Yes, they were also preaching this "Death of PC gaming" crap when the PS2 and the XBox came out, too. When those consoles were released, they WERE just about as powerful as PC with a good processor and video card. That only lasted about six months, though, and then a new generation of video cards and processors came out and put the PC on top again.
Now, both the PS2 and the XBox versions of games look lame compared to the PC versions. In three years or so, you can practically guarantee that it will be exactly the same with the PS3 and the 360.
Yeah, I got to hand it to Novell. Unlike some tech companies, they noticed that people were moving away from core product (NetWare) quickly enough to change their business plan and save their company from becoming a technolgical has been.
Exactly. There are plenty of unemployeed IT people out there, but most companies would rather hire recent college CS grads or H1B visa applicants than senior IT professionals with high salary demands and families to support. They save a fortune on salary and health insurance costs that way.
That's good for you, but 99% of the population doesn't think like that. Joe Sixpack doesn't even know what html standards are, let alone care if they are implimented properly in the browser or the web site that he's using. All he wants is to be able to do things like upload and print his digital photos on Walmart's picture site, pay his bills with Wachovia's BillPay application, and listen to some streaming music on LaunchCast.
I chose those three sites for a reason, because ALL THREE of them have problems with when used with Firefox. Having a "render in IE" option will come in handy for sites like these, because good ol' Joe is going to be pissed at you if you tell him that he can't use those sites anymore with his new web browser.
Believe me, this is a GOOD idea. I've tried converting tons of non-technical people to Firefox, but many of them end up switching back when they can't use a few sites that was designed to only work with IE. Yahoo's LaunchCast and Messenger avatar customization sites come to mind quickly, as do a few online banking and eBay auction tool sites.
I think that they bought them to get Virtual PC, so they would have a competing product for VMWare. Virtual server products are getting more popular now, and development teams are spending big money on them.
Having a good emulation team for the XBOX 360 is a nice bonus, though.
Ha, are you serious?!? IBM's has thousands of employees that are secretaries, accountants, and upper level managers who haven't done anything technical since green screen terminals were on everyone's desk. Fortunately, the learning curve for Firefox is VERY low, or IBM would have never considered deploying it.
Besides, most of the IBM techies have already installed Firefox on their own computers, and stopped using IE months ago. This deployment probably geared towards everyone else in the company who can't or won't figure out how to install the browser on their own.
Actually, this should be moderated Insightful instead of Funny. It has been almost four years since Windows XP came out, two years since Windows Server 2003 came out, and four years since the XBox was released. Almost everyone who wanted one of these products has bought one by now, and the most of new sales that they're getting for Windows are now cheaper OEM copies for new computers.
In the meantime, Microsoft spent a TON of money developing and testing Service Packs for Windows XP and Windows Server 2003.
He's more like the Andy Rooney of the computer industry now. Most of his articles are now just whiny ranting about things that annoy him, and no one really takes his misinformed opinions seriously anymore.
Yean, I'm not TOO suprised by the anti-open source bias in Information Week. Hell, the print version of the magazine is practically 100% sponsored by advertising from software and hardware companies. Projects like openoffice.org and Mozilla Firefox don't have money to waste on two page full color ad spreads every week like Microsoft does, so naturally the writers are going to be biased towards the companies who are ultimately paying their salaries.
"Reasonable price/performance for some situations. Last I checked, a 4-way SunFire V440 was cheaper than an equivalent Intel box, and far far cheaper than anything from IBM."
Umm... According to Sun's web site, the cheapest 4 way SunFire V440 that they offer is $24,000. You can get a 4 way Intel Xeon server for MUCH cheaper than that from a variety of vendors.
Clearly false articles like this one leave me begging for a away to report false articles to the poster without whining about it in the discussion forum. While we're at it, can we add a "report duplicate" link as well?
Seriously, why would anyone want to encourage men OR women to enter a career path that is currently in decline? Between the budget cuts, increasing security problems, and constant outsourcing of jobs overseas, IT is becoming a MISERABLE profession to be in.
Hey, I'm all for women entering high skilled jobs, but I'd recommend going into law or management instead. That's where the money and future career growth is.
Has anyone noticed the simularities between John Dvorak and Andy Rooney? They both seem to have amusing little rants at times, but both them are hopelessly be behind on technology and often have no idea about the topic that they're ranting about.
Both of them are WAY overdue for retirement, too. Until then, I'll enjoy his articles on Slashdot just for the amusing replies of people who still take him seriously:)
Geez... Cynical, aren't we? Anyway, this topic has showed up in Slashdot in the past, so you might want to search on it.
If I remember right, though, most video card companies can't open source their drivers even if they wanted to. Parts of them contain licensed copyrighted code from companies like sgi, which will not permit their stuff to be released to be public.
If you're lucky, you MIGHT be able to run Doom 3 or Half Life 2 at 25 fps on that card, but only if you set the screen resolution to 640x480 and turn off ALL the eye candy. At that point, however, you might as well just stick with Minesweeper or Solitare.
That said, I'm also confused why this article was labeled as "IT". The GeForce 6600 GT is a gamers card, not a business one. Although it would probably do a good job with CAD work or video editing, that really isn't what it was designed for.
No offense man, but companies like Best Buy and CompUSA don't WANT people like you as a customer. That was the whole point of the article! They aren't making much of a profit selling you that copy of WC3 for only $30 to begin with, and they probably LOST money on the sale once you factored in the time that you spent nagging the sales clerk and manager for your discount.
CompUSA and Best Buy cater to rich gadget freaks and clueless newbies because THEY are the kinds of people who will pay retail price and leave the store without thinking twice about it. The math is simple here... Higher product profit margins plus lower sales staffing costs equals MORE MONEY FOR THEM. By ignoring savvy shoppers like you, they're actually increasing their profits in the long run.
You CAN get a free demo for ESX Server if you can convince the VMWare sales staff that your project has the $$$ for a license. If you don't work for the IT department for a Fortune 500 company, though, it's probably not even worth trying.
Anyway, I'm evaluating a copy for a server consolidation project, and I'm impressed so far. It seems faster and more stable than GSX, the virtual SMP and "virtual switch" technology is a great addition, and the web administration is amazingly simple to use. I'm not sure if it's worth the $8,000 license fee, but I'd recommend it anyway.
Yeah, it's only a matter of time until Wikipedia gets sued for infinging on some copyrighted materials. If someone can just cut and paste bogus information into the system, there isn't much stopping someone from cutting and pasting verbatim text from some other refrence source into it as well.
If Apple can cram a G5 motherboard and a 17 inch LCD into a case 2 inches thick, they should be able to do something simular packing job with one of their notebooks, no?
Sure, the battery life probably won't be the greatest in the world, but folks like video editors and Photoshop junkies would probably appreciate having mobile that has the power of a G5.
So, what's the hold up, Apple? Where's my G5 Powerbook?!?
The sad thing is that Microsoft Bob wasn't all that much of a failure. The product itself didn't sell all that well, but the animated assistant idea that came from it is still around in today's versions of Office and Windows.
Sure, us Slashdot folks think that it's annoying, but the newbies seem to like it.
Actually, her economic theory sounded more like Trickle Down economic theory that Reagan used in the 80's. Just like outsourcing, it does a great job of making the rich even richer by cutting their cost base and increasing their profits.
Anyway, like trickle down Economics, her theory only works if the company invests the cost savings in employee training and new product development. If those software CEO's pocket the money for themselves and just buy bigger yachts and private jets with it (like they did in the 80's!), the theory falls flat and the little guy gets screwed again.
Look at the bright point... Sooner or later they'll start outsourcing economist jobs overseas as well. We'll see how this lady feels about her theory when her employer replaces her with a team of $8 an hour Economics grad students from Bangalore:)
I've noticed that I've never really SEEN the chef on Enterprise. Could Shatner be playing him? That might would make for a funny cameo, anyway.
I just hope that they don't go overboard and make an (Insert Van Damme movie here) style episode where the chef somehow takes over and saves the Enterprise from destruction. This whole series seems to be over the top, though, so I guess that it's bound to happen.
Slashdot Mirror
Yes, they were also preaching this "Death of PC gaming" crap when the PS2 and the XBox came out, too. When those consoles were released, they WERE just about as powerful as PC with a good processor and video card. That only lasted about six months, though, and then a new generation of video cards and processors came out and put the PC on top again.
Now, both the PS2 and the XBox versions of games look lame compared to the PC versions. In three years or so, you can practically guarantee that it will be exactly the same with the PS3 and the 360.
Yeah, I got to hand it to Novell. Unlike some tech companies, they noticed that people were moving away from core product (NetWare) quickly enough to change their business plan and save their company from becoming a technolgical has been.
I hope that someone at Sun is taking notes.
Because it bashes Microsoft, silly! What, are you new here? :)
Exactly. There are plenty of unemployeed IT people out there, but most companies would rather hire recent college CS grads or H1B visa applicants than senior IT professionals with high salary demands and families to support. They save a fortune on salary and health insurance costs that way.
That's good for you, but 99% of the population doesn't think like that. Joe Sixpack doesn't even know what html standards are, let alone care if they are implimented properly in the browser or the web site that he's using. All he wants is to be able to do things like upload and print his digital photos on Walmart's picture site, pay his bills with Wachovia's BillPay application, and listen to some streaming music on LaunchCast.
I chose those three sites for a reason, because ALL THREE of them have problems with when used with Firefox. Having a "render in IE" option will come in handy for sites like these, because good ol' Joe is going to be pissed at you if you tell him that he can't use those sites anymore with his new web browser.
Believe me, this is a GOOD idea. I've tried converting tons of non-technical people to Firefox, but many of them end up switching back when they can't use a few sites that was designed to only work with IE. Yahoo's LaunchCast and Messenger avatar customization sites come to mind quickly, as do a few online banking and eBay auction tool sites.
I think that they bought them to get Virtual PC, so they would have a competing product for VMWare. Virtual server products are getting more popular now, and development teams are spending big money on them.
Having a good emulation team for the XBOX 360 is a nice bonus, though.
Ha, are you serious?!? IBM's has thousands of employees that are secretaries, accountants, and upper level managers who haven't done anything technical since green screen terminals were on everyone's desk. Fortunately, the learning curve for Firefox is VERY low, or IBM would have never considered deploying it.
Besides, most of the IBM techies have already installed Firefox on their own computers, and stopped using IE months ago. This deployment probably geared towards everyone else in the company who can't or won't figure out how to install the browser on their own.
Actually, this should be moderated Insightful instead of Funny. It has been almost four years since Windows XP came out, two years since Windows Server 2003 came out, and four years since the XBox was released. Almost everyone who wanted one of these products has bought one by now, and the most of new sales that they're getting for Windows are now cheaper OEM copies for new computers.
In the meantime, Microsoft spent a TON of money developing and testing Service Packs for Windows XP and Windows Server 2003.
He's more like the Andy Rooney of the computer industry now. Most of his articles are now just whiny ranting about things that annoy him, and no one really takes his misinformed opinions seriously anymore.
Yean, I'm not TOO suprised by the anti-open source bias in Information Week. Hell, the print version of the magazine is practically 100% sponsored by advertising from software and hardware companies. Projects like openoffice.org and Mozilla Firefox don't have money to waste on two page full color ad spreads every week like Microsoft does, so naturally the writers are going to be biased towards the companies who are ultimately paying their salaries.
"Reasonable price/performance for some situations. Last I checked, a 4-way SunFire V440 was cheaper than an equivalent Intel box, and far far cheaper than anything from IBM."
Umm... According to Sun's web site, the cheapest 4 way SunFire V440 that they offer is $24,000. You can get a 4 way Intel Xeon server for MUCH cheaper than that from a variety of vendors.
Clearly false articles like this one leave me begging for a away to report false articles to the poster without whining about it in the discussion forum. While we're at it, can we add a "report duplicate" link as well?
Seriously, why would anyone want to encourage men OR women to enter a career path that is currently in decline? Between the budget cuts, increasing security problems, and constant outsourcing of jobs overseas, IT is becoming a MISERABLE profession to be in.
Hey, I'm all for women entering high skilled jobs, but I'd recommend going into law or management instead. That's where the money and future career growth is.
Has anyone noticed the simularities between John Dvorak and Andy Rooney? They both seem to have amusing little rants at times, but both them are hopelessly be behind on technology and often have no idea about the topic that they're ranting about.
:)
Both of them are WAY overdue for retirement, too. Until then, I'll enjoy his articles on Slashdot just for the amusing replies of people who still take him seriously
Geez... Cynical, aren't we? Anyway, this topic has showed up in Slashdot in the past, so you might want to search on it.
If I remember right, though, most video card companies can't open source their drivers even if they wanted to. Parts of them contain licensed copyrighted code from companies like sgi, which will not permit their stuff to be released to be public.
If you're lucky, you MIGHT be able to run Doom 3 or Half Life 2 at 25 fps on that card, but only if you set the screen resolution to 640x480 and turn off ALL the eye candy. At that point, however, you might as well just stick with Minesweeper or Solitare.
That said, I'm also confused why this article was labeled as "IT". The GeForce 6600 GT is a gamers card, not a business one. Although it would probably do a good job with CAD work or video editing, that really isn't what it was designed for.
No offense man, but companies like Best Buy and CompUSA don't WANT people like you as a customer. That was the whole point of the article! They aren't making much of a profit selling you that copy of WC3 for only $30 to begin with, and they probably LOST money on the sale once you factored in the time that you spent nagging the sales clerk and manager for your discount.
CompUSA and Best Buy cater to rich gadget freaks and clueless newbies because THEY are the kinds of people who will pay retail price and leave the store without thinking twice about it. The math is simple here... Higher product profit margins plus lower sales staffing costs equals MORE MONEY FOR THEM. By ignoring savvy shoppers like you, they're actually increasing their profits in the long run.
You CAN get a free demo for ESX Server if you can convince the VMWare sales staff that your project has the $$$ for a license. If you don't work for the IT department for a Fortune 500 company, though, it's probably not even worth trying.
Anyway, I'm evaluating a copy for a server consolidation project, and I'm impressed so far. It seems faster and more stable than GSX, the virtual SMP and "virtual switch" technology is a great addition, and the web administration is amazingly simple to use. I'm not sure if it's worth the $8,000 license fee, but I'd recommend it anyway.
Yeah, it's only a matter of time until Wikipedia gets sued for infinging on some copyrighted materials. If someone can just cut and paste bogus information into the system, there isn't much stopping someone from cutting and pasting verbatim text from some other refrence source into it as well.
If Apple can cram a G5 motherboard and a 17 inch LCD into a case 2 inches thick, they should be able to do something simular packing job with one of their notebooks, no?
Sure, the battery life probably won't be the greatest in the world, but folks like video editors and Photoshop junkies would probably appreciate having mobile that has the power of a G5.
So, what's the hold up, Apple? Where's my G5 Powerbook?!?
The sad thing is that Microsoft Bob wasn't all that much of a failure. The product itself didn't sell all that well, but the animated assistant idea that came from it is still around in today's versions of Office and Windows.
Sure, us Slashdot folks think that it's annoying, but the newbies seem to like it.
Actually, her economic theory sounded more like Trickle Down economic theory that Reagan used in the 80's. Just like outsourcing, it does a great job of making the rich even richer by cutting their cost base and increasing their profits.
:)
Anyway, like trickle down Economics, her theory only works if the company invests the cost savings in employee training and new product development. If those software CEO's pocket the money for themselves and just buy bigger yachts and private jets with it (like they did in the 80's!), the theory falls flat and the little guy gets screwed again.
Look at the bright point... Sooner or later they'll start outsourcing economist jobs overseas as well. We'll see how this lady feels about her theory when her employer replaces her with a team of $8 an hour Economics grad students from Bangalore
I've noticed that I've never really SEEN the chef on Enterprise. Could Shatner be playing him? That might would make for a funny cameo, anyway.
I just hope that they don't go overboard and make an (Insert Van Damme movie here) style episode where the chef somehow takes over and saves the Enterprise from destruction. This whole series seems to be over the top, though, so I guess that it's bound to happen.
Funny, I've always pronounced IBM as "ibbumm". Must be a Southern thing, I guess :)