"Consider Walmart, an entire empire was built because Walmart found a way to reduce costs and pass the savings onto the customer;"
I just disagree with this premise.
I'm not a regular Wal-mart shopper, so forgive me if I don't see these savings. But every time I go to Wal-Mart, I see *higher* prices than are available elsewhere.
With one exception... when Wal-Mart has off-brands, or stuff that's made just for them, the prices can be inexpensive.
But if you take a look at items that you can compare with prices at another store.... Video Games, CD/DVD, computers, accessories, toys, electronics, televisions etc. and you compare them to prices at Bestbuy, Amazon, Circuit City, Frys, Wal-Mart prices are always at the high end. I always consider Wal-Mart the last-resort choice... I need something within the hour, otherwise, I'll order it at Amazon (overnight shipping $4). A perfect example, I needed a new headlight bulb, and Wal-Mart was close, so I went there. $10. I later check the local discount auto store....$6. I'm not angry, because the Wal-Mart was close by. I paid $4 for convenience. But cheap? Nope, the most expensive place I could go.
I'm not a Wal-Mart basher, I admire their business methods, but people think they have lower prices because Wal-Mart keeps telling them they have lower prices.
"If no one at MS can come up with a single compelling reason to get Vista other than irrelevant eye candy, then there must not be one."
There is a reason, but not for you and me.
I think the truth of the matter is that Vista is MS's bid to be the gatekeeper and tollbooth between the entertainment cartels and consumers. Everything MS has been doing in the last few years has been about locking in media to the Windows platform. The XBox line, the Zune, Vista, all point to a coherent strategy about getting a MS device everywhere, allowing you to share your media amongst those devices, locking out competitors, and then charging both consumers and media providers a fee to play in the MS ecosystem.
The reason why Vista looks less than compelling is for the obvious reason, it is less than compelling. The only reason they'll get away with it is the OEMs have no choice.
"Which is a shame because in my book he tried to do his job and dealt with an angry customer the right way."
Actually, he didn't.
Let's assume you're right and that the woman was out of line, and that the guy was 100% right.
Here's his one-time response.
"Dear :
Again, let me apologize that you feel Lycos has let you down. As stated in my previous email, this in accordance with Lyco's policy and your only option at this point is to pay $20 to have your email restored. I understand you may not find this option to your satisfaction, and I apologize but those are company rules"
And then here's the key.... don't respond any more. Even if the woman calls him the worst names possible. Just. Walk. Away.
It's nothing personal. He doesn't get it. And you look at the pictures, it's pretty obvious he's just a kid trying to do an adult's job. He hasn't been adequately trained to deal with the public.
But you cannot seriously think this is the right way to deal with a customer no matter how abusive.
When Coke was released, they stopped the old formula for a short period of time (I want to say 3-6 months). There was "old coke" speculation going on.
After it was clear that it wasn't catching on like they'd hoped, they released the previous formula under "Coke Classic" and the newer formula under "New Coke". Gradually, they make "New Coke" go away (I want to say 18-24 months).
No doubt, after all the current execs are dead, the new CEO of coke will announce "New Coke" and the cycle will repeat itself.
For all intents and purposes, there is no pirating of Windows XP. Yeah, sure, there is a handful of people who build their own and of those, a handful pirate Windows XP.
But if you have a Dell, HP, IBM, Lenovo, eMachines, regardless of what MS says about activation, that machine is licensed forever. It has to be, since none of those machines offers machines to the U.S. public without Windows. And yes, I'm aware of the Dell "N" series. I don't think it makes any difference.
That's the lie of the statement that 25% of all Windows installs are illegal. How can that be when almost every computer already comes with the license.
If you buy a PC today in the U.S. is it possible to get it without Windows?
I'm not talking legally, I mean in the sense that does anyone sell it that way? No such thing exists for Dell, HP, Gateway, Lenovo.
To me, that's what's so crazy. With the exception of guys who build their own (a percentage not worth talking about), or the small stores, virtually ever PC sold in the U.S. has a a legitimate license for Windows. Which makes me wonder who the heck this is targeted at.
The headline the other day was pretty unbelievable: about 25% of all Windows installations being non-licensed. This is clearly impossible if someone were to sit down and think about it. It would imply about 50% of non-US Windows installs are not licensed.
With due respects to these "experts", the race for videogame supremacy will be over before 2008/2009. The next generation of consoles will probably be out in 2009.
I'm really surprised the "experts" have missed the obvious point here...
I think MS released the XBox360 about a year earlier than Sony anticipated. I believe Microsoft did this to force Sony to release a console 9-12 months before they were ready. Sony essentially abandoned the very profitable PS2 way too soon to push the PS3 and compete with the Xbox360. In my opinion, Sony managed in the space of 6 months to throw away a commanding lead in videogames. Now they're in 3rd place for the "new" generation. And it's going to be a tough hole to dig out of.
You can argue that the new PS3 has wonderful technology, you can talk about the wonderful WiFi, BluRay, and all of that is true. But people are going into stores and looking at $250 for a Wii (which is still hard to get), $300 for an Xbox360 (even if that price is deceptive), and then $500/600 for the PS3. I think it's a tough sale.
And again, listening to these experts talk about how the PS3 will come from behind in 2-3 years to take over the lead... it's never been done in consoles, I doubt it will happen now.
I'm really surprised at Sony. They know as well as anyone how easily the lead in videogames can be lost. And despite all that they threw that lead away.
If I was Sony, I'd cut prices by $100-150 across the board, get the cheaper unit into stores, get some games out there and advertise the heck out of the console itself. I think they're in trouble at the moment, and the game is MS's to lose right now.
The way around this is to buy the salesmen an EVDO card and let them use that. That way you can control their access and you don't have to worry about some poor salesman endangering your network.
But that assumes price points that simply don't hold up under any kind of scrutiny. Most of it appears to be uneducated guesswork. My guess is the PS3 breaks even for Sony and allows the retailed to make some profit.
Companies like the "we are selling cheaper than it cost to make" stories because it makes some people feel like they got a real bargain. At $600 the PS3 is no bargain. They're still about $100 too high for the thing, at least compared to the competition.
It seems likely to me that MS has a trick to allow protected processes to be debugged. It's either a secret mode of Vista, or they have debug builds of Vista that allow this type of snooping to take place.
I mean, in the perfect world, you develop non-protected, and then you turn it into a protected process once it's been debugged. But back in the real world, certain programs will break and you'll only be able to debug in "protected" mode.
If Hollywood is bright, they'll just ignore this. The DVD is certainly exploitable (in fact, in hindsight, it was trivial), but last I checked they make a ton of movies from selling DVD's. I fail to see this is any different.
Well, yeah. But that's how the Rebel army defeated the British on U.S. soil in the 18th century. We didn't really defeat the British in the sense that they surrendered themselves to the Americans. They just got tired of fighting and so they left.
In the end, it's quibbling over words.
A honeybee can't defeat a man. But then why is it that when a bee buzzes around a man's head that the man runs away? Doesn't make any sense. Nonetheless, a bee can "defeat" a man by making him run away.
Windows has always done that and no one can explain why. I asked this about a month ago here on slashdot, and some MS MVP basically said I was being stupid.
But again, no one can explain why when Windows does a lot of I/O (i.e. copying from one disk to another), the computer basically becomes non-responsive.
Part of it might be a windows explorer issue, but for pete's sake... why does a modern OS have any usability issues when it's doing I/O?
It reminds me of a radio station in 20th place in the ratings, they'll pull weird stat out like... We're in 1st place for women between the ages of 48 and 52.
It's a way to rally the troops more than anything. The Zune is getting hammered like a rivet in a steel bridge.
"We'd love to play this new high def content, but the increase in cost and reliability to our customers would be significant and we think potentially makes our operating system less secure. While new content is exciting, it's not exciting enough to compromise our high technical standards nor cost our customers what we think will be significant amount of money since they'd have to replace their entire PC to make this new scheme work".
If MS said that, they'd win. You see, no new high def content will catch on unless it works in Windows. Bluetooth suffered and is irreparably harmed by MS's refusal to support it for over a year. If HD-DVD or Blu-Ray didn't run on Windows, it would be a niche product.
MS is agnostic when it comes to doing the right thing. They are a profit making machine. They must believe that embracing and enthusiastically supporting DRM is in their own corporate self interest.
And to address your point directly, Joe Blow wouldn't wonder about HD disks on his computer because he will not have heard of them because they would have failed due to lack of Windows support.
I don't think copyright gives anyone the ability to dictate a video resolution; I think copyright is about the ability to legally control copying a creative work.
The DRM controls technical aspects (such as the how/when/why the work can be viewed/heard), and that aspect is protected by DMCA, not copyright.
The problems with making DRM a concern of government is apparent to everyone with the exception of our lawmakers. I can only hope enlightenment comes to future lawmakers.
"Microsoft does not see this as being their battle to fight, they just want their customers to have a good experience"
Nonsense. Doesn't sell to the end customer; we don't buy Vista. That battle was fought 12 years ago and it's over. All the OEM's must have Windows on their PC, and they must have whatever Vista MS tells them to have.
The customers of MS are the content producers. These new content restrictions are music to the ears of Hollywood. The more we see articles like this, the better, because it reaffirms to the MPAA members that their content is "safe" when it plays through MS.
You didn't think trusted computing was for your or my benefit did you?
Slashdot Mirror
"Consider Walmart, an entire empire was built because Walmart found a way to reduce costs and pass the savings onto the customer;"
I just disagree with this premise.
I'm not a regular Wal-mart shopper, so forgive me if I don't see these savings. But every time I go to Wal-Mart, I see *higher* prices than are available elsewhere.
With one exception... when Wal-Mart has off-brands, or stuff that's made just for them, the prices can be inexpensive.
But if you take a look at items that you can compare with prices at another store.... Video Games, CD/DVD, computers, accessories, toys, electronics, televisions etc. and you compare them to prices at Bestbuy, Amazon, Circuit City, Frys, Wal-Mart prices are always at the high end. I always consider Wal-Mart the last-resort choice... I need something within the hour, otherwise, I'll order it at Amazon (overnight shipping $4). A perfect example, I needed a new headlight bulb, and Wal-Mart was close, so I went there. $10. I later check the local discount auto store....$6. I'm not angry, because the Wal-Mart was close by. I paid $4 for convenience. But cheap? Nope, the most expensive place I could go.
I'm not a Wal-Mart basher, I admire their business methods, but people think they have lower prices because Wal-Mart keeps telling them they have lower prices.
"If no one at MS can come up with a single compelling reason to get Vista other than irrelevant eye candy, then there must not be one."
There is a reason, but not for you and me.
I think the truth of the matter is that Vista is MS's bid to be the gatekeeper and tollbooth between the entertainment cartels and consumers. Everything MS has been doing in the last few years has been about locking in media to the Windows platform. The XBox line, the Zune, Vista, all point to a coherent strategy about getting a MS device everywhere, allowing you to share your media amongst those devices, locking out competitors, and then charging both consumers and media providers a fee to play in the MS ecosystem.
The reason why Vista looks less than compelling is for the obvious reason, it is less than compelling. The only reason they'll get away with it is the OEMs have no choice.
I get funny feeling Vista will be MS's Waterloo.
"just the sober realization and acceptance that it's an OS with the widest hardware support"
/ 03/0110248
Apparently Vista doesn't have wide hardware support quite yet:
http://hardware.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/02
"Which is a shame because in my book he tried to do his job and dealt with an angry customer the right way."
Actually, he didn't.
Let's assume you're right and that the woman was out of line, and that the guy was 100% right.
Here's his one-time response.
"Dear :
Again, let me apologize that you feel Lycos has let you down. As stated in my previous email, this in accordance with Lyco's policy and your only option at this point is to pay $20 to have your email restored. I understand you may not find this option to your satisfaction, and I apologize but those are company rules"
And then here's the key.... don't respond any more. Even if the woman calls him the worst names possible. Just. Walk. Away.
It's nothing personal. He doesn't get it. And you look at the pictures, it's pretty obvious he's just a kid trying to do an adult's job. He hasn't been adequately trained to deal with the public.
But you cannot seriously think this is the right way to deal with a customer no matter how abusive.
"* Third-generation GPU architecture built for Windows Vista "
Just because it was built for it doesn't mean it will.
I mean, Bruce Springsteen was born to run, but how often do you see him jogging around?
It's not that. The platform looks to me as a way to cram a DRM'd platform down everybody's throat with no upside as a user.
I mean, why do I want to switch from XP? What does it get me? MS hasn't begun to answer that question.
Close.
When Coke was released, they stopped the old formula for a short period of time (I want to say 3-6 months). There was "old coke" speculation going on.
After it was clear that it wasn't catching on like they'd hoped, they released the previous formula under "Coke Classic" and the newer formula under "New Coke". Gradually, they make "New Coke" go away (I want to say 18-24 months).
No doubt, after all the current execs are dead, the new CEO of coke will announce "New Coke" and the cycle will repeat itself.
"think Tower Records suffered from the big boxes like Walmart and Best Buy flexing their corporate muscle more than online piracy."
Not to mention Sony/BMG selling music direct to consumers through their club for $6-7/CD. I'll bet Tower paid more than that wholesale for their CD's.
So the choice is free (illegal), discount (direct), discount (online), discount (walmart), full price (retail/tower).
Is it any wonder that fewer people choose to pay full price at Tower? It's the worst possible choice.
You appear to have sent a picture of Iggy Pop by mistake.
For all intents and purposes, there is no pirating of Windows XP. Yeah, sure, there is a handful of people who build their own and of those, a handful pirate Windows XP.
But if you have a Dell, HP, IBM, Lenovo, eMachines, regardless of what MS says about activation, that machine is licensed forever. It has to be, since none of those machines offers machines to the U.S. public without Windows. And yes, I'm aware of the Dell "N" series. I don't think it makes any difference.
That's the lie of the statement that 25% of all Windows installs are illegal. How can that be when almost every computer already comes with the license.
I never quite understand that part.
If you buy a PC today in the U.S. is it possible to get it without Windows?
I'm not talking legally, I mean in the sense that does anyone sell it that way? No such thing exists for Dell, HP, Gateway, Lenovo.
To me, that's what's so crazy. With the exception of guys who build their own (a percentage not worth talking about), or the small stores, virtually ever PC sold in the U.S. has a a legitimate license for Windows. Which makes me wonder who the heck this is targeted at.
The headline the other day was pretty unbelievable: about 25% of all Windows installations being non-licensed. This is clearly impossible if someone were to sit down and think about it. It would imply about 50% of non-US Windows installs are not licensed.
With due respects to these "experts", the race for videogame supremacy will be over before 2008/2009. The next generation of consoles will probably be out in 2009.
I'm really surprised the "experts" have missed the obvious point here...
I think MS released the XBox360 about a year earlier than Sony anticipated. I believe Microsoft did this to force Sony to release a console 9-12 months before they were ready. Sony essentially abandoned the very profitable PS2 way too soon to push the PS3 and compete with the Xbox360. In my opinion, Sony managed in the space of 6 months to throw away a commanding lead in videogames. Now they're in 3rd place for the "new" generation. And it's going to be a tough hole to dig out of.
You can argue that the new PS3 has wonderful technology, you can talk about the wonderful WiFi, BluRay, and all of that is true. But people are going into stores and looking at $250 for a Wii (which is still hard to get), $300 for an Xbox360 (even if that price is deceptive), and then $500/600 for the PS3. I think it's a tough sale.
And again, listening to these experts talk about how the PS3 will come from behind in 2-3 years to take over the lead... it's never been done in consoles, I doubt it will happen now.
I'm really surprised at Sony. They know as well as anyone how easily the lead in videogames can be lost. And despite all that they threw that lead away.
If I was Sony, I'd cut prices by $100-150 across the board, get the cheaper unit into stores, get some games out there and advertise the heck out of the console itself. I think they're in trouble at the moment, and the game is MS's to lose right now.
The way around this is to buy the salesmen an EVDO card and let them use that. That way you can control their access and you don't have to worry about some poor salesman endangering your network.
1) Hollywood says Canada is responsible for 50% of all piracy.
2) So to "punish" the Canadians, they'll take away the legal avenue to purchase movies in Canada.
3) And this leads to....????? Profit???? Less Piracy?????
Presumably, the Canadian legislature will ask similar questions?
"you know: the people that type in their search queries in their browser URL field because they can't tell the difference."
You know: if you do that in Firefox 2.0, that's the fastest way to do a google search. Try it!
So I guess those people are pretty smart after all...
"Everyone knows that, even at $600, Sony is selling the PS3 far below cost. "
c osts-900-sez-merrill-lynch-mob/
We don't know that.
We know about this:
http://www.engadget.com/2006/02/18/playstation-3-
But that assumes price points that simply don't hold up under any kind of scrutiny. Most of it appears to be uneducated guesswork. My guess is the PS3 breaks even for Sony and allows the retailed to make some profit.
Companies like the "we are selling cheaper than it cost to make" stories because it makes some people feel like they got a real bargain. At $600 the PS3 is no bargain. They're still about $100 too high for the thing, at least compared to the competition.
It seems likely to me that MS has a trick to allow protected processes to be debugged. It's either a secret mode of Vista, or they have debug builds of Vista that allow this type of snooping to take place.
I mean, in the perfect world, you develop non-protected, and then you turn it into a protected process once it's been debugged. But back in the real world, certain programs will break and you'll only be able to debug in "protected" mode.
If Hollywood is bright, they'll just ignore this. The DVD is certainly exploitable (in fact, in hindsight, it was trivial), but last I checked they make a ton of movies from selling DVD's. I fail to see this is any different.
"What makes second life, or any other currency, any different?"
Go down to your local 7-11 with second life money and let me know how that works out buying a slurpee and chili dog...
Well, yeah. But that's how the Rebel army defeated the British on U.S. soil in the 18th century. We didn't really defeat the British in the sense that they surrendered themselves to the Americans. They just got tired of fighting and so they left.
In the end, it's quibbling over words.
A honeybee can't defeat a man. But then why is it that when a bee buzzes around a man's head that the man runs away? Doesn't make any sense. Nonetheless, a bee can "defeat" a man by making him run away.
Windows has always done that and no one can explain why. I asked this about a month ago here on slashdot, and some MS MVP basically said I was being stupid.
But again, no one can explain why when Windows does a lot of I/O (i.e. copying from one disk to another), the computer basically becomes non-responsive.
Part of it might be a windows explorer issue, but for pete's sake... why does a modern OS have any usability issues when it's doing I/O?
It's the same reason that when a professional sports team wins, the people who follow the team feel like they "won" as well.
I enjoy sports and macs as much as the next guy, but I've never quite gotten that attitude.
It reminds me of a radio station in 20th place in the ratings, they'll pull weird stat out like... We're in 1st place for women between the ages of 48 and 52.
It's a way to rally the troops more than anything. The Zune is getting hammered like a rivet in a steel bridge.
If MS simply said
"We'd love to play this new high def content, but the increase in cost and reliability to our customers would be significant and we think potentially makes our operating system less secure. While new content is exciting, it's not exciting enough to compromise our high technical standards nor cost our customers what we think will be significant amount of money since they'd have to replace their entire PC to make this new scheme work".
If MS said that, they'd win. You see, no new high def content will catch on unless it works in Windows. Bluetooth suffered and is irreparably harmed by MS's refusal to support it for over a year. If HD-DVD or Blu-Ray didn't run on Windows, it would be a niche product.
MS is agnostic when it comes to doing the right thing. They are a profit making machine. They must believe that embracing and enthusiastically supporting DRM is in their own corporate self interest.
And to address your point directly, Joe Blow wouldn't wonder about HD disks on his computer because he will not have heard of them because they would have failed due to lack of Windows support.
I don't think copyright gives anyone the ability to dictate a video resolution; I think copyright is about the ability to legally control copying a creative work.
The DRM controls technical aspects (such as the how/when/why the work can be viewed/heard), and that aspect is protected by DMCA, not copyright.
The problems with making DRM a concern of government is apparent to everyone with the exception of our lawmakers. I can only hope enlightenment comes to future lawmakers.
"Microsoft does not see this as being their battle to fight, they just want their customers to have a good experience"
Nonsense. Doesn't sell to the end customer; we don't buy Vista. That battle was fought 12 years ago and it's over. All the OEM's must have Windows on their PC, and they must have whatever Vista MS tells them to have.
The customers of MS are the content producers. These new content restrictions are music to the ears of Hollywood. The more we see articles like this, the better, because it reaffirms to the MPAA members that their content is "safe" when it plays through MS.
You didn't think trusted computing was for your or my benefit did you?