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Authored by: Anonymous on Friday, November 02 2012 @ 01:57 PM EDT |
http://www.electronista.com/articles/12/11/01/mexican.ifone.registered.trade.nam
e.four.years.before.apple/
They had some serious balls to try that.
Claiming that the guys who registered the trademark first are infringing on
their trademark reminds me of the McDonalds chippie lawsuits.[ Reply to This | Parent | # ]
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Authored by: Anonymous on Friday, November 02 2012 @ 11:08 PM EDT |
Wired: Microsoft Cloud Floats to China (Without Microsoft)
Microsoft’s cloud is coming to China. But Microsoft isn’t
coming with it.
On Thursday, the software giant said that its cloud
services Windows Azure and Office 365 will be served up from China to Chinese
users, but these Chinese offerings will be handled by 21Vianet, a data center
services company based in the country.
Microsoft decision to license
the technology — rather than serve up the services itself — is significant.
According to an announcement issued by 21Vianet, the service will be subject to
Chinese law, not U.S. law.
If I recall correctly,
Microsoft had planned early in their "cloud" effort to license out their
platform to third parties. Being a cloud provider requires large capital
investments in data centres, and thus lower returns on investment than just
selling software.
Microsoft started their own data centres for two
reasons. One is that the product simply wasn't ready to license out to companies
who simply wanted to operate a service. The other is that there really wasn't
much interest at the prices that Microsoft was demanding.
The Office365
mention is a very important detail. From what I have been able to determine,
this is what customers are interested in. Or rather, they're interested in
hosted Exchange/Outlook e-mail service. Office365 sales are cannibalizing
Microsoft's regular Exchange/Outlook sales to corporate customers who want to
outsource their e-mail service (which is more or less a commodity now).
Operating an Exchange server is difficult and expensive, so it is something that
customers want to get rid of. Microsoft was forced into this because the
alternative was to watch Google eat away at their business with the corporate
version of Google's GMail (which you pay for, but does not have
ads).
The other "cloud" product that Microsoft has is their "Azure"
platform, which like Google's AppEngine lets you run your own custom software on
their servers. Azure (and AppEngine) require you to write your software
specifically for their platform and you are limited in what you can do. It's not
as flexible as having a bare server, but it also requires a lot less management
on your part.
The giant in cloud platforms however is Amazon's AWS.
This requires more management, but it gives you a lot more flexibility. This has
proven to be a lot more popular in practice, and the various open source cloud
efforts either duplicate AWS functionality or provide a direct (but
incompatible) equivalent.
All in all, I think what we are seeing here
is Microsoft attempting to spread their Office365 sales while getting around the
US Patriot Act. Microsoft can't directly sell Office365 to many customers
because US laws would require them to wiretap access for US spy agencies, and in
most countries that would be espionage. Having other companies offer the actual
service gets around this. This is a problem that Google hasn't really addressed
yet with their own products.
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Authored by: pem on Friday, November 02 2012 @ 11:16 PM EDT |
For the first time ever, the percentage of iPhone owners who say they
definitely or probably will buy another Apple phone has declined, according to
Strategy Analytics. And negative press is partly to blame, the firm
says.
Keep those cards and letters coming, folks!
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Authored by: Anonymous on Saturday, November 03 2012 @ 02:24 AM EDT |
Time for a Church dedicated to the vision of the prophet Franz Kafka.
First make Mr Goodwin prove that he owned any data, and that if
such data was ever on Carpathia's servers action of the government
or its agents has caused such data to no longer be available.
Subject of course to Mr Goodwin proving that the contract he
had with Megaupload and the contract they had with Carpathia
guaranteed in any way unfettered and perpetual access to his data.
Observe that the Government cannot permit Mr Goodwin to prove
ownership of his data, or any copies of it on Carpathia's servers.
Apart from the unsolvable snake pit of who owns the ephemeral copies
of data that whizz around the intertubes, the government has, in the
words of many on slashdot, just declared the death of cloud storage
as presently operated. There will still be plenty unaware of this
should it become precedent.
While the government itself goes into plausible deniability mode,
> [T]he government has stated, it does not possess Mr. Goodwin’s
> data and never did.
https://www.eff.org/sites/default/files/filenode/Govt_41(g)_filing.pdf
My problem is my trusted family members being at that nomadic age
where I have to reconfigure my private cloud every time one moves
to a new apartment.
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Authored by: tknarr on Saturday, November 03 2012 @ 04:57 AM EDT |
My immediate counter: "So let me get this straight: it's the government's
position that I don't own any property I put in a rented storage unit? It's the
same thing, I'm placing my property in someone else's facility under a contract
whereby for some consideration they provide storage space for my
property."
Of course, if the government's position holds up, it may mess
up copyright law when it comes to digital data. If I don't own the data once
it's sent to someone else, then the copyright holders don't own the data when
they send it to me. And since the government's position seems to
be that any contract saying I retain ownership is irrelevant, any contract or
license agreement the copyright owners try to impose would likewise be
irrelevant. I'd love to see that one litigated. :) [ Reply to This | Parent | # ]
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- Ridiculous - Authored by: Anonymous on Saturday, November 03 2012 @ 06:43 AM EDT
- Ridiculous - Authored by: kuroshima on Saturday, November 03 2012 @ 06:57 AM EDT
- Ridiculous - Authored by: Anonymous on Saturday, November 03 2012 @ 07:42 AM EDT
- Ridiculous - Authored by: Anonymous on Saturday, November 03 2012 @ 08:14 AM EDT
- Ridiculous - Authored by: tknarr on Saturday, November 03 2012 @ 01:03 PM EDT
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Authored by: tiger99 on Saturday, November 03 2012 @ 08:20 AM EDT |
Obligatory
link, so I will not be chastised. like last time, when it scrolls off the
bottom of the page. :-) I must say that I am astonished that politicians of
any flavour can get something so important so very close to being right. It is
not "quite" right, because the proper thing is to utterly ban software patents,
and although software as such can no longer be patented in the UK (allegedly),
some patents are still being awarded which do indeed affect software.
Nonetheless it is excellent progress. I am really impressed with the need to
calculate exit costs. That should kill Swearpoint dead about 10 times over.... [ Reply to This | Parent | # ]
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- Rejoice! - Authored by: stegu on Saturday, November 03 2012 @ 09:06 AM EDT
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Authored by: Anonymous on Saturday, November 03 2012 @ 02:15 PM EDT |
The kids were using "Motorola Zoom tablet PCs"
not OLPCs
I made the same mistake too :([ Reply to This | Parent | # ]
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