Let's be clear; the market for equity capital in polluting, evil, nasty industries is a large one, and the Gates foundation is just a drop in the bucket. Therefore, from the perspective of companies like Eni, it makes no difference whatsoever whether the Gates foundation owns a chunk of stock or someone else does.
However, if the Gates foundation owns that chunk of stock, the dividends and capital gains from Eni's profits will ultimately go to the causes that the Gates foundation supports. If YOU owned that chunk of stock, the dividends and capital gains would go to purchase that 100" plasma TV, which feeds that evil multinational corporation that makes it and pollutes a river in China somewhere.
Remember, money is just circling around in the economy: profits made by companies go back to their shareholders, who use it to purchase goods, which makes profits for other companies. What the Gates foundation, etc., are taking money out of the cycle when they get their dividends. It doesn't make it any more "evil" for them to take the profits of a company like Eni, as opposed to directly taking the profits of Microsoft. It's just a question of when the money gets spent.
You COULD argue that the Gates foundation should be spending it's money FASTER, that argument is orthogonal to the question of WHERE it's investing the money hasn't spent yet.
No dispute regarding the feasability and cost of Apple's implementation of the API, but strategically, think about the timing of this: if you assume that the goal of this is a market-share grab by Apple, the best time to capture the consumer is at the upgrade cycle from XP to Vista.
During that upgrade cycle, regardless of MS's assurances, there's going to be substantial fear of your legacy apps breaking during the transition. If at that point Apple's offering on the market will allow you to run all/most of your old XP apps, though, then the Vista vs. OS X choice becomes a much more apples-to-apples comparison:
1. Either way, I'm paying for a new OS license and associated hardware 2. Either way, I run the risk of some of my old apps breaking, but chances are, most of them will work. 3. Either way, any application upgrades and new apps that take advantage of the new OS are going to cost me.
With just Boot Camp, (1) skews in favor of Wintel, since you'd have to buy an OS license; and (2) skews in favor of Wintel, since you'd have to reboot to use your old apps.
So now, for the first time, your system purchase decision becomes entirely a question of the user experience and the capabilities of new applications that you will actually be purchasing, and not a question of what you're losing in the transition.
For big publishers and big advertisers, the print ad market is probably quite efficient. Think of local small publishers, though (e.g. your small-town free weekly, college newspapers, 'zines, etc.) where the ad guy spends hours and hours on the phone cold-calling local businesses. Having a centralized marketplace to buy/sell ad space would be pretty handy, I think. Now think about integration with the rest of the speculative soon-to-be-localized google services.
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Let's be clear; the market for equity capital in polluting, evil, nasty industries is a large one, and the Gates foundation is just a drop in the bucket. Therefore, from the perspective of companies like Eni, it makes no difference whatsoever whether the Gates foundation owns a chunk of stock or someone else does. However, if the Gates foundation owns that chunk of stock, the dividends and capital gains from Eni's profits will ultimately go to the causes that the Gates foundation supports. If YOU owned that chunk of stock, the dividends and capital gains would go to purchase that 100" plasma TV, which feeds that evil multinational corporation that makes it and pollutes a river in China somewhere. Remember, money is just circling around in the economy: profits made by companies go back to their shareholders, who use it to purchase goods, which makes profits for other companies. What the Gates foundation, etc., are taking money out of the cycle when they get their dividends. It doesn't make it any more "evil" for them to take the profits of a company like Eni, as opposed to directly taking the profits of Microsoft. It's just a question of when the money gets spent. You COULD argue that the Gates foundation should be spending it's money FASTER, that argument is orthogonal to the question of WHERE it's investing the money hasn't spent yet.
No dispute regarding the feasability and cost of Apple's implementation of the API, but strategically, think about the timing of this: if you assume that the goal of this is a market-share grab by Apple, the best time to capture the consumer is at the upgrade cycle from XP to Vista.
During that upgrade cycle, regardless of MS's assurances, there's going to be substantial fear of your legacy apps breaking during the transition. If at that point Apple's offering on the market will allow you to run all/most of your old XP apps, though, then the Vista vs. OS X choice becomes a much more apples-to-apples comparison:
1. Either way, I'm paying for a new OS license and associated hardware
2. Either way, I run the risk of some of my old apps breaking, but chances are, most of them will work.
3. Either way, any application upgrades and new apps that take advantage of the new OS are going to cost me.
With just Boot Camp, (1) skews in favor of Wintel, since you'd have to buy an OS license; and (2) skews in favor of Wintel, since you'd have to reboot to use your old apps.
So now, for the first time, your system purchase decision becomes entirely a question of the user experience and the capabilities of new applications that you will actually be purchasing, and not a question of what you're losing in the transition.
For big publishers and big advertisers, the print ad market is probably quite efficient. Think of local small publishers, though (e.g. your small-town free weekly, college newspapers, 'zines, etc.) where the ad guy spends hours and hours on the phone cold-calling local businesses. Having a centralized marketplace to buy/sell ad space would be pretty handy, I think. Now think about integration with the rest of the speculative soon-to-be-localized google services.