Natural monopolies are not automatically bad. In the case of the search engine market, there cannot be a bad natural monopoly. The barriers to entry and switching for that market are so low that any company that tries to abuse monopoly power will be dethroned almost overnight by a less evil alternative that works almost as well.
This is very different from the operating system market, where switching requires enormous effort from the user as compared with switching search engines. This is also why American car companies are doing so poorly right now: there is no incentive to buy your new car from the same place you bought your old car.
Also, since you declined to read TFA or even the comments, I will summarize TFA for you: Companies who try to cheat to get good google rankings complain when it backfires. Those companies have a false sense of entitlement to free advertising via Google.
The reason Vista made this happen is because the general population hated Vista *so much* that they just stopped buying computers.
Don't confuse the slashdot population versus the general population. The general population never even got enough of a whiff of vista to stop buying PCs with it on it. I can only provide anecdotal evidence, but in my experience, you are almost completely wrong. Of all the people I know who are prone to buying the "latest and greatest", only about half a dozen have bought a Vista machine. All of them regret it. I know people with money to burn who plan to not buy Vista for a long time. Even the guy who upgrades his PDA every 3 months isn't going to get Vista.
Google reached their position through complete and utter competence. They didn't advertise their site. "Google" as a verb spread through word of mouth alone. If pagerank is really being that unfair to a lot of legit sites, the same market forces that created the Google behemoth will bring it down. If somebody can show that Google's algorithms are really being unfair to Google's customers, Google will be compelled to change those algorithms or lose market share.
If you hate how much the federal government has expanded, why are you opposed to putting restrictions on how they can expand? It would seem that the best way to oppose "big government" is to pass laws or amendments that restrict the government's powers.
Laws are not inherently bad. A well written piece of legislation can unambiguously take powers away from the government.
Granted, I was only in first grade when I first played Myst, but it took me several months to figure out all the ages, and I still have dozens of pages of notes. I didn't figure out the solution to the selenitic age tram until after solving it by brute force, so I have one sheet of paper consisting of just a map of that maze. Riven didn't take me that long, but it was still tough. I had to learn base 25 D'ni numbering on my own. The later games weren't as tough, though.
Honestly, so what? Even the french people I know make jokes about surrendering and retreating. Don't try to draw a parallel between making jokes about france and one's intelligence.
The DS isn't a replacement for the GBA because the DS doesn't have complete backwards compatibility. The GBA can play all gameboy games, but the DS can only play GBA games. Many people own a very large collection of GBx games, and Nintendo would be stupid to abandon them after building an empire based pretty much solely on the backwards compatibility.
You seem to be under the impression that natural monopolies are a bad thing. They are not, especially in a market like video games, where there are no barriers to entry. If one company comes to dominate, it is probably because they have hired all the good talent. If that company starts to suck, there are always a bunch of start-ups hoping to be more than a one-hit-wonder.
Note: The above movie is only funny when you realize that Halo was originally intended as a Mac game, and that the guy in the movie makes a living playing Halo. Without that irony, it's just a nerd abusing Tchaikovsky.
Wouldn't it make sense for Google to run an 'Optimised for Google(tm)' optimisation service? The more sites that Google can spider properly, the more useful it is. No. If anything, Google could publish a set of guidelines for web designers. They could then use their clout to declare flash-based websites profane, standards compliance a necessity, and in general promote common sense design principles. It would work, too. No company would want to know that their google ranking was hurt by the fact that they weren't w3c compliant. Google wouldn't even have to tweak the algorithms in order to make it work.
Google just can't afford to give anybody a privileged place in the rankings. Doing so would make them no better than AOL and Yahoo. If a company wants more exposure through Google, their only option should be advertising.
As the saying goes, sufficiently advanced incompetence is indistinguishable from malice. Although, as a former kaiser member myself, I agree that they aren't that bad.
The problems you describe with input devices can be solved with a trivial performance hit. If a computer can handle OO.o and Firefox simultaneously, it can probably handle another copy of each, considering the way it will be used. The OP just might want include more swap than he otherwise would for a low-end desktop.
Have you used an intel Mac? Neo Office is plenty fast. Faster than, say, the PPC-only MS Office 2004. If you have need for a very powerful suite, you should be willing put up with its less-than-perfect performance. If not, go with iWork ($40) or just use TextEdit.app.
Apple is well known for silently changing/upgrading components. For example, last fall many people were quietly given free upgrades from Core Duos to Core 2 duos because of the timing of their orders. Also, because Apple identifies machines only by brand name, and not model number, you cannot assume that they will continue to use the same wireless chips, etc. for several years.
Your point about imaging Macs with windows is moot. First of all, if a corporation is going to buy macs but also install windows, they are probably going to use parallels instead of bootcamp so that employees can eventually migrate fully to OS X. Even if they don't, the bootcamp driver package contains all the windows drivers for all the intel Macs.
Lastly, Linux drivers don't matter much, because Linux software runs on Macs. It will always be easy to install GNOME or KDE on OS X. I only use use Linux in parallels for testing portability, because OS X runs all the software I need it to run. (The WINE port is lagging behind a good bit, but that doesn't matter much to me because my only Windows-only game now uses Cider.)
BootCamp is really just a pretty installer to help you shrink the OS X partition, burn a driver disk, and start the Windows installer. All of those things can be done separately, but there is seldom reason to bother.
I only have access to the educational prices, but here goes:
All the stock iMac configurations are $100 off the retail price. Upgrades are cheaper by a significant amount. Going from 2.16Ghz to 2.33Ghz is $225 instead of $250. iWork'06 is $39 instead of $79. Doubling the VRAM on the 20" is $68 instead of $75, and doubling the hard drive space is $180 instead of $200.
The 20" Cinema display is $50 off, the 23" is $100 off, and the 30" is $200 off. The standard Mac pro is $200 off. The MacBook Pros are also $200 off. A 5-pack of MacBooks with 1GB of RAM starts at $5335. The standard Xserve is $300 off.
I do not know if these prices go down further in bulk.
Apples are still a bit expensive, but with the educational discount, the remaining premium is justified. I consider it a worthwhile investment to get a quiet all-in-one like the iMac.
... then what kind of computer are they using on the Klingon ships? Probably a nasty old SPARC machine.
... then what kind of computer should I use at home? A Mac, of course. Why wouldn't you want to use the same kind of computer as Scotty?
... then can I use my iPod as a PDA? Nope. But the iPhone shuffle will probably come close to the enterprise's communicators. Especially the "wearable" bit.
I think their statistics can be explained by PC users having much lower expectations. At my university, the helpdesk people have intel iMacs running OS X and XP under parallels. I have never seen them using OS X while helping somebody. All the support calls are for windows.
The only one that seems really stupid is the "Fax and Scan" missing from the home editions. Where did they get the idea that home users never want to scan photos?
Running XP Pro on a 300Mhz processor with 128MB RAM and 1.5GB of hard drive space is insane. First of all, the security patches and service packs won't fit. But even if you do get those installed, there still aren't enough resources left over for something like Firefox displaying an AJAX page. Saying that XP can be run on such a machine is like saying that a 2.6 series Linux kernel can be booted on a PC with 4MB of RAM: theoretically possible, but it doesn't leave much left over for userspace code.
That would be the case but for the fact that the most common cpu hogging applications are the least efficient pieces of code on an average box. Word processors should not require anything close to the amount of memory and cpu speed that they do today. For example, word will refuse to do grammar checking if you have less than 1Gb or RAM. And look at Adobe Reader. That thing is several times slower than pretty much any other pdf reader, even the ones that come close to having all the features (even the ones that nobody uses).
The problem is that software has bloated such that the only way to get a responsive UI is to upgrade the hardware. None of the big software companies have any qualms with introducing noticible but small latency into the UI. If instead they worked to gurrantee that all simple operations completed imperceptibly quickly, the majority of users wouldn't need or have cpus faster than 1Ghz.
If I were on the surface of that planet, I would weigh less than 300lbs. After a few months of living there, I'm pretty sure I would have adapted enough to be reasonably mobile. The only big problems I would have at first would be due to my extreme height. A generation of kids born and raised with that kind of gravity would have fewer problems. I really don't think 2.25G is that hard for us to adapt to, given all the other things we have handled as a species.
Slashdot Mirror
I seem to be making this point a lot lately:
Natural monopolies are not automatically bad. In the case of the search engine market, there cannot be a bad natural monopoly. The barriers to entry and switching for that market are so low that any company that tries to abuse monopoly power will be dethroned almost overnight by a less evil alternative that works almost as well.
This is very different from the operating system market, where switching requires enormous effort from the user as compared with switching search engines. This is also why American car companies are doing so poorly right now: there is no incentive to buy your new car from the same place you bought your old car.
Also, since you declined to read TFA or even the comments, I will summarize TFA for you: Companies who try to cheat to get good google rankings complain when it backfires. Those companies have a false sense of entitlement to free advertising via Google.
Don't confuse the slashdot population versus the general population. The general population never even got enough of a whiff of vista to stop buying PCs with it on it. I can only provide anecdotal evidence, but in my experience, you are almost completely wrong. Of all the people I know who are prone to buying the "latest and greatest", only about half a dozen have bought a Vista machine. All of them regret it. I know people with money to burn who plan to not buy Vista for a long time. Even the guy who upgrades his PDA every 3 months isn't going to get Vista.
Google reached their position through complete and utter competence. They didn't advertise their site. "Google" as a verb spread through word of mouth alone. If pagerank is really being that unfair to a lot of legit sites, the same market forces that created the Google behemoth will bring it down. If somebody can show that Google's algorithms are really being unfair to Google's customers, Google will be compelled to change those algorithms or lose market share.
If you hate how much the federal government has expanded, why are you opposed to putting restrictions on how they can expand? It would seem that the best way to oppose "big government" is to pass laws or amendments that restrict the government's powers.
Laws are not inherently bad. A well written piece of legislation can unambiguously take powers away from the government.
Granted, I was only in first grade when I first played Myst, but it took me several months to figure out all the ages, and I still have dozens of pages of notes. I didn't figure out the solution to the selenitic age tram until after solving it by brute force, so I have one sheet of paper consisting of just a map of that maze. Riven didn't take me that long, but it was still tough. I had to learn base 25 D'ni numbering on my own. The later games weren't as tough, though.
Honestly, so what? Even the french people I know make jokes about surrendering and retreating. Don't try to draw a parallel between making jokes about france and one's intelligence.
I figured as much. This article is kinda like saying linux has 500+ tv tuner drivers, when basically everything is covered by the bt848/878 driver.
The DS isn't a replacement for the GBA because the DS doesn't have complete backwards compatibility. The GBA can play all gameboy games, but the DS can only play GBA games. Many people own a very large collection of GBx games, and Nintendo would be stupid to abandon them after building an empire based pretty much solely on the backwards compatibility.
You seem to be under the impression that natural monopolies are a bad thing. They are not, especially in a market like video games, where there are no barriers to entry. If one company comes to dominate, it is probably because they have hired all the good talent. If that company starts to suck, there are always a bunch of start-ups hoping to be more than a one-hit-wonder.
I'm a Myst fan, so I am inclined to say that there have been great Mac games since the DOS days.
Note: The above movie is only funny when you realize that Halo was originally intended as a Mac game, and that the guy in the movie makes a living playing Halo. Without that irony, it's just a nerd abusing Tchaikovsky.
Google just can't afford to give anybody a privileged place in the rankings. Doing so would make them no better than AOL and Yahoo. If a company wants more exposure through Google, their only option should be advertising.
As the saying goes, sufficiently advanced incompetence is indistinguishable from malice. Although, as a former kaiser member myself, I agree that they aren't that bad.
The problems you describe with input devices can be solved with a trivial performance hit. If a computer can handle OO.o and Firefox simultaneously, it can probably handle another copy of each, considering the way it will be used. The OP just might want include more swap than he otherwise would for a low-end desktop.
Have you used an intel Mac? Neo Office is plenty fast. Faster than, say, the PPC-only MS Office 2004. If you have need for a very powerful suite, you should be willing put up with its less-than-perfect performance. If not, go with iWork ($40) or just use TextEdit.app.
Apple is well known for silently changing/upgrading components. For example, last fall many people were quietly given free upgrades from Core Duos to Core 2 duos because of the timing of their orders. Also, because Apple identifies machines only by brand name, and not model number, you cannot assume that they will continue to use the same wireless chips, etc. for several years.
Your point about imaging Macs with windows is moot. First of all, if a corporation is going to buy macs but also install windows, they are probably going to use parallels instead of bootcamp so that employees can eventually migrate fully to OS X. Even if they don't, the bootcamp driver package contains all the windows drivers for all the intel Macs.
Lastly, Linux drivers don't matter much, because Linux software runs on Macs. It will always be easy to install GNOME or KDE on OS X. I only use use Linux in parallels for testing portability, because OS X runs all the software I need it to run. (The WINE port is lagging behind a good bit, but that doesn't matter much to me because my only Windows-only game now uses Cider.)
BootCamp is really just a pretty installer to help you shrink the OS X partition, burn a driver disk, and start the Windows installer. All of those things can be done separately, but there is seldom reason to bother.
I only have access to the educational prices, but here goes:
All the stock iMac configurations are $100 off the retail price. Upgrades are cheaper by a significant amount. Going from 2.16Ghz to 2.33Ghz is $225 instead of $250. iWork'06 is $39 instead of $79. Doubling the VRAM on the 20" is $68 instead of $75, and doubling the hard drive space is $180 instead of $200.
The 20" Cinema display is $50 off, the 23" is $100 off, and the 30" is $200 off. The standard Mac pro is $200 off. The MacBook Pros are also $200 off. A 5-pack of MacBooks with 1GB of RAM starts at $5335. The standard Xserve is $300 off.
I do not know if these prices go down further in bulk.
Apples are still a bit expensive, but with the educational discount, the remaining premium is justified. I consider it a worthwhile investment to get a quiet all-in-one like the iMac.
... then what kind of computer are they using on the Klingon ships? Probably a nasty old SPARC machine.I think their statistics can be explained by PC users having much lower expectations. At my university, the helpdesk people have intel iMacs running OS X and XP under parallels. I have never seen them using OS X while helping somebody. All the support calls are for windows.
Well, for starters, you can't upgrade from XP Pro to Vista Home Premium. You have to do a clean install. And even though you can look up the differences yourself, I'll point them out: http://www.microsoft.com/windows/products/windowsv ista/editions/choose.mspx?wt_svl=10033VHa2&mg_id=1 0033VHb2
The only one that seems really stupid is the "Fax and Scan" missing from the home editions. Where did they get the idea that home users never want to scan photos?
Running XP Pro on a 300Mhz processor with 128MB RAM and 1.5GB of hard drive space is insane. First of all, the security patches and service packs won't fit. But even if you do get those installed, there still aren't enough resources left over for something like Firefox displaying an AJAX page. Saying that XP can be run on such a machine is like saying that a 2.6 series Linux kernel can be booted on a PC with 4MB of RAM: theoretically possible, but it doesn't leave much left over for userspace code.
The problem isn't new features, it is new, obscure features that compromise the core functionality.
That would be the case but for the fact that the most common cpu hogging applications are the least efficient pieces of code on an average box. Word processors should not require anything close to the amount of memory and cpu speed that they do today. For example, word will refuse to do grammar checking if you have less than 1Gb or RAM. And look at Adobe Reader. That thing is several times slower than pretty much any other pdf reader, even the ones that come close to having all the features (even the ones that nobody uses).
The problem is that software has bloated such that the only way to get a responsive UI is to upgrade the hardware. None of the big software companies have any qualms with introducing noticible but small latency into the UI. If instead they worked to gurrantee that all simple operations completed imperceptibly quickly, the majority of users wouldn't need or have cpus faster than 1Ghz.
If I were on the surface of that planet, I would weigh less than 300lbs. After a few months of living there, I'm pretty sure I would have adapted enough to be reasonably mobile. The only big problems I would have at first would be due to my extreme height. A generation of kids born and raised with that kind of gravity would have fewer problems. I really don't think 2.25G is that hard for us to adapt to, given all the other things we have handled as a species.