Match those against the Wii, and it's clear who's winning so far.
Sony's strategy of losing money on the console and making it up in game licensing only works if they're on top so that they can get a lot of third party games. If they don't have enough consoles out there, fewer games will be sold and they'll end up with a net loss.
PS3 worldwide sales are so far following the sales trends of the GameCube, with the PS3 getting a small boost from the EU launch. It also follows pretty close to the worldwide XBox sales, which only had a large market share in the US and ignored everywhere else. For US numbers only, the PS3 is selling slightly below the GameCube--the also-ran of the last generation in terms of market penetration.
The PS3 is competing against a console with a year's head start to break 10m units, and another console that has a wicked upwards surge and will probably break 10m units within the next few months. Sony has a lot of work to do to avoid becoming the also-ran of this generation. With the number of exclusives moving multiplatform, it may already be too late to retake momentum.
Because any further price reduction would only make the shortage of Wii's worse. If anything, they should increase the price to stop the shortage, but that'd likely hurt long term customer goodwill.
Economically speaking, the Wii should see a price increase of $50-100, which brings it in line with the eBay price (which is roughly the true market price), thus stopping the shortage. However, the effects on long term customer goodwill probably wouldn't be worth it.
It's a consequence of the way Sony works internally. They've got small, independent engineering teams who are more or less encouraged to work on whatever idea pops into their head, even if the market research studies says nobody wants it.
This worked really well once, with the Walkman. But that was a statistical fluke. As much as I hate to give credit to marketing professionals, Sony would probably be better off listening to the studies more often.
A Turing Machine isn't a terribly complex device, and there are a number of low-tech ways to make one. This isn't one of them, though. You'd need some way to change the pegs as the machine runs.
A way to make an infinitely long piece of rope is left as an exercise to the reader.
Not by US copyright law. By default, you have no right to use a copyrighted work unless the holder of the copyright says you can, which is usually done through a license (though it could be done by contract, too). The GPL gives you a right to use the covered work as long as you agree to its terms. If you don't agree to those terms, the entire GPL is void, and thus you have no right to use the code.
However, it's almost impossible to infringe on the GPL just by using GPL'd code. Nearly all its sections deal with modifying and distributing code, not regular use. In any case, the discussion in question centers around Microsoft's distribution of GPL'd code.
Consider an open source product that has a plugin model (could be Gimp, could be Firefox, whatever). In order to write a plugin for that product, I need to include a GPLed header that describes the plugin interface. By including that header, does it mean that I'm required to open source my plugin?
Most GPL'd projects with a plugin API will explicitly state that plugins don't have to be covered by the GPL. Linus states this for kernel modules, for example.
Microsoft is free to ignore the GPL if they choose. However, they then have no legal right to use or distribute GPL'd code (including those vouchers, depending on interpretation).
What is it that makes a computer a "mainframe"? For years, the "Big Iron" programmers insisted that they worked with the only real computers, and the term "mainframe" was always associated with big machines that could only be used by the most experienced programmers. That's just silly; either your computer is Turing Complete or it isn't (making allowances for finate memory limitations, of course). The important distinctions are:
How much memory does it have?
How fast is it?
How easy is it to use it in solving real problems? (Possibly the most important point.)
What sort of extra i/o devices does it have? (Mice, displays, webcams, sensors, etc.)
Big Iron has always had points 1 and 2, but clusters of cheap PCs can often match their level. In practice, current Big Iron hardware isn't fundamentally different from current PCs--it just tends to have better quality control and "more" than whatever's in the PC (more RAM, more hard drive, more processors, etc.). In fact, an AS400 is about the same size as a large server PC, not the room-filling Big Iron machines of yore.
Number 4 simply has to do with what sort of connectors and drivers you have available.
I've had personal experience with RPG, which is why I say with confidence that mainframes are utter failures at number 3. The languages are so primitive that they've barely discovered indentation blocks (and some older programmers shun this "freeform" mode). Sure, they run Java now, but I didn't need Big Iron to run Java. I'll take a VB job before I touch RPG again.
If the programming languages are what make it "Big Iron", then I hope it dies a horrible death.
Overall, we don't need the special terms "mainframe" and "Big Iron" anymore, because all the machines that fit those descriptions are better called "servers" or "supercomputers".
I must say, however, that I am impressed that old Big Iron still works, and in fact still runs a lot of financial transactions. It's no exaggeration to say that removing all the old Big Iron tonight would kill the world economy by tomorrow. It's best to keep those machines and programs in working order, since they obviously work, are quite robust, and solve many problems, whereas a new program may fail.
In many cases, there is never a problem finding prior art. Most software patents would never survive in court. The problem is that no company, working in their rational self-interest, would take the time, expense, and risk of a court case. It's cheaper to either take a settlement or fire back with their own patent warchest (resulting in stalemate).
The US has different laws to cover ideas that are publicly known (copyright) and held privately (trade secrets). One can steal a trade secret (by making it un-secret), but not a copyrighted work.
Those higher level protocols will partially determine how close we can get to the theoretical limit. If TCP was shown to be 10-20 slower than that theoretical limit, then there are possibilities for improvements to give you a 10-20 faster throughput, as FastTCP claims to do.
Since I highly doubt that TCP is that inefficient (which seems to be confirmed by other posters), this product is probably snake oil.
This makes it so that everyone just goes to Wal-Mart because Wal-Mart now has the ability to severely undercut prices while smaller, local groups have to sell them at high prices or not sell them at all.
There's a problem of quality that goes along with that, though. Wal-Mart gets stuff from manufacturers on the cheap, but the manufacturers cut corners to get prices low enough to make a profit. Alternative retailers are a little more expensive, but they get the higher-quality stuff.
Now, in many smaller communities, Wal-Mart is the only retailer left. But even in larger ones, Wal-Mart can often be successful, showing that many people are willing to pay less and get lower quality. But many others aren't. In my city (~200k population), there is a healthy set of both big chains and regional retailers.
The second issue, which builds on the first, is simply this: Why would the State bother to cripple a monopoly that it created in the first place?
Under a strict dictatorship that worked perfectly rationally (which, of course, doesn't exist in the real world), I could see the above happening. However, Democracies in particular have a schizophrenic quality about them. One group takes control and passes laws based on their viewpoints, then another group takes control and repeals those laws or creates new ones based on an alternative viewpoint. To an objective observer, Democracies can look highly contradictory.
Factories used to use groups like Pinkerton to break up attempts to unionize the employees. This was tolerated by the State for a while. But as the Labor movement grew, laws were enacted that protected unions from such practices, even though Pinkerton were little more than thugs and their methods already technically illegal.
Real free market capitalists (i.e., not the ones that think free market=whatever's best for my business, which is more of a mercantilist outlook) accept that trust-busting is necessary in some occasions. A monopoly is a place where the market has demonstrably failed (for whatever reason), so there's nothing wrong with trying to force corrections.
The problem in broadband ISPs is that the FCC's wants there to be one provider per broadband technology. In other words, one company handles DSL, another does cable, and others do something else. The problem is that there just aren't enough technologies out there right now to produce a solid market that way. Powerline broadband will probably go nowhere, wireless methods haven't yet emerged, and fiber-to-the-curb has an expensive last-mile problem. Saying "if you don't like your ISP, you can start your own" is completely disingenuous. There's simply no way to enter the market.
What does XBox Live do that wasn't already in Steam. Sure, it might be the first sensible attempt to do this on a console, but that alone doesn't make you innovative.
In fact, isn't even the first attempt to bring downloadable content to a console. Nintendo did it in Japan with the Super Famicon (SNES).
This is completely ridiculous. If that's true, why don't we already use wireless power?
Because doing a whole house like that would take a lot of power, cause a lot of RF interference, and probably react badly with pacemakers. In any case, we're not looking at powering a bunch of light bulbs over an area, but rather beaming power to a specific target. A later study (PDF link) discusses using a laser for this purpose. Microwaves are also possible.
The financial calculations of space elevator proponents convniently assume that they get to use these miracle materials (which don't really exist yet outside of laboratories) . . .
Mass production methods have already been developed, although not necessarily at the quality necessary for space elevators. They are certainly becoming more than just an interesting lab experiment, though, and techniques can only improve with time.
. . . while comparing them with the current state of competing launch technologies without the benefit of new developments.
If a space elevator is feasible, then it should always beat a conventional rocket, since it doesn't have to lift its own fuel weight. Once it's built, it just needs the energy to move the lifter. And that energy can come cheep and with low environmental impact, since a space elevator makes microwave power satellites economically viable.
Reading the Slashdotters' comments was really painful. Do people around here lack vision and research skills?
Carbon nanotubes are a miracle material. Not just for space elevators, but also for strengthening building/vehicle frames and nanotech. Any research on mass production of high-quality carbon nanotubes will have plenty of spill-over effect.
Unrolling the initial fabric from orbit down to the surface without snagging is a challenge, but hardly an impossible one.
Tesla was playing with remote power transmission a century ago. There's still work to be done, but all the major breakthroughs are in place.
Speed to orbit? Why do you need to go fast? People used to take months to cross the Atlantic, and the treasures offered by cheep space travel are massive compared to the treasures of the New World. Or just send up cargo on the elevator and send people on a rocket (expensive and dangerous in comparison, but quick).
Take a look at the business suits they wear on Babylon 5. They're formal enough that you could probably walk into a mid-level management meeting today wearing one and not be noticed, but different enough that they don't look like contemporary suits when put on the TV show.
The other route to go is space westerns or steampunk, where older fashions are brought back along side advanced technology.
I was really trying to speak specifically about the atmosphere of BAUT. It is an extremely hostile environment. That is perhaps one way to get at the truth, but it presumes that mainstream astrophysicists are infallible.
Nay, the whole scientific method is there to help remove human fallibility from the process.
Sometimes, in fact, mediocre people come up with some pretty smart ideas.
And "mediocre" people also come up with endless streams of perpetual motion machines, which are rapidly torn apart by properly applying the scientific method. Part of a good scientific education is to stop you from going down useless paths.
Slashdot Mirror
Match those against the Wii, and it's clear who's winning so far.
Sony's strategy of losing money on the console and making it up in game licensing only works if they're on top so that they can get a lot of third party games. If they don't have enough consoles out there, fewer games will be sold and they'll end up with a net loss.
The XBox had a strong showing the American market, and weak everywhere else, particularly in Japan. So it depends on where you live.
PS3 worldwide sales are so far following the sales trends of the GameCube, with the PS3 getting a small boost from the EU launch. It also follows pretty close to the worldwide XBox sales, which only had a large market share in the US and ignored everywhere else. For US numbers only, the PS3 is selling slightly below the GameCube--the also-ran of the last generation in terms of market penetration.
The PS3 is competing against a console with a year's head start to break 10m units, and another console that has a wicked upwards surge and will probably break 10m units within the next few months. Sony has a lot of work to do to avoid becoming the also-ran of this generation. With the number of exclusives moving multiplatform, it may already be too late to retake momentum.
Because any further price reduction would only make the shortage of Wii's worse. If anything, they should increase the price to stop the shortage, but that'd likely hurt long term customer goodwill.
Economically speaking, the Wii should see a price increase of $50-100, which brings it in line with the eBay price (which is roughly the true market price), thus stopping the shortage. However, the effects on long term customer goodwill probably wouldn't be worth it.
It's a consequence of the way Sony works internally. They've got small, independent engineering teams who are more or less encouraged to work on whatever idea pops into their head, even if the market research studies says nobody wants it.
This worked really well once, with the Walkman. But that was a statistical fluke. As much as I hate to give credit to marketing professionals, Sony would probably be better off listening to the studies more often.
A Turing Machine isn't a terribly complex device, and there are a number of low-tech ways to make one. This isn't one of them, though. You'd need some way to change the pegs as the machine runs.
A way to make an infinitely long piece of rope is left as an exercise to the reader.
Not by US copyright law. By default, you have no right to use a copyrighted work unless the holder of the copyright says you can, which is usually done through a license (though it could be done by contract, too). The GPL gives you a right to use the covered work as long as you agree to its terms. If you don't agree to those terms, the entire GPL is void, and thus you have no right to use the code.
However, it's almost impossible to infringe on the GPL just by using GPL'd code. Nearly all its sections deal with modifying and distributing code, not regular use. In any case, the discussion in question centers around Microsoft's distribution of GPL'd code.
Consider an open source product that has a plugin model (could be Gimp, could be Firefox, whatever). In order to write a plugin for that product, I need to include a GPLed header that describes the plugin interface. By including that header, does it mean that I'm required to open source my plugin?
Most GPL'd projects with a plugin API will explicitly state that plugins don't have to be covered by the GPL. Linus states this for kernel modules, for example.
Microsoft is free to ignore the GPL if they choose. However, they then have no legal right to use or distribute GPL'd code (including those vouchers, depending on interpretation).
What is it that makes a computer a "mainframe"? For years, the "Big Iron" programmers insisted that they worked with the only real computers, and the term "mainframe" was always associated with big machines that could only be used by the most experienced programmers. That's just silly; either your computer is Turing Complete or it isn't (making allowances for finate memory limitations, of course). The important distinctions are:
Big Iron has always had points 1 and 2, but clusters of cheap PCs can often match their level. In practice, current Big Iron hardware isn't fundamentally different from current PCs--it just tends to have better quality control and "more" than whatever's in the PC (more RAM, more hard drive, more processors, etc.). In fact, an AS400 is about the same size as a large server PC, not the room-filling Big Iron machines of yore.
Number 4 simply has to do with what sort of connectors and drivers you have available.
I've had personal experience with RPG, which is why I say with confidence that mainframes are utter failures at number 3. The languages are so primitive that they've barely discovered indentation blocks (and some older programmers shun this "freeform" mode). Sure, they run Java now, but I didn't need Big Iron to run Java. I'll take a VB job before I touch RPG again.
If the programming languages are what make it "Big Iron", then I hope it dies a horrible death.
Overall, we don't need the special terms "mainframe" and "Big Iron" anymore, because all the machines that fit those descriptions are better called "servers" or "supercomputers".
I must say, however, that I am impressed that old Big Iron still works, and in fact still runs a lot of financial transactions. It's no exaggeration to say that removing all the old Big Iron tonight would kill the world economy by tomorrow. It's best to keep those machines and programs in working order, since they obviously work, are quite robust, and solve many problems, whereas a new program may fail.
In many cases, there is never a problem finding prior art. Most software patents would never survive in court. The problem is that no company, working in their rational self-interest, would take the time, expense, and risk of a court case. It's cheaper to either take a settlement or fire back with their own patent warchest (resulting in stalemate).
The US has different laws to cover ideas that are publicly known (copyright) and held privately (trade secrets). One can steal a trade secret (by making it un-secret), but not a copyrighted work.
Those higher level protocols will partially determine how close we can get to the theoretical limit. If TCP was shown to be 10-20 slower than that theoretical limit, then there are possibilities for improvements to give you a 10-20 faster throughput, as FastTCP claims to do.
Since I highly doubt that TCP is that inefficient (which seems to be confirmed by other posters), this product is probably snake oil.
Regular TCP can't be more than an order of magnitude away from the Shannon Limit, can it?
This makes it so that everyone just goes to Wal-Mart because Wal-Mart now has the ability to severely undercut prices while smaller, local groups have to sell them at high prices or not sell them at all.
There's a problem of quality that goes along with that, though. Wal-Mart gets stuff from manufacturers on the cheap, but the manufacturers cut corners to get prices low enough to make a profit. Alternative retailers are a little more expensive, but they get the higher-quality stuff.
Now, in many smaller communities, Wal-Mart is the only retailer left. But even in larger ones, Wal-Mart can often be successful, showing that many people are willing to pay less and get lower quality. But many others aren't. In my city (~200k population), there is a healthy set of both big chains and regional retailers.
The second issue, which builds on the first, is simply this: Why would the State bother to cripple a monopoly that it created in the first place?
Under a strict dictatorship that worked perfectly rationally (which, of course, doesn't exist in the real world), I could see the above happening. However, Democracies in particular have a schizophrenic quality about them. One group takes control and passes laws based on their viewpoints, then another group takes control and repeals those laws or creates new ones based on an alternative viewpoint. To an objective observer, Democracies can look highly contradictory.
Factories used to use groups like Pinkerton to break up attempts to unionize the employees. This was tolerated by the State for a while. But as the Labor movement grew, laws were enacted that protected unions from such practices, even though Pinkerton were little more than thugs and their methods already technically illegal.
Real free market capitalists (i.e., not the ones that think free market=whatever's best for my business, which is more of a mercantilist outlook) accept that trust-busting is necessary in some occasions. A monopoly is a place where the market has demonstrably failed (for whatever reason), so there's nothing wrong with trying to force corrections.
The problem in broadband ISPs is that the FCC's wants there to be one provider per broadband technology. In other words, one company handles DSL, another does cable, and others do something else. The problem is that there just aren't enough technologies out there right now to produce a solid market that way. Powerline broadband will probably go nowhere, wireless methods haven't yet emerged, and fiber-to-the-curb has an expensive last-mile problem. Saying "if you don't like your ISP, you can start your own" is completely disingenuous. There's simply no way to enter the market.
I want to see these suckers break. It should be almost as good as chucking birds through engines.
What does XBox Live do that wasn't already in Steam. Sure, it might be the first sensible attempt to do this on a console, but that alone doesn't make you innovative.
In fact, isn't even the first attempt to bring downloadable content to a console. Nintendo did it in Japan with the Super Famicon (SNES).
What research do you base this statement on?
The NASA feasibility study from the mid-90's.
This is completely ridiculous. If that's true, why don't we already use wireless power?
Because doing a whole house like that would take a lot of power, cause a lot of RF interference, and probably react badly with pacemakers. In any case, we're not looking at powering a bunch of light bulbs over an area, but rather beaming power to a specific target. A later study (PDF link) discusses using a laser for this purpose. Microwaves are also possible.
The financial calculations of space elevator proponents convniently assume that they get to use these miracle materials (which don't really exist yet outside of laboratories) . . .
Mass production methods have already been developed, although not necessarily at the quality necessary for space elevators. They are certainly becoming more than just an interesting lab experiment, though, and techniques can only improve with time.
. . . while comparing them with the current state of competing launch technologies without the benefit of new developments.
If a space elevator is feasible, then it should always beat a conventional rocket, since it doesn't have to lift its own fuel weight. Once it's built, it just needs the energy to move the lifter. And that energy can come cheep and with low environmental impact, since a space elevator makes microwave power satellites economically viable.
Reading the Slashdotters' comments was really painful. Do people around here lack vision and research skills?
Carbon nanotubes are a miracle material. Not just for space elevators, but also for strengthening building/vehicle frames and nanotech. Any research on mass production of high-quality carbon nanotubes will have plenty of spill-over effect.
Unrolling the initial fabric from orbit down to the surface without snagging is a challenge, but hardly an impossible one.
Tesla was playing with remote power transmission a century ago. There's still work to be done, but all the major breakthroughs are in place.
Speed to orbit? Why do you need to go fast? People used to take months to cross the Atlantic, and the treasures offered by cheep space travel are massive compared to the treasures of the New World. Or just send up cargo on the elevator and send people on a rocket (expensive and dangerous in comparison, but quick).
In short, this wasn't Slashdot's finest moment.
Take a look at the business suits they wear on Babylon 5. They're formal enough that you could probably walk into a mid-level management meeting today wearing one and not be noticed, but different enough that they don't look like contemporary suits when put on the TV show.
The other route to go is space westerns or steampunk, where older fashions are brought back along side advanced technology.
I was really trying to speak specifically about the atmosphere of BAUT. It is an extremely hostile environment. That is perhaps one way to get at the truth, but it presumes that mainstream astrophysicists are infallible.
Nay, the whole scientific method is there to help remove human fallibility from the process.
Sometimes, in fact, mediocre people come up with some pretty smart ideas.
And "mediocre" people also come up with endless streams of perpetual motion machines, which are rapidly torn apart by properly applying the scientific method. Part of a good scientific education is to stop you from going down useless paths.