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1. Comment - Free T-Mobile Hotspot for Vista Users

   (Jan 25, 2007 - 9:26 AM)

   I have been looking for a confirmation link on this one. Does anybody have one?

2. Comment - Office 12 to Support PDF Documents

   (Oct 4, 2005 - 11:55 AM)

   The new PDF feature was shown at the MVP Summit for the first time. From what was shown, it is all Adobe OpenDoc standard. The apps demoed were Word, Excel, Visio, Access (reports), PowerPoint and Publisher. Each worked flawlessly in the demo, which was (obviously) a pre-beta build.

3. Comment - Does Open Source = Closed Mind?

   (Apr 17, 2005 - 5:54 PM)

   >2. It is stealing. What have their customers
   >received? A few cds worth a few pennies. What
   >have they spent? Over a trillion dollars. In a
   >fair world, people could run a computer and be
   >compatible with games and files from all of
   >their friends without making some thief rich.
   
   What you are in essence saying here is the value of the plastic is what something should be sold for. In other words, intellectual property bears no value. If this attitude were rampant, there would be no reason, other than personal satisfaction, to be a developer. Currently, I get paid rather well to work on systems, primarily because I spent years honing my skills. But, the skills are knowledge based, not hardware. In the world you envision, my years of learning my craft are worthless because I ultimately burn the results on a 5 cent piece of plastic.
   
   I am not sure where you are actually going with this thought process, as stating programmers are worth nothing as the end product is only worth 5 cents is pure lunacy. Knowledge is worth a lot and a person with a lot of knowledge has intrensic value to society.
   
   Let's take this world to the nth. All development companies are told they can only sell their software for the cost of the material they burn it on, plus the packaging (maybe you are being generous and allow them a couple of bucks on top of this). So, software now costs $5 a pop, with $2.50 to the company. End result: software companies go out of business. Why? They pay developers a pretty penny to develop for them ($65k/year is a good mid-level here, with up to $100k/year for senior devs). At a buck or two profit, there is not enough to pay the developers.
   
   Solutions:
   
   1. Go offshore. This only works well if you have really firm specs. There is a communication and time problem, as well. Most offshored software that is not well specked out ends up inferior. Inferior software cannot fetch a good price, so the company is still out of business.
   
   2. Move completely to open source. This is a pipe dream, as ultimately developers still want to get paid. There are cases where open source devs have been paid well, but a completely open source world leads to a situation where computer illiterates have to learn more to use their computer. As they learn more, they find that a great majority of the open source material can be burned for free. As more and more go to free software, the amount sold goes down, as well.
   
   The truth of the matter is we need commercial software as well as open source. And, Microsoft should not automatically be considered "ripping people off" as long as there is a market for what they sell. I will agree with you that Microsoft has price fixed, as that is common knowledge, but to state that any profit over the cost of the material is a ripoff is a rather ignorant statement.
   
   To state that all software should only be worth the material it is stamped into sounds more like a justification for ripping software than a sound argument.

4. Comment - Does Open Source = Closed Mind?

   (Apr 17, 2005 - 5:39 PM)

   >>And you're wrong. It's not JUST an OS.
   
   It is just an OS. It is a very good OS, built on idea from another good OS. Overall, it is a very strong and secure OS. But, it is built by humans, not gods.
   
   You are correct that there are Microheads who are arrogant about Windows. There are also MacHeads who are arrogant about Macs. But, there are plenty of LinuxHeads who are arrogant about Linux. It comes with the territory. There are now three things you do not talk about in a bar while you are drinking: religion, politics and operating systems.