Another misguided definition. A monopoly is created by the absence of competition. Notice that I did not put any qualifiers on the word "competition". The lack of "reasonable" or "valid" or even "technologically similar" competition does not make a monopoly.
Here's a brief list of Microsoft's chief competitors (very brief, no need to e-mail me with additions):
Internet Explorer - Netscape Navigator
Windows $DESKTOP-OS - Linux, MacOS (particularly MacOS X)
MSN Portal - Yahoo!, Netscape.com, hundreds of others
Office Suite - Corel WordPerfect Suite, StarOffice
PocketPC - Palm, Handspring, Compaq
...and on and on and on...
Also, the ability to form a coalition against competition (cf. packs of wolves vs. their predators) actually moves forward the Darwinian model of evolution, it does not disprove it.
MSN evolves as a function of the evolution of its "social group", in this case, Microsoft, just as Netscape.com evolves as a function of the evolution of AOL/Time Warner.
The fact that the rewards of success of other arms of the company are used to prop up not-as-successful arms of the company could be said to be an evolution in the sense that altruism is further evolved than selfism.
Microsoft now operates under its own notions of Darwinian business evolution. That is, the rich prey on potential competitors and hang on until they win.
Jon, I don't know where you get YOUR definition of Darwinisms from, but where I come from, the Darwinian model boils down to "the strongest [or most adaptive] shall survive".
And as much as I hate to say it, have you looked at MSN lately? The portal, I mean, not the lame dial-up ISP. It's really not all that bad.
I fully realise I shall be thrown into the dungeon for this, but... <gasp> some of Microsoft's things aren't too bad!
We won't, of course, mention the travesty of a platform that is.NET... not without laughing... but their Windows 9x GUI is a shining example of something that can be quickly grasped by Joe AOL, and their Visual Studio products have made programming accessible to those who shouldn't ever have considered a career in devel...er, wait, never mind, I'm having Freudian slips here. Never mind.
And after the bloom withers (side note: if it smells like a corpse while in full bloom, what must it smell like while the blossom rots?), the attendees will celebrate with a feast of durian.
The next step, you realise, will be coded message to international intelligence spies sent through disco lighting.
Zaphod B
Napster is long from dead, if they hurry.
on
Napster Going Legit
·
· Score: 2
"Napster is dead, they killed themselves on the altar of the RIAA, etc., etc., ad nauseam."
Horseturds. Yes, there are many, many Napster clones out there, and yes, many more spring up as soon as the RIAA clamps down on another one. But the reason Napster was so successful even after its would-be demise is because the NAME was known. Napster became that most coveted of all marketing terms, a "household term" amoung those who have computers.
If Napster DOES go legit, and does it quickly, they will undoubtedly find subscribers, depending on the model they choose. (I, personally, would prefer a monthly fee type of deal. Saves having to buy CDs for one or two songs.) Why? People know the name Napster. With some judicious advertising, they could come back.
Don't forget that that silly Napster client is installed on Joe AOL's computer now. Most people wouldn't bother to get rid of it, they'd just delete the shortcut on the desktop and think they'd deleted the program.
So picture this... Napster goes legit, sets up their model, and advertises through the normal channels (banner ads, bribes to portals to be on the front page, even TV and radio ads). Joe AOL says, "Hey, I've already got that!"
Boom. Success, even if not on the same level as it was apparent before.
And CmdrTaco... buying the bandwidth delivers a HELL of a lot more than Napster. Adding the whole cost of Net access to whatever fees are to be imposed by Napster is specious reasoning.
Nevada already has such a favourable tax climate for business due to the casinos that the relocation of would-be online betting parlours to the state could have a very beneficial effect on the existing, non-betting-oriented businesses, particularly in booming Clark County (home to Las Vegas and Henderson, the fastest-growing collection of ugly tract homes in the world).
The question is not whether Nevada will legalise online gambling, but whether this legality will stand when the inevitable challenges happen in Federal court.
As for minors getting in to online gambling illicitly... the way most casinos are set up now could be used as a model:
Random ID checks involving driver licenses or other government-issued ID
Requirements for proof of age before 'cashing out'
Requirements for proof of age before 'entering' (i.e., before setting up an account).
If nothing else, they could use an age verification system as they do on porn sites.
OTOH, 13-year-olds with too much time and money on their hands vs. the authorities and their slow reactions, especially programmatic reactions...'tis no contest whatsoever.
I suppose that what this means is that if humans are going to be cloned, we are going to need to get back to the biological sense of maturity, meaning that (warning: this is a bit crude) as soon as you can get it up, it's time for cloning. Cloning 13-year-olds and 14-year-olds, etc. in order to prevent the neural degradation.
On the other hand, what is the only group who are both young and interested in science?
You guessed it. Do we really want to create a race of persons who will grow up to be engineers? <shudder> <twitch>
For all you Linus junkies out there in La La Land... you can hear it at 3:00pm PDT (that's one hour and fifteen minutes from now) on KCRW 89.9 Santa Monica
. Zaphod B
You just KNOW what will happen...
on
Duct Tape
·
· Score: 1
The kid will now be recruited to the point of blatant harassment by every college, university, and military institution in the world.
What's scary is that someday that kid will be a first-and-foremost problem.
And all these years I'd been told that SPAM stood for Surgically Processed Albino Mouseloaf.
Huh... go know...
Seriously, though, this is the kind of grace that should be prevalent in all industry. That's not to say that they should roll over when their trademarks are infringed, but they don't have to be such asses about it.
Viva the livelihood of Austin, Minnesota. We could learn a lot from the Minnesotan motto of "Make nice!".
How do you suppose they handle area code changes? I mean, back when I was BBSing in the Central NJ area, our area code was 201. Then it got changed to 908. Now it's 732, with, I'm told (I don't live there anymore), another one on the way.
Hence, The Dark Planet (which has a telnet BBS up here) could be in any of the three area codes.
Now if only we could get in contact with people FROM those BBSes... (Weirdo from Ajerbijan, WHERE ARE YOU?)
Talk about your sysadminning nightmares... not only do you have to provide support for faculty, staff, and students, but also alumni? Not to mention the unsightly cholesterol that would clog the servers. Ten thousand new accounts per year, over a period of ten years... and of course no one would VOLUNTARILY clean out their in-boxen, trash, or sent-items, but the alums from 1980 would be the first to bitch when mailbox size limits were imposed.
No, thank you. I'll stick with Hotmail. I'm screwing M$ out of server resources that way.
Look, this guy is defending Microsoft's strategy. So one of three things is possible:
1. Microsoft's model is bad and they will fail miserably due to the aforementioned bad model. 2. Microsoft's model is NOT bad, and their success can be attributed in part to it. 3. Mr. Mundie had a temporary (or permanent, who knows) lapse of brain power and is just WRONG.
California has already begun this process. All Website portals must have the same look and feel (and before you start complaining, no, they are NOT all on IIS, most are in fact on Solaris). They are passing bills down the street at the Capitol to require posting of certain information to the Web (chiefest among them decisions by the Public Utilities Commission, those electricity whores, and enforcement actions against insurance agents by the Department of Insurance).
The drive for the digitalised government here in sunny CA is actually kind of working. While it's true that there IS a digital divide, more people have access to the Internet than don't, at least in this state (libraries are required to provide access over government-sponsored pipes), and they don't want to alienate the ones who DO use computers for everything, who are, after all, the rich and famous and BOFH:)
The U.S. Government will take a lot longer to move online, but it will eventually happen... and those in government jobs (and those who apply during downturns because "the government doesn't shrink") will be forced to sit there and do noth... oh wait, never mind.
Zaphod B When duplication is outlawed, only outlaws will have/bin/cp
What an appropriate topic, coming after worker protests for May Day (Myezhdunarodnyj Dyen' Rabochikov, whatever...)
As a consultant, I work usually 50-55 hours a week. However, it is in my best interest to work more because my compensation is based on how many hours I bill. It also varies widely - some weeks I have 70-90 hours of work, some weeks I have 15 hours of work
This does not, of course, count the 45% of each minute spent pressing "Reload" on/.
Many countries (the US included) have workers rights laws, just the US law is a bit wussy. French law, for example, guarantees a 35-hour workweek and five weeks of vacation per year. It is not, of course, as widely flouted as the US law, hence why it works. Of course, the entire northern two-thirds of France closes down during August, but them's the breaks when you have enforced laws like that.
Zaphod B When duplication is outlawed, only outlaws will have/bin/cp
While I agree with you that VoIP can be choppy, I don't think the point of the project is to replace telephones. It never was. What the point seems to be is to combine the population-reaching power of the Internet with the go-anywhere power of ham radio.
Let me put it in perspective...one thing about serious ham radio enthusiasts is that they are always going to horrendously isolated places, desolate rocks in the middle of the ocean, etc. so that other hams can get QSL cards (confirmations of contact) with these locations on them. (My father, alav hasholem, had plastered the entire basement and his den with sheets of these cards.)
So imagine you are, for example, a Peace Corps worker in Bhutan. Bhutan, lovely though it is, is not exactly the shining star of international communication, particularly the eastern half, which doesn't even have proper roads. You would love to speak with your parents, but you don't have any telephone, you don't really have any way to GET to a telephone except perhaps once every three months, but you DO know someone with a ham radio (or perhaps even just a visiting QSL factory on one of his/her binges).
Would you really turn down a chance to talk to your parents in Wisconsin or Wiscasset or Wembley, or would you just deal with jitter and choppiness?
Ham radio has a history of breaking down the traditional barriers to communication, so it does not surprise me that this is in development.
I fondly recall [CAUTION: FLASHBACK. CAMERA FOCUS MAY BECOME WAVY IN TRANSITION.] back in my days as WV2LCM, the illicit joy we found at patching calls that otherwise would have cost an insane amount of money or were simply impossible (for those of you not old enough to understand this reference, this was before the breakup of AT&T, when long-distance was a monopoly, and before the breakup of the Soviet Union, when direct-dial was not available). Reuniting George in Ireland with his daughter in New Haven, causing Dmitry in Kiev to be able to speak with his brother in New York for the first time in a decade, those were the joys of communication (as well as a well-deserved poke at Ma Bell, especially after she figured out that we were calling collect to payphones to flout her insane rates, but that's a different story). Rarely did anyone get caught or punished, because (this is one of those little-known facts) the guardians of ham radio communication, the FCC, are (or perhaps were) nearly all ham radio operators themselves.
It's no coincidence that ham radio operators are usually the first on-scene at the Emergency Services Centre during a disaster, and so I'm glad to see this frontier-pushing group (which, sadly, I have not been part of since my equipment was stolen) using the ultimate in global communications to further its cause:)
Zaphod B (CQ, CQ)
One-time WV2LCM on 2m
Zaphod B
They are not legislating that software must not cost money. The actual law (as was stated in the summary) uses the Spanish word libre, which refers to free in the sense of unfettered, not free in the sense of without cost (that would be the word gratis or sin cargo).
What the summary of the law does say is that there should be no restrictions on the use of the software, and no cost should be borne by the user for uses of the software for which normally a software company would charge money.
As for the respondents who say the law is legislating a specific software, since when is all Open Source software the same? The beauty of Open Source is the ability to change it to meet your needs.
That said, I have to say that I don't agree with a law legislating Open Source software. We should not be forcing people to disclose their sources, they should willingly give it up. Whether that will ever happen, I don't know.
Believe it or not, the multi-billion dollar oil companies promote efficient and alternative engine types - the profit margin on gasoline, particularly in the U.S., is among the lowest of any petroleum product.
What we need is for some brilliant and enterprising Open Source type geek with connections at JPL to arrange for the fall to drop on a large corporate campus in a suburb of Seattle... you know, since the earthquake failed.
Great, instead of nuclear terrorism we can have terroristic opportunists in these BMWs deliberately having gruesome accidents, sparking flames from combustion-powered cars, and blowing huge areas to bits.
Well, if it's a matter of simple mass causing it to not be a planet, we could send all of those AOL CDs and DVDs that make such great coasters to this would-be planet and beef it up a bit...
Slashdot Mirror
Another misguided definition. A monopoly is created by the absence of competition. Notice that I did not put any qualifiers on the word "competition". The lack of "reasonable" or "valid" or even "technologically similar" competition does not make a monopoly.
Here's a brief list of Microsoft's chief competitors (very brief, no need to e-mail me with additions):
- Internet Explorer - Netscape Navigator
- Windows $DESKTOP-OS - Linux, MacOS (particularly MacOS X)
- MSN Portal - Yahoo!, Netscape.com, hundreds of others
- Office Suite - Corel WordPerfect Suite, StarOffice
- PocketPC - Palm, Handspring, Compaq
...and on and on and on...Also, the ability to form a coalition against competition (cf. packs of wolves vs. their predators) actually moves forward the Darwinian model of evolution, it does not disprove it.
MSN evolves as a function of the evolution of its "social group", in this case, Microsoft, just as Netscape.com evolves as a function of the evolution of AOL/Time Warner.
The fact that the rewards of success of other arms of the company are used to prop up not-as-successful arms of the company could be said to be an evolution in the sense that altruism is further evolved than selfism.
Zaphod B
Jon, I don't know where you get YOUR definition of Darwinisms from, but where I come from, the Darwinian model boils down to "the strongest [or most adaptive] shall survive".
And as much as I hate to say it, have you looked at MSN lately? The portal, I mean, not the lame dial-up ISP. It's really not all that bad.
I fully realise I shall be thrown into the dungeon for this, but... <gasp> some of Microsoft's things aren't too bad!
We won't, of course, mention the travesty of a platform that is .NET... not without laughing... but their Windows 9x GUI is a shining example of something that can be quickly grasped by Joe AOL, and their Visual Studio products have made programming accessible to those who shouldn't ever have considered a career in devel...er, wait, never mind, I'm having Freudian slips here. Never mind.
Zaphod B
And after the bloom withers (side note: if it smells like a corpse while in full bloom, what must it smell like while the blossom rots?), the attendees will celebrate with a feast of durian.
Zaphod B
We did this when I was a wee 'un with flashlights and the neighbour's kid, after dark.
"...your...mo...ther...is...stan...ding...right. .. be...hind...you...you...mor...on..."
The next step, you realise, will be coded message to international intelligence spies sent through disco lighting.
Zaphod B
"Napster is dead, they killed themselves on the altar of the RIAA, etc., etc., ad nauseam."
Horseturds. Yes, there are many, many Napster clones out there, and yes, many more spring up as soon as the RIAA clamps down on another one. But the reason Napster was so successful even after its would-be demise is because the NAME was known. Napster became that most coveted of all marketing terms, a "household term" amoung those who have computers.
If Napster DOES go legit, and does it quickly, they will undoubtedly find subscribers, depending on the model they choose. (I, personally, would prefer a monthly fee type of deal. Saves having to buy CDs for one or two songs.) Why? People know the name Napster. With some judicious advertising, they could come back.
Don't forget that that silly Napster client is installed on Joe AOL's computer now. Most people wouldn't bother to get rid of it, they'd just delete the shortcut on the desktop and think they'd deleted the program.
So picture this... Napster goes legit, sets up their model, and advertises through the normal channels (banner ads, bribes to portals to be on the front page, even TV and radio ads). Joe AOL says, "Hey, I've already got that!"
Boom. Success, even if not on the same level as it was apparent before.
And CmdrTaco... buying the bandwidth delivers a HELL of a lot more than Napster. Adding the whole cost of Net access to whatever fees are to be imposed by Napster is specious reasoning.
Zaphod B
Nevada already has such a favourable tax climate for business due to the casinos that the relocation of would-be online betting parlours to the state could have a very beneficial effect on the existing, non-betting-oriented businesses, particularly in booming Clark County (home to Las Vegas and Henderson, the fastest-growing collection of ugly tract homes in the world).
The question is not whether Nevada will legalise online gambling, but whether this legality will stand when the inevitable challenges happen in Federal court.
As for minors getting in to online gambling illicitly... the way most casinos are set up now could be used as a model:
If nothing else, they could use an age verification system as they do on porn sites.
OTOH, 13-year-olds with too much time and money on their hands vs. the authorities and their slow reactions, especially programmatic reactions...'tis no contest whatsoever.
Zaphod B
I suppose that what this means is that if humans are going to be cloned, we are going to need to get back to the biological sense of maturity, meaning that (warning: this is a bit crude) as soon as you can get it up, it's time for cloning. Cloning 13-year-olds and 14-year-olds, etc. in order to prevent the neural degradation.
On the other hand, what is the only group who are both young and interested in science?
You guessed it. Do we really want to create a race of persons who will grow up to be engineers? <shudder> <twitch>
Zaphod B
For all you Linus junkies out there in La La Land... you can hear it at 3:00pm PDT (that's one hour and fifteen minutes from now) on KCRW 89.9 Santa Monica
.Zaphod B
The kid will now be recruited to the point of blatant harassment by every college, university, and military institution in the world.
What's scary is that someday that kid will be a first-and-foremost problem.
Zaphod B
And all these years I'd been told that SPAM stood for Surgically Processed Albino Mouseloaf.
Huh... go know...
Seriously, though, this is the kind of grace that should be prevalent in all industry. That's not to say that they should roll over when their trademarks are infringed, but they don't have to be such asses about it.
Viva the livelihood of Austin, Minnesota. We could learn a lot from the Minnesotan motto of "Make nice!".
Zaphod B
Only they would think of naming software with only a punctuation mark fnord.
-><-
Zaphod B
Oh no, now I'll have to worry about Microsoft-developed security on my MP3s downloaded from Napster servers? Whatever shall I do?
Please. Talk about a day late and a dollar short...
Zaphod B
How do you suppose they handle area code changes? I mean, back when I was BBSing in the Central NJ area, our area code was 201. Then it got changed to 908. Now it's 732, with, I'm told (I don't live there anymore), another one on the way.
Hence, The Dark Planet (which has a telnet BBS up here) could be in any of the three area codes.
Now if only we could get in contact with people FROM those BBSes... (Weirdo from Ajerbijan, WHERE ARE YOU?)
Zaphod B
Talk about your sysadminning nightmares... not only do you have to provide support for faculty, staff, and students, but also alumni? Not to mention the unsightly cholesterol that would clog the servers. Ten thousand new accounts per year, over a period of ten years... and of course no one would VOLUNTARILY clean out their in-boxen, trash, or sent-items, but the alums from 1980 would be the first to bitch when mailbox size limits were imposed.
No, thank you. I'll stick with Hotmail. I'm screwing M$ out of server resources that way.
Zaphod B
That's funny, I thought the CDC was more interested in wiping out Ebola and AIDS...
Of course, it could always be (successfully) argued that governments ARE, in fact, a disease...
Hmm...
Zaphod B
Look, this guy is defending Microsoft's strategy. So one of three things is possible:
1. Microsoft's model is bad and they will fail miserably due to the aforementioned bad model.
2. Microsoft's model is NOT bad, and their success can be attributed in part to it.
3. Mr. Mundie had a temporary (or permanent, who knows) lapse of brain power and is just WRONG.
Hm... wonder which of those it is.
Zaphod B
California has already begun this process. All Website portals must have the same look and feel (and before you start complaining, no, they are NOT all on IIS, most are in fact on Solaris). They are passing bills down the street at the Capitol to require posting of certain information to the Web (chiefest among them decisions by the Public Utilities Commission, those electricity whores, and enforcement actions against insurance agents by the Department of Insurance).
The drive for the digitalised government here in sunny CA is actually kind of working. While it's true that there IS a digital divide, more people have access to the Internet than don't, at least in this state (libraries are required to provide access over government-sponsored pipes), and they don't want to alienate the ones who DO use computers for everything, who are, after all, the rich and famous and BOFH :)
The U.S. Government will take a lot longer to move online, but it will eventually happen... and those in government jobs (and those who apply during downturns because "the government doesn't shrink") will be forced to sit there and do noth... oh wait, never mind.
Zaphod B /bin/cp
When duplication is outlawed, only outlaws will have
Zaphod B
What an appropriate topic, coming after worker protests for May Day (Myezhdunarodnyj Dyen' Rabochikov, whatever...)
As a consultant, I work usually 50-55 hours a week. However, it is in my best interest to work more because my compensation is based on how many hours I bill. It also varies widely - some weeks I have 70-90 hours of work, some weeks I have 15 hours of work
This does not, of course, count the 45% of each minute spent pressing "Reload" on /.
Many countries (the US included) have workers rights laws, just the US law is a bit wussy. French law, for example, guarantees a 35-hour workweek and five weeks of vacation per year. It is not, of course, as widely flouted as the US law, hence why it works. Of course, the entire northern two-thirds of France closes down during August, but them's the breaks when you have enforced laws like that.
Zaphod B /bin/cp
When duplication is outlawed, only outlaws will have
Zaphod B
[Note: I apologise for my earlier double-post.]
While I agree with you that VoIP can be choppy, I don't think the point of the project is to replace telephones. It never was. What the point seems to be is to combine the population-reaching power of the Internet with the go-anywhere power of ham radio.
Let me put it in perspective...one thing about serious ham radio enthusiasts is that they are always going to horrendously isolated places, desolate rocks in the middle of the ocean, etc. so that other hams can get QSL cards (confirmations of contact) with these locations on them. (My father, alav hasholem, had plastered the entire basement and his den with sheets of these cards.)
So imagine you are, for example, a Peace Corps worker in Bhutan. Bhutan, lovely though it is, is not exactly the shining star of international communication, particularly the eastern half, which doesn't even have proper roads. You would love to speak with your parents, but you don't have any telephone, you don't really have any way to GET to a telephone except perhaps once every three months, but you DO know someone with a ham radio (or perhaps even just a visiting QSL factory on one of his/her binges).
Would you really turn down a chance to talk to your parents in Wisconsin or Wiscasset or Wembley, or would you just deal with jitter and choppiness?
Zaphod B
Zaphod B
I fondly recall [CAUTION: FLASHBACK. CAMERA FOCUS MAY BECOME WAVY IN TRANSITION.] back in my days as WV2LCM, the illicit joy we found at patching calls that otherwise would have cost an insane amount of money or were simply impossible (for those of you not old enough to understand this reference, this was before the breakup of AT&T, when long-distance was a monopoly, and before the breakup of the Soviet Union, when direct-dial was not available). Reuniting George in Ireland with his daughter in New Haven, causing Dmitry in Kiev to be able to speak with his brother in New York for the first time in a decade, those were the joys of communication (as well as a well-deserved poke at Ma Bell, especially after she figured out that we were calling collect to payphones to flout her insane rates, but that's a different story). Rarely did anyone get caught or punished, because (this is one of those little-known facts) the guardians of ham radio communication, the FCC, are (or perhaps were) nearly all ham radio operators themselves.
It's no coincidence that ham radio operators are usually the first on-scene at the Emergency Services Centre during a disaster, and so I'm glad to see this frontier-pushing group (which, sadly, I have not been part of since my equipment was stolen) using the ultimate in global communications to further its cause :)
Zaphod B (CQ, CQ)
One-time WV2LCM on 2m
Zaphod B
What the summary of the law does say is that there should be no restrictions on the use of the software, and no cost should be borne by the user for uses of the software for which normally a software company would charge money.
As for the respondents who say the law is legislating a specific software, since when is all Open Source software the same? The beauty of Open Source is the ability to change it to meet your needs.
That said, I have to say that I don't agree with a law legislating Open Source software. We should not be forcing people to disclose their sources, they should willingly give it up. Whether that will ever happen, I don't know.
Zaphod B
Zaphod B
Believe it or not, the multi-billion dollar oil companies promote efficient and alternative engine types - the profit margin on gasoline, particularly in the U.S., is among the lowest of any petroleum product.
Heating oil, now...
What we need is for some brilliant and enterprising Open Source type geek with connections at JPL to arrange for the fall to drop on a large corporate campus in a suburb of Seattle... you know, since the earthquake failed.
Any takers?
Great, instead of nuclear terrorism we can have terroristic opportunists in these BMWs deliberately having gruesome accidents, sparking flames from combustion-powered cars, and blowing huge areas to bits.
Does Ted Kaczynski know about this yet?
Well, if it's a matter of simple mass causing it to not be a planet, we could send all of those AOL CDs and DVDs that make such great coasters to this would-be planet and beef it up a bit...