I used to work in a shop that sold music equipment. The cost to the business would be approximately 1/2 to 1/3 of MSRP, so even a 45% off "sale" would still net the shop some decent profit. Funny part was, there were slower moving items (like guitars/keyboards/drums) that had MSRP around 200% of cost, and faster moving items (like strings, sticks, cables) that had MSRP around 250-300% or higher.
That's right, for a fast-moving item that cost us $1.50, MSRP would be $8, we'd advertise for $6. The best part? If I knew a customer and they were kind, they'd get them for more like $3. If the customer was a dick and asked for a discount, he'd get it for $5.50, oblivious that the dude in front of him paid half that.
In the case of the Kindle, Amazon is (presumably) the manufacturer as well as the distributor, so the margins can be different. I couldn't tell you exactly what the cost to actually *make* a guitar might be with respect to the distributor's cost, though we can see they're still in business so they must have another markup somewhere.
Some more info and other applications can be found here. Linked in that article are 150 pages of documents involving CIPAV, just take a look here. Kinda makes you wonder exactly how some of these things happen, perhaps some cross-site scripting with the company requesting FBI help. It's worth noting that in order to use CIPAV, the FBI has to get court approval after explaining how the software can help stop a crime.
i get absolutely nothing from linux that i don't get from windows; it is not easier to use, it is not faster, it is not anything that i need
until the linux community patents a new type of software that i have to have and it runs only on linux, I' wont switch, even tho the thought of giving more money to redmond makes me want to puke
It's a sad truth that most new PC's (not home-built) already come with the MS tax on there. Most people won't ever bother installing an OS, so there isn't much incentive for Dell/HP to ship off machines without an OS. So people just give MS their $100 or whatever it is for the license to "use Windows" (not own).
The simplest way to get Linux into the market would be for an Ubuntu or Fedora (or whatever OS) machine to be sitting right next to whichever Windows is fancy at the time. It certainly can look as flashy, and it would have a price tag $100 to $200 less, for the same box. To get that to happen we would need hardware and software compatibility (marketshare to pressure linux drivers). Many companies do release linux versions of games, Id software, the UT series, etc... Otherwise they work fine in Wine (most of the time).
One adjustment I'd make is to put the word "Web" in front of all of those. Nothing pisses me off more than a job opening for a "Software Engineer" that is nothing more than writing HTML with a little bit of Javascript thrown in for good measure. To say just "Programmer" is not enough, since that could mean any language, including markup languages. Beyond that, I'd say you've got a reasonable definition... it puts all the MS monkeys into the "Software Designer" category...
I wish I could find some sort of reference for this, so someone can chime in if they actually remember the numbers. I was pretty young for the NES and SNES games, so I don't truly remember the numbers there. I also wish I could find some actual sales numbers, it would be interesting to see if NES games outsold GC games or just had a higher market percentage, for example.
NES games - $20-$30
SNES games - $30-40
n64/GC/Wii games - $40-50
ps2/xbox games - $40-50
ps3/xbox360 games - $50-60
I realize that development costs have gone up, but production costs should have gone down (it's a matter of cents to reproduce a DVD, perhaps a bit more for BD, but not by much I think...). If we consider the cost of production to be largely insignificant (a dollar or less), then if they chop the price down from $60 to $30, people would be much more willing to part with it and they just might sell twice as many copies.
Considering the price of ps3 games, I'm apprehensive to buy any new games, $60 is not something I part with easily, so I only have maybe 10 games for the ps3. Back when I had the SNES (and was only working for an allowance), I didn't think twice about picking up a new game for $40. Simple math, if I can buy 3 or more games for the price of 2 (or 1)... I may just go with the quantity over quality.
All these definitions for torture, humiliation, etc... are contingent on one thing: That everyone has the same human rights. Being forced to watch the South Park movie repeatedly, listening to Barbara Streisand for hours on end, or watching Team America for 10 minutes should all be considered torture. However, when you've killed thousands upon thousands of your own people, including women and children, I think you've effectively given up any ability to be called "human" and therefore have no human rights. People who show that amount of disregard for their fellow man/woman should have no claim to the rights the rest of us enjoy.
Concerning the media hype (or lack thereof), you're forgetting that the U.S. media is an indirect PR committee for the US government. It's all what we as Americans see since we don't generally watch news from foreign nations. It certainly did it's job in calming us down in a "don't worry, we got him" sort of way. To say it weakened him in Iraq I think is a stretch, a majority of them hated him anyway.
hanging is a perfectly reasonable form of execution. it's probably easier to get right than lethal injection or electrocution, given some of the horror stories we've all heard. if the rope is long enough and positioned properly, death is instantaneous from a broken neck.
Don't forget the positioning of the knot on the rope is important. If the knot is behind the neck, then the neck doesn't snap and instead the person is suffocated. If the knot is on the side of the neck, then the neck gets broken... but only under the circumstances eltaco outlines below (right length, distance of fall, etc...)
You make an interesting point here. However, to me it looks like MS tried to copy Apple, and failed. Looking at Vista, they tried to do some Vista-only things like DX10, a new paradigm for application development (not sure if the underlying binary was different, or of anyone cared) which broke "legacy" software, and a new set of hardware requirements. All in all, it's not that different than what Apple did with the release of OSX.
What is different is that MS had/has a huge share of the market, most of which was perceived to be "running just fine", and the new hardware requirements were just too steep to make it financially feasible for most corporations. I ran OSX on a g3 back when it first came out, it was sluggish, but it worked. The same can't be said for Vista (run on a computer 2+ years old).
In a nutshell, it was always MS deciding to abandon support for "older" systems that should convince people they "want" the new system. They tried the same stunt with Vista, by not offering DirectX10 support for XP. It fizzled because neither people nor industry cared.
Here I think you are a little misleading. Concerning hardware, things that are still being made may say "Vista Capable" (or whatever), but they still come with XP/2000 drivers. When making the transition from 2k to XP, you didn't need a new computer. To go from XP to Vista, all of a sudden you're asking people to put together gaming machines with fancy video cards, lots of RAM and other expensive hardware. I don't need a Geforce 8800 to run outlook, why should I be forced to buy one?
From a software side, Windows 2000 was completely capable of running Win95 and Win98 executables. Windows XP can run everything in "compatibility mode" for Win NT 4.0 and later. If you don't believe me, right click on any executable, click the compatibility tab, and look at the compatibility mode section. Windows has always had that capability, it's part of the reason that people stick with it... so they don't need to buy a new copy of every piece of software with each new OS. When Vista came along and broke it, people were up in arms because their accounting software was broken, their games no longer worked, or solitaire was in a different location. Apple at least had the common sense to get their new development platform out there quickly so the necessary applications could be ported. I remember having Photoshop designed for OSX within a few weeks of OSX being released. Here it is 2 years later, and we still can't say everything is "Vista Ready"
You're right... they don't own the internet. The U.S. Government doesn't own the internet, nor should they legally have any right to censor or disrupt the operation thereof. A quick search netted this, basically all of the US is owned by the big telecom and cable companies (surprise!) with ~134,855 routers as of the 2006 date in the article. I understand there are only a few massive (fiberoptic?) channels that span the oceans to connect us globally. Even so, considering these are all privately owned companies, what gives the Fed any right to control any of it? I would think that nations of Europe or Asia would have some issues if their internet access died.
Another instance of the United States playing Hall Monitor for the world.
Information from IDC WW Quarterly Server Tracker - CY2008 total Unix Servers factory revenue:...
Sorry, but Apple can't be classified as "major unix competitor".
You cited Unix Servers factory Revenue. Just because there aren't a heck of a lot of Mac servers out there doesn't mean Apple hasn't done wonders in the desktop field to get a Unix derivative out there. They have stiff competition from MS in every line they produce (with the exception of the iPod/Zune, of course).
Those figures also don't detail which OS is running on each of those. Looking at the numbers you'd think that Apple has a long way to go, but consider that there are so many variants of Unix/Linux (they claim Unix, but do they mean *nix?), you can't necessarily claim that Apple is incredibly far behind unless you have specific figures for what OS had what share of the market.
Apple is certainly a Unix-based competitor in the overall computer market. How they fare in a Unix-on-Unix environment is debatable, since they compete with a lot of free software.
If it would cost a lot to upgrade from XP to 7, then it's time to either switch to Linux or at least start talking about it so that Microsoft will help make the transition available for a more reasonable cost.
Look at the Vista debacle (see the past 2 years of "Vista Capable" and "Large corporations not picking up vista"). We have no reason to believe that Win7 will be *any less* a resource hog than the Vista business edition, which is what any company would likely run anyway. Knowing that we can rule out the Vista starter pack that allows only 3 applications (word, outlook, excel, close one to browse the web), we can reasonably assume that Win7 will be a resource hog and likely require hardware upgrades. It's true that many corporations rotate hardware every couple of years, but to replace thousands of machines with the "Vista Ready" boxes just to gear up for Win7 is a pipe dream. What incentive do companies have to upgrade to the latest OS if:
Win7 doesn't have any history in the business sector
Would require hardware upgrades across the board
Requires training/retraining of IT personnel (all I've read says Win7 is vastly different than XP)
There are less expensive alternatives, like sticking with XP (not moving to Vista worked to keep XP alive), or OSS
Considering that we're at a point where computational power is considered to be sufficient or in excess for normal, non-power users, in two years this should allow the government to purchase some low-end machines that have more than enough power to take care of the work that will probably be done on most of them.
You may have a point here, but we're still talking a lot of money in hardware and training. My company used to have a lot of mixed OS development (Mac, *nix, Windows), but within the past few years have migrated to XP-only. If you want something else, you have to go through the red tape with a damned good business reason, and support it yourself. Most of the IT support people are XP-trained. Anything else they refuse to touch. When machines are upgraded every 3 years or so (yea, I know) they are replaced with the least expensive desktop they can get away with. The latest round would have been top of the line a year and a half ago, maybe two, still barely able to run Vista reasonably well (thank you Intel integrated graphics).
Re:I hear lots of negative criticism about Linux.
on
Linux Needs Critics
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· Score: 1, Insightful
As said elsewhere, there are plenty of critics. There are two things really lacking:
Valid criticisms. Not "It's not Windows, there's no little blue 'e' icon, where's my internet?"
All those valid criticisms need to find their way to those people that can/will actually do something about it. My friend telling me they don't like "yum"'s behavior in whatever case doesn't do the greater community any good, since I'm not an active contributor to Linux (heresy!)
I for one slip C and C++ commands into every day speak. Something about C#'s "System dot Diagnostics dot Trace dot Writeline open-paren double-quote Hello World double-quote close-paren" doesn't quite roll off the tongue.
Who runs OO on Windows? The only point of this "test" is to see if Linux can keep up or not.
Anybody that doesn't want to shell out $400 dollars for an MS Office license once the "try it for 10 runs or 60 days, whichever happens first" demo expires.
With the notable exception that OOo is Java-based. I know both compilers handle java, but we're still talking something that runs in a virtual machine, likely with a whole slew of JIT-compilation. To truly compare these, you'd need to make sure you're running the same Java VM, and be certain that the behavior of the VM is the same across the board (i.e. it's actually dead between OOo runs).
The Java Runtime Environment (JRE) is required for the Base (database) component of OpenOffice.org as well as several other features. By default the OpenOffice.org installer will install this additional piece of software as well.
Well actually I see it in another way: probably in a few years Intel will have an absolute monopoly in the X86 arena. If they would be the only manufacturer of the CPU and chipset they would stand to make a shitload of money without caring for their brand as people wouldn't really have any choice.
They can absolutely have a monopoly on the x86 architecture, they can be the captain of a sinking ship. Meanwhile the other chip manufacturers can continue making money on today's technology. I don't think Intel would be stupid enough to continue making 32-bit (x86) machines for the "next few years", that would be like Nintendo still manufacturing the NES, despite having the ps3 staring them down.
Intel tried to do their own 64-bit Itanium that fell flat on it's face, so now they're using AMD's 64-bit instruction set. AMD has threatened to revoke Intel's access to AMD's 64-bit processing copyrights, which would leave Intel scrambling.
I'm not sure of all the specifics for who owns what copyrights and has them apportioned to whoever else, though I do know that Intel's current game can end up very bad for them, very quickly.
Windows 7 has proven to be the most stable Windows release for a good decade.
XP has ruled the desktop market for almost a decade now. Windows 7 shall rule the next.
It's easy to say that "Windows 7 is the most stable release for a good decade." When you only release an OS every 3-5 years (or longer), and every other OS is a steaming pile that people accept anyway.
3.1 - at least it worked
95 - make it stop
98 - getting somewhere
2000 - with harsh resistance
XP - solid, stable, still in action
Vista - How would you like to brick today?
Win7 - Showing promise
VistaTheReturn - I'm expecting Suckfest 2012 (the end of the world!)
Don't get me wrong, I too think Win7 is looking to be a good OS. I wouldn't call it *great*, but I do like that MS is finally looking like they understand the customer can tell them what they want as opposed to the old business model of "we'll tell you what you want".
Speaking as someone who has a CS degree and has sat on numerous interview committees, I can add in that the Bachelor's is the new H.S. Diploma. By not going for any sort of Bachelor's, you're only going to hurt yourself. When I was interviewing people, age meant absolutely nothing to me. We had positions that needed filling, and it became my job to see who fit the mold best. It just so happens that my group is full of Bachelor's, Master's, and PhD's in various fields. If someone doesn't have the piece of paper, they better be able to prove they know what they are talking about, unlike a majority of the script kiddies today that can program "Hello World" in 20 languages, but can't do it without Visual Studio's help.
Did they need to be sharp? Of course, they needed to be able to solve the problems presented to them
Did they need to be young (for whatever perceived reason)? No way. One of the key members of the team, brightest guys I've ever known around C/C++ compilers just retired last year.
Would we have hired someone older? I think the biggest thing we wanted was the ability to keep them around for more than a couple years. At 35, you wouldn't have anything to worry about
Slashdot Mirror
Perhaps a better link for information: Music Genome Project. A little more detail from Pandora's blog.
I used to work in a shop that sold music equipment. The cost to the business would be approximately 1/2 to 1/3 of MSRP, so even a 45% off "sale" would still net the shop some decent profit. Funny part was, there were slower moving items (like guitars/keyboards/drums) that had MSRP around 200% of cost, and faster moving items (like strings, sticks, cables) that had MSRP around 250-300% or higher.
That's right, for a fast-moving item that cost us $1.50, MSRP would be $8, we'd advertise for $6. The best part? If I knew a customer and they were kind, they'd get them for more like $3. If the customer was a dick and asked for a discount, he'd get it for $5.50, oblivious that the dude in front of him paid half that.
In the case of the Kindle, Amazon is (presumably) the manufacturer as well as the distributor, so the margins can be different. I couldn't tell you exactly what the cost to actually *make* a guitar might be with respect to the distributor's cost, though we can see they're still in business so they must have another markup somewhere.
Some more info and other applications can be found here. Linked in that article are 150 pages of documents involving CIPAV, just take a look here. Kinda makes you wonder exactly how some of these things happen, perhaps some cross-site scripting with the company requesting FBI help. It's worth noting that in order to use CIPAV, the FBI has to get court approval after explaining how the software can help stop a crime.
you forgot "Microsoft Works"
i get absolutely nothing from linux that i don't get from windows; it is not easier to use, it is not faster, it is not anything that i need until the linux community patents a new type of software that i have to have and it runs only on linux, I' wont switch, even tho the thought of giving more money to redmond makes me want to puke
It's a sad truth that most new PC's (not home-built) already come with the MS tax on there. Most people won't ever bother installing an OS, so there isn't much incentive for Dell/HP to ship off machines without an OS. So people just give MS their $100 or whatever it is for the license to "use Windows" (not own).
The simplest way to get Linux into the market would be for an Ubuntu or Fedora (or whatever OS) machine to be sitting right next to whichever Windows is fancy at the time. It certainly can look as flashy, and it would have a price tag $100 to $200 less, for the same box. To get that to happen we would need hardware and software compatibility (marketshare to pressure linux drivers). Many companies do release linux versions of games, Id software, the UT series, etc... Otherwise they work fine in Wine (most of the time).
One adjustment I'd make is to put the word "Web" in front of all of those. Nothing pisses me off more than a job opening for a "Software Engineer" that is nothing more than writing HTML with a little bit of Javascript thrown in for good measure. To say just "Programmer" is not enough, since that could mean any language, including markup languages. Beyond that, I'd say you've got a reasonable definition... it puts all the MS monkeys into the "Software Designer" category...
I wish I could find some sort of reference for this, so someone can chime in if they actually remember the numbers. I was pretty young for the NES and SNES games, so I don't truly remember the numbers there. I also wish I could find some actual sales numbers, it would be interesting to see if NES games outsold GC games or just had a higher market percentage, for example.
I realize that development costs have gone up, but production costs should have gone down (it's a matter of cents to reproduce a DVD, perhaps a bit more for BD, but not by much I think...). If we consider the cost of production to be largely insignificant (a dollar or less), then if they chop the price down from $60 to $30, people would be much more willing to part with it and they just might sell twice as many copies.
Considering the price of ps3 games, I'm apprehensive to buy any new games, $60 is not something I part with easily, so I only have maybe 10 games for the ps3. Back when I had the SNES (and was only working for an allowance), I didn't think twice about picking up a new game for $40. Simple math, if I can buy 3 or more games for the price of 2 (or 1)... I may just go with the quantity over quality.
Do they have illegal records of Dick Cheney torturing kittens or something? Wait, that wouldn't surprise anyone.
Especially if said kittens were trained to quail hunt.
All these definitions for torture, humiliation, etc... are contingent on one thing: That everyone has the same human rights. Being forced to watch the South Park movie repeatedly, listening to Barbara Streisand for hours on end, or watching Team America for 10 minutes should all be considered torture. However, when you've killed thousands upon thousands of your own people, including women and children, I think you've effectively given up any ability to be called "human" and therefore have no human rights. People who show that amount of disregard for their fellow man/woman should have no claim to the rights the rest of us enjoy.
Concerning the media hype (or lack thereof), you're forgetting that the U.S. media is an indirect PR committee for the US government. It's all what we as Americans see since we don't generally watch news from foreign nations. It certainly did it's job in calming us down in a "don't worry, we got him" sort of way. To say it weakened him in Iraq I think is a stretch, a majority of them hated him anyway.
hanging is a perfectly reasonable form of execution. it's probably easier to get right than lethal injection or electrocution, given some of the horror stories we've all heard. if the rope is long enough and positioned properly, death is instantaneous from a broken neck.
Don't forget the positioning of the knot on the rope is important. If the knot is behind the neck, then the neck doesn't snap and instead the person is suffocated. If the knot is on the side of the neck, then the neck gets broken... but only under the circumstances eltaco outlines below (right length, distance of fall, etc...)
What MS needs is new hardware.
You make an interesting point here. However, to me it looks like MS tried to copy Apple, and failed. Looking at Vista, they tried to do some Vista-only things like DX10, a new paradigm for application development (not sure if the underlying binary was different, or of anyone cared) which broke "legacy" software, and a new set of hardware requirements. All in all, it's not that different than what Apple did with the release of OSX.
What is different is that MS had/has a huge share of the market, most of which was perceived to be "running just fine", and the new hardware requirements were just too steep to make it financially feasible for most corporations. I ran OSX on a g3 back when it first came out, it was sluggish, but it worked. The same can't be said for Vista (run on a computer 2+ years old).
In a nutshell, it was always MS deciding to abandon support for "older" systems that should convince people they "want" the new system. They tried the same stunt with Vista, by not offering DirectX10 support for XP. It fizzled because neither people nor industry cared.
Here I think you are a little misleading. Concerning hardware, things that are still being made may say "Vista Capable" (or whatever), but they still come with XP/2000 drivers. When making the transition from 2k to XP, you didn't need a new computer. To go from XP to Vista, all of a sudden you're asking people to put together gaming machines with fancy video cards, lots of RAM and other expensive hardware. I don't need a Geforce 8800 to run outlook, why should I be forced to buy one?
From a software side, Windows 2000 was completely capable of running Win95 and Win98 executables. Windows XP can run everything in "compatibility mode" for Win NT 4.0 and later. If you don't believe me, right click on any executable, click the compatibility tab, and look at the compatibility mode section. Windows has always had that capability, it's part of the reason that people stick with it... so they don't need to buy a new copy of every piece of software with each new OS. When Vista came along and broke it, people were up in arms because their accounting software was broken, their games no longer worked, or solitaire was in a different location. Apple at least had the common sense to get their new development platform out there quickly so the necessary applications could be ported. I remember having Photoshop designed for OSX within a few weeks of OSX being released. Here it is 2 years later, and we still can't say everything is "Vista Ready"
You're right... they don't own the internet. The U.S. Government doesn't own the internet, nor should they legally have any right to censor or disrupt the operation thereof. A quick search netted this, basically all of the US is owned by the big telecom and cable companies (surprise!) with ~134,855 routers as of the 2006 date in the article. I understand there are only a few massive (fiberoptic?) channels that span the oceans to connect us globally. Even so, considering these are all privately owned companies, what gives the Fed any right to control any of it? I would think that nations of Europe or Asia would have some issues if their internet access died.
Another instance of the United States playing Hall Monitor for the world.
Information from IDC WW Quarterly Server Tracker - CY2008 total Unix Servers factory revenue: ...
Sorry, but Apple can't be classified as "major unix competitor".
You cited Unix Servers factory Revenue. Just because there aren't a heck of a lot of Mac servers out there doesn't mean Apple hasn't done wonders in the desktop field to get a Unix derivative out there. They have stiff competition from MS in every line they produce (with the exception of the iPod/Zune, of course).
Those figures also don't detail which OS is running on each of those. Looking at the numbers you'd think that Apple has a long way to go, but consider that there are so many variants of Unix/Linux (they claim Unix, but do they mean *nix?), you can't necessarily claim that Apple is incredibly far behind unless you have specific figures for what OS had what share of the market.
Apple is certainly a Unix-based competitor in the overall computer market. How they fare in a Unix-on-Unix environment is debatable, since they compete with a lot of free software.
If it would cost a lot to upgrade from XP to 7, then it's time to either switch to Linux or at least start talking about it so that Microsoft will help make the transition available for a more reasonable cost.
Look at the Vista debacle (see the past 2 years of "Vista Capable" and "Large corporations not picking up vista"). We have no reason to believe that Win7 will be *any less* a resource hog than the Vista business edition, which is what any company would likely run anyway. Knowing that we can rule out the Vista starter pack that allows only 3 applications (word, outlook, excel, close one to browse the web), we can reasonably assume that Win7 will be a resource hog and likely require hardware upgrades. It's true that many corporations rotate hardware every couple of years, but to replace thousands of machines with the "Vista Ready" boxes just to gear up for Win7 is a pipe dream. What incentive do companies have to upgrade to the latest OS if:
Considering that we're at a point where computational power is considered to be sufficient or in excess for normal, non-power users, in two years this should allow the government to purchase some low-end machines that have more than enough power to take care of the work that will probably be done on most of them.
You may have a point here, but we're still talking a lot of money in hardware and training. My company used to have a lot of mixed OS development (Mac, *nix, Windows), but within the past few years have migrated to XP-only. If you want something else, you have to go through the red tape with a damned good business reason, and support it yourself. Most of the IT support people are XP-trained. Anything else they refuse to touch. When machines are upgraded every 3 years or so (yea, I know) they are replaced with the least expensive desktop they can get away with. The latest round would have been top of the line a year and a half ago, maybe two, still barely able to run Vista reasonably well (thank you Intel integrated graphics).
As said elsewhere, there are plenty of critics. There are two things really lacking:
new headline:
OH HAI! I UPGRADED UR GARDIEN KTHXBYE
(that's right... mod me down... care--)
Sweet! I'll be an underacheiver in no time!
I for one slip C and C++ commands into every day speak. Something about C#'s "System dot Diagnostics dot Trace dot Writeline open-paren double-quote Hello World double-quote close-paren" doesn't quite roll off the tongue.
In Soviet Russia, toilet flush you. Perhaps there's just an incompatibility with Russian toilets and astronauts.
Who runs OO on Windows? The only point of this "test" is to see if Linux can keep up or not.
Anybody that doesn't want to shell out $400 dollars for an MS Office license once the "try it for 10 runs or 60 days, whichever happens first" demo expires.
With the notable exception that OOo is Java-based. I know both compilers handle java, but we're still talking something that runs in a virtual machine, likely with a whole slew of JIT-compilation. To truly compare these, you'd need to make sure you're running the same Java VM, and be certain that the behavior of the VM is the same across the board (i.e. it's actually dead between OOo runs).
Just look here.
The Java Runtime Environment (JRE) is required for the Base (database) component of OpenOffice.org as well as several other features. By default the OpenOffice.org installer will install this additional piece of software as well.
Well actually I see it in another way: probably in a few years Intel will have an absolute monopoly in the X86 arena. If they would be the only manufacturer of the CPU and chipset they would stand to make a shitload of money without caring for their brand as people wouldn't really have any choice.
They can absolutely have a monopoly on the x86 architecture, they can be the captain of a sinking ship. Meanwhile the other chip manufacturers can continue making money on today's technology. I don't think Intel would be stupid enough to continue making 32-bit (x86) machines for the "next few years", that would be like Nintendo still manufacturing the NES, despite having the ps3 staring them down.
Intel tried to do their own 64-bit Itanium that fell flat on it's face, so now they're using AMD's 64-bit instruction set. AMD has threatened to revoke Intel's access to AMD's 64-bit processing copyrights, which would leave Intel scrambling.
I'm not sure of all the specifics for who owns what copyrights and has them apportioned to whoever else, though I do know that Intel's current game can end up very bad for them, very quickly.
some light reading
Or I could spend $599 for one without a contract, and still give AT&T a boatload of money.
How exactly is this a good deal?
Windows 7 has proven to be the most stable Windows release for a good decade.
XP has ruled the desktop market for almost a decade now. Windows 7 shall rule the next.
It's easy to say that "Windows 7 is the most stable release for a good decade." When you only release an OS every 3-5 years (or longer), and every other OS is a steaming pile that people accept anyway.
3.1 - at least it worked
95 - make it stop
98 - getting somewhere
2000 - with harsh resistance
XP - solid, stable, still in action
Vista - How would you like to brick today?
Win7 - Showing promise
VistaTheReturn - I'm expecting Suckfest 2012 (the end of the world!)
Don't get me wrong, I too think Win7 is looking to be a good OS. I wouldn't call it *great*, but I do like that MS is finally looking like they understand the customer can tell them what they want as opposed to the old business model of "we'll tell you what you want".
Speaking as someone who has a CS degree and has sat on numerous interview committees, I can add in that the Bachelor's is the new H.S. Diploma. By not going for any sort of Bachelor's, you're only going to hurt yourself. When I was interviewing people, age meant absolutely nothing to me. We had positions that needed filling, and it became my job to see who fit the mold best. It just so happens that my group is full of Bachelor's, Master's, and PhD's in various fields. If someone doesn't have the piece of paper, they better be able to prove they know what they are talking about, unlike a majority of the script kiddies today that can program "Hello World" in 20 languages, but can't do it without Visual Studio's help.
Did they need to be sharp? Of course, they needed to be able to solve the problems presented to them
Did they need to be young (for whatever perceived reason)? No way. One of the key members of the team, brightest guys I've ever known around C/C++ compilers just retired last year.
Would we have hired someone older? I think the biggest thing we wanted was the ability to keep them around for more than a couple years. At 35, you wouldn't have anything to worry about