There's not a single thing in your comment I don't already know.
What's missing in your comment are the costs associated with training and the politics of existing relationships. You're also thinking way too long term for most middle/upper level managers that I know.
Too put things in perspective, if everyone thought as you've described no one would ever install Exchange. But, of course, they do, don't they?
how did you get a 5 digit slashdot uid & not learn anything along the way?
I assume you've not worked in a real company. Don't worry, five to eight years of soul destroying monotony in a barely managed cube-farm will fix your perspective on the world.
I didn't say I wouldn't want to fund it. You try arguing against "vendor lock-in" when upper management really likes the vendor. (Or when there's not even enough funding to meet the company's basic industry reporting requirements. Or when it looks like a listed company won't meet its published forecast earnings. Or when the IT division is so busy that anything not immediately critical doesn't get done.) Vendor lock-in is low priority compared to the crap going on in a typical company.
Yes, that's a great brochure. Now, pack a laptop away for a month before plugging it into an insecure network. There's a good chance it will be rooted or otherwise infected by one of the latest exploits before the anti-virus software and OS have a chance to download and install updates.
And if you think that the IT division can just dictate that staff aren't to do that, try telling your CEO what to do and see how he or she likes it.
Sometimes, and I know this is hard for some linux advocates to understand, a company is irreversibly tied to a product that is Windows-only. A place I worked at recently had just such a product. It did basically everything for the company that Office didn't. It meant that Linux was simply not an option for any desktop. (Also, since the product didn't work under Vista, it meant that wasn't an option either.)
As an IT Manager, there's only one bad thing that's particular to laptops that significant enough to be comment-worthy. They're a vector for virus infection. Everything else an IT department can just get on with, but the high virus risk associated with devices that regularly travel in and out of the firewalled company network merits pointing out.
One day, some place I work, I want to set up a DMZ for laptops.
You can't really talk about how good an idea this is, or not, without referencing the Sega 32X.
1988: Genesis/ Mega Drive
1992: Sega CD / Mega CD
1994: 32X
The Mega CD and 32X were a pair of incremental upgrades to the popular Mega Drive system. They allowed Sega to hook into the capacity of the CD storage, then into the upcoming 3D movement. They were, however, typically considered failures. Much like movie sequels, the market for each new product is a sub-set of the purchasers of the previous. Because of this, games developers were reluctant to invest in the production of titles that had diminishing markets and the library of games suffered.
For a 24fps screen to be any use the source has to be 24fps too. I notice on my one and only Blu-ray title it says neither PAL nor NTSC (but still has a region). Are Blu-ray and HD-DVD stored in the original frame rate and converted by the player?
fictional universe wikis are insanely popular - Memory Alpha (The Star Trek wiki) beats all but a handful of the european language wikipediae, and the battlesar galactica wiki is even bigger.
I wish Wikipedia would separate out all the fictional stuff from the main encyclopedia. We could have "Fikipedia" and all the stuff about how big a Star Trek ship is, what planet Ripley crash-landed on in Alien Cubed and what Claire Bennet's favourite colour is could be moved there.
Actually, VMs can reduce overhead for IT. For each legacy app, build a VM image and then just deploy that image to any of the PCs that needs it. Much more reliable than trying to run it directly through some dodgy legacy support.
As opposed to the analog DRM that books presently enjoy. Yes one can copy books, but technology makes the copying of digital media much easier than analog.
How about lending them to a friend or selling them after you've finished with them? DRM is not just about copying, it's about total control. When you're dealing with industries that see sharing stuff with friends as lost sales, or considers it stealing to go to the toilet during the ads, I'd rather they didn't have control over the stuff I'm supposed to own.
My main thought is that since it's by Sony it'll be drenched in poisonous DRM.
I owned a Newton Messagepad back in the day. I've read fiction, non-fiction, short stories, novels, news articles and heaps of other stuff on everything from a PDA to one a laptop connected to Second Life. The only place ebooks have a decent chance of success is to replace the two tons of textbooks most schools require their students to carry. Otherwise it's hard to beat the convenience of Dead Tree Format.
At least developers appear to be trying with the controller. Do any games even try to take advantage of the (social) networking the console offers? It's got a built-in wireless adapter, for crying out loud. Why aren't all the games networked in some way?
Google has been showing, again and again, that it has become an ordinary big corporate company. It is as efficient as an average corporation. It is managed as well as any big business. It can be trusted as much as you trust any big corporation. There is nothing special about it anymore.
So, do you really want them to have any of your personal information? Your email? Your weblog? Anything you care about?
I am, of course, talking about most of the western world. The example I gave was Australian, but the attitude can be found in Australia, the UK and America without looking too hard.
Many western cultures, America particularly, have a popular belief that games, comics and animation are just for kids. As such, if you produce an adult game, adult comic or adult animation you're immediately considered to be corrupting children by the vast majority of ignorant adults.
Example: Here in Australia, Channel 7 bought Greg the Bunny. Because it had puppets in it, it had to be for kids, right? They showed it in the normal children's TV time slot. Once. I wonder how many executives at 7 learnt a valuable lesson that day.
I'm sure some significant proportion of people who buy a console just to play movies ends up buying a few games titles. I recently bought a PSP (secondhand) to play some UMD titles I was adding to a collection and I also bought Wipeout Pure when I spotted it at an EB's. I mainly bought a PS2 to play DVDs, even bought Datel's DVD Region X for region bypass at the same time. I must have bought about a dozen PS2 titles in the end.
But mainly, MS has an opportunity to capture a market that's not interested in gambling on just one format. I can't possibly be the only one waiting for the format war to be over. Either one format has to die, or hybrid devices need to be more affordable. MS could make the format war irrelevant AND drastically increase their installation base simply by adding Blu-ray to their 360. And since they'd do it with an external, separately-purchasable drive just like HD-DVD it wouldn't even affect the price of their base games system.
Meanwhile, if they continue to cling to HD-DVD and consider Blu-ray to be their enemy, everybody loses.
Slashdot Mirror
There's not a single thing in your comment I don't already know.
What's missing in your comment are the costs associated with training and the politics of existing relationships. You're also thinking way too long term for most middle/upper level managers that I know.
Too put things in perspective, if everyone thought as you've described no one would ever install Exchange. But, of course, they do, don't they?
It's not. And I left six months ago.
I didn't say I wouldn't want to fund it. You try arguing against "vendor lock-in" when upper management really likes the vendor. (Or when there's not even enough funding to meet the company's basic industry reporting requirements. Or when it looks like a listed company won't meet its published forecast earnings. Or when the IT division is so busy that anything not immediately critical doesn't get done.) Vendor lock-in is low priority compared to the crap going on in a typical company.
Apparently he spent months becoming friendly with the Bloodsail Pirates, then realised it screwed over his engineering.
Great idea! I'll add it to the huge long list of stuff that will never get funding.
Yes, that's a great brochure. Now, pack a laptop away for a month before plugging it into an insecure network. There's a good chance it will be rooted or otherwise infected by one of the latest exploits before the anti-virus software and OS have a chance to download and install updates.
And if you think that the IT division can just dictate that staff aren't to do that, try telling your CEO what to do and see how he or she likes it.
Sometimes, and I know this is hard for some linux advocates to understand, a company is irreversibly tied to a product that is Windows-only. A place I worked at recently had just such a product. It did basically everything for the company that Office didn't. It meant that Linux was simply not an option for any desktop. (Also, since the product didn't work under Vista, it meant that wasn't an option either.)
As an IT Manager, there's only one bad thing that's particular to laptops that significant enough to be comment-worthy. They're a vector for virus infection. Everything else an IT department can just get on with, but the high virus risk associated with devices that regularly travel in and out of the firewalled company network merits pointing out.
One day, some place I work, I want to set up a DMZ for laptops.
Keep it up!
Love,
Your competitors in the rest of the world.
I wonder if this is how the British Empire collapsed too.
- 1988: Genesis/ Mega Drive
- 1992: Sega CD / Mega CD
- 1994: 32X
The Mega CD and 32X were a pair of incremental upgrades to the popular Mega Drive system. They allowed Sega to hook into the capacity of the CD storage, then into the upcoming 3D movement. They were, however, typically considered failures. Much like movie sequels, the market for each new product is a sub-set of the purchasers of the previous. Because of this, games developers were reluctant to invest in the production of titles that had diminishing markets and the library of games suffered.For a 24fps screen to be any use the source has to be 24fps too. I notice on my one and only Blu-ray title it says neither PAL nor NTSC (but still has a region). Are Blu-ray and HD-DVD stored in the original frame rate and converted by the player?
- Metroid (the 2D versions, particularly Super Metroid)
- Bomberman (the best being the Saturn version)
- Bejeweled / Diamond Mine
- World of Warcraft
- Speedball 2
- Golden Axe
- Chu Chu Rocket
- Lemmings
- Gods
- Slapfight
- Side Arms
- Populous
- Secret of Monkey Island
- Space Quests 1 to 3
- Ico
I'm sure I could think of more if I tried.Actually, VMs can reduce overhead for IT. For each legacy app, build a VM image and then just deploy that image to any of the PCs that needs it. Much more reliable than trying to run it directly through some dodgy legacy support.
Browsing a dozen news sites on a PC is not the same thing as an ebook.
My main thought is that since it's by Sony it'll be drenched in poisonous DRM.
I owned a Newton Messagepad back in the day. I've read fiction, non-fiction, short stories, novels, news articles and heaps of other stuff on everything from a PDA to one a laptop connected to Second Life. The only place ebooks have a decent chance of success is to replace the two tons of textbooks most schools require their students to carry. Otherwise it's hard to beat the convenience of Dead Tree Format.
Ouch, look at that first R&D hit.
At least developers appear to be trying with the controller. Do any games even try to take advantage of the (social) networking the console offers? It's got a built-in wireless adapter, for crying out loud. Why aren't all the games networked in some way?
First they get other countries to give away a heap of stuff, then the US doesn't even hold up what little it promised.
Google has been showing, again and again, that it has become an ordinary big corporate company. It is as efficient as an average corporation. It is managed as well as any big business. It can be trusted as much as you trust any big corporation. There is nothing special about it anymore.
So, do you really want them to have any of your personal information? Your email? Your weblog? Anything you care about?
I am, of course, talking about most of the western world. The example I gave was Australian, but the attitude can be found in Australia, the UK and America without looking too hard.
Many western cultures, America particularly, have a popular belief that games, comics and animation are just for kids. As such, if you produce an adult game, adult comic or adult animation you're immediately considered to be corrupting children by the vast majority of ignorant adults.
Example: Here in Australia, Channel 7 bought Greg the Bunny. Because it had puppets in it, it had to be for kids, right? They showed it in the normal children's TV time slot. Once. I wonder how many executives at 7 learnt a valuable lesson that day.
I'm sure some significant proportion of people who buy a console just to play movies ends up buying a few games titles. I recently bought a PSP (secondhand) to play some UMD titles I was adding to a collection and I also bought Wipeout Pure when I spotted it at an EB's. I mainly bought a PS2 to play DVDs, even bought Datel's DVD Region X for region bypass at the same time. I must have bought about a dozen PS2 titles in the end.
But mainly, MS has an opportunity to capture a market that's not interested in gambling on just one format. I can't possibly be the only one waiting for the format war to be over. Either one format has to die, or hybrid devices need to be more affordable. MS could make the format war irrelevant AND drastically increase their installation base simply by adding Blu-ray to their 360. And since they'd do it with an external, separately-purchasable drive just like HD-DVD it wouldn't even affect the price of their base games system.
Meanwhile, if they continue to cling to HD-DVD and consider Blu-ray to be their enemy, everybody loses.