so true! They look gentle like the wolf in the fable

Gordon

And working for Oracle and or Google that directly benefit from "open project" miss understood (on purpose) as "open source"

Gordon

And what will you do when in the name of PIPA someone will shutdown Wikipedia forever ?

Gordon

Funny if you read both answer simultaneoulsy, sorry but it contains contradiction. Apple did a great Job for UI, but iPod is overpriced if you look to the manufacturing cost. This means that Apple can get a lot from their original idea and design. As it cost them less than critical 13% margin cap than a tech compagny need to match for being profitable (Not ready to debate, it's a rule of thumb from Harvard studies) Means Apple is planing huge profit. That's life. Reallity is that no other vendors have the guts to step out of classical design alley!!. Apple struggle for life, they were nearly dead and still not out of the blue. Steve Jobs did a great He reengineering the company, but don't be overestimate them juste in June because we can see/here loud!! Ipod stepping out. Theyr alos get luck, as MP3 is a proprietary format that will die (thanks to Franhaufer Institute!!) theyr had to design their own compression, and guess what since they do it, changing the DRM systeme that come with it and the UI cost them just a penny. Their is still place for a challenger, see how RIM (Research In Motion) take out on the PDA market. - Nokia is that much arrogant (sorry guys I ad very disappointing discussion with you when you say that you own the market and deosn't need anything from anybody) - Motorola sleep over Z3 and is too much of a "giant" Asian manufaturer fight on price and win (compare revenue) they surely will never take a risk - Sony, the only contender, is out of money, but still not enough to become creative (again ?) - Microsoft/linux ? Hmm I don't know. It's up to us guys! Doesn't any of us have enough spare time, guts, good idea to start a new concept and implement it. I am no seeling Msoft r Linux here, just that I can't afford to buy or create a new IDE. As opposed to tradditional vendor who carefully close their envirronnement, their could be a chance for developping original idea here. Team up with a fashion designer, change the paradigm (read Arthur C Clark again), split processing power between your pocket and your other pocket, when at office increase it by Bluetooth connection to your main laptop, just to make it learning, Find proper bridge with web (WAP show a path, but was too early to get benefit from hardware tech.) In short get a secretary/friend/jewels/funny toy, and leave Phone/computer/calculator/agenda in the closet, Theses devices become our new physical extension like a wrist watch. So they will be their for long, but remember, wrist watch is

I must add another reasons to go SAS (or said ASP) for software maker. Direct contact with customer in very low cost of sales environment. We did build Image processing software for the printing industries. It's a dispersed market and we had to go trough "distributors" or "OEM" As vendor in a small "niche", software price were high, 30K$ minimum. But they were sold end user for 150K$ without any good cost justification for such a margin. Customers anyway would have to pay an extra 13% for maintenance, charged by distributors, that we never smmell a penny from, etc ... A 5-fold margin could be understood in masse market, not in our business Anyway, we didn't collect enough money to feed our development, and we did bankrupt. Our software were very good, still in use and there still about 15% chance that whatever you read in English, Spanish or French had gone trough our solutions. How could this happen without warning? Very simple: development cost didn't incorporate enough provision for the huge cost of suppling simple enough installation procedure. All the bells and whistles distributors or OEM were supposed to put around, they "forget". They then ask us to do, cost justifying their margin by "how hard it is to be the inbetween", How good tomorrow will be. Their technicians didn't even all know how to install Windows. OK I know, it can be cumbersome, but on your PC for yourself. Imagine that somebody gave you 70K$ each time you do it, I think you would feel that it's a steal) So.... So we stop selling software, now we rent it. SAS is THE solution for that. Don't mix-up Internet: the media which allow payement for services, with the Web: more a mentality or a community were everything is supposed to be free. Now our customers are VERY happy! The startup cost is 0, they pay as they use it. Small companies that would have been out of business just because they can afford going Digital are smiling again. Big customers endorse it too. It cost them about 3 times more than it would if we did sell the soft, BUT!! - 2 times cheaper that what they used to pay for TCO - It's not a capital expenditure. - They don't have to care about obsolescence (a "freezing" decision factors in expensive high tech sold to non techies peoples); we take the burden of it. - Universal around the world. Etc.. And we, ALL of us, (understand including our customers), are back making money. Competitions are left in the dust, unable to give any proper answers. etc ... But there is a KEY