Washington Post says Bush is not likely to sign it, and that is in part because the Justice Department has serious reservations about the criminal investigations resources this issue would divert to what is, essentially, a private litigation issue. He also feels that their creation of a position in the White House without his consent is a violation of the separation of powers principles in the Constitution.
So he is likely to veto it on the grounds of it being unConstitutional.
Yeah, 10% and growing - at the rate of something like 30% + per annum! Sorry, but lots of people find them funny, its just the Microsoft fanbois that don't, cause they're annoyed that they hit so close to home!
Microsoft was right to pull these ads. They were lame, made no sense to most people, and the inside jokes, while amusing to those that understood them, went right over the heads of most folk - who were presumably the targets of the ads!
"People have always been comparing Microsoft unfavourably to Apple. That people would then go on to compare the adds unfavourably to Apples adds shouldn't be surprising."
Yeah? I wonder why that is? Perhaps it is because their products compare unfavorably to Apple's products? That's the bottom line, after all.
No, Apple is NOT monopolistic. The iPhone is, as someone noted above in a less than charitable tone, selling at somewhere south of 10% of the market. How is THAT monopolistic?
One cannot be a monopoly at less than 10% of the market. The simple fact is that Apple sells the iPhone, the App Store is THEIR App Store, so Apple gets to make the rules. They do so, as Steve has noted time after time, to prevent malware from getting into the system. If you can't load it without iTunes, and iTunes won't load it without approval from Apple, that sets a high bar for malware to cross.
I'm happy with a safe phone, thankyouverymuch.
Don't like it? Buy something from Samsung, or RIM! Then you don't have to agonize over it.
Get back to us when you can actually say something intelligent.
I, like most other of Apple's customers, bought an iPhone 3G because, gee, it is a well designed hand held computer that brings the modern world of communication to my pocket. It just happens to have a phone in it to round out that world of communication possibilities.
I don't feel particularly cheated by AT&T, certainly it ain't cheap, but then, it is on a new generation network, which ain't particularly cheap for them to build, either.
As an Apple shareholder, I can appreciate the desire of the AT&T shareholders to actually make some money at the end of the day...
And thanks to Michael Long for the nice way of bringing us some REAL perspective in this story!
Just what part of free market do you not understand? i know Canada is a bit more socialistic than the US, but I'd bet that even there, the government can't dictate prices.
Sometimes the investor's best interests aren't immediately obvious.
This merger would have taken the lion's share of Microsoft's cash reserves. It would have forced the management of both companies to focus on that merger for at least two years, distracting them at a time when they both need full attention on the road ahead in order to keep in business.
It would, in short, have been disastrous to both Yahoo and Microsoft investors. Yahoo's management did what they are supposed to do - keep the investors' interests in mind as they negotiate in these situations.
It isn't just the money - if a merger would destroy the entity created after the merger, it is in the best interests of the investors for the management to avoid the merger!
Just because Ballmer was too stupid to see that outcome doesn't mean Yang was.
I think Shohat doesn't know what he's talking about.
1. Until the merger legally takes place, there are still two sides.
2. Perhaps your remarks indicate that you have no idea how long such work takes to do behind the scenes, and you don't realize that the last three months' 'work' you speak of is the result of probably a couple of years of behind the scenes work.
3. you really don't understand innovation, or reality, do you? Software work is as real as it gets. Just because it's on the web, doesn't make it less real. Software runs a lot of stuff, and most of the companies you mention use it to run their basic processes, much less their own products. And more and more of that will run on the web in the future. There is a lot of internal, collaborative software that runs over intranets now.
The only thing about your post that makes sense is the last sentence, because the more innovative software engineers will find the top 5% of Microsoft/Yahoo positions just fine, assuming the company doesn't just implode.
It's like your wife appointing her sister as your financial attorney - without having a Power of attorney from you to authorize the action, then having her sister empty your bank account.
Well, some don't, and that's why people had little black books.
And THAT'S why modern cell phones are popular - you don't HAVE to remember them all. And you can link lots of other information to that phone number too.
Idiot, the whole point of the article is the number of people who no longer use that paradigm any more! I know at least three people, two of whom are family, that don't even have a land line at all.
Being able to back up your data to your PC is almost a requirement. Backing up ANY data is a requirement if you don't want to lose it.
That said, Apple's iPhone does just that, simply, easily.
As another idea from your took-a-genius-to-figure-that-out department, the US government, as a large bureaucracy, doesn't move fast.
There are numerous very good reasons for that.
First, money. Encrypting data may sound good, but practically, to do it right takes the right software, and that takes money. Given the perennial focus on budget these days, most Agencies don't have the money to buy the right stuff. Budgeting that money takes mostly two years to get the request into the budget cycle, if it is a substantial amount.
Second, control. One may think that an Agency could control the use and configuration of its equipment, but that's not so easy. In order to control that, an Agency must have an IT department that has functional control over its equipment, and many don't. As long as organizational parts of an Agency can buy and configure their own equipment, their IT department can't control the encryption of its equipment, as the various offices can just buy a laptop and start using it. Lots of ways that an IT department can be circumvented.
Third, culture. Every organization has a dominant culture. A given Agency's culture may or may not support such central control. If it doesn't, then the job of protecting data just got exponentially more difficult.
There isn't an overall umbrella authority which oversees the country's court system that has the authority to stop them. If you file in one District, that's one authority, and there are a lot of Federal court Districts. When or if one is allowed to file is generally up to the individual court judge, and everybody has the right to file wherever they need to by jurisdiction.
Same thing with the State and local jurisdictions. These guys shotgun their suits all over the country, wherever their victims, er, I mean plaintiffs, happen to live.
Who is there that has the authority to stop them? Perhaps Congress could get into the act? Don't make me laugh!
Now I've heard everything. Let M$ pull out of the EU and governments will collapse...
Crap.
What, will Windows suddenly stop working? No. Will Office stop letting you save docs? No.
Any business can run on current software (if they haven't fallen too far behind) for a year or two, and even for large businesses, a two to three year replacement cycle is standard. Same for governments.
Training? No worse going from Winblows to either Mac or Linux than from XP to Vista. Several large cities in the EU have recently switched from Winblows to Linux.
As of just recently, Microsoft was noted as having bled cash badly in the last year, and their cash reserves are down to less than 29 billion bucks. Still a lot of money, but they dumped something like a third of their cash reserves in just a year.
I'm not saying, nor did the analyst directly, that such an occurrence means that they're failing. It does mean that those of you that are saying that they can exist on those cash reserves for years or decades better think again. Microsoft is BIG, and a big company can bleed cash very quickly once things do start going south.
The point of this article isn't that the recent discussions are necessarily wrong saying that Microsoft is in trouble, but that instead of just repeating that mantra, we should move the discussion on to the next level.
What is that next level?
Perhaps what will Microsoft do to counter the forces that are causing it to lose market share? WILL it do anything to counter that? CAN it?
Instead of actually trying to compete in the same old way, will new management (after Gates) try reorganizing itself? Perhaps will MS try to dump unprofitable parts of itself? Diversification is the best defense against losing out in a primary market. If its not really that primary to your revenue stream any more, then you don't lose so big.
I think that's the thrust of this article. Plenty of analysts, and others, have noted the market forces that are grinding away at Microsoft, and even a monopoly can't fight forever. Markets change, and if the monopolist doesn't change, it WILL lose.
A car's computer isn't networked with the cigarette lighter. It shares the electrical system, but that doesn't get you connected to the computer, as a car's computer is a very specialized unit with specifically designed connectors that only work with the Mfr's designed diagnostic machines. They don't do ethernet or wireless, so no, you can't get a virus on your car's computer through the cigarette lighter.
I work for a Federal Agency, and I've seen the same thing.
Usually, when an Agency "loses" a piece of equipment, it means one of three things:
1. It's been surplused, and somebody forgot to do, or lost, the paperwork.
2. It's been reassigned, and somebody forgot to do, or lost, the paperwork.
3. It's been mislaid in storage somewhere, and they really don't know where it is. (But it's probably still under lock & key - they just don't know where.
Face it, most Federal Agencies are pretty big places, with many different physical locations where things can get lost. That doesn't mean that they really ARE lost, as in stolen, it just means they can't find it when it's time to do the inventory.
That said, MY Agency has a policy that only the IT department can buy PCs or laptops. And when we do, ALL machines that are slated to leave the physical confines of an Agency location are encrypted. No exceptions, even the Commissioner has to have it done. Even desktops.
Also, there is no need tor data to be stored on a physical drive on a laptop. We use a VPN solution that is about as secure as such things can get, especially so that our employees can easily get to their network resources. ALL data is encouraged to be stored online, so if someone loses a laptop, not only is the entire HD encrypted, but there shouldn't be any data there to lose anyway - we mostly encrypt the HDs to keep network information, such as server names, from getting distributed.
These reports are based upon inventory records gathered by the Agencies themselves, and is what gets reported to Congress. The news media gets a hold of this, and it becomes "DATA LOSS". But in reality, most of us in the know realize what it really means. (And that is that they get raked over the coals by Congress, but nothing was ever really actually released to the public.)
Most of you have no idea what you are talking about.
I work for a major gov't Agency (US) and have for over thirty years.
Government workers are no different than private sector workers. As a matter of fact, a lot of people bounce back and forth between the two several times during their careers. So any characterization of Government workers as slouches is ridiculous.
I support computer systems at the desktop level, and have been responsible for property inventory in the past.
A major issue with all US government agencies I have known is that property inventory clerks are not doing that as a primary duty, it is always "other duties as assigned". This always puts that duty on the back burner.
Another issue is that, unless an agency deliberately does something about it, the guys that dispose of old property are not usually the ones responsible for keeping track of that property.
Most of the time, when an agency has property listed as "lost", that doesn't mean that it has been stolen, especially if it is a desktop unit. What it does mean is that it was disposed of, and somebody didn't do the paperwork. If they have set up the procedures properly, and people follow them, the units HAVE been through the desk shredding process, but you just can't find the paperwork to prove it, cause some noob didn't fill it out.
Our Agency finally got its act together when we got hauled up in front of Congress and they wanted to know what had happened to a very large dollar figure's worth of property that we "couldn't find". As it turned out, most of it had been disposed of, and a lot of it was stored but not properly being accounted for. But it took us almost a year and a lot of heartache to find out, so a newer, tighter set of rules and procedures have been implemented to make it easier, on a bureaucratic basis, to do things right.
In short, you "lose" a desktop computer when nobody knows where somebody else moved it, and the two aren't talking to each other. It may be right under your nose, but if you own thousands of PCs just like it, finding that one unit isn't easy!
Even if you use property numbers in the PC's name, your admins may know it's there, cause they can see it on the network, but that doesn't tell you WHERE it is! In the case of some gov't agencies, that could be anywhere in the US, or the world... in your hands, but exactly whose, and on which desk? Until you can physically find it, you must list it officially as lost.
These stories don't tell you about that, as this information isn't part of the database.
On the post: House Follows Senate In Giving The President A Copyright Czar
not quite
So he is likely to veto it on the grounds of it being unConstitutional.
On the post: Microsoft Gives In To Online Critics: Fires Seinfeld
Re: They were ads for Apple...
Yeah, 10% and growing - at the rate of something like 30% + per annum! Sorry, but lots of people find them funny, its just the Microsoft fanbois that don't, cause they're annoyed that they hit so close to home!
Microsoft was right to pull these ads. They were lame, made no sense to most people, and the inside jokes, while amusing to those that understood them, went right over the heads of most folk - who were presumably the targets of the ads!
"People have always been comparing Microsoft unfavourably to Apple. That people would then go on to compare the adds unfavourably to Apples adds shouldn't be surprising."
Yeah? I wonder why that is? Perhaps it is because their products compare unfavorably to Apple's products? That's the bottom line, after all.
On the post: Should Apple Really Be Determining What Is Useful?
monopoly
One cannot be a monopoly at less than 10% of the market. The simple fact is that Apple sells the iPhone, the App Store is THEIR App Store, so Apple gets to make the rules. They do so, as Steve has noted time after time, to prevent malware from getting into the system. If you can't load it without iTunes, and iTunes won't load it without approval from Apple, that sets a high bar for malware to cross.
I'm happy with a safe phone, thankyouverymuch.
Don't like it? Buy something from Samsung, or RIM! Then you don't have to agonize over it.
On the post: Putting iPhone Sales In Perspective
Get back to us when you can actually say something intelligent.
I, like most other of Apple's customers, bought an iPhone 3G because, gee, it is a well designed hand held computer that brings the modern world of communication to my pocket. It just happens to have a phone in it to round out that world of communication possibilities.
I don't feel particularly cheated by AT&T, certainly it ain't cheap, but then, it is on a new generation network, which ain't particularly cheap for them to build, either.
As an Apple shareholder, I can appreciate the desire of the AT&T shareholders to actually make some money at the end of the day...
And thanks to Michael Long for the nice way of bringing us some REAL perspective in this story!
On the post: Rogers Tries (And Fails) To Appease Angry iPhone Buyers As Belgians Contemplate $1,000 iPhones
what?
On the post: Yahoo Needs To Pull An Apple Before It Becomes A Netscape
investors best interests
This merger would have taken the lion's share of Microsoft's cash reserves. It would have forced the management of both companies to focus on that merger for at least two years, distracting them at a time when they both need full attention on the road ahead in order to keep in business.
It would, in short, have been disastrous to both Yahoo and Microsoft investors. Yahoo's management did what they are supposed to do - keep the investors' interests in mind as they negotiate in these situations.
It isn't just the money - if a merger would destroy the entity created after the merger, it is in the best interests of the investors for the management to avoid the merger!
Just because Ballmer was too stupid to see that outcome doesn't mean Yang was.
On the post: A Hostile Microsoft Bid For Yahoo! Would Likely Be A Pyrrhic Victory
What?
1. Until the merger legally takes place, there are still two sides.
2. Perhaps your remarks indicate that you have no idea how long such work takes to do behind the scenes, and you don't realize that the last three months' 'work' you speak of is the result of probably a couple of years of behind the scenes work.
3. you really don't understand innovation, or reality, do you? Software work is as real as it gets. Just because it's on the web, doesn't make it less real. Software runs a lot of stuff, and most of the companies you mention use it to run their basic processes, much less their own products. And more and more of that will run on the web in the future. There is a lot of internal, collaborative software that runs over intranets now.
The only thing about your post that makes sense is the last sentence, because the more innovative software engineers will find the top 5% of Microsoft/Yahoo positions just fine, assuming the company doesn't just implode.
On the post: Are The Last Eight Years Of Patent Board Appeals About To Be Tossed Out?
Don't buy it.
It's like your wife appointing her sister as your financial attorney - without having a Power of attorney from you to authorize the action, then having her sister empty your bank account.
That isn't a "minor" action.
On the post: Are We Becoming Too Dependent On Mobile Phones?
Re:
Well, some don't, and that's why people had little black books.
And THAT'S why modern cell phones are popular - you don't HAVE to remember them all. And you can link lots of other information to that phone number too.
It's called progress.
On the post: Are We Becoming Too Dependent On Mobile Phones?
Re: Disconnected from life?
Idiot, the whole point of the article is the number of people who no longer use that paradigm any more! I know at least three people, two of whom are family, that don't even have a land line at all.
Being able to back up your data to your PC is almost a requirement. Backing up ANY data is a requirement if you don't want to lose it.
That said, Apple's iPhone does just that, simply, easily.
On the post: Brace Yourself For The Shock News: Government Still Doesn't Protect Data Well
slow going
There are numerous very good reasons for that.
First, money. Encrypting data may sound good, but practically, to do it right takes the right software, and that takes money. Given the perennial focus on budget these days, most Agencies don't have the money to buy the right stuff. Budgeting that money takes mostly two years to get the request into the budget cycle, if it is a substantial amount.
Second, control. One may think that an Agency could control the use and configuration of its equipment, but that's not so easy. In order to control that, an Agency must have an IT department that has functional control over its equipment, and many don't. As long as organizational parts of an Agency can buy and configure their own equipment, their IT department can't control the encryption of its equipment, as the various offices can just buy a laptop and start using it. Lots of ways that an IT department can be circumvented.
Third, culture. Every organization has a dominant culture. A given Agency's culture may or may not support such central control. If it doesn't, then the job of protecting data just got exponentially more difficult.
It isn't always as easy as just issuing a memo.
On the post: Comcast And Theaters Disagree On How Best To Not Interest Movie Watchers
Uh
On the post: RIAA Drops Yet Another Case
more to the point
Same thing with the State and local jurisdictions. These guys shotgun their suits all over the country, wherever their victims, er, I mean plaintiffs, happen to live.
Who is there that has the authority to stop them? Perhaps Congress could get into the act? Don't make me laugh!
On the post: Hey Neelie Kroes, The 90s Called, It Wants Its Case Against Microsoft Back
oh boy
Crap.
What, will Windows suddenly stop working? No. Will Office stop letting you save docs? No.
Any business can run on current software (if they haven't fallen too far behind) for a year or two, and even for large businesses, a two to three year replacement cycle is standard. Same for governments.
Training? No worse going from Winblows to either Mac or Linux than from XP to Vista. Several large cities in the EU have recently switched from Winblows to Linux.
I haven't heard of any civic crises yet...
On the post: Plenty Of Exaggeration Over Microsoft's Rumored Demise
cash
I'm not saying, nor did the analyst directly, that such an occurrence means that they're failing. It does mean that those of you that are saying that they can exist on those cash reserves for years or decades better think again. Microsoft is BIG, and a big company can bleed cash very quickly once things do start going south.
The point of this article isn't that the recent discussions are necessarily wrong saying that Microsoft is in trouble, but that instead of just repeating that mantra, we should move the discussion on to the next level.
What is that next level?
Perhaps what will Microsoft do to counter the forces that are causing it to lose market share? WILL it do anything to counter that? CAN it?
Instead of actually trying to compete in the same old way, will new management (after Gates) try reorganizing itself? Perhaps will MS try to dump unprofitable parts of itself? Diversification is the best defense against losing out in a primary market. If its not really that primary to your revenue stream any more, then you don't lose so big.
I think that's the thrust of this article. Plenty of analysts, and others, have noted the market forces that are grinding away at Microsoft, and even a monopoly can't fight forever. Markets change, and if the monopolist doesn't change, it WILL lose.
So now, start the discussion.
HOW will Microsoft change. Or will it?
On the post: FTC Wants Time In The Clink For Spyware Distributors
No
On the post: IRS Latest To Get Dinged Over Lost Computers
agree w/#3
Usually, when an Agency "loses" a piece of equipment, it means one of three things:
1. It's been surplused, and somebody forgot to do, or lost, the paperwork.
2. It's been reassigned, and somebody forgot to do, or lost, the paperwork.
3. It's been mislaid in storage somewhere, and they really don't know where it is. (But it's probably still under lock & key - they just don't know where.
Face it, most Federal Agencies are pretty big places, with many different physical locations where things can get lost. That doesn't mean that they really ARE lost, as in stolen, it just means they can't find it when it's time to do the inventory.
That said, MY Agency has a policy that only the IT department can buy PCs or laptops. And when we do, ALL machines that are slated to leave the physical confines of an Agency location are encrypted. No exceptions, even the Commissioner has to have it done. Even desktops.
Also, there is no need tor data to be stored on a physical drive on a laptop. We use a VPN solution that is about as secure as such things can get, especially so that our employees can easily get to their network resources. ALL data is encouraged to be stored online, so if someone loses a laptop, not only is the entire HD encrypted, but there shouldn't be any data there to lose anyway - we mostly encrypt the HDs to keep network information, such as server names, from getting distributed.
These reports are based upon inventory records gathered by the Agencies themselves, and is what gets reported to Congress. The news media gets a hold of this, and it becomes "DATA LOSS". But in reality, most of us in the know realize what it really means. (And that is that they get raked over the coals by Congress, but nothing was ever really actually released to the public.)
On the post: Agency Tasked With Keeping Nuclear Secrets Can't Keep Track Of Its Computers
correction
On the post: Agency Tasked With Keeping Nuclear Secrets Can't Keep Track Of Its Computers
BS
I work for a major gov't Agency (US) and have for over thirty years.
Government workers are no different than private sector workers. As a matter of fact, a lot of people bounce back and forth between the two several times during their careers. So any characterization of Government workers as slouches is ridiculous.
I support computer systems at the desktop level, and have been responsible for property inventory in the past.
A major issue with all US government agencies I have known is that property inventory clerks are not doing that as a primary duty, it is always "other duties as assigned". This always puts that duty on the back burner.
Another issue is that, unless an agency deliberately does something about it, the guys that dispose of old property are not usually the ones responsible for keeping track of that property.
Most of the time, when an agency has property listed as "lost", that doesn't mean that it has been stolen, especially if it is a desktop unit. What it does mean is that it was disposed of, and somebody didn't do the paperwork. If they have set up the procedures properly, and people follow them, the units HAVE been through the desk shredding process, but you just can't find the paperwork to prove it, cause some noob didn't fill it out.
Our Agency finally got its act together when we got hauled up in front of Congress and they wanted to know what had happened to a very large dollar figure's worth of property that we "couldn't find". As it turned out, most of it had been disposed of, and a lot of it was stored but not properly being accounted for. But it took us almost a year and a lot of heartache to find out, so a newer, tighter set of rules and procedures have been implemented to make it easier, on a bureaucratic basis, to do things right.
In short, you "lose" a desktop computer when nobody knows where somebody else moved it, and the two aren't talking to each other. It may be right under your nose, but if you own thousands of PCs just like it, finding that one unit isn't easy!
Even if you use property numbers in the PC's name, your admins may know it's there, cause they can see it on the network, but that doesn't tell you WHERE it is! In the case of some gov't agencies, that could be anywhere in the US, or the world... in your hands, but exactly whose, and on which desk? Until you can physically find it, you must list it officially as lost.
These stories don't tell you about that, as this information isn't part of the database.
On the post: Who Will Protect Teens From This New Obsession With Book Reading?
cash
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