> I'm not following your logic. Splitting Microsoft into an OS company, an applications company, and a hardware would have changed things how? Those companies wouldn't be competing with each other...
Good question, here's some examples how:
It wouldn't be in Office Inc's and IE Inc's interests to protect Windows Inc's dominance, so they might choose to make an Office for Linux and IE for Mac and IE for Linux -- they would likely even make IE fully standards based. Years ago IE Inc would likely have had excellent Java integration, as Java was a threat to Windows, not IE. Windows Inc would have no interest in ensuring Office Inc's or IE Inc's success, so they might bundle Firefox or OpenOffice with every copy of Windows shipped.
It's sort of like, if there was one company that made all cars and all gas. They would have no interest in making car's more fuel efficient. Breaking up the monopoly makes sense -- competition is good for the consumer and for innovation.
Frankly, if Microsoft was spun out into 4 smaller companies, each with their own stock symbol, the collective value of the company would likely grow larger than the whole -- so it would be good for shareholders too.
Competition is good. Microsoft would never improve IE unless Firefox was trying to out-do them. Similarly, they'd never improve Windows if it wasn't for Mac OS X, and they would never improve their server products if it wasn't for Linux.
If Microsoft had been broken into a variety of little companies like the judge wanted 10 years ago, we'd all have much better products now because of the resulting competition.
Now it's time for Firefox (or Apple) to truly think out of the box and blow us all away with the next big thing. What's the next KILLER APP? We all know Microsoft won't do it first.
He knows the iPhone is going to be big and that it will put pressure on Microsoft's hand-held OS to match it feature for feature; but since MS doesn't not design the hardware, they'll be in tough to compete.
The hand-held market is the dominant computing platform and Jobs is going after it with a vigor not seen since the first Macintosh came out. Apple has yet to ship a single unit, but already iPhone (and mini OS X) is a top-ranked contender for that market.
Ballmer is either scared or stupid, plain and simple.
but with the Conservatives in charge, all bets are off if they can find a way to claim it's about terrorism or child pornography
It's comments like this that I find really anti-productive -- why do you assume that just because the current government is conservative that it's *not* about terrorism or national security?? Believe it or not, we conservatives are not interested in invading your private space, go live your life and have fun -- but we DO care if you die in a terrorist bombing or if your kids get raped and photographed by some perv.
Believe me, I don't want to live in Nazi Germany, but I don't want to die in a subway bombing either. Let's stop the partisan stuff and find a balanced solution.
I read the three Lord Of The Rings books and The Hobbit. Can someone tell me what other Tolkien books take place in the same Middle Earth "universe", and how do they relate to the ones I read? That is, are they prequels, sequels, or parallel stories?
Do any of the hobbits, Gandalf, the Shire, or any other "Rings" characters appear in the other books?
the religious groups worried it would make access too easy and allow porn to expand even further onto the Internet
Er... is that possible??
OK, I'm religious, but that's about the stupidest argument *against* a.xxx domain I can imagine.
An.xxx domain and the restriction of adult content to it would be the best thing to help parents filter porn from their kids. But it's a pie in the sky idea. There's no way to prevent people in other countries from putting porn on whatever URL they want.
> We work overtime when needed, there is alot of support for balancing work and life.
> Telecommuting is a big plus, as is flexible work hours. As long as I make netmeetings
> and conference calls and hit my targets, they don't care when I get the work done.
Thanks for the response. That sounds very reasonable, indeed. Where do I sign up?;-)
The problem I would have with the Google work environment is that it all appears to be geared to getting you to spend as many hours as possible at the office.
That is, the free food, and fun corporate events are all nice and everything; but my sense is that in return you're pretty much expected to work extremely long hours, to make your job your life.
IMO, it's extremely important -- crucial even -- to have a separate work life and home life. Work hard from 9-to-5 but then drop everything and go home, spend the evening with your wife and family. Forget about work and come back fresh the next day. Google doesn't seem to emphasize that. It appears when you work at Google, you work there 24/7. I don't think that's necessarily a healthy approach.
Still -- looks like a very fun place to work. If you are allowed to go home at the end of the day.;-)
It would actually be nice if when you decided to take something down off the web, it was gone forever. How many embarrassing photos and postings have we written over the years? There's something about people being able to google or way-back-machine your past that's makes you feel *exposed*.
I often wonder about all those girls that are nude on the web -- aren't they going to grow up and wish all that stuff would be taken down?
Still, that's life -- once it's out there, it's out there. The lady in the story doesn't (or shouldn't) have a chance.
It's apparent that both Apple and Google believe that the phone/hand-held-computer will be the next dominant computing platform, and they're intent on wrestling ownership of that platform away from RIM/Blackberry.
Interesting that Apple and Google are working tightly together on iPhone apps; now Google's working on their own phone, and there's also been rumors that Apple will license their "mini OS X" to other hand-helds. My guess is Google will be the first licensee, and Steve Jobs wants "mini OS X" to be the "Windows" of the 21st century.
It is illegal for a library to keep a record of the books you have checked out after they're returned.
It should also be illegal for your ISP to record your browsing history.
It's about privacy and freedom.
I'll probably get modded down for this, but I don't think it's right that Google is allowed to generate all that eyeball-driven advertising revenue by broadcasting other people's copyrighted video content.
I like free video as much as the next guy, but people *own* this stuff. And Google does not.
Since I upgraded to 10.4.8, Safari crashes on me about once a week. Forum advice was to run "repair permissions", I did but it didn't help.
I use Safari because I want that whole "Apple" experience, and I also like the bookmark manager. But there have been a few times when web pages didn't work quite correctly in Safari, so I had to run Firefox anyway.
I've been thinking about formally switching to Firefox, seems like it would be less trouble, but I'd hate to have to do that somehow.
As a Mac user I'm at risk of sounding like I'm belly-aching, but I really don't think Vista is that good looking.
The default color scheme, that earthy green blending in to pale yellowy blue -- it all looks kind of... I don't know... greasy. Like I'm looking through oily antique glass. It doesn't feel fresh and clean to me.
Also, the way that 3d window swapping thing works, with the windows flying by at an 45 degree angle from top the top left. If gives me a kind of motion sickness -- just seems like an unnatural movement somehow.
When XP came out, I thought most of the OS looked second rate, but they really nailed the default desktop background; the rolling green hills and clear blue sky, it was really refreshing to me. But Vista's default is heavy -- like it needs a wash -- not light and airy at all.
Dollars to donuts, people will pay for the iPhone.
They said the original iPod was expensive, too. But there's are segments of society that won't flinch at $500 for a phone because it's not much money to them. And there are other segments of society that are willing to invest $500 of their hard earned money into something they really like.
The iPhone may be expensive for a "phone" -- but as a pocket computer, it's a pretty cool device. These nay-sayers are the same people shelling out thousands of dollars for HD TVs, and I paid $2000 for my iMac a while ago -- in the grand scheme of things, $500 is not that much money.
iPhone will sell like hot cakes and make Apple a tonne of dough.
Microsoft spent the last 20 years copying ideas from Apple, Netscape, Sun, AOL, Burst, and Google -- and now they have the nerve to complain that Linux looks like Windows??
I don't for a moment believe this is an accident. Since Apple surely had access to the beta versions of Windows Vista all along to make sure their apps were compatible with Vista, there are two distinct possibilities:
a) Apple intentionally did not release Vista compatible versions of their software so that their iPod/iTunes masses would have a compelling reason to not buy Vista and consider buying a Mac instead.
b) Microsoft intentionally submarined Apple's software, specifically iPod/iTunes, because they want they Vista upgraders to consider dumping their iPod in favor of a Zune.
Either way, it's interesting that the music player industry would have such a compelling affect on choice of operating systems. I guess MP3 is this generation's killer app.
But I thought Java was "write once, run anywhere"?
Actually it pretty much is write once, run anywhere. I don't recall the last time I had to tweak Java code after the fact because of problems deploying on either OS. However, I wouldn't be a very good programmer if I didn't test on all supported platforms. Call it: "write once, test everywhere"
> Other Mac users may need to run Windows-only software like Microsoft Project or games that are only available for Windows.
Then what's the point? "I love my Mac, but not when I want to get any work done, or have any fun."
I work in Eclipse, Adobe CS2 and Microsoft Office. All run natively on Mac. For fun I have Call Of Duty 2 for the Mac, the only game I play. There's really nothing I need Windows for outside of needing to test my Java code on it.
In fact, the biggest problem I face is the exact reverse of the guy who needs to run Project -- when I get to work where I have to use Windows I lose all of my favorite Mac programs; OmniGraffle, CSS Edit, RapidWeaver, not to mention iLife (thank goodness iTunes is available on Windows!).
I switched to Mac a year ago and Windows has become nothing more than a developer's "legacy issue" for me.
the cheaper versions of Vista... forbids... use... on virtual machines (ie Macs pretending to be PCs)
Running Windows on a Mac with Bootcamp (Apple's "dual boot partitioning software") is not a virtual machine. With Bootcamp you're running Windows right on the intel-based hardware just as if the machine was a plain-jane PC.
Parallels is virtual machine software that runs on Mac -- in which case Microsoft's beef should be with SWSoft/Parallels, not Apple.
I don't understand the problem here. ISPs should be free to provide what they want, right?
I mean, if I want to set up a "family friendly" ISP that blocks all pornographic content, that might be an attractive product for families with young children.
Why should the government decide what content the ISPs provide?
freaking me out
on
Who won?
·
· Score: -1, Flamebait
*sigh* Stolen elections, terrorist conspiracies. Dubya may be making a lot of mistakes, but he's not Adolph Hilter. Heck, he's not even Richard Nixon.
All this talk about how he engineers fake elections and terrorist attacks -- all from a guy who everyone ridicules as been a moron... I think people need a reality check.
America voted Bush in. The first time because he was a friendly likable guy and the Lewinsky scandal scoured them on Clinton/Gore. He won the second time because they felt he was protecting them from danger and wanted to give him a chance to win the war. Bush won. Both times. Get over it.
In 2008 you'll have a shot at the White House again, and it'll be be your election to lose.
Harrison Ford knows crap when he sees it. He turned down the part because he wants to try and do good work, he's not interested in resurrecting an old character just for a cash grab -- like Ford once said about returning to Han Solo in a Barbara Walters interview, "That character is a little thin for me now".
George Lucas, on the other hand, has lost a tonnes of credibility with the Star Wars prequels. As Brent Spiner said, "it took him twenty years to come up with something lousey". George's quickness to return to the Star Wars well is more evidence that he has become a sell-out of the highest order.
George should forget about Star Wars spin-offs, go back to his roots and start a new project. Maybe a remake of Flash Gordon or Buck Rogers... something he loved as a child.
Slashdot Mirror
Good question, here's some examples how:
It wouldn't be in Office Inc's and IE Inc's interests to protect Windows Inc's dominance, so they might choose to make an Office for Linux and IE for Mac and IE for Linux -- they would likely even make IE fully standards based. Years ago IE Inc would likely have had excellent Java integration, as Java was a threat to Windows, not IE. Windows Inc would have no interest in ensuring Office Inc's or IE Inc's success, so they might bundle Firefox or OpenOffice with every copy of Windows shipped.
It's sort of like, if there was one company that made all cars and all gas. They would have no interest in making car's more fuel efficient. Breaking up the monopoly makes sense -- competition is good for the consumer and for innovation.
Frankly, if Microsoft was spun out into 4 smaller companies, each with their own stock symbol, the collective value of the company would likely grow larger than the whole -- so it would be good for shareholders too.
boxlight
If Microsoft had been broken into a variety of little companies like the judge wanted 10 years ago, we'd all have much better products now because of the resulting competition.
Now it's time for Firefox (or Apple) to truly think out of the box and blow us all away with the next big thing. What's the next KILLER APP? We all know Microsoft won't do it first.
boxlight
He knows the iPhone is going to be big and that it will put pressure on Microsoft's hand-held OS to match it feature for feature; but since MS doesn't not design the hardware, they'll be in tough to compete.
The hand-held market is the dominant computing platform and Jobs is going after it with a vigor not seen since the first Macintosh came out. Apple has yet to ship a single unit, but already iPhone (and mini OS X) is a top-ranked contender for that market.
Ballmer is either scared or stupid, plain and simple.
boxlight
Canadian speaking.
but with the Conservatives in charge, all bets are off if they can find a way to claim it's about terrorism or child pornography
It's comments like this that I find really anti-productive -- why do you assume that just because the current government is conservative that it's *not* about terrorism or national security?? Believe it or not, we conservatives are not interested in invading your private space, go live your life and have fun -- but we DO care if you die in a terrorist bombing or if your kids get raped and photographed by some perv.
Believe me, I don't want to live in Nazi Germany, but I don't want to die in a subway bombing either. Let's stop the partisan stuff and find a balanced solution.
I read the three Lord Of The Rings books and The Hobbit. Can someone tell me what other Tolkien books take place in the same Middle Earth "universe", and how do they relate to the ones I read? That is, are they prequels, sequels, or parallel stories?
Do any of the hobbits, Gandalf, the Shire, or any other "Rings" characters appear in the other books?
the religious groups worried it would make access too easy and allow porn to expand even further onto the Internet
... is that possible??
.xxx domain I can imagine.
.xxx domain and the restriction of adult content to it would be the best thing to help parents filter porn from their kids. But it's a pie in the sky idea. There's no way to prevent people in other countries from putting porn on whatever URL they want.
Er
OK, I'm religious, but that's about the stupidest argument *against* a
An
boxlight
> We work overtime when needed, there is alot of support for balancing work and life. > Telecommuting is a big plus, as is flexible work hours. As long as I make netmeetings > and conference calls and hit my targets, they don't care when I get the work done.
;-)
Thanks for the response. That sounds very reasonable, indeed. Where do I sign up?
boxlight
The problem I would have with the Google work environment is that it all appears to be geared to getting you to spend as many hours as possible at the office.
;-)
That is, the free food, and fun corporate events are all nice and everything; but my sense is that in return you're pretty much expected to work extremely long hours, to make your job your life.
IMO, it's extremely important -- crucial even -- to have a separate work life and home life. Work hard from 9-to-5 but then drop everything and go home, spend the evening with your wife and family. Forget about work and come back fresh the next day. Google doesn't seem to emphasize that. It appears when you work at Google, you work there 24/7. I don't think that's necessarily a healthy approach.
Still -- looks like a very fun place to work. If you are allowed to go home at the end of the day.
boxlight
It would actually be nice if when you decided to take something down off the web, it was gone forever. How many embarrassing photos and postings have we written over the years? There's something about people being able to google or way-back-machine your past that's makes you feel *exposed*.
I often wonder about all those girls that are nude on the web -- aren't they going to grow up and wish all that stuff would be taken down?
Still, that's life -- once it's out there, it's out there. The lady in the story doesn't (or shouldn't) have a chance.
It's apparent that both Apple and Google believe that the phone/hand-held-computer will be the next dominant computing platform, and they're intent on wrestling ownership of that platform away from RIM/Blackberry.
Interesting that Apple and Google are working tightly together on iPhone apps; now Google's working on their own phone, and there's also been rumors that Apple will license their "mini OS X" to other hand-helds. My guess is Google will be the first licensee, and Steve Jobs wants "mini OS X" to be the "Windows" of the 21st century.
Buy AAPL now for a times-20 return in 10 years.
boxlight
It is illegal for a library to keep a record of the books you have checked out after they're returned.
It should also be illegal for your ISP to record your browsing history.
It's about privacy and freedom.
I like free video as much as the next guy, but people *own* this stuff. And Google does not.
The billion dollar lawsuit looks good on them.
Since I upgraded to 10.4.8, Safari crashes on me about once a week. Forum advice was to run "repair permissions", I did but it didn't help.
I use Safari because I want that whole "Apple" experience, and I also like the bookmark manager. But there have been a few times when web pages didn't work quite correctly in Safari, so I had to run Firefox anyway.
I've been thinking about formally switching to Firefox, seems like it would be less trouble, but I'd hate to have to do that somehow.
boxlight
No -- Britney Spears as Lt. Ilia.
As a Mac user I'm at risk of sounding like I'm belly-aching, but I really don't think Vista is that good looking.
... I don't know ... greasy. Like I'm looking through oily antique glass. It doesn't feel fresh and clean to me.
The default color scheme, that earthy green blending in to pale yellowy blue -- it all looks kind of
Also, the way that 3d window swapping thing works, with the windows flying by at an 45 degree angle from top the top left. If gives me a kind of motion sickness -- just seems like an unnatural movement somehow.
When XP came out, I thought most of the OS looked second rate, but they really nailed the default desktop background; the rolling green hills and clear blue sky, it was really refreshing to me. But Vista's default is heavy -- like it needs a wash -- not light and airy at all.
Anyway, just my opinion. Maybe it's just me.
Dollars to donuts, people will pay for the iPhone.
They said the original iPod was expensive, too. But there's are segments of society that won't flinch at $500 for a phone because it's not much money to them. And there are other segments of society that are willing to invest $500 of their hard earned money into something they really like.
The iPhone may be expensive for a "phone" -- but as a pocket computer, it's a pretty cool device. These nay-sayers are the same people shelling out thousands of dollars for HD TVs, and I paid $2000 for my iMac a while ago -- in the grand scheme of things, $500 is not that much money.
iPhone will sell like hot cakes and make Apple a tonne of dough.
Microsoft spent the last 20 years copying ideas from Apple, Netscape, Sun, AOL, Burst, and Google -- and now they have the nerve to complain that Linux looks like Windows??
Serious question ...
Is it possible these lake were always there? Where is the evidence that these lake are a new thing and are caused by global warming?
I don't for a moment believe this is an accident. Since Apple surely had access to the beta versions of Windows Vista all along to make sure their apps were compatible with Vista, there are two distinct possibilities:
a) Apple intentionally did not release Vista compatible versions of their software so that their iPod/iTunes masses would have a compelling reason to not buy Vista and consider buying a Mac instead.
b) Microsoft intentionally submarined Apple's software, specifically iPod/iTunes, because they want they Vista upgraders to consider dumping their iPod in favor of a Zune.
Either way, it's interesting that the music player industry would have such a compelling affect on choice of operating systems. I guess MP3 is this generation's killer app.
boxlight
But I thought Java was "write once, run anywhere"?
Actually it pretty much is write once, run anywhere. I don't recall the last time I had to tweak Java code after the fact because of problems deploying on either OS. However, I wouldn't be a very good programmer if I didn't test on all supported platforms. Call it: "write once, test everywhere"
> Other Mac users may need to run Windows-only software like Microsoft Project or games that are only available for Windows.
Then what's the point? "I love my Mac, but not when I want to get any work done, or have any fun."
I work in Eclipse, Adobe CS2 and Microsoft Office. All run natively on Mac. For fun I have Call Of Duty 2 for the Mac, the only game I play. There's really nothing I need Windows for outside of needing to test my Java code on it.
In fact, the biggest problem I face is the exact reverse of the guy who needs to run Project -- when I get to work where I have to use Windows I lose all of my favorite Mac programs; OmniGraffle, CSS Edit, RapidWeaver, not to mention iLife (thank goodness iTunes is available on Windows!).
I switched to Mac a year ago and Windows has become nothing more than a developer's "legacy issue" for me.
boxlight
Tell me again why a MAC user would _want_ to run vista on their MAC?
I'm a Mac user and I need access to Windows because I have to test my Java code on Windows. I don't want a separate PC machine just for testing code.
Other Mac users may need to run Windows-only software like Microsoft Project or games that are only available for Windows.
boxlight
the cheaper versions of Vista ... forbids ... use ... on virtual machines (ie Macs pretending to be PCs)
Running Windows on a Mac with Bootcamp (Apple's "dual boot partitioning software") is not a virtual machine. With Bootcamp you're running Windows right on the intel-based hardware just as if the machine was a plain-jane PC.
Parallels is virtual machine software that runs on Mac -- in which case Microsoft's beef should be with SWSoft/Parallels, not Apple.
boxlight
I mean, if I want to set up a "family friendly" ISP that blocks all pornographic content, that might be an attractive product for families with young children.
Why should the government decide what content the ISPs provide?
All this talk about how he engineers fake elections and terrorist attacks -- all from a guy who everyone ridicules as been a moron ... I think people need a reality check.
America voted Bush in. The first time because he was a friendly likable guy and the Lewinsky scandal scoured them on Clinton/Gore. He won the second time because they felt he was protecting them from danger and wanted to give him a chance to win the war. Bush won. Both times. Get over it.
In 2008 you'll have a shot at the White House again, and it'll be be your election to lose.
boxlight
George Lucas, on the other hand, has lost a tonnes of credibility with the Star Wars prequels. As Brent Spiner said, "it took him twenty years to come up with something lousey". George's quickness to return to the Star Wars well is more evidence that he has become a sell-out of the highest order.
George should forget about Star Wars spin-offs, go back to his roots and start a new project. Maybe a remake of Flash Gordon or Buck Rogers ... something he loved as a child.
boxlight