I hate to be pedantic, but the original Porsche car company was the same thing. Founded by someone of the same family as Dr. Ferdinand Porsche (to be fair; his son) - cashing in on the famous name. Turned out that the talent for making the most ass kickinest cars in the world runs in the family. (IMHO).
Borland has recovered somewhat for one reason and one reason only; it has stopped competing with Microsoft. Borland was crushed for one reason and one reason only, it was competing with Microsoft.
I'm very sorry to hear of your plight with the AMT.
I was smart, and sold all my stock options as same day sales - thus avoiding AMT - but getting bent over by having been taxed as income. I agree 100% that AMT is the most boneheaded idea, and actually discouraged people from buying and holding, and was largely responsible for the dotcom crash. Absolutely every person I know at my former place of employment had to do the same thing.
Fortunately, I had a few extra thou laying around, and when I left, I cashed in and bought a buttload of my options when the price had hit rock bottom, very near my option price. In a few years, these may be a nice addition to my retirement. Unless some other diabolical tax law is devised to fuck us all up the ass.
Having been a Tech Support professional for several years, I can say that this is the number 1 reason why the quality of tech support has declined throughout the industry. There's a huge push in many companies to make Tech Support into either a profit center, or to minimize the expense of "answering the phones". To that end, the once vibrant job of support rep is now nothing but pure drudgery. Typically, the management is "business-based" rather than "technically-based" and so they think like accountants. Things that make sense on their spreadsheet don't always make sense in the real world.
Such organizations do not value employees that are multitalented. they tend to force people into a narrowly defined role, with no chance for growth, or advancement, or exploring other ways to help customers besides just answering as many calls as possible, getting the customer off the phone as quickly as possible (never mind solving their problem) - as a result - workers who are bright, creative, more likely to solve problems, are hounded out of such organizations as "poor performers" etc. I've seen this happen more times than I care to recall for you here. And as I call in to support lines at other companies, I see things are much the same everywhere. The trend is away from salaried competent professionals, towards hourly-paid mindless phone monkeys. And this trend is driven by "business-based" management. Where I've worked, when the managers were technical people, it may not have been a volume business, but customers were happy, because when they did get through to a support rep, they talked to someone who could answer their problem. In other organizations where I worked under non-technical people, it was quite the opposite.
yeah, but that quickly-slapped-together-in-as-little-time-and-for -as-little-$-as-possible KIA has a 10 year warranty. Chrysler^H^H^H^H^HMercedes can't touch that.
(though $45k spent on a Mercedes is often money well spent, those cars will run 300k miles quite often without a hiccup. And so will your typical Volvo, at about 2/3 the price)
Well, it used to be that one could make money on a daily basis by working, and over one's lifetime, one could purchase the things one needs. One makes money by putting in the daily effort to produce or sell something.
Now the sellers want to sell something one time, and get an ongoing revenue stream without ongoing labor. The problem is, nobody but the ultra rich can afford ongoing expenses like this. Maybe a little bit, with home mortgages and car loans, and monthly utility bills - but at some point, people are going to say "enough" - because when one spends all one makes in every given month, without any apparent forward "progress" towards "owning" things - one is "treading water". One is essentially a slave.
Nobody's got an argument with YOU getting paid what you deserve. Our argument is with the "Juniors" of this world - who claim to be "worth" what they're being paid.
Having a CEO title and getting well paid doesn't necessarily mean you're evil, or undeserving of the money. But the "Junior" scenario you outlined is by FAR the norm. THAT is where most people have a problem with it. In the basics of "right and wrong" we were all taught as kindergarteners, this screams "wrong wrong wrong bad evil". The fundamental value of fairness springing from money being earned for work - REAL work. Your story, in my mind, does not violate that fundamental value. Junior's does.
The people in charge, the important people, the managers, are never going to read this book.
At my company (which shall remain nameless) we were recently assigned a book (The Trusted Advisor) to read. Management hyped it so much that they actually bought one for every engineer. It was a good book, actually an excellent book, about building high-level relationships with customers, and I found several sections that were actually philosophically diametrically opposed to some new policies and procedures that had just been instituted along with the hyping of this book. Apparently it was a "feel good move" passed on from some consultant to soften the blow of the policies (and a round of "performance-based" layoffs that were just around the corner that we hadn't been told about yet). Management obviously never read the book.
The funny thing is - the policies were put in place so that the managers could root-out slackers. They involved doing reviews of all their team members every 30 days, and team members had weekly status reports (which were not even read in the majority of cases). And the managers were too lazy to actually carry out the policy themselves. They did the reviews for the first and second month, then the next review was 4 months later (and everyone was working their asses off so they wouldn't be in the bottom 10%). In the end, some layoffs did come, mainly politically motivated layoffs, rather than "performance-based" as they had planned.
And the end result was the workers left behind are all getting burned out - because the workload didn't go down when the pressure increased.
um - sorry, I forgot to mention
on
Slashdot Turns 5
·
· Score: 2
6 years ago, I patented this whole thing. Slashcode, perl-based internet discussion boards, and the dark greenish color in conjunction with grey black and white. And the word "slashdot" and "Cowboy Neal"
A couple of years ago, I looked into this, and frankly, I was not convinced that the technology had been perfected. Worse still, the few people for whom the surgery did go wrong, were told that they were crazy, discredited, etc. Yet when careful medical analysis was done by third parties, yes - there was evidence of permanent damage having been done. True, you can go get cornea transplants for like $10,000 per eye to repair the damage.
The horror stories were just too horrifying.
I decided to wait a couple of years to see if the Lasik procedure had matured or evolved. It has not. Basically, the company has created their "product" - and is now sitting back and raking in royalties from the surgeries. (about 80% of the cost of the surgery is royalties that go back to the company that makes the machines - the surgeon has to pay-per-use, in addition to paying for the hardware).
I also waited to see if a competing technology had evolved - it involved inserting a clear polymer torus into the cornea to change the shape - the important bit was that it was reversible. The company was bought out and shut down.
Finally, I had my optometrist do a check up on me to see if Lasik was right for me - as it turns out - it is not, because I get dry eyes. My eyes were damaged as a teen from sensitivity to thimerosol in my contact lens solutions - (they don't use thimerosol anymore, because many people were sensitive to it). The new contact lenses, I can wear, in a limited fashion, about 8 hours a day at the most, and maybe 2-3 days a week. That's enough for me. I wear glasses the rest of the time.
MOST importantly: The CURE for dry eyes!!!! If anyone out there is suffering from dry eyes - try taking 1000mg of FLAX SEED OIL a day. Flax seed oil is a dietary supplement, and it's sold mostly at health-food stores and such, in the aisle with all the bee pollen, ox bile, and other garbage. But from experience, Flax seed oil REALLY does work for dry eyes. I used to be totally fatigued by 5pm, and unable to read my computer screen anymore. I even had to stop reading books for pleasure, because I just couldn't keep my eyes open from dry eyes. The Flax seed oil really helps. And it's a lot less annoying than having to stop and put in drops every half hour.
(sarcasm) I find, that in general, when they do the movie first, and then the book (like the Star Trek movies, etc.) - the story in the movie more closely mirrors what's in the book. I don't know why, it' just seems that way. Maybe they should have made the LOTR movies first, and THEN written the books? (/sarcasm)
"Humans are much more adaptable to climate change than most other plants and animals. But with 6 billion+ mouths to feed, its not quite clear how we'd adapt to a climatic problem of this kind of scale."
Isn't it QUITE clear? A whole lot of us are going to die premature deaths.
Personally, I'd tear that fucking piece of shit feature out. It's totally stupid. It should perhaps display progress as total files/bytes copied/left to copy, start time, and average transfer rate statistics. Those are actual figures the OS can get ahold of - but having to estimate how much time it's going to take is utter folly because it's dependent on so many factors like CPU load, cache, and network bandwidth, all of which can change over the time of the copy.
People just want to know that the copy is doing something, that it's not hung or chorking on disk errors or something.
I can totally understand what "religious wars" are all about.
I started off as a Novell person, I invested countless hours getting my CNE certification.
I can now wipe my ass with my CNE certificate, it don't mean jack squat anymore.
But I moved on. I now support Windows and Solaris products, and I run OS X at home. I keep telling myself that someday, Linux will be relevant enough for me to need to learn it - but that day has not come yet. When it does, I suppose I will.
I find it very difficult to understand why someone would be "religious" about Microsoft, unless they put effort into certifying on Windows, and only barely made it, and now would feel threatened if they had to move on to another OS, because they're not sure they can handle the complexity. Windows *does* do a good job of hiding the underlying complexity under a lot of abstraction. But the fact is - when you can't do any low-level troubleshooting, because that part is obscured and protected as proprietary trade secrets, then your problem-fixing repertoire will consist of "rebooting or reinstalling the OS". How much is that really worth?
A true technician does not care about what technology he or she is skilled in. A true technician can change when required (unless the vendor has the technology locked up so there's a high price-barrier to enter).
I guess if they can't build a better mouse trap, at least they can buy up all the other mousetrap manufacturers out there and make them stamp an MS logo on them.
All during an Anti-Trust trial where they've been found guilty of abusing Monopoly power. Sigh.
Let's face facts and look at what's driving this trend here.
Microsoft realizes that if there's a huge market for games, then other computer components, and software, necessary for selling computers, is eating Microsoft's lunch. They tried to get computers to appeal to the broader market segment, and found that that appeal is largely based on games. Sure, I agree that email is also a killer-app - but email is somewhat dependent on a huge infrastructure which, again, Microsoft does not control (yet). And that infrastructure is somewhat dependent on broadband - and the telcos have made it obvious that they're not going to allow broadband to cut into their T1 racket.
SO - in order to milk the gaming market, Microsoft is now going to focus on stripping down the offering to "just games" and possibly a few other whistles and bells to push the "just email" or "just DVD player" people into the console market.
In the long run, yes, I see this marginalizing the PC game market, possibly putting it into the same position as the Mac game market. (only much less marginalized). There's always going to be a place for PC games. There's just things you can do on a PC that just cannot be done in Console-land. Game modding, in-game net play, chat, hacking, etc. There will always be a group to which that has an appeal (so stop fucking buying consoles and supporting the market that's going to ultimately make your lives miserable). But the question is - will that market support the commercial effort required to supply the products?
What could follow? If demand for gaming slips on the PC side, cannibalized by the Console market - then the golden age of killer video accelerators is dead dead dead.
My son has a friend, who's very rich parents bought him a PC, an Xbox, a dreamcast, and Nintendo. My son has only a Mac. This friend of my son spends exactly zero hours on his computer. He will likely grow up with no discernable computer skills. My son hacks his Escape Velocity pilot files. I think geekness, just is not for most people out there. And the simplicity, and cost effectiveness of a console will win out over a gaming PC every time to that segment of the market. The demand will drive the games there.
I have a daughter. 6 years old. She's a big fan of Disney movies of course. So one day, she had a friend over, and they were watching the Lion King. This friend had seen it before as well. Probably hundreds of times.
(SPOILER ALERT!!!:) Right after Mufasa was killed in the stampede, this girl breaks out into hysterics. Screaming and crying. We take her out of the room and try to comfort her - she's unconsoleable. We call her parents. Her mom comes over and collects her, and by this time the girl has calmed down. Her mom explained that her daughter was a little sensitive, and that she had taken all the home videos they had, and copied them, and edited out all the "intense" parts for her. So she had never seen the scene where Mufasa died before. Now, otherwise, this girl is a rather normal, bright young child. We had no idea. Even more frightening, is that this girl's mother has a Masters in Psychology. After she left, my wife and I were like "What the fuck?" God forbid that this girl's dad should ever fall off a ladder while painting the house, or mom choke on a ham sandwich or something. I mean, I can understand she's sensitive and all - but you shield people from the unpleasant side of reality for too long, and sooner or later, unpleasantness happens to everyone. And what's she going to do in those situations? Fall to pieces? Or call 911?
I don't let my kids watch PG-13 content without seeing it first. I know a lot of my 8 year old son's friends have seen The Matrix. We didn't let him see Fellowship of the Ring last year when it came out, but here it is, 9 months later, and we feel like he's more mature now, and we rented the DVD, and he enjoyed it very much and wasn't terrified of the nine, and didn't have nightmares or anything. He probably would have last year. Would I be pleased to have the choice to rent a hacked up version of the Matrix? No. What's the point? The movie is about violence, it's about the beauty of death and destruction. There's a story in there too - but really, what's the point? When he's old enough, he'll enjoy it. My mom didn't let me watch A Clockwork Orange when I was 10. I watched it when I was 16. Chopped up movies are for lazy parents.
For military planes, 10-20% more bombs. For civilian planes, refuel 10-20% less often (saving the airline a few bucks in labor - passing the savings directly on to the CEO's offshore account).
At some point though, Apple's gotta throw us a frickin bone. Something to let us know that the platform has a future. Judging by the course of development on the Hardware side for the past two years, wrt not only bus speed, but CPU development, with AltiVec being practically the ONLY high point, the Macintosh Hardware landscape is incredibly bleak. The only thing selling Macs now on the Hardware side is Gee-Whiz fancy cases, DVD burners, and LCD monitors.
The SOFTWARE story, on the other hand, is BRILLIANT. But what the fuck are you going to run this tremendously asskicking OS on in 5 years?
I don't give a crap what the rumor sites say - I'm *not* going to invest $3500 in a pro Mac until Apple brings it's system architecture into the 21st century. I'm talking about bus bandwidth. I don't care if I have to squeeze another two years of life out of my heavily upgraded Beige G3. Apple's not getting my money, until they offer a system that's worth it to me.
If I see developments - rumors, in the positive direction, I'm more likely to wait for the worthy upgrade, than I am to say "FUCK Steve Jobs, I'm building an AMD box, and running Linux". It's as simple as that. A platform that has a future, that I can afford, versus one that does not have a future, that I can't buy at any price.
- yeah, I had a 6th grade science teacher who told me I'd never amount to anything. She didn't say; "you'll never amount to anything if you don't do X". It was "you'll never amount to anything" - period.
The dotcom bust hasn't gotten to me yet, but I'm secure in the knowledge that I'm probably making at least double what she made - adjusted for inflation, etc.
Why?
I didn't pay attention in class. Instead of listening to the redundant lectures on earth science, I read. Usually trashy sci-fi novels.:) I think that year, I was into novelized Star Trek TOS books.
In retrospect, I can't say that my behavior in that class was to my profit. Nor will I admit that it was to my detriment. But one's success or failure in the drudgery-mill doesn't have to be the end-defining judgement on anybody's life.
I home-school my kids. When they blow-off work to read trashy sci-fi novels, my heart swells with pride! One day, you all will bow to my daughter as emporer - that much I know for sure.
Slashdot Mirror
I hate to be pedantic, but the original Porsche car company was the same thing. Founded by someone of the same family as Dr. Ferdinand Porsche (to be fair; his son) - cashing in on the famous name. Turned out that the talent for making the most ass kickinest cars in the world runs in the family. (IMHO).
Borland has recovered somewhat for one reason and one reason only; it has stopped competing with Microsoft. Borland was crushed for one reason and one reason only, it was competing with Microsoft.
I'm very sorry to hear of your plight with the AMT.
I was smart, and sold all my stock options as same day sales - thus avoiding AMT - but getting bent over by having been taxed as income.
I agree 100% that AMT is the most boneheaded idea, and actually discouraged people from buying and holding, and was largely responsible for the dotcom crash. Absolutely every person I know at my former place of employment had to do the same thing.
Fortunately, I had a few extra thou laying around, and when I left, I cashed in and bought a buttload of my options when the price had hit rock bottom, very near my option price. In a few years, these may be a nice addition to my retirement. Unless some other diabolical tax law is devised to fuck us all up the ass.
Having been a Tech Support professional for several years, I can say that this is the number 1 reason why the quality of tech support has declined throughout the industry. There's a huge push in many companies to make Tech Support into either a profit center, or to minimize the expense of "answering the phones". To that end, the once vibrant job of support rep is now nothing but pure drudgery.
Typically, the management is "business-based" rather than "technically-based" and so they think like accountants. Things that make sense on their spreadsheet don't always make sense in the real world.
Such organizations do not value employees that are multitalented. they tend to force people into a narrowly defined role, with no chance for growth, or advancement, or exploring other ways to help customers besides just answering as many calls as possible, getting the customer off the phone as quickly as possible (never mind solving their problem) - as a result - workers who are bright, creative, more likely to solve problems, are hounded out of such organizations as "poor performers" etc. I've seen this happen more times than I care to recall for you here. And as I call in to support lines at other companies, I see things are much the same everywhere. The trend is away from salaried competent professionals, towards hourly-paid mindless phone monkeys. And this trend is driven by "business-based" management. Where I've worked, when the managers were technical people, it may not have been a volume business, but customers were happy, because when they did get through to a support rep, they talked to someone who could answer their problem. In other organizations where I worked under non-technical people, it was quite the opposite.
yeah, but that quickly-slapped-together-in-as-little-time-and-for -as-little-$-as-possible KIA has a 10 year warranty. Chrysler^H^H^H^H^HMercedes can't touch that.
(though $45k spent on a Mercedes is often money well spent, those cars will run 300k miles quite often without a hiccup. And so will your typical Volvo, at about 2/3 the price)
Well, it used to be that one could make money on a daily basis by working, and over one's lifetime, one could purchase the things one needs. One makes money by putting in the daily effort to produce or sell something.
Now the sellers want to sell something one time, and get an ongoing revenue stream without ongoing labor. The problem is, nobody but the ultra rich can afford ongoing expenses like this. Maybe a little bit, with home mortgages and car loans, and monthly utility bills - but at some point, people are going to say "enough" - because when one spends all one makes in every given month, without any apparent forward "progress" towards "owning" things - one is "treading water". One is essentially a slave.
Actually, the Bible commandment IS misquoted.
The pro-capital-punishment Bible-thumpers will tell you that the actual commandment is "thou shalt not commit murder".
Notice, this makes it perfectly alright to execute criminals, or bomb villages in third world countries full of hostiles.
Nobody's got an argument with YOU getting paid what you deserve. Our argument is with the "Juniors" of this world - who claim to be "worth" what they're being paid.
Having a CEO title and getting well paid doesn't necessarily mean you're evil, or undeserving of the money. But the "Junior" scenario you outlined is by FAR the norm. THAT is where most people have a problem with it. In the basics of "right and wrong" we were all taught as kindergarteners, this screams "wrong wrong wrong bad evil". The fundamental value of fairness springing from money being earned for work - REAL work. Your story, in my mind, does not violate that fundamental value. Junior's does.
I used to label my drive "DEFECTIVE" - so that whenever I did a DIR, it said - "The volume label on drive C: is DEFECTIVE"
That's exactly the point.
The people in charge, the important people, the managers, are never going to read this book.
At my company (which shall remain nameless) we were recently assigned a book (The Trusted Advisor) to read. Management hyped it so much that they actually bought one for every engineer. It was a good book, actually an excellent book, about building high-level relationships with customers, and I found several sections that were actually philosophically diametrically opposed to some new policies and procedures that had just been instituted along with the hyping of this book. Apparently it was a "feel good move" passed on from some consultant to soften the blow of the policies (and a round of "performance-based" layoffs that were just around the corner that we hadn't been told about yet). Management obviously never read the book.
The funny thing is - the policies were put in place so that the managers could root-out slackers. They involved doing reviews of all their team members every 30 days, and team members had weekly status reports (which were not even read in the majority of cases). And the managers were too lazy to actually carry out the policy themselves. They did the reviews for the first and second month, then the next review was 4 months later (and everyone was working their asses off so they wouldn't be in the bottom 10%).
In the end, some layoffs did come, mainly politically motivated layoffs, rather than "performance-based" as they had planned.
And the end result was the workers left behind are all getting burned out - because the workload didn't go down when the pressure increased.
6 years ago, I patented this whole thing. Slashcode, perl-based internet discussion boards, and the dark greenish color in conjunction with grey black and white. And the word "slashdot" and "Cowboy Neal"
I'll see ya in court buddy!
A couple of years ago, I looked into this, and frankly, I was not convinced that the technology had been perfected. Worse still, the few people for whom the surgery did go wrong, were told that they were crazy, discredited, etc. Yet when careful medical analysis was done by third parties, yes - there was evidence of permanent damage having been done. True, you can go get cornea transplants for like $10,000 per eye to repair the damage.
The horror stories were just too horrifying.
I decided to wait a couple of years to see if the Lasik procedure had matured or evolved. It has not. Basically, the company has created their "product" - and is now sitting back and raking in royalties from the surgeries. (about 80% of the cost of the surgery is royalties that go back to the company that makes the machines - the surgeon has to pay-per-use, in addition to paying for the hardware).
I also waited to see if a competing technology had evolved - it involved inserting a clear polymer torus into the cornea to change the shape - the important bit was that it was reversible. The company was bought out and shut down.
Finally, I had my optometrist do a check up on me to see if Lasik was right for me - as it turns out - it is not, because I get dry eyes. My eyes were damaged as a teen from sensitivity to thimerosol in my contact lens solutions - (they don't use thimerosol anymore, because many people were sensitive to it).
The new contact lenses, I can wear, in a limited fashion, about 8 hours a day at the most, and maybe 2-3 days a week. That's enough for me. I wear glasses the rest of the time.
MOST importantly:
The CURE for dry eyes!!!!
If anyone out there is suffering from dry eyes - try taking 1000mg of FLAX SEED OIL a day. Flax seed oil is a dietary supplement, and it's sold mostly at health-food stores and such, in the aisle with all the bee pollen, ox bile, and other garbage. But from experience, Flax seed oil REALLY does work for dry eyes. I used to be totally fatigued by 5pm, and unable to read my computer screen anymore. I even had to stop reading books for pleasure, because I just couldn't keep my eyes open from dry eyes. The Flax seed oil really helps. And it's a lot less annoying than having to stop and put in drops every half hour.
(sarcasm)
I find, that in general, when they do the movie first, and then the book (like the Star Trek movies, etc.) - the story in the movie more closely mirrors what's in the book. I don't know why, it' just seems that way.
Maybe they should have made the LOTR movies first, and THEN written the books?
(/sarcasm)
make em pay, don't make em pay, I don't care!
Just make the fuckers STOP!
"Humans are much more adaptable to climate change than most other plants and animals. But with 6 billion+ mouths to feed, its not quite clear how we'd adapt to a climatic problem of this kind of scale."
Isn't it QUITE clear? A whole lot of us are going to die premature deaths.
Personally, I'd tear that fucking piece of shit feature out. It's totally stupid.
It should perhaps display progress as total files/bytes copied/left to copy, start time, and average transfer rate statistics. Those are actual figures the OS can get ahold of - but having to estimate how much time it's going to take is utter folly because it's dependent on so many factors like CPU load, cache, and network bandwidth, all of which can change over the time of the copy.
People just want to know that the copy is doing something, that it's not hung or chorking on disk errors or something.
I can totally understand what "religious wars" are all about.
I started off as a Novell person, I invested countless hours getting my CNE certification.
I can now wipe my ass with my CNE certificate, it don't mean jack squat anymore.
But I moved on. I now support Windows and Solaris products, and I run OS X at home. I keep telling myself that someday, Linux will be relevant enough for me to need to learn it - but that day has not come yet. When it does, I suppose I will.
I find it very difficult to understand why someone would be "religious" about Microsoft, unless they put effort into certifying on Windows, and only barely made it, and now would feel threatened if they had to move on to another OS, because they're not sure they can handle the complexity. Windows *does* do a good job of hiding the underlying complexity under a lot of abstraction. But the fact is - when you can't do any low-level troubleshooting, because that part is obscured and protected as proprietary trade secrets, then your problem-fixing repertoire will consist of "rebooting or reinstalling the OS". How much is that really worth?
A true technician does not care about what technology he or she is skilled in. A true technician can change when required (unless the vendor has the technology locked up so there's a high price-barrier to enter).
I guess if they can't build a better mouse trap, at least they can buy up all the other mousetrap manufacturers out there and make them stamp an MS logo on them.
All during an Anti-Trust trial where they've been found guilty of abusing Monopoly power. Sigh.
Let's face facts and look at what's driving this trend here.
Microsoft realizes that if there's a huge market for games, then other computer components, and software, necessary for selling computers, is eating Microsoft's lunch. They tried to get computers to appeal to the broader market segment, and found that that appeal is largely based on games. Sure, I agree that email is also a killer-app - but email is somewhat dependent on a huge infrastructure which, again, Microsoft does not control (yet). And that infrastructure is somewhat dependent on broadband - and the telcos have made it obvious that they're not going to allow broadband to cut into their T1 racket.
SO - in order to milk the gaming market, Microsoft is now going to focus on stripping down the offering to "just games" and possibly a few other whistles and bells to push the "just email" or "just DVD player" people into the console market.
In the long run, yes, I see this marginalizing the PC game market, possibly putting it into the same position as the Mac game market. (only much less marginalized). There's always going to be a place for PC games. There's just things you can do on a PC that just cannot be done in Console-land. Game modding, in-game net play, chat, hacking, etc. There will always be a group to which that has an appeal (so stop fucking buying consoles and supporting the market that's going to ultimately make your lives miserable). But the question is - will that market support the commercial effort required to supply the products?
What could follow? If demand for gaming slips on the PC side, cannibalized by the Console market - then the golden age of killer video accelerators is dead dead dead.
My son has a friend, who's very rich parents bought him a PC, an Xbox, a dreamcast, and Nintendo. My son has only a Mac. This friend of my son spends exactly zero hours on his computer. He will likely grow up with no discernable computer skills. My son hacks his Escape Velocity pilot files. I think geekness, just is not for most people out there. And the simplicity, and cost effectiveness of a console will win out over a gaming PC every time to that segment of the market. The demand will drive the games there.
I have a daughter. 6 years old. She's a big fan of Disney movies of course. So one day, she had a friend over, and they were watching the Lion King. This friend had seen it before as well. Probably hundreds of times.
(SPOILER ALERT!!!:)
Right after Mufasa was killed in the stampede, this girl breaks out into hysterics. Screaming and crying. We take her out of the room and try to comfort her - she's unconsoleable. We call her parents. Her mom comes over and collects her, and by this time the girl has calmed down. Her mom explained that her daughter was a little sensitive, and that she had taken all the home videos they had, and copied them, and edited out all the "intense" parts for her. So she had never seen the scene where Mufasa died before.
Now, otherwise, this girl is a rather normal, bright young child. We had no idea.
Even more frightening, is that this girl's mother has a Masters in Psychology.
After she left, my wife and I were like "What the fuck?"
God forbid that this girl's dad should ever fall off a ladder while painting the house, or mom choke on a ham sandwich or something. I mean, I can understand she's sensitive and all - but you shield people from the unpleasant side of reality for too long, and sooner or later, unpleasantness happens to everyone. And what's she going to do in those situations? Fall to pieces? Or call 911?
I don't let my kids watch PG-13 content without seeing it first. I know a lot of my 8 year old son's friends have seen The Matrix. We didn't let him see Fellowship of the Ring last year when it came out, but here it is, 9 months later, and we feel like he's more mature now, and we rented the DVD, and he enjoyed it very much and wasn't terrified of the nine, and didn't have nightmares or anything. He probably would have last year. Would I be pleased to have the choice to rent a hacked up version of the Matrix? No. What's the point? The movie is about violence, it's about the beauty of death and destruction. There's a story in there too - but really, what's the point? When he's old enough, he'll enjoy it. My mom didn't let me watch A Clockwork Orange when I was 10. I watched it when I was 16. Chopped up movies are for lazy parents.
For military planes, 10-20% more bombs.
For civilian planes, refuel 10-20% less often (saving the airline a few bucks in labor - passing the savings directly on to the CEO's offshore account).
So what?
At some point though, Apple's gotta throw us a frickin bone. Something to let us know that the platform has a future. Judging by the course of development on the Hardware side for the past two years, wrt not only bus speed, but CPU development, with AltiVec being practically the ONLY high point, the Macintosh Hardware landscape is incredibly bleak. The only thing selling Macs now on the Hardware side is Gee-Whiz fancy cases, DVD burners, and LCD monitors.
The SOFTWARE story, on the other hand, is BRILLIANT. But what the fuck are you going to run this tremendously asskicking OS on in 5 years?
I don't give a crap what the rumor sites say - I'm *not* going to invest $3500 in a pro Mac until Apple brings it's system architecture into the 21st century. I'm talking about bus bandwidth. I don't care if I have to squeeze another two years of life out of my heavily upgraded Beige G3. Apple's not getting my money, until they offer a system that's worth it to me.
If I see developments - rumors, in the positive direction, I'm more likely to wait for the worthy upgrade, than I am to say "FUCK Steve Jobs, I'm building an AMD box, and running Linux". It's as simple as that. A platform that has a future, that I can afford, versus one that does not have a future, that I can't buy at any price.
I've often wondered if anybody's tried one of those XLR8 G4 upgrades on a TiVo?
- yeah, I had a 6th grade science teacher who told me I'd never amount to anything.
:) I think that year, I was into novelized Star Trek TOS books.
She didn't say; "you'll never amount to anything if you don't do X". It was "you'll never amount to anything" - period.
The dotcom bust hasn't gotten to me yet, but I'm secure in the knowledge that I'm probably making at least double what she made - adjusted for inflation, etc.
Why?
I didn't pay attention in class. Instead of listening to the redundant lectures on earth science, I read. Usually trashy sci-fi novels.
In retrospect, I can't say that my behavior in that class was to my profit. Nor will I admit that it was to my detriment. But one's success or failure in the drudgery-mill doesn't have to be the end-defining judgement on anybody's life.
I home-school my kids.
When they blow-off work to read trashy sci-fi novels, my heart swells with pride!
One day, you all will bow to my daughter as emporer - that much I know for sure.
I would hire the worlds best assassin. Then I'd start going down the list of the worlds worst tyrants (and overpaid executives).