Since MS is closed source, it wouldn't be fixed for months on end like open source is. That's the only difference. See? It works both ways, neither is really helpful.
The cost of music production is DRAMATICALLY lower than the cost of movies or video games. You can buy enough power to do some really nice quality sound mixing in your home for under $10k. The cost of consuming music has not come down to meet the lower production costs. When it does, nominal consumption will go back up. As long as the cost of a music CD is the same as the cost of a movie/DVD you don't have much of an argument.
Yes, but there's problems with it. In my experience you can't get the same exact specs with linux for cheaper than the MS counterpart. Sometimes they're the exact same, and sometimes they will toss in a slightly larger hard drive or something in the linux version. Also, since apparently no one really wanted linux the linux versions are getting harder and harder to find in a netbook. You can't get them at Best Buy anymore for sure.
Okay, we'll meet halfway. When I sign a contract with ATT it should be something like "$50/mo for 2 years and then $40/mo after that." It's simple, it gives ATT $240 to subsidize my free phone, and I get a discount for "bringing my own phone" after the contract is up. But that's not the way it works. I will continue to pay $50 (or more) forever.
in this case a lot of phones are lossleaders because they sell you a phone for less than retail price and make up the difference on the monthly charges.
You just cited what I believe is the worst aspect of the American cell phone industry as a benefit. I understand a lot of consumers don't want to drop $150-400 on a cell phone at the beginning of their service so it's wise for the cell phone companies to offer plans which dramatically subsidize the price of the phone by spreading it across a 2 year contract. However, if I bring my own phone I can't get a better rate. I still have to pay the "subsidize the phone" rate price even if I already have paid for the phone. And pay as you go rates are generally higher cost per minute than the *regular* plans.
You touched on something that scares me and doesn't seem to scare anyone else. The accepted P/E ratios in the stock market are very much supply and demand based. There's a lot of demand for shares because baby boomers are investing in their 401ks. When they massively pull out of the market, demand is going to drop significantly. We'll run into the same problem everyone is talking about with Social Security, but it's going to be our 401ks. In this way, the stock market also behaves like a ponzi scheme. Maybe someone wiser can set me straight on how that won't happen.
It's not really as much money as you'd think. Bill Gates was once worth about $100 Billion (according to the GP). If it were even feasible for him to cash that out and spread it amongst everyone in the US, that's only a little over $300 for each man woman and child. Also, if you were willing to accept the standards of living you had 30 years ago (one car per family, small house, probably no cable, no cell phones, health care available only at that time, no flat screens, no internet, etc.) you could probably easily afford retirement.
Microsoft would be glad to spend a hundred million dollars to make GPL'ed software a "NO-NO" in big business. If they can give away their source for free... not sue any of their users... but sue anyone who uses their open sourced software for patent violations (and actually win the case) then that will make anyone in the business world pretty much immediately remove any and all GPL software from their systems.
I have a cron job running on my linux machine which gets the latest version of everything every night at 2am, so I'm virtually always on the latest version available. Instead of having one updater tool for each application, having one updater tool that looks for updates to hundreds of potential apps you may want to install would be a much better use of resources on my PC. And the default installation setting for this Windows tool should be "auto-update once per week" or something.
It's pretty easy to believe that the technology they develop will make its way into average joe's cars over the next several decades. In fact, a good chunk of that money is being used to open a manufacturing plant to produce vehicles for commodity car manufacturers from day one. And eventually they'll even fall off the patent train and become (potentially) ubiquitous.
I think it's bad form to call NASA a bloated behemoth while giving the US military a pass. Most military research and development has been privatized and yet it doesn't seem to be particularly non-bloated.
That's not 100% correct. Kerosene is taxed, but "jet fuel" is not. I may have it backwards, but I believe kerosene has a special additive whose technical term is "pink dye" which causes it to be more expensive. And by more expensive I mean it is taxed.
I don't see the difference. 90% of the DVRs out there (which are apparently legal) are owned by the cable companies and rented to end users. All they did was move the DVR up the channel.
There's a give and take. In the grander scheme of things it's more important to have a cohesive team than just about any other single factor. At the same time when the proverbial stuff hits the proverbial fan it's that weird/obnoxious genius guy who comes through with the solution that saves the day more often than not.
Virtualization is a huge cost saver in our shop. We bought one blade system and we have our source control, developer box (build system, wiki, etc.), a few QA and development servers (including a few db servers for dev/qa). And that's just the stuff MY department puts on there. We are also moving to have a few virtual machines set up as hot backup for some live systems with dedicated boxes. Eventually I predict we'll also put some actual production systems in virtual machines once the pointy hairs have built up some confidence in them in cases where it makes sense to do so.
It would be really funny if those little auto-updater apps like Real, Quicktime, etc. counted also. You might hit the 3 barrier and have NOTHING RUNNING!:0
Imperialism is always about wealth stealing. Modern imperialism doesn't require that we actually conquer your nation and overtake your government. As long as we're allowed to put a McDonald's on every street corner you're okay with us.
I think I'll start deploying stand-alone apps which are just my own lite wrappers around the IE active-x control. That way it's a 'fat' application but updates and deployments are a cinch. It's the best of both worlds.. I control their 'browser' environment and I only have to update the server.
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Since MS is closed source, it wouldn't be fixed for months on end like open source is. That's the only difference. See? It works both ways, neither is really helpful.
The cost of music production is DRAMATICALLY lower than the cost of movies or video games. You can buy enough power to do some really nice quality sound mixing in your home for under $10k. The cost of consuming music has not come down to meet the lower production costs. When it does, nominal consumption will go back up. As long as the cost of a music CD is the same as the cost of a movie/DVD you don't have much of an argument.
Yes, but there's problems with it. In my experience you can't get the same exact specs with linux for cheaper than the MS counterpart. Sometimes they're the exact same, and sometimes they will toss in a slightly larger hard drive or something in the linux version. Also, since apparently no one really wanted linux the linux versions are getting harder and harder to find in a netbook. You can't get them at Best Buy anymore for sure.
Okay, we'll meet halfway. When I sign a contract with ATT it should be something like "$50/mo for 2 years and then $40/mo after that." It's simple, it gives ATT $240 to subsidize my free phone, and I get a discount for "bringing my own phone" after the contract is up. But that's not the way it works. I will continue to pay $50 (or more) forever.
in this case a lot of phones are lossleaders because they sell you a phone for less than retail price and make up the difference on the monthly charges.
You just cited what I believe is the worst aspect of the American cell phone industry as a benefit. I understand a lot of consumers don't want to drop $150-400 on a cell phone at the beginning of their service so it's wise for the cell phone companies to offer plans which dramatically subsidize the price of the phone by spreading it across a 2 year contract. However, if I bring my own phone I can't get a better rate. I still have to pay the "subsidize the phone" rate price even if I already have paid for the phone. And pay as you go rates are generally higher cost per minute than the *regular* plans.
You touched on something that scares me and doesn't seem to scare anyone else. The accepted P/E ratios in the stock market are very much supply and demand based. There's a lot of demand for shares because baby boomers are investing in their 401ks. When they massively pull out of the market, demand is going to drop significantly. We'll run into the same problem everyone is talking about with Social Security, but it's going to be our 401ks. In this way, the stock market also behaves like a ponzi scheme. Maybe someone wiser can set me straight on how that won't happen.
It's not really as much money as you'd think. Bill Gates was once worth about $100 Billion (according to the GP). If it were even feasible for him to cash that out and spread it amongst everyone in the US, that's only a little over $300 for each man woman and child. Also, if you were willing to accept the standards of living you had 30 years ago (one car per family, small house, probably no cable, no cell phones, health care available only at that time, no flat screens, no internet, etc.) you could probably easily afford retirement.
Microsoft would be glad to spend a hundred million dollars to make GPL'ed software a "NO-NO" in big business. If they can give away their source for free... not sue any of their users... but sue anyone who uses their open sourced software for patent violations (and actually win the case) then that will make anyone in the business world pretty much immediately remove any and all GPL software from their systems.
I have a cron job running on my linux machine which gets the latest version of everything every night at 2am, so I'm virtually always on the latest version available. Instead of having one updater tool for each application, having one updater tool that looks for updates to hundreds of potential apps you may want to install would be a much better use of resources on my PC. And the default installation setting for this Windows tool should be "auto-update once per week" or something.
Apache is win. Netflix confirms it!
Looks like the EU hit Microsoft with one to many anti-trust rulings.
It's pretty easy to believe that the technology they develop will make its way into average joe's cars over the next several decades. In fact, a good chunk of that money is being used to open a manufacturing plant to produce vehicles for commodity car manufacturers from day one. And eventually they'll even fall off the patent train and become (potentially) ubiquitous.
I think it's bad form to call NASA a bloated behemoth while giving the US military a pass. Most military research and development has been privatized and yet it doesn't seem to be particularly non-bloated.
That's not 100% correct. Kerosene is taxed, but "jet fuel" is not. I may have it backwards, but I believe kerosene has a special additive whose technical term is "pink dye" which causes it to be more expensive. And by more expensive I mean it is taxed.
A scientist is a person who uses mostly linux.
I don't see the difference. 90% of the DVRs out there (which are apparently legal) are owned by the cable companies and rented to end users. All they did was move the DVR up the channel.
They're giving you $8,000 worth of consulting services
So... basically they'll let me call the 1-800 number and listen to a 30 second pre-recorded message?
There's a give and take. In the grander scheme of things it's more important to have a cohesive team than just about any other single factor. At the same time when the proverbial stuff hits the proverbial fan it's that weird/obnoxious genius guy who comes through with the solution that saves the day more often than not.
Virtualization is a huge cost saver in our shop. We bought one blade system and we have our source control, developer box (build system, wiki, etc.), a few QA and development servers (including a few db servers for dev/qa). And that's just the stuff MY department puts on there. We are also moving to have a few virtual machines set up as hot backup for some live systems with dedicated boxes. Eventually I predict we'll also put some actual production systems in virtual machines once the pointy hairs have built up some confidence in them in cases where it makes sense to do so.
It would be really funny if those little auto-updater apps like Real, Quicktime, etc. counted also. You might hit the 3 barrier and have NOTHING RUNNING! :0
Okay, for most of that you were agreeing with me, then you decided to go and insult me in the last sentence. I don't get it...
Imperialism is always about wealth stealing. Modern imperialism doesn't require that we actually conquer your nation and overtake your government. As long as we're allowed to put a McDonald's on every street corner you're okay with us.
I think I'll start deploying stand-alone apps which are just my own lite wrappers around the IE active-x control. That way it's a 'fat' application but updates and deployments are a cinch. It's the best of both worlds.. I control their 'browser' environment and I only have to update the server.
I don't consider work slums and slave labor to be 'competing'.
...If this keeps up slashdotters are going to have to find another company to bitch about.
When I read this I wasn't sure if you meant that Sun had seen the light or that they were going bankrupt.