forcing customers to reject proprietary software that would be a whole nuther thing. So why is nobody going after the Bill/Melinda Gates Foundation for restricting the use of open source software when they provide 'donations'?
LoB
Thanks ahfoo for that look at another pressure Microsoft sees in their attempts at protecting their business/monopoly. Unfortunately, I'd not heard of a supply problem for Windows based laptops. If anything, what you have stated shows a point of control Microsoft could exert pressure to in keeping down non-Windows based devices.
BTW, though I'v been involved with product development and manufacturing and considered Microsoft's ability to ensure their partners products keep on the production lines, I'd not considered they'd be concerned of to opposite happening.
LoB
maybe a better example is the Thailand government funded cheap laptops. The ones where HP couldn't keep up with sales of the Linux loaded laptops and when Dell was brought in to help with providing more hardware, Microsoft stepped in and funded a switch to Windows with some big $$$ service deal. It was also that beginning the Windows XP Starter Edition and probably the Microsoft department in charge of fighting off open source in emerging markets.
Here's a good start at learning all about this one example:
http://www.google.com/search?q=microsoft+hp+linux+thailand+laptop
LoB
This is they tactic and it has been used many many times to stall the threat.
These are the things people who have been in the market for years AND had their eyes open to see Microsoft's business tactics in action. Bruce has good reason for his concerns and very little to believe things will play out differently.
LoB
Well, I don't think you are correct in this thought and OLPC has allowed Microsoft to become involved and the OLPC people have spent time with Microsoft and Microsoft funded contractors. It does not appear to be "we won't block anyone" and instead, appears to be a we're going to actively help Microsoft get Windows and the Windows GUI/desktop on the XO.
You said yourself that Sugar is unlikely to be part of Microsoft's plans for running software on the MS-XO device.
Bruce, IMO, is with good reason for his concerns that MS-XO has alot to do with DRM and ebook control. Also, Windows OS and Windows GUI on MS-XO are just part of the strings needed to pull to derail the advances of the open source and open learning programs. IMO.
LoB
but you'll be missing alot of the hardware features the current Redhat kernel and software provide. They could be ported but the problem is not the Linux kernel. One of the problems is that the OLPC Sugar project was only created a short time ago and the developers were under immense pressure to get it out. So much that it was not started like many open source projects and a supportable community around it wasn't built. It's probably getting going now but now we have all this political junk and a possible platform shift to deal with.
The Linux kernel is not the problem from what I've seen. But maybe getting Shuttleworth on this can not only get more kernel developers helping with the power management but also more Sugar developers too. That would be helpful if it were to happen.
LoB
it is just now 10 fold more difficult using the device as a "learning to learn" device. I doubt that Microsoft will allow Sugar to be the default desktop and hacking all the Sugar activities to use the Microsoft Explore desktop not only will take a good year but will also add complexity to the learning process.
I've heard someone mention that one of the main reason the Palm OS still exists today is because they built a desktop/launcher which makes getting to the task easy and the database filesystem of the default applications make getting to documents fast and easy too. A general purpose desktop is not helping anybody but Microsoft and puts more load on the teachers and OLPC training personnel, and slows the learning process for the kids. IMO.
LoB
Did you know that the current OLPC OS/firmware installation does not install any activities at all? So are they now anti-open source because they are not pre-installing open source applications? It does not matter anyways since what they do believe is that the end product of the project( the base XO and the base OS/firmware ) are completely open for the customer to build on. Each customer can do what they want with the software going on top of the base platform. They are not blocked from adding software on top of the open XO software stack.
Ask any of the Microsoft Windows OEM's how come they put no open source software on pre-loaded Windows PCs and laptops. Extremism on the part of the OLPC project is not the case, extremism on the part of the Microsoft somehow gets a pass. Go figure.
LoB
and stay away. Over the last 20 something years, many developers have seen one technology after another get subverted and corrupted for the purpose of sustaining a market monopoly. So there are many who just want to stay away from such a 'place'. From these years of experience they know why it is this way and they know that anybody who thinks that somehow they will be the one to emerge from the dead zone is more likely than not, committing technological suicide.
And then you have the press which seems to only remember what happened 3 months ago, if even that. You also have those who only have the inclination or the time to follow what everyone they know is doing and that is playing at the forests edge being completely oblivious to the dangers/costs of doing this.
It's a business choice, it's an intellectual choice, it's a very calculated choice and it is not fundamentalism. There are facts involved and not faith based beliefs. IMO.
And Negroponte is nuts to think he can win anything for his project by letting Microsoft gain power over it. After all, why have we not heard Bill Gates start saying that the OLPC project is a good idea, a noble idea, an idea we will help promote? All we have is a half dozen public statements from Bill putting the project down. And somehow, putting a more costly, a more resource consuming OS on this device along with handing over the ability to control their own platform is good for the project. History and facts say the outcome will be consistent with history.
LoB
I hate when that happens. :-/
LoB
Sqeak is a Smalltalk-like language and environment, runs on many platforms and has a package called e-Toys. It's on the OLPC
I believe they have other education software too so here's a link for you to search for yourself:
http://www.squeak.org/Features/Education/
LoB
it was meant as a joke since Microsoft's latest financial report claimed some losses were do to increased piracy of Microsoft software. That was probably stated because the PC industry has been saying that there was around 15% growth in PC sales but Microsofts numbers only claimed something like 11% PC growth. They had to explain that somehow and they picked piracy. Nobody asked what that means but we know that previous statements about white box vendors was that they are for piracy.
;-)
clear as mud?
LoB
they declare an increase in piracy to the financial sector in hopes people won't notice what is really going on.
LoB
I've heard they( BMGF ) typically require no use of open source software in the contracts. So some schools or libraries may have taken money from BMGF for some locations but probably not many or this would be a much smaller effort.
LoB
http://www.google.com/search?q=thailand+Linux+laptop+Microsoft but two things are clear:
1) It has nothing to do with OLPC so you shouldn't be mentioning it.
2) People will ignorantly mod you up You had one thing right when you said: Have no idea LoB
I've got the zv6000 and got it working by going to the website the dialog box mentioned, got the two files and ran the script. poof, up came the broadcom wireless card.
It is still much easier than the previous releases though still not a one-click simple install. Close to it and just requires reading a paragraph asking what driver you really want.
LoB