This is more a guess than any kind of a formal prediction, but look at how the market has behaved. As far back as I can remember, there's been 2 popular systems (usually Nintendo and Sega, but more recently Nintendo and Sony, and currently perhaps Sony and Sega). It seems to me to be pretty likely that that's just the number that the market can comfortably hold, any more will simply not build a big enough fan base.
The analysis is complicated somewhat by the fact that the systems aren't coming out all within a year like they used to. Who knows if people will to buy a new system in another year? My guess is no, I think that by being first Sega and Sony will have too big of a market share to be displaced by the time Nintendo and Microsoft finally get their products launched. But I'm not an industry expert, obviously. I guess I'll stop speculating and just wait and see what happens.
Really, love 'em or hate 'em, this is a goddamn long time for them to have to wait. Why not just automatically approve them and then split them up if it starts looking like a problem? I suppose the problem with that is that as Microsoft is demonstrating, it takes the courts even LONGER to break companies up.
I know they want to be careful, but I think most of us could come up with a fairly well educated opinion in a matter of hours. In a matter of days, we'd be able to come up with a perfectly reasonable final decision. The months that they've been taking is simply absurd.
As a side note, it looks like the Washington Post is taking lessons from Slashdot in journalism. Note the repetition of the second and third paragraphs.
I know some ACs have already said this, but just so you know it's not a troll, I also went and downloaded it (pain in the ass, had to boot into windows, then REBOOT windows:), and the image is legit.
Now my question is, what the hell? How can they restrict use of something they don't own? I guess they own the format, and hence the file itself, but that doesn't let you restrict what people can do with the intellectual content. I don't get it.
Apple's business is based around their UI. Sure, they get a few people using their computers on a basis Photoshop performance, but 99% of users are there because it's percieved as user-friendly.
If someone copies their design, then they really don't have a heck of a lot to sell to people. It's unfortunate that they feel a need to protect their design so rabidly, because of course a UI is more than just a color scheme, but if you live inside a company with that kind of a business scheme, your top worry is that someone eles is going to become a pretty as you, and so keeping people from using their color schemes is just one of the logical things to do, from their POV.
People keep arguing that Moore's Law only applies to transistor density, without considering that this is not a scientific law. The point is, Moore was observing that in the case of transistor density, astoundingly high exponential growth could be maintained over a long period of time.
Regardless of the specific case Moore was observing, his "law" can be generalized to any number of different technologies. Bandwidth, RAM, storage space, and clockspeed all appear to follow similar curves, though the exact amount of time it takes each to double (six months, 18 months, 2 years, etc.) may be somewhat different, the fact is that "Moore's law" is more than simply a statement about transistor density. It is a general rule of thumb that may be adapted, in some form or another, to fit many developing computer technologies.
The MS case is a LEGAL case, or hadn't you noticed. If the president could exert significant influence on legal proceedings, then how the hell do you explain the Supreme Court siding with Bush, despite the Democrat in the White House, or for that matter the Florida Supreme Court siding with Gore despite Bush's brother in the Governor's Mansion? This case is out of Bush's hands. Unless he pushes a bill through congress which does away with anti-monopoly laws (hardly seems likely given the make-up of congress), he cannot do anything to impede the case.
Once, in the earlier days of software, a company created a totally new type of program. I've forgotten what it was now, it had a very specialized application, but anyway, since there really was no product like it, they had no idea what to charge, whether it should be $1 or $1 million. So when they'd pitch it to companies, the cost conversation would go something like this:
Exec: Great, we could use this, how much is it?
Sales Rep: Forty dollars...
At this point they would watch for a reaction, if the execs still looked interested,
Sales Rep:...per unit...
Still interested?
Sales Rep:...per day.
In my ideal world, you'd be allowed to accept banishment from your country to any country in which what you had done was not against the law. I think it would have the effect of doing away with a lot of ridiculous victimless "crimes." I'm sure places like Columbia would think "America already knows we make drugs, why not officially acknowledge it and get a bunch of wealthy educated coke-addicts to come to our country as an alternative to serving jail time?" Hell, as it is, I bet Amsterdam makes a fucking fortune in tourist money simply off of people who like the idea of smoking pot legally for a week or so.
I guess you're entitled to your opinion, but this kind of attitude strikes me as incredibly insensitive. It's tough to get good at computer security, and new exploits are discovered all the time. It's easy to forget to close a window. One should always take whatever steps possible to protect oneself, but that doesn't make the criminal any less evil for taking advantage of someone who did an imperfect job of it.
A lot of these "white hat hacker" supporters seem to think it's perfectly okay to get access to systems you're not supposed to have access to. It's not. It's directly analagous to breaking into someone's house. Even if you don't do any harm, it's at the very least an invasion of their privacy.
As for the "moron leaving his window open" bit, do you belive anyone who doesn't buy an car alarm should get his cd-player stolen? Where do you draw the line? No matter how easy it is to commit the crime, it's still a crime, and ought to be punished accordingly.
Then again, I am not a fan of jail per se anyway. I don't think that even a week in jail is warrented for almost any crime (including murder). Tho, its mostly because I have a problem with putting people in cages, against their will.
So you would want to do, what exactly? Spank him? Actually, I've heard caning works quite well for Singapore... Seriously, for punishing crime you've got two options, pain or containment. Pain has the advantage of being better at discouragement, while containment has the advantage of physically stopping people from committing crimes for a certain amount of time.
Of course, there's always the "psychological counselling" option, but that's just bullshit. First, there's lots of people who commit crimes who aren't messed up in any way. They just don't care much for others. Counselling may help some people get over their surpressed memories of being beaten as children, but it won't help people who just honestly don't feel bad about messing with other people's personal property. Second, counselling is not a deterrent. Even if it were effective, it would only help after the crime had been committed.
As for stopping it by removing any "profit" incentives, profit is not merely monetary. This guy probably didn't do this for the money, he probably just gets a thrill out of annoying and cheating people, same way trolls on slashdot get off by annoying people.
Commercial email is required to have a real, working unsubscribe link, just as telemarketers have to stop calling if you tell them to take you off their lists. So yeah, most of that spam actually is against the law.
Fer Chrissake, listen to yourselves. Does no one here understand that this is a MAXIMUM penalty? The whole reason behind pleading guilty was so he'd get off with less. I doubt he'll be in jail longer than one year, assuming good behavior and whatnot. This hardly seems like an inappropriate punishment for breaking into a computer system and using it for illicit purposes.
In fact, the sympathetic response by many of those on Slashdot suggests to me that maybe punishments need to be made stronger in order to firmly establish that breaking into someone's computer is NO DIFFERENT from breaking into someone's house. If you want to take a look at someone's house, and slip a note in their mailbox if you notice they've left a window open, well that's one thing. If you crawl through the window and take a look around, even if you don't do any damage, that's a problem.
The only two lines I can consistently remember from that song are the first one, and "the sun and you and me, and all the stars that we can see, are travelling at a million miles a daaaaay! something something something in a galexy we call the Milky Way." *sigh* It's been too long since I last saw Monty Python movies.
Bacteria can survive astonishingly low temperatures. They've found strains that can be subjected to temperatures approaching absolute zero, and the suckers just go into hibernation. But, nothing can survive boiling temperatures. That's why you cook food. That's also why you get fevers when you're sick, your body subjects you to temperatures that are about as high as you can stand before you die in the hopes that the bacteria will be just a little less hardy.
Now, to the best of my knowledge, no killer bacterial strains have yet shown up in fish, so you're probably pretty safe. But, one day something like samonella or mad cow disease could show up in salmon, and then say bye bye to sushi. Until then, the worst you're likely to suffer is an upset stomach.
What can I say? I knew there was a sequel, and I never played it, but I knew I had heard of it, and that sounded familiar. Still, the point remains the same.
That wasn't meant as a jab against sushi. I like sushi too. I happen to prefer kappa, ebi and California rolls, none of which contain raw fish, but still, that's just a matter of personal taste. I was merely observing that they, the Japanese, eat plenty of other foods that are probably just as dangerous as fugu. For that matter, rare hamburgers can have bacterial infestations too (steaks just need to be cooked on the outside, but ground meat has to be cooked all the way through).
We're standing on a planet that's evolving and revolving, and going at 900 miles an hour...
My (very approximate) calculations show that the planet's travelling at about 270,000 miles per hour, 300 times faster than the earth, if my Monty Python is correct.
MY calculations are:
2*6,000,000*PI = 38,000,000 kilometers
38,000,000/72 = 530,000 kph
530,000/2 = 270,000 mph
270,000/900 = 300 times faster than Earth
Only about an average of 1 or 2 people per year die in Japan from eating improperly prepared fugu, and all of these are from those black market places. More than that number of Japanese people probably die just from the fact that they're eating raw fish all the time:)
Slashdot Mirror
At least he's consistent.
The analysis is complicated somewhat by the fact that the systems aren't coming out all within a year like they used to. Who knows if people will to buy a new system in another year? My guess is no, I think that by being first Sega and Sony will have too big of a market share to be displaced by the time Nintendo and Microsoft finally get their products launched. But I'm not an industry expert, obviously. I guess I'll stop speculating and just wait and see what happens.
I know they want to be careful, but I think most of us could come up with a fairly well educated opinion in a matter of hours. In a matter of days, we'd be able to come up with a perfectly reasonable final decision. The months that they've been taking is simply absurd.
As a side note, it looks like the Washington Post is taking lessons from Slashdot in journalism. Note the repetition of the second and third paragraphs.
We'd be able to simulate whole wars with each person playing an individual soldier. How cool would THAT be?
You have to hit the menu button in the lower right, then hit info, then permissions.
Now my question is, what the hell? How can they restrict use of something they don't own? I guess they own the format, and hence the file itself, but that doesn't let you restrict what people can do with the intellectual content. I don't get it.
If someone copies their design, then they really don't have a heck of a lot to sell to people. It's unfortunate that they feel a need to protect their design so rabidly, because of course a UI is more than just a color scheme, but if you live inside a company with that kind of a business scheme, your top worry is that someone eles is going to become a pretty as you, and so keeping people from using their color schemes is just one of the logical things to do, from their POV.
Regardless of the specific case Moore was observing, his "law" can be generalized to any number of different technologies. Bandwidth, RAM, storage space, and clockspeed all appear to follow similar curves, though the exact amount of time it takes each to double (six months, 18 months, 2 years, etc.) may be somewhat different, the fact is that "Moore's law" is more than simply a statement about transistor density. It is a general rule of thumb that may be adapted, in some form or another, to fit many developing computer technologies.
The MS case is a LEGAL case, or hadn't you noticed. If the president could exert significant influence on legal proceedings, then how the hell do you explain the Supreme Court siding with Bush, despite the Democrat in the White House, or for that matter the Florida Supreme Court siding with Gore despite Bush's brother in the Governor's Mansion? This case is out of Bush's hands. Unless he pushes a bill through congress which does away with anti-monopoly laws (hardly seems likely given the make-up of congress), he cannot do anything to impede the case.
Exec: Great, we could use this, how much is it? ...per unit... ...per day.
Sales Rep: Forty dollars...
At this point they would watch for a reaction, if the execs still looked interested,
Sales Rep:
Still interested?
Sales Rep:
In my ideal world, you'd be allowed to accept banishment from your country to any country in which what you had done was not against the law. I think it would have the effect of doing away with a lot of ridiculous victimless "crimes." I'm sure places like Columbia would think "America already knows we make drugs, why not officially acknowledge it and get a bunch of wealthy educated coke-addicts to come to our country as an alternative to serving jail time?" Hell, as it is, I bet Amsterdam makes a fucking fortune in tourist money simply off of people who like the idea of smoking pot legally for a week or so.
I guess you're entitled to your opinion, but this kind of attitude strikes me as incredibly insensitive. It's tough to get good at computer security, and new exploits are discovered all the time. It's easy to forget to close a window. One should always take whatever steps possible to protect oneself, but that doesn't make the criminal any less evil for taking advantage of someone who did an imperfect job of it.
Sure, I expect the funky shops on the Castro to carry male thongs, but it's a bit more surreal to walk into a respectable deparment store and see it.
As for the "moron leaving his window open" bit, do you belive anyone who doesn't buy an car alarm should get his cd-player stolen? Where do you draw the line? No matter how easy it is to commit the crime, it's still a crime, and ought to be punished accordingly.
So you would want to do, what exactly? Spank him? Actually, I've heard caning works quite well for Singapore... Seriously, for punishing crime you've got two options, pain or containment. Pain has the advantage of being better at discouragement, while containment has the advantage of physically stopping people from committing crimes for a certain amount of time.
Of course, there's always the "psychological counselling" option, but that's just bullshit. First, there's lots of people who commit crimes who aren't messed up in any way. They just don't care much for others. Counselling may help some people get over their surpressed memories of being beaten as children, but it won't help people who just honestly don't feel bad about messing with other people's personal property. Second, counselling is not a deterrent. Even if it were effective, it would only help after the crime had been committed.
As for stopping it by removing any "profit" incentives, profit is not merely monetary. This guy probably didn't do this for the money, he probably just gets a thrill out of annoying and cheating people, same way trolls on slashdot get off by annoying people.
Commercial email is required to have a real, working unsubscribe link, just as telemarketers have to stop calling if you tell them to take you off their lists. So yeah, most of that spam actually is against the law.
In fact, the sympathetic response by many of those on Slashdot suggests to me that maybe punishments need to be made stronger in order to firmly establish that breaking into someone's computer is NO DIFFERENT from breaking into someone's house. If you want to take a look at someone's house, and slip a note in their mailbox if you notice they've left a window open, well that's one thing. If you crawl through the window and take a look around, even if you don't do any damage, that's a problem.
Here in San Francisco, I swear to God, Macy's sells male thongs.
"But sir, it's just one wafer thin mint..."
Now, to the best of my knowledge, no killer bacterial strains have yet shown up in fish, so you're probably pretty safe. But, one day something like samonella or mad cow disease could show up in salmon, and then say bye bye to sushi. Until then, the worst you're likely to suffer is an upset stomach.
It's called Slashdot. That's just one of the advantages of being open source, ANYONE can contribute FUD :)
What can I say? I knew there was a sequel, and I never played it, but I knew I had heard of it, and that sounded familiar. Still, the point remains the same.
That wasn't meant as a jab against sushi. I like sushi too. I happen to prefer kappa, ebi and California rolls, none of which contain raw fish, but still, that's just a matter of personal taste. I was merely observing that they, the Japanese, eat plenty of other foods that are probably just as dangerous as fugu. For that matter, rare hamburgers can have bacterial infestations too (steaks just need to be cooked on the outside, but ground meat has to be cooked all the way through).
My (very approximate) calculations show that the planet's travelling at about 270,000 miles per hour, 300 times faster than the earth, if my Monty Python is correct.
MY calculations are:
2*6,000,000*PI = 38,000,000 kilometers
38,000,000/72 = 530,000 kph
530,000/2 = 270,000 mph
270,000/900 = 300 times faster than Earth
Only about an average of 1 or 2 people per year die in Japan from eating improperly prepared fugu, and all of these are from those black market places. More than that number of Japanese people probably die just from the fact that they're eating raw fish all the time :)