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Apple Sticks with CRTs For Now
A reader writes, "eWEEK talked with Apple about the state of its hardware line at Macworld Expo/New York, six months after Apple said it was going all-flat panel with future Macs. Greg Joswiak, senior director, hardware products, with Apple worldwide product marketing, says that while LCD Macs are still 'the future,' surprise boosts in flat-panel prices mean CRT systems like the eMac and old-school iMac will stick around a while longer."
Credits: dmg
Yet again the Linux so-called elite, backed up by their pseudo intellectual cohorts of the w3c conspire to ruin Linux's chances in the marketplace by sowing confusion and complexity. As someone with years of experience in the marketing world, I am constantly amazed at the willingness of the W3C and other bodies to pollute the acronym space with their content free "TLAs".
Basic marketing 101 (and an undergrad course in psychology) would tell them that the normal person is only capable of remembering approximately 7 items of data in their short-term memory, but now we have to remember HTTP, HTML, XML, XSL, DTD, PHP, SSL, DSL, ADSL, ISDN, Perl, etc etc etc
This is a text book example of the tail wagging the dog from a marketing perspective.
I have been following the standardisation of the web for many many months now, but one thing has become clear, E-commerce will NEVER become popular so long as there are so many confusing acronyms involved. The guys in charge of marketing Linux absolutely MUST work to reduce the number of acronyms. One possible solution would be to merge those protocols which are not all that different. For example, why not merge XML with SGML ? (they could call it XSGML or SXGML or perhaps XMSGML), they seem to address the same problems. Or would that be too simplistic a solution for their pampered elitist ivy-league minds to comprehend ?
If something is not done URGENTLY, and I mean URGENTLY, Linux (and other more experimental derivatives such as FreeBSD) can never hope to be taken seriously as an e-commerce platform by the people who count - the accountants.
The miracle of Linux is that anyone actually runs it at all, considering one seems to require a masters in computer science to install it! (contrast this with NT4 which was so easy to install, we let our receptionist upgrade her own machine).
As usual my "open source" advice is free. Hopefully this time my valuable advice will be taken into account the next time the w3c smell an acronym brewing.
Finally, in conclusion, as an American, I am saddened that the Internet seems to have been commandeered by a European based protocol. Was America so short of talent we had to buy the HTML protocol from Tom Berners-Lee at CERN ?
Think of the security implications of the worlds strongest economy, running an e-commerce protocol developed by a foreigner from Socialist Europe. Remember the wall has not been down for that long. Who knows what kind of trojans might be lurking within the depths of these complicated protocols.
I am afraid I am behind Al Gore on this point, how can this be necessary in the home of smart corporations such as Microsoft and Intel ? The answer is the vast subsidies given by European socialist governments to fund development of the HTML specification.
The solution is clear. The federal government should mandate and strongly subsidise the use of Microsoft software for all US corporations involved in e-commerce. Only with a US-developed set of protocols can we be assured of the security of our transactions.
- posted by poopbot: providing truth in a deceitful world
Gh2GhDGhPi Post #351
CRTs are nearly and order of magnitude less expensive
Forgive me if I'm being overly anal, but I see the phrase ``an order of magnitude'' misused far more often than it's used correctly. An order of magnitude is a multiple of 10. For example, 1,000 is one order of magnitude bigger than 100, and two orders of magnitude smaller than 100,000.
Do you seriously mean that LCDs are ten times more expensive than CRTs? I don't have any specific information one way or the other, but that doesn't sound right to me.
hyperbole
n.
A figure of speech in which exaggeration is used for emphasis or effect, as in I could sleep for a year or This book weighs a ton.
God save our Queen, and Heaven bless The Maple Leaf Forever!
to clarify, I do mean to state 10 times less expensive - a 15" CRT (at BestBuy, OfficeMax, etc) can be had for $49. Meanwhile, 15" LCD's routinely command more than $500. ...atleast in my experience
I only came here to do two things; kick some ass, and drink some beer...looks like we're almost out of beer.
Given this definition of an order of magnitude, we can see that CRTs are priced in the third order of magnitude, while LCDs are, except for the very best bargains, in the fourth order: one order of magnitude difference.
P.S., a cartoon I once saw in a lab at university, shows two scientists standing in front of a chalk board, one talking to the other, the caption reads: "It's within an order of magnitude, in other words it's completely wrong."