Not to be Mr. Sour Grapes, but 8% growth (while very healthy) isn't historically that wonderful for MSFT. While its certainly safe to say that MSFT is doing well, I'd say its also safe to say that the days of explosive growth (as in early to mid 90's) are behind them.
Once again we have isolated cases being held aloft as if to demonstrate some sort of greater pattern. After all, we also have rapists in our country (as all countries do) but that does not make America a "nation of rapists". America does not, as a matter of practice, torture prisoners.
If you compare greater trends with greater trends, patterns with patterns, the United States still has more civil liberties than anywhere else in the world. (Not that we can rest complacently with this fact, we must continue to fight for it.)
And Al-Jazeera is a joke. They are an embarassment to the journalistic community. The reporting is so horribly distorted and biased its somewhere between funny and terrifying.
No seriously. If the writers had any sense they'd kill off Archer. Its the only way to save the show. He's so awful he makes my head hurt. He's stiffer than Kevin Costner with rigormortis. He sucked in Quantum Leap and now he's brought truckloads of "suck-age" right along with him in to Trek-land.
And can we lose the whole T'Pol+Trip love connection. Its so cheese. Better yet, can we kill T'Pol too? Not that I have anything against tits-on-a-stick, but can anyone bear watching this nasty-ass fake-titted Los Angeles pr0n-star with way too much cosmetic surgery pretend to be an emotionless Vulcan? Pretending to be from San Francisco would be a stretch for this "actress".
And then get a new friggin ship while you're at it. The silver, intentionally-retro look of the ship is just plain weak. What is this, "Battleship Potemkin"? The Enterprise looks like a precursor to a submarine. The set designers seem to have forgotten that while the show is set before TNG, its still supposed to be *our future*. God its ugly.
And can we get some unhealthy people please? Christ, Battlestar Galactica introduced an alcoholic, a pathological liar, a cancer patient and a dysfunctional family in its first 10 minutes. Does everyone need to be such a goody-two-shoes on this ship? As it stands now, Ned Flanders would fit right in.
Oh what do I care... I already cancelled my Tivo season pass... I couldn't take it anymore...
Creating a computer program that rates a very limited set of relationships is not exactly difficult. If the computer were "really" watching rock paper scissors that would be incredibly cool, but the computer is taking as input a limited set of defined images on cards placed in an exact location...
That's not Rock Paper Scissors. Its a simplified 2D representation of it organized in a precise way for computer analysis.
By the same definitions of "learn" and "game" I could teach a computer to "learn to fight." (It would of course involve 'fight cards' precisely arranged on a table)
Sorry -- my roommate just blasted into me for saying that there's no more climaxes. Ok so there's the dragon story. Blah blah blah. Its an appendage. Its so less climactic than the Grendel fight its absurd.
I just re-read the latest (and imho greatest) Beowulf translation by Seamus Heaney. (If anyone is interested in re-reading it, this translation is stunningly good.)
The problem with making a major film version of the poem is that Beowulf is the most anti-Hollywood tale ever told. When most people summarize the story they reduce the lengthy plot down to something like this: a foreign hero comes to a land plagued by a horrible demon, slays the demon (and the demon's mother) and lives happily ever after.
Unfortunately for Hollywood screenwriters, that's not the whole story. Beowulf is a far more modern tale about a rarely discussed subject: Life in the aftermath of fame. Its an almost depressing story about a hero whose greatest achievement occurs early-on in his career. Beowulf slays his adversaries surprisingly soon in the text -- and then must live on in an exhausted world (filled with far less glamour) for the rest of his long days.
The story ends -- without another climax, without another conflict. At times the reader has to wonder, "where's this story going?", and the truth is: It isn't going anywhere, and neither is Beowulf. And that's the painful part of the story -- that Beowulf's finest years and greatest deeds are already done.
Its hardly the stuff of Hollywood blockbusters, and the chances are good that the story will be Hollywood-ized with an abbreviated ending. A far more interesting (and accurate film) would include the bulky second part of the poem where the conflict shifts from man vs. monster to man vs. himself.
-Popo
Learned something? Don't bet on it.
on
Sony Admits MP3 Error
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
Did they learn something after Betamax?
Did they learn something after DVD Regional Encoding?
Did they learn something after Memory Stick?
Did they learn something after that ridiculous proprietary music format?
The Sony learning curve looks like a horizontal line to me. They suffer from the same desire to "own" formats that MSFT does.
Ultimately both companies will lose to open standards.
I hear you. (and totally agree). I'm comparing encumberance b/w Windows MCE and the PS3. Ultimately both will look encumbered as hell next to opensource linux-based DVR software.
Even a 1ghz processor has MORE than enough power for a media center PC. How much speed do you think it takes to play an MP3 or do DVR functionality? The only think holding back media center PCs is DRM, price, and interface.
Wrong.
Wrong.
Wrong.
First off, 1GHZ is more than enough for a linux-based (Tivo or other) media pc. But its nowhere near enough for Windows MCE (which is a dog).
Secondly, even if you wrote lightweight, efficient code 1GHz would stutter like mad on an HD signal.
Thirdly -- no, I have not noticed that Sony game consoles suck. What are *you* some rabid fanboy? There's a year and a half generation gap b/w PS2 and Xbox. And Xbox *sucks* -- it can't do the most basic antialiasing. And Xbox's twin desire to use standard chipsets, and yet at the same time be pirate-proof will be its undoing. No hard drive in Xbox 3 Bwah hah hah hah! Way to shoot yourself in the foot MSFT!
Fourthly -- your point about consoles being cheaper because they're mass produced.... uh... yeah?
"No Apps"? Try every single video game publisher in the world.
And besides, this isn't about "Office" style apps. Its about games, and more importantly: its about home media centers. I think the Windows MCE is going to have its rear-end handed to it by the PS3.
When you consider that a cell-based PS3 could have a computational power of *several times* a 3 GHz Pentium...
You have to ask, what's more likely: that Intel can get around IBM/Toshiba patents in time for Windows to conquer the living room with a faster box? (That's if they can even build a secure, stable OS with a decent UI). Or that Sony, now armed with the worlds fastest consumer-computing platform, an enormous user base and years of TiVO experience, will own the living room media center market.
If I had to bet on who builds a better media-center PC.. Sony or MSFT... I'd say its absolutely no contest. Sony would crush MSFT. They have better interface design, fewer conflicting platform goals, and they'll put a PS3 in your living room for a fraction of what MSFT could.
The problem for web-based email services is this: the customer acquisition strategy of all web-based email clients is the offer of "Free" service. Hotmail grew 300 million users or so before being acquired by MSFT (and before any sort of user-based revenue streams). How did they grow so big? Easy, because the service was free.
As email services transition to 'paid-for' services, recognize that the transition to $-based services can never represent a 100% changeover. There will always be an upsell for "enhanced service". (e.g.: "10 more Megs for $20"). Why? Because getting rid of "Free" means losing both new and existing users.
And there's the rub. There will *always* be another company willing to provide some of those additional paid-for features for "Free" in order to steal users. Gmail is a perfect example. Gmail gives away for free what MSFT is charging for. Likewise, someone further down the line will attempt to lure users away from Gmail with a similar "free vs. upsell" competition.
Its a critical mass / tipping-point problem. Simply underselling your competitor *won't* work. The rate of transition from their service to yours simply won't be fast enough to justify the expense of the revenue structure. You'll ultimately lose users to competitors before your service is populated. Usage patterns already show that "Free" is the only user acquisition strategy that works rapidly enough (or at all effectively). Look at the OS world: A cheaper OS won't lure enough users away from a dominant platform to achieve a self-sustaining userbase. A "Free" one will. In order to achieve the tipping-point of customer-loyalty to new-product-adoption, "Free" is the only thing that has ever worked.
MSFT is hoping their desktop monopoly can help them break of the "Free" cycle.
It won't.
Soo... let me get this straight...
on
Spammers Sue Spamee
·
· Score: 4, Insightful
If Person-A tells Company-B to do something which may or may not be legal to Company-C...
And Company-B goes ahead and does it.
Isn't Company-B the liable party here?
e.g. -- If I tell my Landlord to kick out my loud upstairs neighbor -- and for some reason he complies and *does* it.... As far as I know my neighbor's furious, my landlord's getting sued and I'm nothing other than stoked.
Most works on the subject of aging agree that the issue is with the overall rate of aging -- which is determined genetically (at conception or shortly thereafter).
If you want to live to 1000 you'll have to accept a 100 year childhood. (Know any parents that would be ok with 100 years of teens?)
Once again we've reached that point in all/. threads where it becomes necessary to point out the hilariously large rift between what is legislated and what happens on the ground.
P2P is alive and well. Its a ridiculously simple concept which requires as little as 15 lines of code. P2P apps are being developed everywhere from Oslo, to Hong Kong, to New Delhi, to Tel Aviv, etc.
As with DeCSS, or even virii P2P applications require 1 author and poof! they're out there. So the questions are:
Will any legislation put the P2P genie back in the bottle? Of course not.
Will any legislation 'significantly' slow P2P development? OF COURSE NOT. (America isn't where most P2P apps are written anyway).
So let Governor Arnold enact his little uneducated, fantasy tirade against a force which is uncontrollable and is far stronger than he (or any government) is.
It just won't matter.
P2P is here to stay.
And what's next? "P2P Streaming" is around the corner (and will have a far, far greater impact than file-sharing did).
Who gets affected by this? US p2p developers.
Ok, if you're one of them... you have a legitimate gripe here.
Otherwise, this legislation (if enacted) will have zero affect on the existence or use of P2P apps.
There's another little talked about reason why TiVO is losing users fast: "The VOIP effect".
In a nutshell: TiVO's internal modem doesn't work with most VOIP services.
Recently I switched over to Vonage. About a week after my Vonage service began I started getting messages on my TiVO telling me I needed to make my "daily call" because my program data had not been updated for a while.
I checked on the TiVO forums and sure enough there is a problem using TiVO's internal modem with most VOIP services. There are dozens of supposed workarounds but the success rate for these workarounds is apparently grim.
Series I TiVO users are truly screwed. Series II TiVO users can wire an Ethernet cable to the back of their TiVO to get listings via IP. But even TiVO acknowleges that most TiVO users probably don't have Ethernet cables in their living rooms.
There are also many hardware fixes I'm looking into. (But soldering a modem to my TiVO motherboard hardly seems like a fix that most people are going to want to deal with).
The bottom line is this: As VOIP sweeps the nation, its also sweeping TiVO away.
Is there anyone out there who honestly believes that these non-networked (or barely network-capable) digital PVR's are the end-game anyway?
Don't get me wrong, I love my TiVo (although HD would be nice), but don't we all really want access to what's on everyone *else's* TiVo -- streamed instantly across a P2P network.
Just wait until broadcasters join the chorus of RIAA whiners...
If you think P2P is cool, wait until you hear about HTTP!
Man that's going to rock!
But really: Most discussion of P2P is moot -- its here to stay and not only that its been here for a while. Furthermore (and this is what the RIAA can't get their tiny brains around) there is no real way to get *rid* of P2P. There are a near infinite number of P2P permutations from encryption to closed networks to more advanced file storate/indexing, etc. etc. that make P2P a genie that no-way, no-how is getting back in its bottle. That, on the other hand, in no-way makes violation of copyrighted works ok.
If this so-called "manifesto" had been written about P2P STREAMING (IMHO where all the *really* cool stuff is happening) it would be one thing, but this piece seems both misguided, misinformed, and sooo 1999.
Slashdot Mirror
It should also be said, that there's no Halo next quarter.
MSFT would love to make the claim that this is largely due to server software... but its Halo II... and that ain't happening again any time soon.
Not to be Mr. Sour Grapes, but 8% growth (while very healthy) isn't historically that wonderful for MSFT. While its certainly safe to say that MSFT is doing well, I'd say its also safe to say that the days of explosive growth (as in early to mid 90's) are behind them.
Oh please.
Once again we have isolated cases being held aloft as if to demonstrate some sort of greater pattern. After all, we also have rapists in our country (as all countries do) but that does not make America a "nation of rapists". America does not, as a matter of practice, torture prisoners.
If you compare greater trends with greater trends, patterns with patterns, the United States still has more civil liberties than anywhere else in the world. (Not that we can rest complacently with this fact, we must continue to fight for it.)
And Al-Jazeera is a joke. They are an embarassment to the journalistic community. The reporting is so horribly distorted and biased its somewhere between funny and terrifying.
No seriously. If the writers had any sense they'd kill off Archer. Its the only way to save the show. He's so awful he makes my head hurt. He's stiffer than Kevin Costner with rigormortis. He sucked in Quantum Leap and now he's brought truckloads of "suck-age" right along with him in to Trek-land.
And can we lose the whole T'Pol+Trip love connection. Its so cheese. Better yet, can we kill T'Pol too? Not that I have anything against tits-on-a-stick, but can anyone bear watching this nasty-ass fake-titted Los Angeles pr0n-star with way too much cosmetic surgery pretend to be an emotionless Vulcan? Pretending to be from San Francisco would be a stretch for this "actress".
And then get a new friggin ship while you're at it. The silver, intentionally-retro look of the ship is just plain weak. What is this, "Battleship Potemkin"? The Enterprise looks like a precursor to a submarine. The set designers seem to have forgotten that while the show is set before TNG, its still supposed to be *our future*. God its ugly.
And can we get some unhealthy people please? Christ, Battlestar Galactica introduced an alcoholic, a pathological liar, a cancer patient and a dysfunctional family in its first 10 minutes. Does everyone need to be such a goody-two-shoes on this ship? As it stands now, Ned Flanders would fit right in.
Oh what do I care... I already cancelled my Tivo season pass... I couldn't take it anymore...
So... their strategy to save a show which suffers from incredibly poor casting, is to bring two of the previous generation's casting gaffes.
I can't think of two more expendible characters from TNG (After wesley crusher of course) than Riker and Troi.
yay
Creating a computer program that rates a very limited set of relationships is not exactly difficult. If the computer were "really" watching rock paper scissors that would be incredibly cool, but the computer is taking as input a limited set of defined images on cards placed in an exact location...
That's not Rock Paper Scissors. Its a simplified 2D representation of it organized in a precise way for computer analysis.
By the same definitions of "learn" and "game" I could teach a computer to "learn to fight." (It would of course involve 'fight cards' precisely arranged on a table)
Ultimately the cable companies will be the winners here. They have a high speed digital cable running into a box which is attached to your TV.
What more can you possibly say?
Sorry -- my roommate just blasted into me for saying that there's no more climaxes. Ok so there's the dragon story. Blah blah blah. Its an appendage. Its so less climactic than the Grendel fight its absurd.
I just re-read the latest (and imho greatest) Beowulf translation by Seamus Heaney. (If anyone is interested in re-reading it, this translation is stunningly good.)
The problem with making a major film version of the poem is that Beowulf is the most anti-Hollywood tale ever told. When most people summarize the story they reduce the lengthy plot down to something like this: a foreign hero comes to a land plagued by a horrible demon, slays the demon (and the demon's mother) and lives happily ever after.
Unfortunately for Hollywood screenwriters, that's not the whole story. Beowulf is a far more modern tale about a rarely discussed subject: Life in the aftermath of fame. Its an almost depressing story about a hero whose greatest achievement occurs early-on in his career. Beowulf slays his adversaries surprisingly soon in the text -- and then must live on in an exhausted world (filled with far less glamour) for the rest of his long days.
The story ends -- without another climax, without another conflict. At times the reader has to wonder, "where's this story going?", and the truth is: It isn't going anywhere, and neither is Beowulf. And that's the painful part of the story -- that Beowulf's finest years and greatest deeds are already done.
Its hardly the stuff of Hollywood blockbusters, and the chances are good that the story will be Hollywood-ized with an abbreviated ending. A far more interesting (and accurate film) would include the bulky second part of the poem where the conflict shifts from man vs. monster to man vs. himself.
-Popo
Did they learn something after Betamax?
Did they learn something after DVD Regional Encoding?
Did they learn something after Memory Stick?
Did they learn something after that ridiculous proprietary music format?
The Sony learning curve looks like a horizontal line to me. They suffer from the same desire to "own" formats that MSFT does.
Ultimately both companies will lose to open standards.
I hear you. (and totally agree). I'm comparing encumberance b/w Windows MCE and the PS3. Ultimately both will look encumbered as hell next to opensource linux-based DVR software.
(Building my Myth TV box now...)
Even a 1ghz processor has MORE than enough power for a media center PC. How much speed do you think it takes to play an MP3 or do DVR functionality? The only think holding back media center PCs is DRM, price, and interface.
Wrong.
Wrong.
Wrong.
First off, 1GHZ is more than enough for a linux-based (Tivo or other) media pc. But its nowhere near enough for Windows MCE (which is a dog).
Secondly, even if you wrote lightweight, efficient code 1GHz would stutter like mad on an HD signal.
Thirdly -- no, I have not noticed that Sony game consoles suck. What are *you* some rabid fanboy? There's a year and a half generation gap b/w PS2 and Xbox. And Xbox *sucks* -- it can't do the most basic antialiasing. And Xbox's twin desire to use standard chipsets, and yet at the same time be pirate-proof will be its undoing. No hard drive in Xbox 3 Bwah hah hah hah! Way to shoot yourself in the foot MSFT!
Fourthly -- your point about consoles being cheaper because they're mass produced.... uh... yeah?
"No Apps"? Try every single video game publisher in the world.
.. Sony or MSFT... I'd say its absolutely no contest. Sony would crush MSFT. They have better interface design, fewer conflicting platform goals, and they'll put a PS3 in your living room for a fraction of what MSFT could.
And besides, this isn't about "Office" style apps. Its about games, and more importantly: its about home media centers. I think the Windows MCE is going to have its rear-end handed to it by the PS3.
When you consider that a cell-based PS3 could have a computational power of *several times* a 3 GHz Pentium...
You have to ask, what's more likely: that Intel can get around IBM/Toshiba patents in time for Windows to conquer the living room with a faster box? (That's if they can even build a secure, stable OS with a decent UI). Or that Sony, now armed with the worlds fastest consumer-computing platform, an enormous user base and years of TiVO experience, will own the living room media center market.
If I had to bet on who builds a better media-center PC
The question isn't as you said "what percentage of the US is using VOIP". That's irrelevant.
...That's a number that has terrifying ramifications for TiVO.
The question is: "what percentage of *TiVO users* are switching to VOIP"?
God I wish that were true. I've tried them all. And I've been on dozens of boards where people have similar problems.
You're one of the lucky ones.
The problem for web-based email services is this: the customer acquisition strategy of all web-based email clients is the offer of "Free" service. Hotmail grew 300 million users or so before being acquired by MSFT (and before any sort of user-based revenue streams). How did they grow so big? Easy, because the service was free.
As email services transition to 'paid-for' services, recognize that the transition to $-based services can never represent a 100% changeover. There will always be an upsell for "enhanced service". (e.g.: "10 more Megs for $20"). Why? Because getting rid of "Free" means losing both new and existing users.
And there's the rub. There will *always* be another company willing to provide some of those additional paid-for features for "Free" in order to steal users. Gmail is a perfect example. Gmail gives away for free what MSFT is charging for. Likewise, someone further down the line will attempt to lure users away from Gmail with a similar "free vs. upsell" competition.
Its a critical mass / tipping-point problem. Simply underselling your competitor *won't* work. The rate of transition from their service to yours simply won't be fast enough to justify the expense of the revenue structure. You'll ultimately lose users to competitors before your service is populated. Usage patterns already show that "Free" is the only user acquisition strategy that works rapidly enough (or at all effectively). Look at the OS world: A cheaper OS won't lure enough users away from a dominant platform to achieve a self-sustaining userbase. A "Free" one will. In order to achieve the tipping-point of customer-loyalty to new-product-adoption, "Free" is the only thing that has ever worked.
MSFT is hoping their desktop monopoly can help them break of the "Free" cycle.
It won't.
If Person-A tells Company-B to do something which may or may not be legal to Company-C...
And Company-B goes ahead and does it.
Isn't Company-B the liable party here?
e.g. -- If I tell my Landlord to kick out my loud upstairs neighbor -- and for some reason he complies and *does* it.... As far as I know my neighbor's furious, my landlord's getting sued and I'm nothing other than stoked.
Anyone?
Amazing how the texture/wave pattern stays consistent right up to the land.
Hmm...
Because me and my old version of KPT Bryce have also been able to come up with some Titan "photos"
(And likewise: according to my photos I confirm that the Huygens probe descended conveniently right above a stunning shoreline).
Most works on the subject of aging agree that the issue is with the overall rate of aging -- which is determined genetically (at conception or shortly thereafter).
If you want to live to 1000 you'll have to accept a 100 year childhood. (Know any parents that would be ok with 100 years of teens?)
Once again we've reached that point in all
P2P is alive and well. Its a ridiculously simple concept which requires as little as 15 lines of code. P2P apps are being developed everywhere from Oslo, to Hong Kong, to New Delhi, to Tel Aviv, etc.
As with DeCSS, or even virii P2P applications require 1 author and poof! they're out there. So the questions are:
Will any legislation put the P2P genie back in the bottle? Of course not.
Will any legislation 'significantly' slow P2P development? OF COURSE NOT. (America isn't where most P2P apps are written anyway).
So let Governor Arnold enact his little uneducated, fantasy tirade against a force which is uncontrollable and is far stronger than he (or any government) is.
It just won't matter.
P2P is here to stay.
And what's next? "P2P Streaming" is around the corner (and will have a far, far greater impact than file-sharing did).
Who gets affected by this? US p2p developers.
Ok, if you're one of them... you have a legitimate gripe here.
Otherwise, this legislation (if enacted) will have zero affect on the existence or use of P2P apps.
There's another little talked about reason why TiVO is losing users fast: "The VOIP effect".
In a nutshell: TiVO's internal modem doesn't work with most VOIP services.
Recently I switched over to Vonage. About a week after my Vonage service began I started getting messages on my TiVO telling me I needed to make my "daily call" because my program data had not been updated for a while.
I checked on the TiVO forums and sure enough there is a problem using TiVO's internal modem with most VOIP services. There are dozens of supposed workarounds but the success rate for these workarounds is apparently grim.
Series I TiVO users are truly screwed. Series II TiVO users can wire an Ethernet cable to the back of their TiVO to get listings via IP. But even TiVO acknowleges that most TiVO users probably don't have Ethernet cables in their living rooms.
There are also many hardware fixes I'm looking into. (But soldering a modem to my TiVO motherboard hardly seems like a fix that most people are going to want to deal with).
The bottom line is this: As VOIP sweeps the nation, its also sweeping TiVO away.
Is there anyone out there who honestly believes that these non-networked (or barely network-capable) digital PVR's are the end-game anyway?
Don't get me wrong, I love my TiVo (although HD would be nice), but don't we all really want access to what's on everyone *else's* TiVo -- streamed instantly across a P2P network.
Just wait until broadcasters join the chorus of RIAA whiners...
If you think P2P is cool, wait until you hear about HTTP!
Man that's going to rock!
But really: Most discussion of P2P is moot -- its here to stay and not only that its been here for a while. Furthermore (and this is what the RIAA can't get their tiny brains around) there is no real way to get *rid* of P2P. There are a near infinite number of P2P permutations from encryption to closed networks to more advanced file storate/indexing, etc. etc. that make P2P a genie that no-way, no-how is getting back in its bottle. That, on the other hand, in no-way makes violation of copyrighted works ok.
If this so-called "manifesto" had been written about P2P STREAMING (IMHO where all the *really* cool stuff is happening) it would be one thing, but this piece seems both misguided, misinformed, and sooo 1999.