Yes, there were two reasons why the dot-com bubble burst:
A) Most dot-com "businesses" were started by people with lots of technical knowledge, but no business knowledge. They were funded by people with lots of business knowledge but no technical knowledge. Most of the "businesses" had no hope of ever really turning a profit, most of them were businesses that lose money on every sale, but they make up for it in volume.
B) The internet was -slow- in the 1990s. Lets face it, because of faster internet we've been able to do a lot of stuff that was impossible to do back in the 1990s.
While I do think that "the cloud" hype is backwards in its thinking, I don't think that it will be like the dot-com crash because they are two different things. Rather, the cloud will fail because consumer hardware is always getting faster, ISPs/cell phone companies are screwing their customers (bandwidth caps, throttling, etc.) and privacy issues.
True, but the GBA Micro was an odd release (really didn't add much to the SP and the DS was already out at the time) and really didn't sell too well, and when the Micro was released, you could still buy a backwards compatible SP, even today Nintendo is still making the DS Lite, allowing you to still have backwards compatibility with GBA games. There are few, if any, DS games out there that require a DSi to play, with of course the exception of the games in the DSi electronic store. So if someone wanted to get a DS but still wanted backwards compatibility, they could still get a DS Lite and not lose out on most games. The 3DS on the other hand is an upgrade (has a lot better hardware and is receiving new games that can't be played on DS systems) that removes GBA compatibility, but honestly, the GBA is ten years old and it is technically infeasible to add support for it because the cartridge slot is quite large and there isn't much spare room in the design to put in a slot for it. Now, I'd complain if GBA games were the same size as DS cards and Nintendo didn't include a GBA emulator with the 3DS, but really the 3DS doesn't look like it has room for the cartridge slot.
Which raises two questions. First, how does one determine whether a particular game is "unplayable crap"?
Get any iOS or Android device and search through the games section, for more fun pick your favorite genre, go to an unfiltered category (as in, not top rated, or editors pick or anything like that, but just the newest releases) and download a few games, and see how many of them are adequate and how many of them are broken either gameplay wise (bad physics, unbalanced gameplay, etc.) or technologically broken (crashes, lags, etc.).
If you are lucky you might find a few gems, but I think you will find that the majority of them you won't be in any hurry to purchase the "premium" version of the game.
And second, once my team has developed something that is noticeably better than said "unplayable crap" yet isn't in a genre suitable for the exclusively touch-based input of phones, can you recommend a guide to establishing a company to market it?
Personally, I'd go for the PC market, particularly if you release it on all 3 major platforms to attract attention. There have been many successful companies founded by starting with PC then moving to consoles (for example, The Behemoth, the company that has made Castle Crashers got its start making Flash games on Newgrounds).
I never said that they fully embraced homebrew, but lets look at the three competitors.
Sony which sued someone for creating software to jailbreak the PS3, removed functionality to use third party controllers and disabled features included in the PS3 from day one (OtherOS feature) to prevent people from modifying their PS3.
Microsoft which locks out people running modified software from accessing xbox live along with destroying functionality offline (can't access Windows Media, can't add stuff to HDD). And presses for modchip bans.
Or Nintendo which sues those who sell flash carts, but more or less lets people use homebrew as they please. And doesn't disable any features and has more or less given up in trying to stop Wii homebrew.
Out of all 3, none of them are great, but Nintendo easily stands out as the least evil out of all of them. None of them enable homebrew by default, and average users suffer the most under Sony and the least under MS and Nintendo. And those with modded consoles suffer the least under Nintendo.
And on upgrade cycles for DS/game boy Nintendo hasn't given up backwards compatibility which was the original argument that with upgrades you lost things you purchased. For example, despite 3 entries in the original game boy line (Game Boy, Game Boy Pocket, and the Game Boy Light which was only available in Japan) they were all compatible with the same games and accessories (the link cable did need a dongle to fit the smaller link port, but that was it), the original game boy line lasted from 1989 to 1998 (and games compatible with the original game boy were made until 2002) when the Game Boy Color came out which was 9 years and that is longer than most home consoles are in production for. But the Game Boy Color could play all game boy games along with specially designed game boy color games. In 2001, the Game Boy Advance was released, and it could play all the Game Boy and Game Boy Color games, along with Game Boy Advance games. In fact, until the DS came out in 2004, Nintendo's portable game systems could play all games from 1989 to the present.
Really, Nintendo has an excellent track record when it comes to keeping backwards compatibility with its console, which was the original point of the post. And Nintendo is doing the same thing with its digital software.
Because Nintendo is a company born out of the video game crash of the early '80s and fears their systems being overwhelmed with crap games that no one wants (though, I guess it is happening with the Wii/NDS that has about 21312312 Sudoku/crossword games, but they all sell fairly well so its no problem for Nintendo), because of that they have a (rather archaic policy) of only giving SDKs to established companies. Bob's game is more of the exception than the rule, one only needs to own a smartphone to see that the vast majority of indie games are crap. Yes, there are some gems in the world of indie games like Angry Birds and Castle Crashers, but the vast majority of indie "games" are unplayable crap.
Its easy though to develop a homebrew application then release it online to play on a flash cart, which can be found even at Wal-mart.
While the official means of distribution are fairly strict, Nintendo is the only major console maker that allows unofficial means of distribution fairly easily. If your application is rejected from the xbox market, there is no way you can really release it.
It is like every other authentication system, if it was one per hour and someone who has a job maintaining and running the servers made a typo, the company would be out of quite a bit of money and time. Oddly enough, a secure password is pretty easy to make typos when you are typing a password like ZH72$uew36fwz*eiwJjewiwifaghe32^.
I doubt that it has anything to do with "Brick Nintendo" because out of all the companies, Nintendo is easily the most homebrew friendly. Yes, Nintendo has released a few pointless updates to the Wii simply to prevent homebrew to be run, but they are few and far between, but a console running homebrew still can do all the things an unmodded console can do. Modified Xbox consoles can't access Microsoft's online service without risking being banned. And the PS3 has had multiple features disabled in the name of "security".
"Brick Nintendo" is just another FSF project with a noble goal, but really won't accomplish much. It makes a lot more sense if Lulzsec was devoted to the FSF to go after larger targets... Like Microsoft.
If you are running servers that face the internet and you have pissed off major hacker organizations, you will be compromised. It makes no difference if you are running the newest patched versions because the majority of them have exploits that have not been patched and may not even be discovered by the developers of the software, especially with large, popular pieces of software such as Apache.
One of the really funny things about defending the way Nintendo does it is that if you buy a new console, you can't even redownload your purchases
Call up Nintendo's tech support and you can transfer games if your other console breaks.
When it comes to Nintendo's DS line, nearly all DSi games can be transfered to the 3DS, with the exception of 11 games that either are getting re-made to take advantage of the new hardware (flipnote studio), had security flaws (sodoku) or had complex licensing (oregon trail).
And I have no doubt that when Project Cafe is released, the same thing will work with Wii Ware and Virtual Console titles.
The difference isn't really a technical thing, but the way that Nintendo and Sony/Microsoft look at consoles. Nintendo views consoles as something where (except in rare cases where one breaks) you really only buy one until they release the new version.
On the other hand, Sony/Microsoft view consoles as something to upgrade midway through the lifecycle (the new slim models of the PlayStation line, the new version of the Xbox). So it makes sense that Sony/MS makes it more straightforward to redownload things because they expect a large segment of their gamers to get the new console when it launches.
Yes, these abuses are bad, but what would the alternative be? Massive poverty and unemployment. The problem isn't Nintendo, but is rooted in the Chinese government and the Chinese culture. Without large companies like Foxconn, the alternative most likely wouldn't be a higher standard of living, but instead would be more agricultural work, which is often more dangerous and almost always pays lower than factory work.
Microsoft purchases a -lot- of companies and the vast majority of them end up scrapped and dead. nVidia makes hardware, not software, and most of the hardware projects made/sold by Microsoft have either failed or had major design flaws.
If Microsoft acquires nVidia, it isn't going to be nVidia that has the final say, instead, it will be Microsoft, since Microsoft has historically made crappy hardware and no matter how many companies it has acquired (currently well over one hundred) Microsoft's way of doing things has remained the same.
Citation needed.
When was the last time, or first time, have you ever seen a Microsoft Surface? The system is still prohibitively expensive, and even all the cool features have yet to be implemented in Windows/Windows Phones despite Surface being about 3 years old by now and there has been 1-2 Windows phone releases since then and a major Windows desktop release since then.
Tegra 2 is a dual-core ARM-based SoC easily capable of running Windows 8 with all UI acceleration enabled. NVIDIA produces chips already proven to power the NT kernel neatly (the original Tegra powered the Zune HD), so clearly it works. Microsoft just wants to make sure they don't get undermined by an NVIDIA buyout.
Yes, nVidia makes good hardware, but if nVidia was bought by Microsoft, it is entirely likely that nVidia would fail, much like just about every other company Microsoft has bought out.
True, but if you are only single-tasking and you optimize your game for the hardware it is pretty impressive what you can do. Heck, the PS3 only has 128 MB of RAM, the Wii only has 88 MB of RAM, etc. On the other hand, a typical PC has lots of things going at once, after all, how many programs does the typical/.er have open even when they are just browsing the internet? Music, Skype, a video playing in the background, some updates downloading etc.
I'm not saying that it was a flaw, only that it doesn't really show Microsoft's skill in developing hardware. The major flaw was the large controller, not the actual internals of the machine.
Microsoft is not a hardware company and would most likely kill nVidia. Out of Microsoft's major hardware projects, the 360 was a complete failure in the hardware department, Surface, while neat is hardly a gamechanger, and the first Xbox had a major ergonomics flaw (I mean, were the controllers designed for giants or what) at first, and the internals were pretty much just generic PC hardware.
Considering that most people aren't going to carry a standalone camera to document police brutality/corruption, and most people tend to upgrade their cell phone every few years, a law would prove pretty devastating.
Except for the fact that the government and police officers are all greedy bastards.
None of them will take the sane solution that since everyone is going 30 miles over the speed limit the speed limit should be raised. Instead, they see money and waste more taxpayer funds going after this "crime" rather than protecting people from actual crime.
Does it matter if they are tracking who it is or not? It would be one thing if police officers, police departments and other government agencies weren't greedy and they would use this data to show that the speed limit should be increased, but it won't be used this way. You and I both know that all this will be used to do is make money for the police force to justify its existence and expansion in low crime areas.
Speed limits should be guidelines first off, and secondly they are writing tickets for victimless crimes, sure, it might be their job to enforce the law, but enforce the important stuff, like, oh I don't know, robbery, murder, rape, etc. And if there isn't enough crime to warrant that many police officers, get rid of some of them! The speed limits and other things should be guidelines to reduce accidents and reckless driving. -That- is what should be ticketed, not "speeding" or "distracted driving" or whatever.
The fact is, the vast majority of police officers are useless bums who can't get over the fact that there isn't enough real crime in most areas to be needed. Others simply realize that its a lot easier to stop people who were going safely on the road than it is to stop people from harming others.
And sitting on something like this for a week -is- a problem. When you have possibly exposed the equivalent of 25% of the US population to credit card fraud, the world needs to know. This isn't some "oh whoops, one of our laptops is missing" instead this is a data breach affecting 77 million people. And to say -nothing- is completely irresponsible. A week is a pretty long time to not say -anything- and to just hope that it will go away.
Even someone who has your personal information for a few hours can cause havoc in your life, let alone for an entire week.
The problem is that it is never a "well funded crime kingpin" and most often a 15-30 year old or an (ex) employee that noticed some gaping, obvious security flaw. Data breaches like this are rarely the work of huge "cyber gangs" and mostly the work of individuals who noticed some huge flaw that Sony had. The crime kingpins wouldn't bother with something like this because it is a whole lot easier to sell botnets with 3nl@rg3 y0ur p3n15 spam.
The reason why Blackberry is losing marketshare is because Android is taking over Blackberry's non-key markets. A lot of people used to have Blackberries because they were the cheapest smartphone you could get. If you were with Sprint or Verizon and didn't want to get a Windows Mobile smartphone, BlackBerry was your only option until Android really took over. And even on T-Mobile and AT&T, a Blackberry cost a lot less than a G1 or iPhone.
Really, RIM made Blackberries for people who use their enterprise system, and for corporate people who check their e-mail every 5 seconds, and not as the general purpose smartphones that Android and iOS devices are. So when Android started gaining marketshare, it made sense for the people who simply got a Blackberry because it was cheap and had a Facebook app and a browser to migrate to Android.
....Or it could be that the vast majority of applications and features that people use to get work done are cross platform. You can get e-mail on Blackberry, iPhone and Android. You can make calls on Blackberry, iPhone and Android. You can access webpages on Blackberry, iPhone and Android. And really, those three things is all most people need to get work done. So of course people are going to have different preferences and change phone models.
...And what power source would you recommend? Coal, which is pretty much the only other viable alternative to nuclear energy at this point, which kills over 5 thousand workers each year just mining it, not to mention all of the health risks associated with burning coal for power. On the other hand, we've had about 63 deaths occurring directly from nuclear incidents since nuclear power started. Now, while others have obviously had larger cancer risks and such resulting in death, but it is nearly impossible to be 100% certain about how many of those have occurred. Quite honestly nuclear power is the safest type of power we have at the moment.
And we have to realize that the disaster at the Fukushima plant isn't normal. Rather, this was the fifth largest earthquake to be recorded in modern history. Not only that but it had a huge tsunami to go along with it. Could TEPCO have handled this better? Yes. Could the Japanese government have handled this better? Yes. Should TEPCO have built this reactor to withstand larger earthquakes? Yes. But is nuclear power more dangerous than coal, oil, and every other power source that can be used in large quantities? No.
1) Inventor invents something new and revolutionary and is marketing it
2) Right before the product goes on the market a patent troll sues the company that is marketing it
3) By the time the case is truly resolved, some other way of solving a problem was created leaving the inventor of the product nothing but a long time spent in court.
The idea that patents make the inventors money so they can continue to invent and create good things is a complete myth in 2011.
Slashdot Mirror
Yes, there were two reasons why the dot-com bubble burst:
A) Most dot-com "businesses" were started by people with lots of technical knowledge, but no business knowledge. They were funded by people with lots of business knowledge but no technical knowledge. Most of the "businesses" had no hope of ever really turning a profit, most of them were businesses that lose money on every sale, but they make up for it in volume.
B) The internet was -slow- in the 1990s. Lets face it, because of faster internet we've been able to do a lot of stuff that was impossible to do back in the 1990s.
While I do think that "the cloud" hype is backwards in its thinking, I don't think that it will be like the dot-com crash because they are two different things. Rather, the cloud will fail because consumer hardware is always getting faster, ISPs/cell phone companies are screwing their customers (bandwidth caps, throttling, etc.) and privacy issues.
True, but the GBA Micro was an odd release (really didn't add much to the SP and the DS was already out at the time) and really didn't sell too well, and when the Micro was released, you could still buy a backwards compatible SP, even today Nintendo is still making the DS Lite, allowing you to still have backwards compatibility with GBA games. There are few, if any, DS games out there that require a DSi to play, with of course the exception of the games in the DSi electronic store. So if someone wanted to get a DS but still wanted backwards compatibility, they could still get a DS Lite and not lose out on most games. The 3DS on the other hand is an upgrade (has a lot better hardware and is receiving new games that can't be played on DS systems) that removes GBA compatibility, but honestly, the GBA is ten years old and it is technically infeasible to add support for it because the cartridge slot is quite large and there isn't much spare room in the design to put in a slot for it. Now, I'd complain if GBA games were the same size as DS cards and Nintendo didn't include a GBA emulator with the 3DS, but really the 3DS doesn't look like it has room for the cartridge slot.
Which raises two questions. First, how does one determine whether a particular game is "unplayable crap"?
Get any iOS or Android device and search through the games section, for more fun pick your favorite genre, go to an unfiltered category (as in, not top rated, or editors pick or anything like that, but just the newest releases) and download a few games, and see how many of them are adequate and how many of them are broken either gameplay wise (bad physics, unbalanced gameplay, etc.) or technologically broken (crashes, lags, etc.).
If you are lucky you might find a few gems, but I think you will find that the majority of them you won't be in any hurry to purchase the "premium" version of the game.
And second, once my team has developed something that is noticeably better than said "unplayable crap" yet isn't in a genre suitable for the exclusively touch-based input of phones, can you recommend a guide to establishing a company to market it?
Personally, I'd go for the PC market, particularly if you release it on all 3 major platforms to attract attention. There have been many successful companies founded by starting with PC then moving to consoles (for example, The Behemoth, the company that has made Castle Crashers got its start making Flash games on Newgrounds).
I never said that they fully embraced homebrew, but lets look at the three competitors.
Sony which sued someone for creating software to jailbreak the PS3, removed functionality to use third party controllers and disabled features included in the PS3 from day one (OtherOS feature) to prevent people from modifying their PS3.
Microsoft which locks out people running modified software from accessing xbox live along with destroying functionality offline (can't access Windows Media, can't add stuff to HDD). And presses for modchip bans.
Or Nintendo which sues those who sell flash carts, but more or less lets people use homebrew as they please. And doesn't disable any features and has more or less given up in trying to stop Wii homebrew.
Out of all 3, none of them are great, but Nintendo easily stands out as the least evil out of all of them. None of them enable homebrew by default, and average users suffer the most under Sony and the least under MS and Nintendo. And those with modded consoles suffer the least under Nintendo.
And on upgrade cycles for DS/game boy Nintendo hasn't given up backwards compatibility which was the original argument that with upgrades you lost things you purchased. For example, despite 3 entries in the original game boy line (Game Boy, Game Boy Pocket, and the Game Boy Light which was only available in Japan) they were all compatible with the same games and accessories (the link cable did need a dongle to fit the smaller link port, but that was it), the original game boy line lasted from 1989 to 1998 (and games compatible with the original game boy were made until 2002) when the Game Boy Color came out which was 9 years and that is longer than most home consoles are in production for. But the Game Boy Color could play all game boy games along with specially designed game boy color games. In 2001, the Game Boy Advance was released, and it could play all the Game Boy and Game Boy Color games, along with Game Boy Advance games. In fact, until the DS came out in 2004, Nintendo's portable game systems could play all games from 1989 to the present.
Really, Nintendo has an excellent track record when it comes to keeping backwards compatibility with its console, which was the original point of the post. And Nintendo is doing the same thing with its digital software.
Because Nintendo is a company born out of the video game crash of the early '80s and fears their systems being overwhelmed with crap games that no one wants (though, I guess it is happening with the Wii/NDS that has about 21312312 Sudoku/crossword games, but they all sell fairly well so its no problem for Nintendo), because of that they have a (rather archaic policy) of only giving SDKs to established companies. Bob's game is more of the exception than the rule, one only needs to own a smartphone to see that the vast majority of indie games are crap. Yes, there are some gems in the world of indie games like Angry Birds and Castle Crashers, but the vast majority of indie "games" are unplayable crap.
Its easy though to develop a homebrew application then release it online to play on a flash cart, which can be found even at Wal-mart.
While the official means of distribution are fairly strict, Nintendo is the only major console maker that allows unofficial means of distribution fairly easily. If your application is rejected from the xbox market, there is no way you can really release it.
It is like every other authentication system, if it was one per hour and someone who has a job maintaining and running the servers made a typo, the company would be out of quite a bit of money and time. Oddly enough, a secure password is pretty easy to make typos when you are typing a password like ZH72$uew36fwz*eiwJjewiwifaghe32^.
I doubt that it has anything to do with "Brick Nintendo" because out of all the companies, Nintendo is easily the most homebrew friendly. Yes, Nintendo has released a few pointless updates to the Wii simply to prevent homebrew to be run, but they are few and far between, but a console running homebrew still can do all the things an unmodded console can do. Modified Xbox consoles can't access Microsoft's online service without risking being banned. And the PS3 has had multiple features disabled in the name of "security".
"Brick Nintendo" is just another FSF project with a noble goal, but really won't accomplish much. It makes a lot more sense if Lulzsec was devoted to the FSF to go after larger targets... Like Microsoft.
If you are running servers that face the internet and you have pissed off major hacker organizations, you will be compromised. It makes no difference if you are running the newest patched versions because the majority of them have exploits that have not been patched and may not even be discovered by the developers of the software, especially with large, popular pieces of software such as Apache.
One of the really funny things about defending the way Nintendo does it is that if you buy a new console, you can't even redownload your purchases
Call up Nintendo's tech support and you can transfer games if your other console breaks.
When it comes to Nintendo's DS line, nearly all DSi games can be transfered to the 3DS, with the exception of 11 games that either are getting re-made to take advantage of the new hardware (flipnote studio), had security flaws (sodoku) or had complex licensing (oregon trail).
And I have no doubt that when Project Cafe is released, the same thing will work with Wii Ware and Virtual Console titles.
The difference isn't really a technical thing, but the way that Nintendo and Sony/Microsoft look at consoles. Nintendo views consoles as something where (except in rare cases where one breaks) you really only buy one until they release the new version.
On the other hand, Sony/Microsoft view consoles as something to upgrade midway through the lifecycle (the new slim models of the PlayStation line, the new version of the Xbox). So it makes sense that Sony/MS makes it more straightforward to redownload things because they expect a large segment of their gamers to get the new console when it launches.
Yes, these abuses are bad, but what would the alternative be? Massive poverty and unemployment. The problem isn't Nintendo, but is rooted in the Chinese government and the Chinese culture. Without large companies like Foxconn, the alternative most likely wouldn't be a higher standard of living, but instead would be more agricultural work, which is often more dangerous and almost always pays lower than factory work.
If Microsoft acquires nVidia, it isn't going to be nVidia that has the final say, instead, it will be Microsoft, since Microsoft has historically made crappy hardware and no matter how many companies it has acquired (currently well over one hundred) Microsoft's way of doing things has remained the same.
Citation needed.
When was the last time, or first time, have you ever seen a Microsoft Surface? The system is still prohibitively expensive, and even all the cool features have yet to be implemented in Windows/Windows Phones despite Surface being about 3 years old by now and there has been 1-2 Windows phone releases since then and a major Windows desktop release since then.
Tegra 2 is a dual-core ARM-based SoC easily capable of running Windows 8 with all UI acceleration enabled. NVIDIA produces chips already proven to power the NT kernel neatly (the original Tegra powered the Zune HD), so clearly it works. Microsoft just wants to make sure they don't get undermined by an NVIDIA buyout.
Yes, nVidia makes good hardware, but if nVidia was bought by Microsoft, it is entirely likely that nVidia would fail, much like just about every other company Microsoft has bought out.
True, but if you are only single-tasking and you optimize your game for the hardware it is pretty impressive what you can do. Heck, the PS3 only has 128 MB of RAM, the Wii only has 88 MB of RAM, etc. On the other hand, a typical PC has lots of things going at once, after all, how many programs does the typical /.er have open even when they are just browsing the internet? Music, Skype, a video playing in the background, some updates downloading etc.
I'm not saying that it was a flaw, only that it doesn't really show Microsoft's skill in developing hardware. The major flaw was the large controller, not the actual internals of the machine.
Microsoft is not a hardware company and would most likely kill nVidia. Out of Microsoft's major hardware projects, the 360 was a complete failure in the hardware department, Surface, while neat is hardly a gamechanger, and the first Xbox had a major ergonomics flaw (I mean, were the controllers designed for giants or what) at first, and the internals were pretty much just generic PC hardware.
Considering that most people aren't going to carry a standalone camera to document police brutality/corruption, and most people tend to upgrade their cell phone every few years, a law would prove pretty devastating.
Except for the fact that the government and police officers are all greedy bastards.
None of them will take the sane solution that since everyone is going 30 miles over the speed limit the speed limit should be raised. Instead, they see money and waste more taxpayer funds going after this "crime" rather than protecting people from actual crime.
Does it matter if they are tracking who it is or not? It would be one thing if police officers, police departments and other government agencies weren't greedy and they would use this data to show that the speed limit should be increased, but it won't be used this way. You and I both know that all this will be used to do is make money for the police force to justify its existence and expansion in low crime areas.
Speed limits should be guidelines first off, and secondly they are writing tickets for victimless crimes, sure, it might be their job to enforce the law, but enforce the important stuff, like, oh I don't know, robbery, murder, rape, etc. And if there isn't enough crime to warrant that many police officers, get rid of some of them! The speed limits and other things should be guidelines to reduce accidents and reckless driving. -That- is what should be ticketed, not "speeding" or "distracted driving" or whatever.
The fact is, the vast majority of police officers are useless bums who can't get over the fact that there isn't enough real crime in most areas to be needed. Others simply realize that its a lot easier to stop people who were going safely on the road than it is to stop people from harming others.
And sitting on something like this for a week -is- a problem. When you have possibly exposed the equivalent of 25% of the US population to credit card fraud, the world needs to know. This isn't some "oh whoops, one of our laptops is missing" instead this is a data breach affecting 77 million people. And to say -nothing- is completely irresponsible. A week is a pretty long time to not say -anything- and to just hope that it will go away.
Even someone who has your personal information for a few hours can cause havoc in your life, let alone for an entire week.
The problem is that it is never a "well funded crime kingpin" and most often a 15-30 year old or an (ex) employee that noticed some gaping, obvious security flaw. Data breaches like this are rarely the work of huge "cyber gangs" and mostly the work of individuals who noticed some huge flaw that Sony had. The crime kingpins wouldn't bother with something like this because it is a whole lot easier to sell botnets with 3nl@rg3 y0ur p3n15 spam.
The reason why Blackberry is losing marketshare is because Android is taking over Blackberry's non-key markets. A lot of people used to have Blackberries because they were the cheapest smartphone you could get. If you were with Sprint or Verizon and didn't want to get a Windows Mobile smartphone, BlackBerry was your only option until Android really took over. And even on T-Mobile and AT&T, a Blackberry cost a lot less than a G1 or iPhone.
Really, RIM made Blackberries for people who use their enterprise system, and for corporate people who check their e-mail every 5 seconds, and not as the general purpose smartphones that Android and iOS devices are. So when Android started gaining marketshare, it made sense for the people who simply got a Blackberry because it was cheap and had a Facebook app and a browser to migrate to Android.
....Or it could be that the vast majority of applications and features that people use to get work done are cross platform. You can get e-mail on Blackberry, iPhone and Android. You can make calls on Blackberry, iPhone and Android. You can access webpages on Blackberry, iPhone and Android. And really, those three things is all most people need to get work done. So of course people are going to have different preferences and change phone models.
...And what power source would you recommend? Coal, which is pretty much the only other viable alternative to nuclear energy at this point, which kills over 5 thousand workers each year just mining it, not to mention all of the health risks associated with burning coal for power. On the other hand, we've had about 63 deaths occurring directly from nuclear incidents since nuclear power started. Now, while others have obviously had larger cancer risks and such resulting in death, but it is nearly impossible to be 100% certain about how many of those have occurred. Quite honestly nuclear power is the safest type of power we have at the moment.
And we have to realize that the disaster at the Fukushima plant isn't normal. Rather, this was the fifth largest earthquake to be recorded in modern history. Not only that but it had a huge tsunami to go along with it. Could TEPCO have handled this better? Yes. Could the Japanese government have handled this better? Yes. Should TEPCO have built this reactor to withstand larger earthquakes? Yes. But is nuclear power more dangerous than coal, oil, and every other power source that can be used in large quantities? No.
That is unlikely though.
After all, how often have we seen this formula:
1) Inventor invents something new and revolutionary and is marketing it
2) Right before the product goes on the market a patent troll sues the company that is marketing it
3) By the time the case is truly resolved, some other way of solving a problem was created leaving the inventor of the product nothing but a long time spent in court.
The idea that patents make the inventors money so they can continue to invent and create good things is a complete myth in 2011.