Well, I could be wrong but the difference is magnitude. If the work you put in doesnt make a significant difference, then I would be disinclined to call it innovative, but if you make a conceptual leap then yes, that would be.
I'm sure Microsoft have done some innovating over the years (I mean, with that much money spent, you would be hard pressed not to create something by accident even) but I dont think their primary goal has ever been to do that.
My point of course (back up there somewhere) was merely that their cash flow has not necessarily come from innovation.
Um, excuse me if I'm wrong but without innovation wouldn't MS still be using QDos?
I'm not sure that innovation and development are the same thing. They have developed and evolved their software for years its true, but innovation is more than that.
Attention all armchair businessmen! If big bucks on R&D was a waste companies wouldn't do it. If you had as much insight into this as you think you'd be the next one with the Bill Gates cashflow, not a pizza delivery monkey.
IANAPDM but even I know that they didnt get that cashflow from innovation, they got it from luck and marketing and licensing of MS-DOS on *every* IBM PC that went out the door for years that got them the dominant market position no matter the quality of their product.
No, the point is that the severity of the punishment should be felt equally. If you earn a million euros a year, a 30 euro fine is not any kind of disincentive to drive like an idiot, whereas a 15000 euro fine might be.
X is confusing because the client/server are the "wrong way round".
No its a graphics server. The server is where the graphical display is, and the clients are the programs that want to draw on the graphical display. One server, many clients.
Microsoft runs these bug-checker-programs on their code all the time.
Maybe not so successfully though..
In fact, as far as I am aware, Coverity are intending to make a profit. They are providing free access to their tools to the Open Source community now because it gets them publicity and give their tools a good workout (there is lots of fine tuning going on). Later, they will be selling their services privately and you wont hear about the bugs they find.
Well you already had a headstart and now you are a leader of many rather than few and your followers are richer which makes you richer.
The alternate scenario where everybody just takes what their neighbour has, would seem to end up with us all sitting around in the dirt stealing sticks.
For instance if you use a primestar dish with a coffee can, and have super high gain, you are required to turn down your transmission power to be within FCC regs
Can you do that, with drivers and hardware that dont allow you to tune the power levels?
place your hands on the keyboard now in the 'home' position, that is relaxed with your index fingers on the f and j buttons and the other fingers on the keys alongside. Feel the little dimple or whatever there is there. Caress it, yeah.
Now, use the longest finger on the left hand (whats that called, the 'fuck you' finger?) and extend it slightly until it sits on the top row. Thats right, its on the e button!
Now here is the clever bit.. Stretch the 'fuck you' finger of the right hand to the top row.. whaddya know! There is your i, don't poke your finger in it.
Its quite common for beginner touch typists to use the wrong hand..
Well, compatibility is a consumer issue its not a vendor issue because it is based on consumer's choice and not on vendors.
Fine, except that there is no choice of vendors. Microsoft use their considerable might to crush alternative vendors by unfair means.
What does it mean for EU to enable other people to enter the marketplace? Stiffle progress each time a competitor gets left behind? Rob the IP right of the leader just because he is good?
Except that none of these things apply to the Microsoft Monopoly Abuse that is the current issue. Nobody is trying to prevent Microsoft from making good software, just to make it so that they no longer create software that is intentionally incompatible with everybody else. They have no worthwhile IP rights here, they did not extend the standard to make it better, they extended it purely to stifle the competition and because they had the power to do so because they are in a monopoly position.
What you are suggesting is something that is illustratively described by Ayn Rand in her "Atlas Shrugged" novel, and it does not suggest a good state of affairs.
I have not read it, sorry. As others have mentioned many times though, the rules are (and must be) different for monopoly companies because although your right to choose is still there, the effective choice is limited.
No matter how good your alternative software is, still people are unlikely to use it because all their data is already in Microsoft proprietary format and your software is not allowed to read it. There are no conversion utilities because the format is secret and obfuscated. Whose data is it anyway? If its your data, why do Microsoft control the way you can access it?
EU or any other government should provide a fair framework with equal rights for each competitor and then monitor that the framework is fair.
Thats exactly the point. They do monitor it, and have found that Microsoft are not acting within that fair framework, never have done and seemingly have no intention to do so in the future. Intervention is required.
The only thing stifling innovation in the EU is the consumers themselves. If the EU doesn't like M$, they should not #$%@ing buy it. I bet if the EU used all non M$ products it would be few short months before M$ was compatible with them and doing anything to win back the market. Just because the EU has not come up with a viable option to M$ doesn't mean they have the right to mold M$ into the product they want.
Well I think that much of that is the point you are arguing against. The reality is that Microsoft is in a monopoly position and are abusing that monopoly position in order to keep the competition down. The consumers must have Microsoft compatibility because everybody else has it, and unfortunately the only way to have that compatibility is to buy Microsoft because they work hard to keep it that way by keeping the specs hidden.
The EU is not a homogenous organisation who can just use something else, and they cant force citizens to use something else either. What they can do is impose massive fines on companies who break the law, until they stop doing so. Guess thats what they are working on then..
Its not about changing Microsoft or punishing them because they are evil yankee overlords, its about enabling other people to enter the marketplace in the first place.
There's quite a bit seperating openBSD & the Berkeley Software Distribution. netBSD was based on the last Berkely distribution & openBSD split from netBSD because some developers wanted security to be a stronger focus.
Er, thats not really the case. OpenBSD has concentrated on security for most of its life but thats not the reason that it was forked from NetBSD. The reason for that is that Theos CVS access was revoked and he had lots to contribute, so he decided to bypass NetBSD and contribute directly. You can probably find a bunch of history at wikipedia if you are really interested.
I think speeding tickets would be effective if they were levied at half a billion Euros.
A friend of mine who lived in Finland a few years ago says that such things there are adjusted to your income. If you earn 10x the national average, you pay 10x the fine, on the principle that it should hurt you the same.
I think that the REAL motivation behind most of the lawsuits against MS that imply they abuse their "power" is sour grapes. Apple, Sun, IBM, even Be(!) all fucked up. They didn't do as good a job as MS in promoting their OSs and hardware. Especially Apple, who should've OWNED the entire market. They had ELEVEN YEARS (1984 - 1995) where their OS was superiour in every way to MSs. And they blew it. The same can be said for all the other OS vendors.
You missed the obvious point there. Yes, there were years when Apple OS was miles better than anything Microsoft had to offer (and many would say, that is still the case) but still the users didnt switch. Why not? Because even back then, Microsoft was a defacto monopoly on desktop computers and were using every trick in the book to keep it that way.
They got into that position by luck and marketing and have stayed the market leader not because they were better, but because they consistently used their position of power to deny others the chance to compete. To say that the other vendors blew it is not the whole story, by a long shot.
The court then replies: So what? European courts have their own mechanisms. The only basis for your demand is that you don't like the outcome of those mechanisms and want an American court to interfere with the European proceedings. It would improper for us to grant you that wish.
and I am left wondering if there isnt a little resentment (maybe not the right word) on the part of the judges in the USA - Microsoft were convicted there and seemingly paid off the politicians to get out of being punished. Thats a slap in the face for the judiciary and I can't see them going out of their way to assist Microsoft weasel out of a deserved punishment again even if it is in a different jurisdiction.
OLED's are nice for displays, but not enough lumen/watt efficiency for general illumination.
thats ok when you are talking about point sources, but TFA mentioned something about printing it onto glass or plastic. Ok, so then you spread it out - have a low level light evenly over the ceiling and point sources for reading. No need for garish illumination.
How about if somebody creates a 'paint' of this, just spray it all over the walls and ceiling and ambient lighting is all over.
I thought those led/dry cell driven pocket torches produced 30 lumens though..
as far as I can tell, that is marketing bullshit.
I have a LED headlight for my bicycle and while it is very intense when its pointing right at you, it has very poor illumination capability when compared to an incandescent headlight. The light is very directional so when they say 'X lumens' it generally means they measured the output in the beam segment rather than the the whole sphere.
For town riding, such a headlight is fine. You arent using it for its illumination, you really only want a light so cars can see you, and if you are riding into oncoming traffic at night chances are you are a fool. The rear light is generally more important. In the country where streetlighting is non existent, the LED is barely adequate and you need an incandescent bulb.
I can't be bothered to google for references to back my shaky claims up, its just a personal anecdote.
Monkey porn might be not probable, but as the GP pointed out they already did include restrictions in an update, so its not improbable at all that they will do it again.
The only thing i buy there is ammo. I hate the lines and customer service.
Excuse me I'm foreign - do they still sell ammo? I was under the impression after seeing 'Bowling for Columbine' that they were not going to do that anymore..
So what if a family can save $2500+ dollars a year shopping at wal-mart! cheaper groceries is just a horrible thing!
You suppose that the price you pay is equal to the cost, but it is not. The cost is more than that. When walmart bully their suppliers to lower the quality so they can make more profit, the actual cost went up because you have to pay later to deal with that poor quality. Walmart dont care about that though, they have their money and now its your problem.
What is the cost of cheaper apples? Its cheaper to spray pesticides when growing, but the real cost is that your life may be shortened, or you may be financially ruined paying for medical care. What about all the fuel that is burned bringing those apples to you? We are all going to be paying for that when the fuel gets scarce.
What is the cost of cheaper clothing? Its cheaper to get it made at sweatshops in a third world country, but the real cost is that the people who work there die of overwork. Then, when the manufacturing jobs have left your country, you will also suffer.
You can bet that Walmart (and all large corporations) have done cost benefit analysis of everything they sell, and they fully realise that they are offsetting the real costs onto their customers. Thats their business plan.
Slashdot Mirror
I'm sure Microsoft have done some innovating over the years (I mean, with that much money spent, you would be hard pressed not to create something by accident even) but I dont think their primary goal has ever been to do that.
My point of course (back up there somewhere) was merely that their cash flow has not necessarily come from innovation.
I'm not sure that innovation and development are the same thing. They have developed and evolved their software for years its true, but innovation is more than that.
IANAPDM but even I know that they didnt get that cashflow from innovation, they got it from luck and marketing and licensing of MS-DOS on *every* IBM PC that went out the door for years that got them the dominant market position no matter the quality of their product.
No, the point is that the severity of the punishment should be felt equally. If you earn a million euros a year, a 30 euro fine is not any kind of disincentive to drive like an idiot, whereas a 15000 euro fine might be.
No its a graphics server. The server is where the graphical display is, and the clients are the programs that want to draw on the graphical display. One server, many clients.
Maybe not so successfully though..
In fact, as far as I am aware, Coverity are intending to make a profit. They are providing free access to their tools to the Open Source community now because it gets them publicity and give their tools a good workout (there is lots of fine tuning going on). Later, they will be selling their services privately and you wont hear about the bugs they find.
Lets not forget who caused the DHS to be set up, props to Bush and props to Osama
Ra! Ra! Ra! The US taxpayers!
and props to St Brendan, Lief Ericsson and John Cabot! Yaay!
The alternate scenario where everybody just takes what their neighbour has, would seem to end up with us all sitting around in the dirt stealing sticks.
Can you do that, with drivers and hardware that dont allow you to tune the power levels?
place your hands on the keyboard now in the 'home' position, that is relaxed with your index fingers on the f and j buttons and the other fingers on the keys alongside. Feel the little dimple or whatever there is there. Caress it, yeah.
Now, use the longest finger on the left hand (whats that called, the 'fuck you' finger?) and extend it slightly until it sits on the top row. Thats right, its on the e button!
Now here is the clever bit.. Stretch the 'fuck you' finger of the right hand to the top row.. whaddya know! There is your i, don't poke your finger in it.
Its quite common for beginner touch typists to use the wrong hand..
Try Criticism of Microsoft to start.
So, the people and not Microsoft have to find a way to get out of this fix.
Yes, and the people are being represented by the government [of the EU] in this case.
Its because she is my girlfriend, you insensitive clod!
Fine, except that there is no choice of vendors. Microsoft use their considerable might to crush alternative vendors by unfair means.
What does it mean for EU to enable other people to enter the marketplace? Stiffle progress each time a competitor gets left behind? Rob the IP right of the leader just because he is good?
Except that none of these things apply to the Microsoft Monopoly Abuse that is the current issue. Nobody is trying to prevent Microsoft from making good software, just to make it so that they no longer create software that is intentionally incompatible with everybody else. They have no worthwhile IP rights here, they did not extend the standard to make it better, they extended it purely to stifle the competition and because they had the power to do so because they are in a monopoly position.
See Embrace, Extend and Extinguish for more details.
What you are suggesting is something that is illustratively described by Ayn Rand in her "Atlas Shrugged" novel, and it does not suggest a good state of affairs.
I have not read it, sorry. As others have mentioned many times though, the rules are (and must be) different for monopoly companies because although your right to choose is still there, the effective choice is limited.
No matter how good your alternative software is, still people are unlikely to use it because all their data is already in Microsoft proprietary format and your software is not allowed to read it. There are no conversion utilities because the format is secret and obfuscated. Whose data is it anyway? If its your data, why do Microsoft control the way you can access it?
EU or any other government should provide a fair framework with equal rights for each competitor and then monitor that the framework is fair.
Thats exactly the point. They do monitor it, and have found that Microsoft are not acting within that fair framework, never have done and seemingly have no intention to do so in the future. Intervention is required.
Well I think that much of that is the point you are arguing against. The reality is that Microsoft is in a monopoly position and are abusing that monopoly position in order to keep the competition down. The consumers must have Microsoft compatibility because everybody else has it, and unfortunately the only way to have that compatibility is to buy Microsoft because they work hard to keep it that way by keeping the specs hidden.
The EU is not a homogenous organisation who can just use something else, and they cant force citizens to use something else either. What they can do is impose massive fines on companies who break the law, until they stop doing so. Guess thats what they are working on then..
Its not about changing Microsoft or punishing them because they are evil yankee overlords, its about enabling other people to enter the marketplace in the first place.
Er, thats not really the case. OpenBSD has concentrated on security for most of its life but thats not the reason that it was forked from NetBSD. The reason for that is that Theos CVS access was revoked and he had lots to contribute, so he decided to bypass NetBSD and contribute directly. You can probably find a bunch of history at wikipedia if you are really interested.
Hm, doesnt really induce any panic about the internet perverts though?
A friend of mine who lived in Finland a few years ago says that such things there are adjusted to your income. If you earn 10x the national average, you pay 10x the fine, on the principle that it should hurt you the same.
You missed the obvious point there. Yes, there were years when Apple OS was miles better than anything Microsoft had to offer (and many would say, that is still the case) but still the users didnt switch. Why not? Because even back then, Microsoft was a defacto monopoly on desktop computers and were using every trick in the book to keep it that way.
They got into that position by luck and marketing and have stayed the market leader not because they were better, but because they consistently used their position of power to deny others the chance to compete. To say that the other vendors blew it is not the whole story, by a long shot.
and I am left wondering if there isnt a little resentment (maybe not the right word) on the part of the judges in the USA - Microsoft were convicted there and seemingly paid off the politicians to get out of being punished. Thats a slap in the face for the judiciary and I can't see them going out of their way to assist Microsoft weasel out of a deserved punishment again even if it is in a different jurisdiction.
thats ok when you are talking about point sources, but TFA mentioned something about printing it onto glass or plastic. Ok, so then you spread it out - have a low level light evenly over the ceiling and point sources for reading. No need for garish illumination.
How about if somebody creates a 'paint' of this, just spray it all over the walls and ceiling and ambient lighting is all over.
as far as I can tell, that is marketing bullshit.
I have a LED headlight for my bicycle and while it is very intense when its pointing right at you, it has very poor illumination capability when compared to an incandescent headlight. The light is very directional so when they say 'X lumens' it generally means they measured the output in the beam segment rather than the the whole sphere.
For town riding, such a headlight is fine. You arent using it for its illumination, you really only want a light so cars can see you, and if you are riding into oncoming traffic at night chances are you are a fool. The rear light is generally more important. In the country where streetlighting is non existent, the LED is barely adequate and you need an incandescent bulb.
I can't be bothered to google for references to back my shaky claims up, its just a personal anecdote.
Monkey porn might be not probable, but as the GP pointed out they already did include restrictions in an update, so its not improbable at all that they will do it again.
"And that's what you get for believing a Michael Moore movie!"
Well, I've done a bit of googling and it seems to have been K-Mart but like I said, I'm foreign. We dont got no 'marts here.
Excuse me I'm foreign - do they still sell ammo? I was under the impression after seeing 'Bowling for Columbine' that they were not going to do that anymore..
You suppose that the price you pay is equal to the cost, but it is not. The cost is more than that. When walmart bully their suppliers to lower the quality so they can make more profit, the actual cost went up because you have to pay later to deal with that poor quality. Walmart dont care about that though, they have their money and now its your problem.
What is the cost of cheaper apples? Its cheaper to spray pesticides when growing, but the real cost is that your life may be shortened, or you may be financially ruined paying for medical care. What about all the fuel that is burned bringing those apples to you? We are all going to be paying for that when the fuel gets scarce.
What is the cost of cheaper clothing? Its cheaper to get it made at sweatshops in a third world country, but the real cost is that the people who work there die of overwork. Then, when the manufacturing jobs have left your country, you will also suffer.
You can bet that Walmart (and all large corporations) have done cost benefit analysis of everything they sell, and they fully realise that they are offsetting the real costs onto their customers. Thats their business plan.