No cool reviews = no traffic. You can't afford to purchase hardware / games for each review because you're not making any money. If you DON'T toe the party line from ATI or nVidia or whomever... no more free demo cards / games / widgets.
Sure, mod me offtopic, but this is the reason online 'scoop' reviews are so... homogenous. I'm not sure I have the solution. Does anyone?
You make a great point about ad saturation. As I read the article I was thinking about how due to the explosion of web sites and online marketing in the past 5 years it has become second nature to tune everything out. I would wager I am not the only person who surfs on a windows box and has become blindingly fast with ALT-F4 and ALT-TAB.
The question that remains in my mind is: where is the scale now? You mention selling a couple of suckers at the expense of pissing off the masses, but aren't we there now? I think online marketers have not caught on to how peeved most users are about the gimmicks (read: dirty tricks) they use to redirect our browsing efforts.
Recently, I was floored to see my own mom, a calm woman in her middle years, have a cursing fit at some web site that broght pop up windows to her screen. Point being, we are not talking about just the geeks anymore; it does not take a fool to realize when they are being led by the nose.
Granted, they don't have AutoCAD standard listed, but I think the last licenses we purchased were around $2795 or so each. One can certainly argue the merits of AutoCAD. I am not saying it's not a great application, but in the open market, the price of other CAD applications seems to be $500 - $1500 per license whereas AutoCAD has *always* been around $3K.
I take it you've never worked with AutoDesk (makers of neato things like AutoCAD, 3D Studio Max, et cetera).
Moderate me as off topic, but insofar as I know, AutoDesk is the only company around who regularly, successfully sues their customers and still makes a mint. They do this by channeling a disproportionate amount of their financials into Anti-piracy teams that seek to 'barter a deal' with violators. Part of that deal is usually, "don't talk to the media and either will we."
The real advantage of this is that AutoCAD is the industry standard. If you want to hire drafters and you don't have CAD, you're done. Cooked. Finished. This allows AutoDesk to charge about $2800 / license for what is essentially program that let's you draw pictures.
The only real difference between AutoDesk and MS is that AutoDesk waits for you to rat out your employer. It's reasonably well known in the Design industry that you can screw your company if they are not compliant with their CAD licensing via a simple phone call to AutoDesk's anti-piracy department. MS should take note, this is the way to play hardball, don't chase customers and do public things like audits and so forth that make you look like a greedy asshole, just let it be known that you'll fuck anybody who doesn't play by your rules and provide a nice 800 number for disgruntled employees.
I do not believe *HOSTING* is what we should be thinking of here. Plenty of branch offices use DSL to hook up to the 'home' office. This is not done so that the branc can host a single public service, it's done to keep the lines of communication open in a geograhpically dispersed business.
Call up your local telco and you can get hooked up with a T1 pretty quickly.
I do not intend to be rude, but this statement reflects a lack of understanding of how telcos work. There is nothing 'quick' (or feasible in most cases) about any small office going from DSL ($150 / month on average) to a full T line ($1K / month plus hardware).
For any business which relies upon DSL to cheaply connect remote offices, this is nothing short of a medium sized disaster. You will hear about this again at earnings time this quarter, of this I am certain.
I'm surprised people are debating this law's complete lack of merrit and not debating the obviousness of this trend. What I mean is:
We need a law for this kind of shit?
Seriously... when was the last time you felt like you needed the good ole' boys on this Hill (or the Texan equivolent) to tell you that you must purchase X, Y and Z with your new DELL or Compaq?
What's next? Oil purchased from Texas must be accompanied by the purchase of child safety seats? I mean, gasoline comes from oil and cars run on gas and some people have kids and those kids need safety seats!
SAVE THE CHILDREN!!!
No, I don't think so, mayhaps a better rallying call would be: fuck the lawyers, vote the clown Garcia out of office.
The really troubling thing about your post is that it sounds as though you assume your hypothetical opponents are evenly matched. As in, "I won't nuke you, so don't nuke me."
As history teaches and we have seen in most of our lifetimes, war is not about equally matched opponents. Bullies don't piss on the guy they believe might whip their ass in a fair fight, they piss on the kid whose lunch money they can readily take.
Example: Pakistan feels threatened by India. India is huge in comparison. Their economy, though depressed, is enormous in comparison. When India lit their nukes, even through hordes of international protest and pressure from the UN, Pakistan did the same. They were threatedned and that threat forced them to ignore the international body. Do you really think if India were to invade pakistan today, send tens of thousands of troops into Pakisatni territory and yet say, "hey, really, we won't nuke you, sure guy, we're your friends..." that New Delhi would last 20 minutes?
That scenario scares the hell out of me.
Modern wars between superpowers are not about guns and nukes and nanotech aresonal. Modern superpowers have espionage such that imballances such as those we saw in the Manhattan project era do not exist any longer. Modern threats of mass destruction do not come from the united states or from china or india.
They come from fundamentalists with money. "States" may not be focusing on nukes, but you can bet the islamic jihad is working on it.
Perhaps we would be better working to teach one another peace. Peace between nations begins with peace within ourselves. These conflicts of personality and culture do not behoove us as men in this age of technical ability and intellectual adolescence.
That's an excellent point (and I like the Sim's jab!). Looking at this from the 'what do they fear?' perspective, you are 100% in the right.
The US Gov't fears other nations using supercomputers to develop higher yield nukes. It is my understanding that much of the code in the field of implosion characteristics is, shall we say, cycle intensive and highly customized. So you're right, you can't buy it in the store!
I was thinking more of a few years ago when we would hear the FBI drone on and on about how they can't fight the drug war without export controls on high encryption, blah blah blah. My comment was really more along this line of reasoning.
... however, I would like to see a Platoon of Iraqi Red Guard try to rocket jump over a tank...
I agree with your assessment of the article, but I disagree with your statement that this is 'a practical matter.'
I personally, and I believe I am not alone, think it is a waste of gov't time to try and stem the tide of software beyond US borders. What's to keep any foreign national from chartering a flight to the US, wandering into Egghead, getting what they want, and returning to any of the Tier 4 countries? Granted, it's sometimes difficult to physically get here, but there's always your brother's wife's cousin who lives in the states. You could have him e-mail you a copy of X, Y Z software.
I'm not trying to be argumentative, I'm just saying that applying the export controls philosophy to the software arena smells like a problem brewing to me. I think we need different and better thinking on the subject.
FishNet -- hahaha, I'm from Ventura, I used to know these people. Judging from the way they used to run their business, I'm not shocked they got rooted by Evil Romain Script Kiddie (tm).
I do not recall the relevant articles or links, but there have been several interesting threads here from JohnC (yes, that JohnC) and others speaking of this subject w/ repsect to the release of the Quake I codebase.
A quick search might guide you to their discussions as I myself, do not have an elegant solution for this common problem.
Disclaimer: I'm just looking for insights from those who know more about this subject.
The msnbc article glances over this a bit, but I'm hazarding a guess that what they're trying to do is statistical analysis based on protein folding relating to the entire active genome. From what I understand, this is a lot like the traveling sales person problem and the whole genre of NP v. P problems that are more suited to quantum computing.
So as our society's tech progress in the quantum computing realm to the point where we can actually build these things, does that mean we get faster answers to questions like those posed of the genome map?
If anyone has any informed insights (not my bs guesswork) I'd like to hear them.
"We're looking for no more or no less than is appropriate for the rights to our intellectual property. It is a reasonable action," Orr said.
If I were a clueful IT person with BT right now, this is the kind of fucked up action that would cause me to resign. That's right. Stalk into the board room, give them the finger, shout out, "WAKE UP. JACKASS!" and quit.
The problem with this is that we all hear people refer to ESR as a Linux (and/or) Open Source spokesperson.
Clue train ticket: this guy is about as effective a spokesperson for Open Source as a cable TV evangelist is for people with serious religious convictions and faith.
He's doing more harm than good with interviews like this. As people don't take ESR seriously anymore (after reading that, I don't, do you?) they don't take the open source movement seriously.
Stephen's article just reminded me what I miss about good conferences.
Comdex and all it's spin-offs have not been good in so many years I've lost count. I suspect there's a critical point at which the geek-to-marketing-slime ratio causes these things to suck.
Slashdot Mirror
No cool reviews = no traffic. You can't afford to purchase hardware / games for each review because you're not making any money. If you DON'T toe the party line from ATI or nVidia or whomever ... no more free demo cards / games / widgets.
Sure, mod me offtopic, but this is the reason online 'scoop' reviews are so ... homogenous. I'm not sure I have the solution. Does anyone?
Cheers,
- RLJ
Frightening that you got my gist, regardless?
Cheers,
- RLJ
The question that remains in my mind is: where is the scale now? You mention selling a couple of suckers at the expense of pissing off the masses, but aren't we there now? I think online marketers have not caught on to how peeved most users are about the gimmicks (read: dirty tricks) they use to redirect our browsing efforts.
Recently, I was floored to see my own mom, a calm woman in her middle years, have a cursing fit at some web site that broght pop up windows to her screen. Point being, we are not talking about just the geeks anymore; it does not take a fool to realize when they are being led by the nose.
Hey, thanks for your post, cheers
-- RLJ
This is different how?
Oh ... well perhaps I could stay for a little while.
A quick glance over at CDW's "CAD Software" listing confirms this:
http://www.cdw.com/shop/search/results.asp?grp=CAD
Granted, they don't have AutoCAD standard listed, but I think the last licenses we purchased were around $2795 or so each. One can certainly argue the merits of AutoCAD. I am not saying it's not a great application, but in the open market, the price of other CAD applications seems to be $500 - $1500 per license whereas AutoCAD has *always* been around $3K.
It's just ... unusual.
Cheers,
-- RLJ
-- RLJ
I take it you've never worked with AutoDesk (makers of neato things like AutoCAD, 3D Studio Max, et cetera).
Moderate me as off topic, but insofar as I know, AutoDesk is the only company around who regularly, successfully sues their customers and still makes a mint. They do this by channeling a disproportionate amount of their financials into Anti-piracy teams that seek to 'barter a deal' with violators. Part of that deal is usually, "don't talk to the media and either will we."
The real advantage of this is that AutoCAD is the industry standard. If you want to hire drafters and you don't have CAD, you're done. Cooked. Finished. This allows AutoDesk to charge about $2800 / license for what is essentially program that let's you draw pictures.
The only real difference between AutoDesk and MS is that AutoDesk waits for you to rat out your employer. It's reasonably well known in the Design industry that you can screw your company if they are not compliant with their CAD licensing via a simple phone call to AutoDesk's anti-piracy department. MS should take note, this is the way to play hardball, don't chase customers and do public things like audits and so forth that make you look like a greedy asshole, just let it be known that you'll fuck anybody who doesn't play by your rules and provide a nice 800 number for disgruntled employees.
See, simple!
-- RLJ
I do not intend to be rude, but this statement reflects a lack of understanding of how telcos work. There is nothing 'quick' (or feasible in most cases) about any small office going from DSL ($150 / month on average) to a full T line ($1K / month plus hardware).
For any business which relies upon DSL to cheaply connect remote offices, this is nothing short of a medium sized disaster. You will hear about this again at earnings time this quarter, of this I am certain.
Regards,
-- RLJ
We need a law for this kind of shit?
Seriously ... when was the last time you felt like you needed the good ole' boys on this Hill (or the Texan equivolent) to tell you that you must purchase X, Y and Z with your new DELL or Compaq?
What's next? Oil purchased from Texas must be accompanied by the purchase of child safety seats? I mean, gasoline comes from oil and cars run on gas and some people have kids and those kids need safety seats!
SAVE THE CHILDREN!!!
No, I don't think so, mayhaps a better rallying call would be: fuck the lawyers, vote the clown Garcia out of office.
-- Cheers
-- RLJ
As history teaches and we have seen in most of our lifetimes, war is not about equally matched opponents. Bullies don't piss on the guy they believe might whip their ass in a fair fight, they piss on the kid whose lunch money they can readily take.
Example: Pakistan feels threatened by India. India is huge in comparison. Their economy, though depressed, is enormous in comparison. When India lit their nukes, even through hordes of international protest and pressure from the UN, Pakistan did the same. They were threatedned and that threat forced them to ignore the international body. Do you really think if India were to invade pakistan today, send tens of thousands of troops into Pakisatni territory and yet say, "hey, really, we won't nuke you, sure guy, we're your friends..." that New Delhi would last 20 minutes?
That scenario scares the hell out of me.
Modern wars between superpowers are not about guns and nukes and nanotech aresonal. Modern superpowers have espionage such that imballances such as those we saw in the Manhattan project era do not exist any longer. Modern threats of mass destruction do not come from the united states or from china or india.
They come from fundamentalists with money. "States" may not be focusing on nukes, but you can bet the islamic jihad is working on it.
Perhaps we would be better working to teach one another peace. Peace between nations begins with peace within ourselves. These conflicts of personality and culture do not behoove us as men in this age of technical ability and intellectual adolescence.
-- RLJ
You'll remember that whole little issue about the Nukes on their property?
Riiiight.
The US Gov't fears other nations using supercomputers to develop higher yield nukes. It is my understanding that much of the code in the field of implosion characteristics is, shall we say, cycle intensive and highly customized. So you're right, you can't buy it in the store!
I was thinking more of a few years ago when we would hear the FBI drone on and on about how they can't fight the drug war without export controls on high encryption, blah blah blah. My comment was really more along this line of reasoning.
-- Cheers,
-- RLJ
I personally, and I believe I am not alone, think it is a waste of gov't time to try and stem the tide of software beyond US borders. What's to keep any foreign national from chartering a flight to the US, wandering into Egghead, getting what they want, and returning to any of the Tier 4 countries? Granted, it's sometimes difficult to physically get here, but there's always your brother's wife's cousin who lives in the states. You could have him e-mail you a copy of X, Y Z software.
I'm not trying to be argumentative, I'm just saying that applying the export controls philosophy to the software arena smells like a problem brewing to me. I think we need different and better thinking on the subject.
Cheers,
-- RLJ
Still laughing (hi stan!),
-- RJL
A quick search might guide you to their discussions as I myself, do not have an elegant solution for this common problem.
-- RLJ
The msnbc article glances over this a bit, but I'm hazarding a guess that what they're trying to do is statistical analysis based on protein folding relating to the entire active genome. From what I understand, this is a lot like the traveling sales person problem and the whole genre of NP v. P problems that are more suited to quantum computing.
So as our society's tech progress in the quantum computing realm to the point where we can actually build these things, does that mean we get faster answers to questions like those posed of the genome map?
If anyone has any informed insights (not my bs guesswork) I'd like to hear them.
Thanks, -- RLJ
If I were a clueful IT person with BT right now, this is the kind of fucked up action that would cause me to resign. That's right. Stalk into the board room, give them the finger, shout out, "WAKE UP. JACKASS!" and quit.
Thank you, that will be all.
- RLJ
Clue train ticket: this guy is about as effective a spokesperson for Open Source as a cable TV evangelist is for people with serious religious convictions and faith.
He's doing more harm than good with interviews like this. As people don't take ESR seriously anymore (after reading that, I don't, do you?) they don't take the open source movement seriously.
-- RLJ
Comdex and all it's spin-offs have not been good in so many years I've lost count. I suspect there's a critical point at which the geek-to-marketing-slime ratio causes these things to suck.
-- RLJ
</SouthPark>
-- RLJ
-- RLJ
-- RLJ
yes folks, that's humor
Do you know if there are any set top players out there that ignore the 'fast forward lockout' portions of the DVD encoding?
-- RLJ