Soft District

Today, another episode in the eternal Microsoft vs Apple vs Linux unfolds, and this time, it seems the Redmond giant is winning. As usual, the results coming from different sources could be anything else but the truth, so don't worry - Microsoft's products are not better than Apple's, and they are not kicking the penguin around, either. This is all about statistics, research, and the results of a study conducted by a certain Web monitoring firm, but it is worth being mentioned, and here's why...


According to Pingdom, the Windows Update site was up and running 100% of the time, in the second quarter of this year, while Apple's Software Update had a 99.9% uptime, with Ubuntu falling on the third place, with "only" 98.64%. OK, these are the percentages, but what about measured downtime?

For the three-month period considered in the study, the Apple Software Update was down for 2 hours and 34 minutes, while Ubuntu didn't respond for a full day, 5 hours, and 45 minutes.

Just as a side note, I guess Apple would have got the same score as Microsoft, if the iPhone 3G wouldn't have started the online madness which caused the servers to go down... as for the Linux competitor, I think the release of Ubuntu 8.04 had its contribution in the large downtime measured.

If only overall system reliability could be the same as the one of the software update service...we would surely have a completely different OS landscape, don't you think? :)

Remember Google Lively? I am sure you do, and despite the fact less than two days have passed since we talked about it for the last time(and first time ever, by the way), today I'll get back to it! You are probably wondering why, but here's the deal - I just noticed that, if I force full anti-aliasing in the Direct3D settings, Google Lively looks great! Heh, it's not quite that...it's just the pleasure of discovering new things with each login into the virtual cartoon world offered by the IT giant, which is getting one step further from the "search giant" label with each new project(I don't know about you, but I think this is a good thing)!

Since talking about the whole thing may not be that interesting, here you have a few tips and tricks:

1. Right click a character in the room, switch to the Animations tab, and then choose one of the following actions: bodyslam, kungfu1 or kungfu2, as well as tickle, but there are plenty of choices, so feel free to explore all of them.

2. Right click your own character, go to Animations, and choose one of the following, for the start: dance1, evillaugh, workout, or roft, my absolute favorite!

3. To adjust your view properly, use the icon in the upper left corner of the Google Lively screen, as you can see in the screenshot below. This can save you a lot of wasted time, believe me!

4. If you liked The Dragon Tower room, which can be seen in the last 3 screenshots above, feel free to fully enjoy it below...

I see a lot of good looking rooms, and it seems people are really getting involved in this already. To create a new room is easy, but to create a good looking one, can be pretty hard, so I will try to help you with this as soon as possible. In the meantime, the question remains - what do you think about Google Lively? Even more, what would you like me to discover for you? ;)



Ooh, it seems I forgot to tell you one thing - if you notice that Google Lively keeps disconnecting you after fairly short periods of inactivity, don't worry - I've been there too, so I guess this is one of those things that the boys and girls at Google will have to work on, sometimes in the near future. I know we're talking about a virtual world here, but why not keep me logged in, just like in Gmail? After all, it's my computer who's doing all the hard work here, isn't it? Don't shoot me yet, I know it may be because staying in a room may cause a certain amount of load on Google's servers... but that's what are they for, right? :)

Did you ever thought about how large could be Microsoft's piracy losses? Well, I know most people don't really care about this, especially those that are using pirated products, but piracy could lead to some people remaining without a job, in the end, and I think this is the most important consequence of this modern plague. Anyway, while I think about people, Microsoft has a colder view of the whole deal. How? In the end, it's all about money, so the Redmond giant made public its concerns about "lost opportunities" due to piracy. Financial opportunities, obviously...

Leaving Microsoft aside for now, we'll look back 5 years for a short moment. Why? Because I want to remind you that, according to a IIPA report from 2003, the US economy lost over $9 billion in 2002 through copyright breaches in other countries, with almost $2 billion in China, where estimations were that motion picture piracy was at 91 percent, records and music piracy at 90 percent, business software piracy at 93 percent, and entertainment software piracy at 96 percent. Now, let's get back to the present day, shall we?

In 2008, Microsoft claims that for each dollar lost to software piracy, there are also lost opportunities worth $5.50, but what are these "lost opportunities," after all? While stolen software can slow down sales, as expected, especially in emerging countries("if I can get it for free, why pay for it?"), sometimes entire projects could be halted by the discovery of illegal copies. According to Microsoft, "in many emerging markets where legally licensed software is difficult even to obtain, it can be next to impossible for a legitimate partner to operate."

It seems those $5.50 are coming from increased revenues, combined with lower operational costs, but how Microsoft and the IDC are obtaining piracy figures leaves a lot of room for errors, and past proved that such errors occur pretty often.

Microsoft's director of License Compliance, Michael Beare, said "Even in a healthy ecosystem, illegal software causes hidden costs and friction in the sales and deployment processes. At its worst, rampant piracy in some economies is tearing down the opportunity for legitimate businesses to exist and thrive."

I have a brilliant idea, and I will gladly say it out loud, so Microsoft could use it - you want to avoid piracy? Then make them all free! I never heard of piracy when talking about software support, because that's what some free software companies do for a living, and they do it quite well!