Attacked by Snakes - Slashdot User

Submission + - Can Apple Take Microsoft on the Desktop?

Submitted by on Sunday March 04, 2007 @12:33AM

An anonymous reader writes: RDM asks Can Apple Take Microsoft on the Desktop?, a comparison of recent sales and profits and the future outlook for Macs and PCs. From the article: "Apple doesn't have to take a majority share of the desktop market to win, it only needs to take the most valuable segments of the market. Once that happens, Microsoft will be forced to choose whether it wants to battle Mac OS X for control of the slick consumer desktop, or repurpose Windows as a cheaper, mass market alternative to Linux in corporate sales. If it doesn't make a choice, the company will face difficult battles on two fronts."

Comment I wish they would outsource! (Score 2, Informative) 450

by Attacked by Snakes on Saturday March 03, 2007 @06:26PM (#18220994) Attached to: University Migrating Students to Windows Live Mail?

I'm at a university in DC and they are also talking about outsourcing student's mail either to Yahoo or Google. They're starting the trials soon and there are a number of good reasons for it. Currently students are limited to 250 MB of mail which can be a problem when you're sending papers back and forth to your group paper. Also, they are currently using Lotus Notes webmail and it's horrible to use on the web, regularly failing and being generally backward in its use. Webmail clients like the new Yahoo client would be a fantastic improvement from what we have now.

Reason for the university to do it. I've talked with the folks running this and there are a bunch. 1) It's much cheaper to outsource your email than to run your own servers. 2) Re-purposing email servers to all those new services that you'd love to offer...like perhaps a library of recordings of lectures. 3) Long term relationships - While current student's email would be ad-free, the university could allow people to keep their school email accounts forever as long as they went ad-supported after graduation. That has a lot of benefits for the school community and may help them improve donations.

Personally I'm going to see if I can get in on the trial of this. I'd love to keep my email address from the university for a while, especially while I'm looking for a job after I graduate.

Submission + - New Royalty Rates Could Kill Internet Radio

Submitted by FlatCatInASlatVat on Saturday March 03, 2007 @04:52PM

FlatCatInASlatVat writes: Kurt Hanson's Radio Internet Newsletter has an analysis of the new royalty rates for Internet Radio announced by the US Copyright Office. The decision is likely to put most internet radio stations out of business by making the cost of broadcasting much higher than revenues. From the article: "The Copyright Royalty Board is rejecting all of the arguments made by Webcasters and instead adopting the "per play" rate proposal put forth by SoundExchange (a digital music fee collection body created by the RIAA)...[The] math suggests that the royalty rate decision — for the performance alone, not even including composers' royalties! — is in the in the ballpark of 100% or more of total revenues." Clear Channel, in the meantime, pays nothing. So long Radio Paradise, and all the other wonderful internet stations.

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