The PS3 is the Lexus while the XBox 360 is a Scion and the Wii is a Toyota Civic. All have their markets and are decent products for the price they're available for. All of them sell well and are profitable. Any market has this stratification.
The PS3 is nothing like the Dreamcast. The DC was fine but had bad timing, a lack of features, and a lack of games to let it stand up against the competition. If anything the Wii is at risk of becoming the next Dreamcast. The PS3 is pimped out and has the huge legacy library of PS games available for it.
I won't buy a Wii or 360 until they hit the bargin rack, the same thing I waited for with the Dreamcast and GameCube, but I'll buy the PS3 at release regardless to the price. It's all part of getting the most pimped out toy to mess with and I can excuse it because it'll let me give my PS2 to my younger siblings while still having full access to play my existing game library.
I doubt many parents will bother buying their children a PS3 but does Sony care? These are the people who don't buy enough games and add-ons to make back the loss Sony has on every console they sell. The people who will buy the PS3 are the people likely to buy a lot of extra toys so Sony is pretty sure about making back any loss from the actual sale of the console. The PS3 price of $700 really doesn't make much difference to me. I spend that much on toys every month anyway.
Dammit your right. Everything fscking sucks about everything. I don't need examples because I fscking know it sucks and I know examples suck. Fsck me I suck.
*shrugs* I've been using RedHat/Fedora on the server and desktop longer than most you Linux fanboys have been using computers and I have no plan to stop anytime soon. Killing a popular distro is rather difficult to do and I don't see upstarts like Ubuntu as a threat to well established distros like Debian and RedHat. What is this obsession with making your distro of the month kill everyone else off? Use it if you like it but don't become fanatical. The point of opensource is to cooperate to make something better even as you compete to make something better.
I have every AP I own, in locations throughout San Diego, open for the express purpose of making it easier for other people to get a connection if they want it. I even went so far as adding more powerful antennas to the APs and naming the APs as 'OpenPortal'. The APs aren't privledged on my networks so there is no worry of them being used to penetrate my security. It's my AP so it's entirely my right to allow or deny anyone I want to access it. If my apartment or business complex tried to force me to change my security I'd laugh in their face.
A strong set of business and a strong set of technical skills combined is what will make you successful in my experience. Being able to deliver a strong product and keep customers, coworkers, investors, etc all happy isn't easy at all but it can really pay off.
I installed and ran it on a new iMac with the Intel Duo Core processor with no problem. Install was pretty easy and all the rough spots were actually in Mac OS. The install didn't configure the monitor very well though.. setting it at 800x600 isn't so great. They'll have to do some more work on driver support too as I wasn't able to get the monitor to it's full 1680x1050 resolution and the sound doesn't seem to work. Networking does work. Haven't had time to try out the other hardware yet but it seems usuable for basic stuff. I expect it'll be pretty nice by the time it goes stable.
Ubuntu is just the latest buzzword distro. I've yet to see anything about it that really sets it apart anymore than any of the past buzzword distros. There are hundreds of distros but in my experience only two really matter - Debian and RedHat, now Fedora, are the ones that have stood the test of time. Most other distros are children to one of those two.
Rather than forking off endless similar child distros I'd rather see the distros work together. Why not merge the Debian and Fedora development efforts? Is there any real difference of goals so large that the teams couldn't, over time, resolve the differences?
There is really no need for yet another distro that does essentially the same things so I really see no point in Ubuntu or any of the other forks. If you're going to fork off your own distro then at least do something radical with your new direction.
Python can be something of a mind-trip if you've only used languages with a C-styled syntax such as PHP. The majority of the difference is in the lack of containing braces around blocks which is replaced by making whitespace meaningful. It works pretty well once you get used to it. Python is a terse language that doesn't make you spell out every little detail, such as Java or C/C++, and is strongly object oriented. I find Python easy to write and maintain for anything from a short script up to full-blown applications. For the most part it's a very clean well designed language.
For short scripts it'd probably not mean much for you to switch from PHP (or a similar language) but for larger scripts the clean syntax and object oriented nature would save you a lot of work. The kicker being that you need to understand the concept of objects to work well in Python.
I've used Fedora on servers and workstations with no stability problems. I have servers running Fedora with years of uptime despite the heavy loads and interesting uses I put them under.
My only real complaint about Fedora is it's use of yum which I don't feel works as well as competitiors such as rug (command-line component of Red Carpet). If they coould bring yum's quality up to snuff I'd be pretty happy with it. It'd be nice if they could calm some of the fighting between offical and unoffical repos too. That's partly related to the poor quality of yum so it's all one issue IMO.
At least with IE7 things seem to be improving a lot. It's still far from perfect and not even in the same level of quality as Firefox, Safari, or Opera 9 but it's to the point where I don't have to do some really shitty looking rehash of the site just to make things look okay in IE. My IE7 stylesheets have many fewer changes from my standard stylesheets than my IE6 stylesheets.
I just wish Mac people would stop using IE5. What the hell is wrong with you people. Use Safari, Opera 9, or Firefox. IE5 just flat out sucks and isn't worth supporting. I force most my websites into non-styled mode for people who use IE5. Luckily I haven't seen a classic Netscape or IE4 user in a long time so it seems most users have upgraded past those. IE6 has about 50% with IE7 starting to pop up. Firefox and other gecko-based browsers have about 35%. The rest is mostly Safari and Opera with a few odd browsers thrown in.
Home units? Could they make computer controlled units that average people could use? Set up some method to launch us into the air to the right height and then let the computer guide us to our chosen destination at little fuel expense. Sounds like it'd be great for short term flights of around 100 miles or less.
Censorship should be marked too. I hate not knowing if a CD from a store like WalMart or Target has had the lyrics censored without having marked the product. I just always assume it's been done and don't buy music from any of these stores anymore.
So I vote for requiring explicit labels for DRM and censorship both.
I won't be buying HD-DVD or BlueRay players or movies so Sony's including BlueRay into the PS3, a product I do plan on buying, makes sense as a way to push it into living rooms. If it holds more data than HD-DVD then it makes sense to go ahead and use it because there really is not a need for the average consumer for a product better than DVD which leaves video games and software which are often data hungry. With their included hdd and higher resolutions these systems could be even more data hungry so why wouldn't Sony provide the highest density format, that they don't have to license from someone else, instead of something else?
It really doesn't matter. HD-DVD and BlueRay are both products looking for consumer interest that isn't there. It's been to recent since the VHS to DVD switch and people don't want to reinvest and don't yet feel a need for a more dense standard. High-end user's such as myself that would be more likely to switch will be turned off largely by the DRM involved. For the time being, the DVD is king of the entertainment market. If anything is a challenger of the DVD it's the download and in that case it's technology like bit torrent that has the biggest chance to make a lot of money from the change. Physical discs are passe.
Hey it's a second chance to get rich and get out quick so that some investor gets left holding the bag. If you missed out the first time it isn't to late afterall!
I think like the first wave of web innovation created a lot of good things and I expect this second wave to do likewise. As always we'll hear a lot of bold cliams, buzzwords, etc and new ideas will emerge but in the end the crap sinks and the good stuff hangs around.
We've always known that eventually rich interactions would be important to the web. It's an obvious upgrade path. Java, Javascript, Flash, etc were all weak first stab attempts at the problem. To some extent these attempts have evolved and improved but for the most part I expect them all to be replaced with better implementations of the same concept. The battle over these new technologies is going to be fierce but hopefully something open and powerful will emerge and some cool shit will be built on top of it.
Mostly I agree, but I also have some sites that I started and never went anywhere. I never turned them into spam ad sites and I mostly still own the domains because I keep forgetting to cancel the auto-charge on the domains. I don't want $1500 for these domains but enough to cover what I've spent on them would be nice. Say maybe $150 each? I don't think that's unreasonable given that I'm making no effort to sell them and still wouldn't mind making them work if I found time to make the sites I originally planned.
I also recently considered buying a domain that was in active development by someone else but for which they hadn't had commited strongly to branding. I probably could have bought it for $500 but eventually decided it wasn't really worth it for me. I thought $500 was fair though.
Given that I read Slashdot from the top down I have to ask what the FreeNAS support is.
I'd like a nice RAID 5 setup in a big ol case that can hold a dozen hdds. Of course maybe I should just wait until the drives cross the 1TB barrier. These would be nice for my servers that use a combination of ramdrive and CF-based drive for the files that need fast reliable storage and cheapie disk arrays for providing my bulk storage. I always like the occassional density upgrade that lets me put twice as much into the same amount of space.
Dying because you sit in one spot for 50 hours and don't move other than for the occassional trip to the kitchen for junk food and soda? Holy fuck people it's just a freaking game. Take a break now and then. Go outside and walk around, go have sex with another person in real life, develop a bad attitude and drink a lot - do something. I'm a geek that works on computers all day and I still manage to get up eveyr couple hours and walk to the store, make out with my gf, go to the beach, etc. If you can't do that much then you have some serious issues and deserve to die from your video game addiction. You people are just sad.
Boy it's good having someone that's a bigger losser than myself to point a finger at!
Are they seriously suggesting there is no way to make a space elevator or just not this way? I would think you get work out most of these kinds of issues by engineering better materials and by using something more redundant. If one cable isn't strong enough in the face of defects could they use say four that would each support the corner of an elevator? Could they make cables that would diagnose their own injuries and repair themselves? Every weakness is something that can be addressed and fixed.
I wanted to do a.pad domain as pad is descriptive and easy to enter on a phone. To bad it takes so much money to start a tld. My company, apt.pad, was set to deliver software to make using the web from phones better. Or so was the dream.;)
Really, I think the thing to do is to give website's phone numbers as an option. It's a pain to remember them but it's easier than typing in a long url on a keypad. You can use all the tricks to make using phone numbers easier that cell phones already offer. It'd be especially cool if typing in a businesses phone number and pressing the web button would take you to their website.
Learning to use IDEs should be a class different from learning a programming language. To many students I worked with got caught up in trying to use the IDE and forgot to actually learn to program.
I'd say you need a class for teaching concepts such as working with blocks of programming logic. Essentially learning psuedo-code.
Then you need a class for the basics of programming in some specific language. I find Python really good for teaching concepts to new programmers.
Then you need at least one class for advanced programming in that same language. Probably more than one class as things like networking, string parsing, security, etc should each be their own class probably.
Then you need a class for command-line tools such as Unix tools, shell scripting, Perl, etc.
Then finally you need a class in using IDEs and project management tools.
I know some very smart doctors.. that being said, I know a lot of really stupid doctors too. To many doctors haven't the mental power or the concern enough to figure out anything that can't be diagnosed with a step book like untrained tech support people use. "Is it plugged in?" "Did you turn it on?" I guess it's good to pass people through the unwashed dimwits to spare the more skilled doctors, repair guys, etc from having to waste their time. The sad thing is that this often keeps people from ever working their way up to the more skilled help.
It can be a good start to finding a cure. Finding things that aggravate something is a good indication of the causes and therefore a good way to work your way towards a cure. Technically a lot of stuff we think we're immune to is still with us all the time but our bodies have learned to ignore them so it is pretty much the same as a cure.
Take small bites to eat faster.
on
The CVS Cop-Out
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· Score: 1
A large part of the problem I think is developers who try to bite off to big a chunk for releases. One or two new features is plenty for a new release. You don't have to add a dozen features at a time and it's probably not a good idea for software security to do so. Bug fixes should cause a minor point release as soon as your sure it works. A new feature that's stable should cause a major point release. No waiting around for dozens of new features and no messing around with two dozen half assed features rather than finishing one.
And yes, I'm guilty of this too but I've learned to do better. Most of the time I take my own advice.
Slashdot Mirror
The PS3 is the Lexus while the XBox 360 is a Scion and the Wii is a Toyota Civic. All have their markets and are decent products for the price they're available for. All of them sell well and are profitable. Any market has this stratification.
The PS3 is nothing like the Dreamcast. The DC was fine but had bad timing, a lack of features, and a lack of games to let it stand up against the competition. If anything the Wii is at risk of becoming the next Dreamcast. The PS3 is pimped out and has the huge legacy library of PS games available for it.
I won't buy a Wii or 360 until they hit the bargin rack, the same thing I waited for with the Dreamcast and GameCube, but I'll buy the PS3 at release regardless to the price. It's all part of getting the most pimped out toy to mess with and I can excuse it because it'll let me give my PS2 to my younger siblings while still having full access to play my existing game library.
I doubt many parents will bother buying their children a PS3 but does Sony care? These are the people who don't buy enough games and add-ons to make back the loss Sony has on every console they sell. The people who will buy the PS3 are the people likely to buy a lot of extra toys so Sony is pretty sure about making back any loss from the actual sale of the console. The PS3 price of $700 really doesn't make much difference to me. I spend that much on toys every month anyway.
Dammit your right. Everything fscking sucks about everything. I don't need examples because I fscking know it sucks and I know examples suck. Fsck me I suck.
*shrugs* I've been using RedHat/Fedora on the server and desktop longer than most you Linux fanboys have been using computers and I have no plan to stop anytime soon. Killing a popular distro is rather difficult to do and I don't see upstarts like Ubuntu as a threat to well established distros like Debian and RedHat. What is this obsession with making your distro of the month kill everyone else off? Use it if you like it but don't become fanatical. The point of opensource is to cooperate to make something better even as you compete to make something better.
I have every AP I own, in locations throughout San Diego, open for the express purpose of making it easier for other people to get a connection if they want it. I even went so far as adding more powerful antennas to the APs and naming the APs as 'OpenPortal'. The APs aren't privledged on my networks so there is no worry of them being used to penetrate my security. It's my AP so it's entirely my right to allow or deny anyone I want to access it. If my apartment or business complex tried to force me to change my security I'd laugh in their face.
A strong set of business and a strong set of technical skills combined is what will make you successful in my experience. Being able to deliver a strong product and keep customers, coworkers, investors, etc all happy isn't easy at all but it can really pay off.
I installed and ran it on a new iMac with the Intel Duo Core processor with no problem. Install was pretty easy and all the rough spots were actually in Mac OS. The install didn't configure the monitor very well though.. setting it at 800x600 isn't so great. They'll have to do some more work on driver support too as I wasn't able to get the monitor to it's full 1680x1050 resolution and the sound doesn't seem to work. Networking does work. Haven't had time to try out the other hardware yet but it seems usuable for basic stuff. I expect it'll be pretty nice by the time it goes stable.
Ubuntu is just the latest buzzword distro. I've yet to see anything about it that really sets it apart anymore than any of the past buzzword distros. There are hundreds of distros but in my experience only two really matter - Debian and RedHat, now Fedora, are the ones that have stood the test of time. Most other distros are children to one of those two.
Rather than forking off endless similar child distros I'd rather see the distros work together. Why not merge the Debian and Fedora development efforts? Is there any real difference of goals so large that the teams couldn't, over time, resolve the differences?
There is really no need for yet another distro that does essentially the same things so I really see no point in Ubuntu or any of the other forks. If you're going to fork off your own distro then at least do something radical with your new direction.
Python can be something of a mind-trip if you've only used languages with a C-styled syntax such as PHP. The majority of the difference is in the lack of containing braces around blocks which is replaced by making whitespace meaningful. It works pretty well once you get used to it. Python is a terse language that doesn't make you spell out every little detail, such as Java or C/C++, and is strongly object oriented. I find Python easy to write and maintain for anything from a short script up to full-blown applications. For the most part it's a very clean well designed language.
For short scripts it'd probably not mean much for you to switch from PHP (or a similar language) but for larger scripts the clean syntax and object oriented nature would save you a lot of work. The kicker being that you need to understand the concept of objects to work well in Python.
I've used Fedora on servers and workstations with no stability problems. I have servers running Fedora with years of uptime despite the heavy loads and interesting uses I put them under.
My only real complaint about Fedora is it's use of yum which I don't feel works as well as competitiors such as rug (command-line component of Red Carpet). If they coould bring yum's quality up to snuff I'd be pretty happy with it. It'd be nice if they could calm some of the fighting between offical and unoffical repos too. That's partly related to the poor quality of yum so it's all one issue IMO.
At least with IE7 things seem to be improving a lot. It's still far from perfect and not even in the same level of quality as Firefox, Safari, or Opera 9 but it's to the point where I don't have to do some really shitty looking rehash of the site just to make things look okay in IE. My IE7 stylesheets have many fewer changes from my standard stylesheets than my IE6 stylesheets.
I just wish Mac people would stop using IE5. What the hell is wrong with you people. Use Safari, Opera 9, or Firefox. IE5 just flat out sucks and isn't worth supporting. I force most my websites into non-styled mode for people who use IE5. Luckily I haven't seen a classic Netscape or IE4 user in a long time so it seems most users have upgraded past those. IE6 has about 50% with IE7 starting to pop up. Firefox and other gecko-based browsers have about 35%. The rest is mostly Safari and Opera with a few odd browsers thrown in.
Home units? Could they make computer controlled units that average people could use? Set up some method to launch us into the air to the right height and then let the computer guide us to our chosen destination at little fuel expense. Sounds like it'd be great for short term flights of around 100 miles or less.
Censorship should be marked too. I hate not knowing if a CD from a store like WalMart or Target has had the lyrics censored without having marked the product. I just always assume it's been done and don't buy music from any of these stores anymore.
So I vote for requiring explicit labels for DRM and censorship both.
Is HD-DVD really less proprietary than BlueRay?
I won't be buying HD-DVD or BlueRay players or movies so Sony's including BlueRay into the PS3, a product I do plan on buying, makes sense as a way to push it into living rooms. If it holds more data than HD-DVD then it makes sense to go ahead and use it because there really is not a need for the average consumer for a product better than DVD which leaves video games and software which are often data hungry. With their included hdd and higher resolutions these systems could be even more data hungry so why wouldn't Sony provide the highest density format, that they don't have to license from someone else, instead of something else?
It really doesn't matter. HD-DVD and BlueRay are both products looking for consumer interest that isn't there. It's been to recent since the VHS to DVD switch and people don't want to reinvest and don't yet feel a need for a more dense standard. High-end user's such as myself that would be more likely to switch will be turned off largely by the DRM involved. For the time being, the DVD is king of the entertainment market. If anything is a challenger of the DVD it's the download and in that case it's technology like bit torrent that has the biggest chance to make a lot of money from the change. Physical discs are passe.
Hey it's a second chance to get rich and get out quick so that some investor gets left holding the bag. If you missed out the first time it isn't to late afterall!
I think like the first wave of web innovation created a lot of good things and I expect this second wave to do likewise. As always we'll hear a lot of bold cliams, buzzwords, etc and new ideas will emerge but in the end the crap sinks and the good stuff hangs around.
We've always known that eventually rich interactions would be important to the web. It's an obvious upgrade path. Java, Javascript, Flash, etc were all weak first stab attempts at the problem. To some extent these attempts have evolved and improved but for the most part I expect them all to be replaced with better implementations of the same concept. The battle over these new technologies is going to be fierce but hopefully something open and powerful will emerge and some cool shit will be built on top of it.
That works. I'm glad they had the decency just to make a fair offer and not jump straight to lawsuits.
Mostly I agree, but I also have some sites that I started and never went anywhere. I never turned them into spam ad sites and I mostly still own the domains because I keep forgetting to cancel the auto-charge on the domains. I don't want $1500 for these domains but enough to cover what I've spent on them would be nice. Say maybe $150 each? I don't think that's unreasonable given that I'm making no effort to sell them and still wouldn't mind making them work if I found time to make the sites I originally planned.
I also recently considered buying a domain that was in active development by someone else but for which they hadn't had commited strongly to branding. I probably could have bought it for $500 but eventually decided it wasn't really worth it for me. I thought $500 was fair though.
Given that I read Slashdot from the top down I have to ask what the FreeNAS support is.
I'd like a nice RAID 5 setup in a big ol case that can hold a dozen hdds. Of course maybe I should just wait until the drives cross the 1TB barrier. These would be nice for my servers that use a combination of ramdrive and CF-based drive for the files that need fast reliable storage and cheapie disk arrays for providing my bulk storage. I always like the occassional density upgrade that lets me put twice as much into the same amount of space.
Dying because you sit in one spot for 50 hours and don't move other than for the occassional trip to the kitchen for junk food and soda? Holy fuck people it's just a freaking game. Take a break now and then. Go outside and walk around, go have sex with another person in real life, develop a bad attitude and drink a lot - do something. I'm a geek that works on computers all day and I still manage to get up eveyr couple hours and walk to the store, make out with my gf, go to the beach, etc. If you can't do that much then you have some serious issues and deserve to die from your video game addiction. You people are just sad.
Boy it's good having someone that's a bigger losser than myself to point a finger at!
Are they seriously suggesting there is no way to make a space elevator or just not this way? I would think you get work out most of these kinds of issues by engineering better materials and by using something more redundant. If one cable isn't strong enough in the face of defects could they use say four that would each support the corner of an elevator? Could they make cables that would diagnose their own injuries and repair themselves? Every weakness is something that can be addressed and fixed.
I wanted to do a .pad domain as pad is descriptive and easy to enter on a phone. To bad it takes so much money to start a tld. My company, apt.pad, was set to deliver software to make using the web from phones better. Or so was the dream. ;)
Really, I think the thing to do is to give website's phone numbers as an option. It's a pain to remember them but it's easier than typing in a long url on a keypad. You can use all the tricks to make using phone numbers easier that cell phones already offer. It'd be especially cool if typing in a businesses phone number and pressing the web button would take you to their website.
Learning to use IDEs should be a class different from learning a programming language. To many students I worked with got caught up in trying to use the IDE and forgot to actually learn to program.
I'd say you need a class for teaching concepts such as working with blocks of programming logic. Essentially learning psuedo-code.
Then you need a class for the basics of programming in some specific language. I find Python really good for teaching concepts to new programmers.
Then you need at least one class for advanced programming in that same language. Probably more than one class as things like networking, string parsing, security, etc should each be their own class probably.
Then you need a class for command-line tools such as Unix tools, shell scripting, Perl, etc.
Then finally you need a class in using IDEs and project management tools.
You need to crawl before you walk I think.
I know some very smart doctors.. that being said, I know a lot of really stupid doctors too. To many doctors haven't the mental power or the concern enough to figure out anything that can't be diagnosed with a step book like untrained tech support people use. "Is it plugged in?" "Did you turn it on?" I guess it's good to pass people through the unwashed dimwits to spare the more skilled doctors, repair guys, etc from having to waste their time. The sad thing is that this often keeps people from ever working their way up to the more skilled help.
Ask somebody, they'll let you put their special medicine in your mouth if you ask nicely.
It can be a good start to finding a cure. Finding things that aggravate something is a good indication of the causes and therefore a good way to work your way towards a cure. Technically a lot of stuff we think we're immune to is still with us all the time but our bodies have learned to ignore them so it is pretty much the same as a cure.
A large part of the problem I think is developers who try to bite off to big a chunk for releases. One or two new features is plenty for a new release. You don't have to add a dozen features at a time and it's probably not a good idea for software security to do so. Bug fixes should cause a minor point release as soon as your sure it works. A new feature that's stable should cause a major point release. No waiting around for dozens of new features and no messing around with two dozen half assed features rather than finishing one.
And yes, I'm guilty of this too but I've learned to do better. Most of the time I take my own advice.