I think all these guys talking about how much Microsoft, or Nintendo or Sony is losing are repeating stuff that they've heard with no independant confirmation. How could they? With the exception of a handful of managers at MS, who could possibly know what MS "loses" on the hardware? Nobody. And MS or Sony isn't going to tell a reporter the truth.
I happen to think that it costs about $100 to make an X-Box, but MS "leaks" these loss numbers to make it seem as if buying the console is close to theft
(e.g. "Hey bobby joe, I got me a X-Box. I only paid $200, but it costs MS $350 to make. Boy, ain't they dumb! Mebbe I'll buy 2 more 'cause I earn $150 for every X Box I buy")
Really? Can you show me the document that says you'll get anything back from the money you and your employer "invested" on your behalf in FICA?
You can't.
Congress might fold it (unlikely), change the eligibility requirements (likely), change the benefits (certain). Anything could change, and specifically, you aren't guaranteed anything other than you have to pay
So FICA has an IOU from the treasury, but your name isn't involved anywhere. So YOU aren't owed anything.
But you OWE 15.4% on all your wages to this mythical retirement plan. Fortunately, your employer is NICE enough to pick up 1/2 the tab.
If there were no PC's, this scheme might work because there is no "untrusted" installed base.
But since there are already billions of PCs out there already that can't or won't work with this scheme, they it can't be adopted because a merchant or web site owner would risk locking out huge portions of their customers.
This reminds me of the whole Passport authentication scheme that had everyone in an uproar last year. In the end it amounted to NOTHING because it never had critical mass.
I agree with most of the analysis, I just don't think anyone has enough control over the computing ecosphere to make this work.
"On the contrary, they've gone out of their way to make sure that folks know they don't give a damn about that polycarbonate disc you've got there, they're talking about what's encoded on it."
Lets assume you've never been to slashdot and don't know IP from TCP/IP.
Okay, pick up a music CD in the music store (easier, find the closest one to you).
Read all the fine print. ALL the fine print.
Tell me where they've made it clear that its not my property. Guess what...you can't.
There is no EULA on any of the music CD's I have. A reasonable person would say they own that CD and can do with it as they please (within the limits of the law, obviously).
Now, the LAW doesn't say anything about not owning the CD and the music on it; that's a creation of the record companies. But they haven't made that clear.
THEREFORE, as far as I know, I own the rights to do with this CD as I please, including selling it to anyone I want without any special encumberances by the copyright holder.
My guess is this song has been fingerprinted (md5 or something slightly more subtle) and they're going to watch the P2P networks to assess how quickly this will be "shared".
That's the info they're looking for, in my opinion.
Because if they really wanted to prove something, they'd choose a band or act that people have heard of.
I bought a copy in...probably '95, and I still have the CD.
I think Office 95 is great for use with older laptops. Its disk requirements are very small compared with '97, 2000, and XP/2002, and it seems to be quick and fast.
If you can track down a copy at a hamfest, its a good product.
Technically, I got Suse 7.3 loaded, but it could never recognize the root password I put in when I installed it. Thinking I mistyped it, I reinstalled. Nope. Something about the keyboard driver is my guess, but it wasn't worth the hassle. VMWare 3.x seems to be better at Linux for me.
I don't believe these emulators take advantage of multiple CPU's, so he is using effectively a 533mhz Celeron. That's a little slow for these emulators.
He states that neither supports sound cards. This is not correct. VPC has the edge for this function in my opinion, although VMWare isn't bad.
Here's what I've learned. Virtual PC is your best bet for running virual Windows based machines. It runs them very well. On the other hand, I can't get any distro of Linux to fully load under VPC. That's not saying you can't, but each one crashes or freezes at some point. The real strength of VPC is that it emulates known, common hardware, so it provides an easier environment to set up in the emulated machine.
By contrast, VMWare is mediocre at providing an environment for Windows. It will do it, but the non-standard video card it emulates is a huge pain in the rear. However, VMWare runs Linux distro's pretty well. It emulates different types of hardware, and the options are impressive.
I wouldn't rate one better than the other, they're both very good and some things, and very average to poor at others.
However, you should buy one of these tools for testing out new software. You can load software inside the virtual machine, test it (for trojans, spyware, whatever), and then when you're done, you either blow the changes away or keep them in you virtual machine. The virutal disks themselves are disk files, so they provide an excellent testing environment because they are effectively immune from user changes to the environment (burn the hard drive image to a CD, and pass it out to the testers with VPC on their drive). It allows you to test on dozens of machines without owning dozens of machines.
"Is any of this due to people switching to the open-source alternatives?"
I think its more complicated than that. Oracle changed its pricing model about 2-3 years ago that was effectively for many customers a huge price rise.
At that time, IBM's UDB and MS's SQL Server suddenly because reasonable alternatives to Oracle.
Oracle has essentially withdrawn that price increase, but I think the damage has been done. Oracle has mindshare and good performance, but I'm not sure that's enough to overcome a the financial side of the equation for Oracle. Time will tell.
Plus...I contend the market for high-end relational database is relatively small anyway. So its possible the world doesn't need any more 6 figure databases.
I want all my fair rights use of anything sent into my home as I do today with analog.
If not, I'm not interested. I'm not going to buy a new TV, a decoder, a new VCR, a new *everything else* and then be saddled with a restriction that I can't tape what the Networks don't want me to.
I mean, welcome to 1969.
Vote with your wallets folks. That will kill all this nonsense faster than any government decree.
"All they want is to add to their 100GB collection of mp3's"
Yea, in an mp3 format limited to 128 bits and sounding like they were encoded underwater. The sound quality of mp3's from Kazaa is roughly that of FM radio.
These people would save us all a lot of bandwidth if they just recorded the songs from the radio.
Celine Dion has been one of the most profitable acts for Sony over the past few years. They generally reach a point where they extract a much better deal with the record company than a start-up garage band.
Do you seriously think an act of this earning potential has no say on the use of copy protection from their label? I don't think so. In fact, an artist like this probably thinks of earnings potential as one of their primary motivators, so they're more likely to use something like this if they think it will net them a few bucks.
Then when you want to run a program you're not sure about, you copy a disk partition file, boot it and then install then install the suspicious program. If it works fine, and you're satisfied, you can load it on your host (real) PC. If not, you wipe the parition and you start all over again.
There are so many advantages to this, its hard to believe more people don't use it.
But after using for about 1/2 an hour, I'd say this thing is pretty impressive.
Just a couple of notes:
1) I find the interface a little (stress "little")clunky, but I'm a long time Office user. But I'd get used to it in about a week.
2) The Document default views are awful. I'm going to see if I can mess with this to make it more livable for me.
3) It opens Office XP Spreadsheets, Documents, and Powerpoints pretty well. I haven't thrown the kitchen sink at it though.
4) 1/2 hour isn't long enough to judge stability. But I haven't had any crashes or oddities yet.
This is a good package so far as I've looked. I'm going to try to work in it for the next few days and see if its good enough to recommend to relatives who need MS Office compatibility.
I worked for a company a long time ago that paid serious money for the following slogan:
"We make every bit count"
After a few years, they paid even more money for:
"Locked on the leading edge"
The corporate mindset can be simultaneously wonderous and scary.
Re:Relay-testing
on
ORBZ Shuts Down
·
· Score: 4, Insightful
You're right. But on the other hand, once you understand what you're doing is crashing servers, you should probably either (a) fix what you're doing, even though its not your fault (b) refuse to test domino servers until they get it fixed.
Or both.
But to say "Gee, we crash Lotus server, too bad for them" is really poor manners.
Mind you, it isn't criminal in a sane world, but it is thoughtless.
Slashdot Mirror
Sugar in the gas tank is not a big deal. More of a nuisance.
b ru ary/02.html
http://cartalk.cars.com/Columns/Archive/2001/Fe
What's more interesting to me is the MPAA didn't WANT to diversify, they courts essentially forced them into that position.
Maybe the RIAA could learn something there.
Why would you need to be reachable most of the day?
I consider it a blessing that I'm unreachable while commuting. I don't give out my cell phone number because I don't want anyone to call me.
My favorite is watching people talking on their cell phone as they walk down the street. The conversation is always like this:
"...no no, not doing anything, just walking down the street...nope, in the city. Nope, nothing going on. How about you? So, what's going on..."
Complete inanity.
I guess if you pay for 9000 minutes a month, you're going to use them no matter how ridiculous it is.
I think all these guys talking about how much Microsoft, or Nintendo or Sony is losing are repeating stuff that they've heard with no independant confirmation. How could they? With the exception of a handful of managers at MS, who could possibly know what MS "loses" on the hardware? Nobody. And MS or Sony isn't going to tell a reporter the truth.
I happen to think that it costs about $100 to make an X-Box, but MS "leaks" these loss numbers to make it seem as if buying the console is close to theft
(e.g. "Hey bobby joe, I got me a X-Box. I only paid $200, but it costs MS $350 to make. Boy, ain't they dumb! Mebbe I'll buy 2 more 'cause I earn $150 for every X Box I buy")
"This is untrue"
Really? Can you show me the document that says you'll get anything back from the money you and your employer "invested" on your behalf in FICA?
You can't.
Congress might fold it (unlikely), change the eligibility requirements (likely), change the benefits (certain). Anything could change, and specifically, you aren't guaranteed anything other than you have to pay
So FICA has an IOU from the treasury, but your name isn't involved anywhere. So YOU aren't owed anything.
But you OWE 15.4% on all your wages to this mythical retirement plan. Fortunately, your employer is NICE enough to pick up 1/2 the tab.
I think its a chicken or egg problem.
If there were no PC's, this scheme might work because there is no "untrusted" installed base.
But since there are already billions of PCs out there already that can't or won't work with this scheme, they it can't be adopted because a merchant or web site owner would risk locking out huge portions of their customers.
This reminds me of the whole Passport authentication scheme that had everyone in an uproar last year. In the end it amounted to NOTHING because it never had critical mass.
I agree with most of the analysis, I just don't think anyone has enough control over the computing ecosphere to make this work.
"On the contrary, they've gone out of their way to make sure that folks know they don't give a damn about that polycarbonate disc you've got there, they're talking about what's encoded on it."
Lets assume you've never been to slashdot and don't know IP from TCP/IP.
Okay, pick up a music CD in the music store (easier, find the closest one to you).
Read all the fine print. ALL the fine print.
Tell me where they've made it clear that its not my property. Guess what...you can't.
There is no EULA on any of the music CD's I have. A reasonable person would say they own that CD and can do with it as they please (within the limits of the law, obviously).
Now, the LAW doesn't say anything about not owning the CD and the music on it; that's a creation of the record companies. But they haven't made that clear.
THEREFORE, as far as I know, I own the rights to do with this CD as I please, including selling it to anyone I want without any special encumberances by the copyright holder.
Seriously, where have they made it clear?
Notice it says they hope to get the price below $23.
Hello?
CD's cost double what they should, its a primary cause of piracy, and the record company's response is to raise prices another 50%?
The shareholders show skewer the guys who run these companies.
My guess is this song has been fingerprinted (md5 or something slightly more subtle) and they're going to watch the P2P networks to assess how quickly this will be "shared".
That's the info they're looking for, in my opinion.
Because if they really wanted to prove something, they'd choose a band or act that people have heard of.
I bought a copy in...probably '95, and I still have the CD.
I think Office 95 is great for use with older laptops. Its disk requirements are very small compared with '97, 2000, and XP/2002, and it seems to be quick and fast.
If you can track down a copy at a hamfest, its a good product.
Technically, I got Suse 7.3 loaded, but it could never recognize the root password I put in when I installed it. Thinking I mistyped it, I reinstalled. Nope. Something about the keyboard driver is my guess, but it wasn't worth the hassle. VMWare 3.x seems to be better at Linux for me.
I don't believe these emulators take advantage of multiple CPU's, so he is using effectively a 533mhz Celeron. That's a little slow for these emulators.
He states that neither supports sound cards. This is not correct. VPC has the edge for this function in my opinion, although VMWare isn't bad.
Here's what I've learned. Virtual PC is your best bet for running virual Windows based machines. It runs them very well. On the other hand, I can't get any distro of Linux to fully load under VPC. That's not saying you can't, but each one crashes or freezes at some point. The real strength of VPC is that it emulates known, common hardware, so it provides an easier environment to set up in the emulated machine.
By contrast, VMWare is mediocre at providing an environment for Windows. It will do it, but the non-standard video card it emulates is a huge pain in the rear. However, VMWare runs Linux distro's pretty well. It emulates different types of hardware, and the options are impressive.
I wouldn't rate one better than the other, they're both very good and some things, and very average to poor at others.
However, you should buy one of these tools for testing out new software. You can load software inside the virtual machine, test it (for trojans, spyware, whatever), and then when you're done, you either blow the changes away or keep them in you virtual machine. The virutal disks themselves are disk files, so they provide an excellent testing environment because they are effectively immune from user changes to the environment (burn the hard drive image to a CD, and pass it out to the testers with VPC on their drive). It allows you to test on dozens of machines without owning dozens of machines.
Its cool stuff.
It doesn't emulate an OS, it emulates an x86 PC.
It acts like a...well, a virtual PC.
"Is any of this due to people switching to the open-source alternatives?"
I think its more complicated than that. Oracle changed its pricing model about 2-3 years ago that was effectively for many customers a huge price rise.
At that time, IBM's UDB and MS's SQL Server suddenly because reasonable alternatives to Oracle.
Oracle has essentially withdrawn that price increase, but I think the damage has been done. Oracle has mindshare and good performance, but I'm not sure that's enough to overcome a the financial side of the equation for Oracle. Time will tell.
Plus...I contend the market for high-end relational database is relatively small anyway. So its possible the world doesn't need any more 6 figure databases.
No television.
Not that interested. I'm pretty much down to watching a 1/2 each night before I go to bed. I can do with out that 1/2 hour as well.
I'm not alone, either.
I'm not buying a TV like this.
I want all my fair rights use of anything sent into my home as I do today with analog.
If not, I'm not interested. I'm not going to buy a new TV, a decoder, a new VCR, a new *everything else* and then be saddled with a restriction that I can't tape what the Networks don't want me to.
I mean, welcome to 1969.
Vote with your wallets folks. That will kill all this nonsense faster than any government decree.
"All they want is to add to their 100GB collection of mp3's"
Yea, in an mp3 format limited to 128 bits and sounding like they were encoded underwater. The sound quality of mp3's from Kazaa is roughly that of FM radio.
These people would save us all a lot of bandwidth if they just recorded the songs from the radio.
Celine Dion has been one of the most profitable acts for Sony over the past few years. They generally reach a point where they extract a much better deal with the record company than a start-up garage band.
Do you seriously think an act of this earning potential has no say on the use of copy protection from their label? I don't think so. In fact, an artist like this probably thinks of earnings potential as one of their primary motivators, so they're more likely to use something like this if they think it will net them a few bucks.
Buy Virtual PC. Spend the $200.
Then when you want to run a program you're not sure about, you copy a disk partition file, boot it and then install then install the suspicious program. If it works fine, and you're satisfied, you can load it on your host (real) PC. If not, you wipe the parition and you start all over again.
There are so many advantages to this, its hard to believe more people don't use it.
But after using for about 1/2 an hour, I'd say this thing is pretty impressive.
Just a couple of notes:
1) I find the interface a little (stress "little")clunky, but I'm a long time Office user. But I'd get used to it in about a week.
2) The Document default views are awful. I'm going to see if I can mess with this to make it more livable for me.
3) It opens Office XP Spreadsheets, Documents, and Powerpoints pretty well. I haven't thrown the kitchen sink at it though.
4) 1/2 hour isn't long enough to judge stability. But I haven't had any crashes or oddities yet.
This is a good package so far as I've looked. I'm going to try to work in it for the next few days and see if its good enough to recommend to relatives who need MS Office compatibility.
Hats off to these guys. This is excellent work.
The article says 641D is the production (or near production) version. But if you go to the mirror sites, there's already a 642 version out there.
(Incidentally, neither of the US mirrors are working, but the one from Denmark seemed to work just fine. The links are further down on the page.
I worked for a company a long time ago that paid serious money for the following slogan:
"We make every bit count"
After a few years, they paid even more money for:
"Locked on the leading edge"
The corporate mindset can be simultaneously wonderous and scary.
You're right. But on the other hand, once you understand what you're doing is crashing servers, you should probably either (a) fix what you're doing, even though its not your fault (b) refuse to test domino servers until they get it fixed.
Or both.
But to say "Gee, we crash Lotus server, too bad for them" is really poor manners.
Mind you, it isn't criminal in a sane world, but it is thoughtless.
IBM is claiming in some places its unsuited for server use because a restriction of 333 hours per month of use.
But I haven't turned my PC off in over a year (does anyone do that anymore?). Does that make it a server, or simply just a normal use?
Seriously, for those of you with broadband, don't you keep your PC on all the time? Why would you shut it off?
"PS/2 Model 50's"
Just to remind people, PS/2 Model 50's were 10mhz 286 machines and usually shipped with just 1M of memory.
They weren't particular speedy even when released, and I remember them primarily as being too slow to even run Windows 3.0 very quickly.
I remember the boot time on a PS/2 50 for OS/2 was in the order of 2-5 minutes, whereas DOS could probably boot up in 30-45 seconds.
My memories are old, but I do remember it as being a well-engineered, but slow machine.