OK, I found some real numbers. In 2006, "H-P claimed the top spot with 2.26 million units... Dell was second with 1.78 million shipments... IBM placed third on shipments of 1.3 million units... while Sun sold more than 368,000 servers" http://www.marketwatch.com/news/story/gartner-says -server-shipments-revenue/story.aspx So, the top four sold about 5.7 million servers, and considering that 4th place is about 1/6 the size of first place, I'd say it's safe to assume that the numbers drop off considerably after that.
(Another site says that the 8th, 9th, and 10th most popular servers--Acer, Hitachi, and Apple--sold 15,000 servers or less in one quarter. http://www.digitimes.com/systems/a20070604PD204.ht ml So yeah, the tail gets pretty thin, pretty fast.)
So the number of Macs sold roughly equals the number of servers sold. BUT, as we all know, Apple only has about 5% of the market, so there are roughly 20x more consumer computers sold than servers. And as I said above, "in order for the number of Linux boxes to equal Macs, there would have to be one server for every 20 desktops."
Wow. Am I a good estimator or what?:-)
And remember--the point of this is not whether there are more Linux boxes or Macs out there. I know that the number of servers sold does not include all those boxes that someone put Linux onto for server use, and I don't know if servers or desktops last longer, etc etc etc. But no matter how far you push the numbers, the point is clear--Apple and Linux are probably very close to each other. One might be one-half or twice the size of the other, but they are both obviously QUITE large and they in the same league and neither should ignore the other. The fact is, Apple and Linux have comparable market share, and for this guy to totally dismiss Apple--by talking about a world where there is only MS and Linux--was wrong in several ways.
There. Happy?
Re:The defaults are no longer what they were in 19
on
Hardening Linux
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· Score: 1
> Mandriva 2007 Bootable CD > Port 6000 is all that's open (X server. Ok this is dumb, why?)
Well, if it's a bootable CD, maybe the idea is you boot to it, and then do a remote X session to it? With no HD in the box, there would be no risk to your data.
It's pretty well accepted that OS X has ~3-5% of non-server market share. Let's say 3%, or 1 in 30 computers is a Mac. Linux's consumer penetration is nearly nothing... let's be charitable and say 1%.
Now, for servers, let's say Linux has 40% market share, the rest being Windows, Sun, etc. And let's just say that Mac has 0% penetration in this area.
If the number of servers is S and the number of desktops is D, and the number of Macs is M and the number of Linux boxes is L, L = 0.01D+0.4S and M = 0.03D Let's pretend that the number of Linux boxes and Mac boxes is equal. That gives us 0.01D+0.4S = 0.03D 0.4S = 0.02D 40S = 2D 20S = D Now, in order for the number of Linux boxes to equal Macs, there would have to be one server for every 20 desktops. I don't know about you, but that sounds pretty high to me. Yes, there are a lot of companies and a lot of servers out there, and a lot of hosting companies, Google boxes, etc., but does it really sound correct to think that there's one server for every 20 desktops out there?
(If you, or anyone else, wants to dig up lots and lots of good numbers and prove me wrong, feel free.)
Even if that is correct--which I doubt--and even if I'm off by 100%--that there is 1 server for every 10 desktops out there, thus giving Linux a 2:1 lead over Macs... my main point still stands: for the author to totally dismiss Macs altogether is just... wrong. Didn't we all freak out just two months ago when Steve Jobs showed a slide showing IE and Safari, without Mozilla?
Apple made $1 billion profit on $7 billion in revenue in the last quarter of 2006. Red Hat, if I'm reading that correctly, made $34 million on $119 million in one quarter earlier this year. Again--the author just totally dismisses them?
In fact, if *any* OEM should be respected by OSS fans, it *should* be Apple. They've shown how you can take OSS, present it to the user in an attractive, easy-to-use manner, and make money. But no, what does he say? (I'm quoting TFA here, which didn't directly quote the author for this passage, so I'm assuming TFA is correct.) "Microsoft for instance has excelled in marketing the operating system, and has a good track record in fending off competition." So, he's saying that OSS users--a group who believes that good technology shoudl win over all--should respect MS becase a) they're good at ***marketing*** (which is the exact opposite of "the best technology should win") and b) for "fending off competition"--which, history has shown us, means "crushing" and "illegally abusing a monopoly" when it comes to MS.
Yeah. Good call. That's *exactly* whom we should hold up as role models.
I'm not limiting it to desktops. Linux undoubtedly has more servers than Apple, but there are many, many more desktops in the world than servers. I think that more than makes up the difference.
And Apple very much is relevant to this story. A Linux guy, talking about openness and happiness and everything else, says there's only two OSs in the world? WTF?!?!? Aren't these love-everyone, we're-all-equal, everyone's-a-winner types supposed to show love for ALL OSs, down to the last BeOS, OS/2, and Amiga user?
As for the mods, I probably got that point for the first half of my post. I probably would have done better if I would have left it at that.
I bet he thinks that if we're nice to them, they'll be nice to us.
Yeah. That didn't work in Kindergarten, and it doesn't work now.
From TFA: "Open source vendors have to recognise that Windows is here to stay and that together with Microsoft it will form a duopoly in the market for operating systems."
Um, what abour Mac OS X? You know, that "other" OS with a higher market share than Linux?
Re:"The silent majority" is uninformed.
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Storm Worm Rising
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· Score: 1
There's got to be an opportunity in there somewhere for the FOSS movement. Imagine if we could convince the "I hate computers" brigade that what they mainly hate is Microsoft...
Yes, it certainly is an opportunity. And it's something that LUGs, advocates, and others in the FOSS movement have been trying to convince the world of since at least 1998, which is when I became aware of it. You can see how well it's gone so far. Maybe we could ask Mac users for tips--they've been making that same argument for about twice as long. They must be good at convincing people by now.:-)
Screw all this. I'm gonna start my own working group... with blackjack and hookers! In fact, forget the working group.
- That, of course, would belong in the much anticipated <bender> tag.
Re:The one thing I *hate* about the iPhone...
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Smartphone Shootout
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· Score: 1
This has nothing to do with following standards.
Unless the viewport is specifically stated, then it doesn't know how to render the page. When it starts to assume things about the page and how to render it, is when non-compliant issues start to arise.
Huh??? All it needs to do is render the page as if it were being displayed in a 320px-wide window--which, in fact, it is. What's non-standard about that? Any browser on any PDA will do exactly that. Do we use 'viewport' to specify that text should wrap naturally on 640, 800, 1024, 1280, 1400, 1600, 1680, 1920, and 2560 pixel screens?
All I want is the exact same default behavior that the iPhone already uses when you're looking at an unstyled site in landscape mode.
The one thing I *hate* about the iPhone...
on
Smartphone Shootout
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· Score: 1
... is the way that, if you look at a plain-vanilla HTML page--one without a single table or div anywhere, like this ebook of The Invisible Man--it INSISTS on showing you a shrunken version that you've got to zoom in and scroll around to read, or turn the iPhone sideways. Why, when faced with such a page, can't it just present you a 100% view at 320px wide? Looking at plain pages like that (and yes, there are plenty, especially ones that I use for work--I've put lots of documentation online in the plainest possible format for the widest possible compatability) is one thing that works better on my Axim. That, and the fact that when you're doing lots and lots of reading, it is nice to just press a hardware button and scroll down exactly one page, rather than doing a finger-flick scroll.
Hmm... maybe Apple will release Boot Camp for the iPhone and let us dual-boot with Windows Mobile?:-) If not, it would be a cool hack to use the volume up/down buttons as page up/page down if no audio is playing.
Cute. Yes, we do have a DirecTV subscription with premium channels, 1.5M/256k DSL, two cell phones with texting, a Wii, and a TiVo, but those bills pale in comparison to electricity, food, water, mortgage, and insurance for car, home, health, and life. Cutting out the extras would not be enough to cover quitting one job. Not even close.
So, where does it say you're entitled to make a living doing what you enjoy? Where does it say that if you play music people like, you deserve to become a superstar? And finally, if the Internet didn't exist and the music weren't available for free, how many would still buy it? Please tell me you're not falling for the MAFIAA's logic that every copied track == 1 lost sale.
I work with quite a few artists (painters, sculptors, etc.) as well as several musicians. None are rich. None are megastars. They do it because they like it. Would they like to be the next big thing? Sure. Will they? Probably not. Do they accept the fact that performing is not the road to riches? YES. (By the way, I myself have two jobs. I don't clean grease pits because I've got other talents but I've had plenty of crappy jobs. Do I cry myself to sleep every night because no one wants to pay to watch me doing what I enjoy? No.)
Why do people have this idea that "because I'm an artist, I'll devote myself to my craft and live like shit." What's wrong with "I know I love doing this, but I want to have a decent life, so I'll get a decent job somewhere and play in my off time?" If someone is really, really driven to create art, and doesn't want to devote any time to anything else, that's great--that's what some of the best artists in history have done--but don't fucking expect me to cry for you if that's the decision you make! And don't blame the big, bad Internet for your lot in life. This fucking sense of entitlement has got to go.
Also, plenty of artists HAVE succeeded since Napster was all the rage. Guess what? It's about the same number that it's always been. Your brother's band isn't a hit? Well, I guess they need to be better. "Quite popular locally" != "1 step away from mega-riches." Also, "quite popular locally" != "we'd be rich if it weren't for those thieving kids."
There is a HUGE continuum of talent. Ranging from "no one will listen" to "you are rich." Along that continuum is "good enough to listen to for free, but not so good that I feel compelled to pay."
That is the only time in your life where you'll be able to (in some cases legally) to screw teen girls while everything is tight and where it is supposed to be. Gravity takes a toll on the old human body as you get older.
That's why they let you buy alcohol once you're 21.:-)
Re:$10/month from the cable company and you're don
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The Trouble With TiVo
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· Score: 1
Why on earth would you buy a Tivo when you can rent a HD DVR for $10 from your cable company which is cheaper than the required Tivo subscription?
Because...
back when I had upgraded from regular cable to TW's "digital" service, (around 1999/2000 or so) channels 2-73 (i.e., all the good ones) were analog, so we switched to DirecTV; DirecTV's picture quality was even better than the actual digital channels, let alone the analog ones
I then bought a DirecTiVo, which existed (3 years? 5 years?) before the local cable company offered DVRs (remember--for a loooong time there was only TiVo and Replay TV; cable-company-supplied DVRs are a pretty new beast)
DirecTiVos have had two tuners since forever, so even a standalone TiVo+cable wouldn't have been as good
plus that would have required two patched-together boxes, instead of an integrated solution
plus with DirecTV, the TiVo doesn't do any encoding--it just saves the ones and zeroes as they are broadcast into the dish, so watching a recording == watching a zero-gen copy (not sure if cable-company-supplied boxes do this, but I'm guessing they do; in any case, this was another feature that DirecTiVo had long before cable-company-supplied DVRs even existed)
because the TiVo works exactly the way you would think it should: season passes can be first-run only or new+reruns, can specify how many to keep, whether to automatically save them forever once recorded, start early/end late, and everything else that should be there is (with rare exception) and you can figure it all out without ever looking at the manual. And, Mac-like, it all just works
because in 5+ years of ownership there have been maaaybe 5 things where I said "I wish my TiVo could..." Basically, if I would have written a list of everything a DVR could do, that's pretty much what the TiVo is.
because it's so easy that everyone in the family can easily use it
because I still have, and am very happy with, a standard-def TV
because with DirecTV, the TiVo subscription is only $5 per box per month.
because TiVo's engineers are SO FUCKING AWESOME. I hacked my TiVo (40 GB -> 120 GB drive upgrade) and forgot to reconnect the fan. I awoke the next morning to a black screen that said "Your TiVo overheated. It has shut itself off to prevent damage." I cracked it open, reconnected the fan, and it has been humming along ever since.
And, to answer your original question: after using a TiVo for so long, going to a friend's house and poking around on their cable DVR is like fingers on a blackboard.
That's all I can come up with off the top of my head. There are probably that many more reasons if I would have written down every good TiVo thought I've had over the years.
Until they have free subscriptions they aren't going to get any market share.
Score: -1, factually incorrect. They already have some market share. I admit that it's probably waning in the face of cheap boxes from cable companies, but it's not like they're nonexistent. MythTV has no service charges and look at their market share: maybe 10% of Slashdotters and 0.001% of the real world. I love Myth, but just like with Linux, the last decade has proven that "free" does not automatically equal "winner."
Re:$10/month from the cable company and you're don
on
The Trouble With TiVo
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· Score: 1
Is some of your post missing? There seems to be a chunk missing between talking to her and being amazed at what she did. Or is it... 1) Talk with mother 2) ? 3) Profit! (for TiVo)
First there was Netscape, the browser, which of course grew to include a mail reader (as all apps must), then with NS4 it became a suite with an HTML editor and what-all else.
Then it became Mozilla, which started life as a NS4-style suite, but people wanted a non-bloated browser, so they made Phoenix/Firebird/Firefox (which of course went on to become quite popular) along with the suite, then they started offering all (most? whatever) portions of the suite available as separate apps, which is when Thunderbird arrived. (And Sunbird, the calendar.)
Then, they mostly got out of the suite business--the suite isn't even listed on the front page of mozilla.org--and now, they're going to ditch the standalone email client.
In other words, they've gone browser, browser+email, suite, suite, browser + other individual apps + a suite if you wanted, browser + other apps but no suite, and now just browser. My question is this: how long until they say "You know, Firefox is a great browser, but what we really need now is make an equally-nice email client."
I say within 18 months. Any takers?
Personally, I've got two jobs and am almost never home, and when I am home, I'm more likely to be using my laptop on the couch while watching TV than I am to be sitting at my desk. I've been webmail-only for four years now.
And on a related note, I never understood why everyone gushed over LaserDisc. The color and sound were great but you couldn't watch a movie straight through! AT BEST you only had to flip the disc ONCE during playback (60 minutes per side on CLV (I think) discs); at worst, you'd have to swap the disc or turn it over a half-dozen times! How could cinephiles possibly accept that? Nothing pulls you out of the movie-going mood like 4 intermissions in Star Wars.
My friend had a player that could move the internal mechanism and automatically play the other side but there was still several seconds of blue screen while it did the change and you still had to swap the discs. Ebert used to go on about them and I agree that the picture quality was great (and it was usually the only way to get letterboxed titles) but once I'm really absorbed in a good movie, those finer points disappear--but the aggravation of repeated mandatory jolts back to reality doesn't. I'd rather watch a good movie on a 13" B/W set than have the spell broken like that.
OTOH, for showing off your home theater system with scenes from Jurassic Park or T2, nothing was better.:-) Thank God DVD finally came along.
Greetings! I'm also posting from a parallel universe--a world where Mac OS is based on UNIX, is respected by geeks, and runs on Intel CPUs. Freaky huh?
Hmm... maybe people will have *gasp* a desktop and a notebook?!? Desktops still have many big advantages over notebooks; mainly, you aren't tied to a particular screen or keyboard. There are two good reasons why notebook sales (especially in terms of % of computers sold) are growing--the PCs people bought in the last few years are still "good enough" and don't need to be replaced just yet, and notebook prices continue to drop, becoming more and more attractive with each passing month--but that doesn't necessarily mean that they'll eventually be >90% of the market.
Yes, you can use external keyboards and displays with laptops, but that isn't an ideal solution. And leaving a notebook plugged in all the time kills the battery. I wouldn't be surprised to see Apple do something really cool that would let you easily sync your notebook with your desktop. All they've got to do is expand what they've done with the iPhone. (And, while they're at it, they should introduce a 10" subnotebook with no optical or hard drive--just ~10GB of solid-state storage. Think of the boot times! *drool*)
What would be even more amazing would be if it came with an actual Microsoft Vista install DVD. Anyone know if it comes with one? Or is it just a restore DVD, or something else (like a *gack* restore partition)? TFA didn't say and the Everex site itself seems to be down.
Also: anyone know how a 1.5GHz VIA C7 performs? Comparable to a 1 GHz PIII at least?
Slashdot Mirror
OK, I found some real numbers.s -server-shipments-revenue/story.aspx
t ml
s .htmls .htmls .html. html
:-)
In 2006, "H-P claimed the top spot with 2.26 million units... Dell was second with 1.78 million shipments... IBM placed third on shipments of 1.3 million units... while Sun sold more than 368,000 servers"
http://www.marketwatch.com/news/story/gartner-say
So, the top four sold about 5.7 million servers, and considering that 4th place is about 1/6 the size of first place, I'd say it's safe to assume that the numbers drop off considerably after that.
(Another site says that the 8th, 9th, and 10th most popular servers--Acer, Hitachi, and Apple--sold 15,000 servers or less in one quarter.
http://www.digitimes.com/systems/a20070604PD204.h
So yeah, the tail gets pretty thin, pretty fast.)
So let's say that there were about 6 million servers sold in 2006. Guess what: in 2006, Apple sold over 5.6 million Macs.
http://www.apple.com/pr/library/2006/apr/19result
http://www.apple.com/pr/library/2006/jul/19result
http://www.apple.com/pr/library/2006/oct/18result
http://www.apple.com/pr/library/2007/01/17results
So the number of Macs sold roughly equals the number of servers sold. BUT, as we all know, Apple only has about 5% of the market, so there are roughly 20x more consumer computers sold than servers. And as I said above, "in order for the number of Linux boxes to equal Macs, there would have to be one server for every 20 desktops."
Wow. Am I a good estimator or what?
And remember--the point of this is not whether there are more Linux boxes or Macs out there. I know that the number of servers sold does not include all those boxes that someone put Linux onto for server use, and I don't know if servers or desktops last longer, etc etc etc. But no matter how far you push the numbers, the point is clear--Apple and Linux are probably very close to each other. One might be one-half or twice the size of the other, but they are both obviously QUITE large and they in the same league and neither should ignore the other. The fact is, Apple and Linux have comparable market share, and for this guy to totally dismiss Apple--by talking about a world where there is only MS and Linux--was wrong in several ways.
There. Happy?
> Mandriva 2007 Bootable CD
> Port 6000 is all that's open (X server. Ok this is dumb, why?)
Well, if it's a bootable CD, maybe the idea is you boot to it, and then do a remote X session to it? With no HD in the box, there would be no risk to your data.
It's pretty well accepted that OS X has ~3-5% of non-server market share. Let's say 3%, or 1 in 30 computers is a Mac. Linux's consumer penetration is nearly nothing... let's be charitable and say 1%.
. html
Now, for servers, let's say Linux has 40% market share, the rest being Windows, Sun, etc. And let's just say that Mac has 0% penetration in this area.
If the number of servers is S and the number of desktops is D, and the number of Macs is M and the number of Linux boxes is L,
L = 0.01D+0.4S
and
M = 0.03D
Let's pretend that the number of Linux boxes and Mac boxes is equal. That gives us
0.01D+0.4S = 0.03D
0.4S = 0.02D
40S = 2D
20S = D
Now, in order for the number of Linux boxes to equal Macs, there would have to be one server for every 20 desktops. I don't know about you, but that sounds pretty high to me. Yes, there are a lot of companies and a lot of servers out there, and a lot of hosting companies, Google boxes, etc., but does it really sound correct to think that there's one server for every 20 desktops out there?
(If you, or anyone else, wants to dig up lots and lots of good numbers and prove me wrong, feel free.)
Even if that is correct--which I doubt--and even if I'm off by 100%--that there is 1 server for every 10 desktops out there, thus giving Linux a 2:1 lead over Macs... my main point still stands: for the author to totally dismiss Macs altogether is just... wrong. Didn't we all freak out just two months ago when Steve Jobs showed a slide showing IE and Safari, without Mozilla?
http://www.linuxinsider.com/story/58070.html
http://www.apple.com/pr/library/2007/01/17results
Apple made $1 billion profit on $7 billion in revenue in the last quarter of 2006. Red Hat, if I'm reading that correctly, made $34 million on $119 million in one quarter earlier this year. Again--the author just totally dismisses them?
In fact, if *any* OEM should be respected by OSS fans, it *should* be Apple. They've shown how you can take OSS, present it to the user in an attractive, easy-to-use manner, and make money. But no, what does he say? (I'm quoting TFA here, which didn't directly quote the author for this passage, so I'm assuming TFA is correct.) "Microsoft for instance has excelled in marketing the operating system, and has a good track record in fending off competition." So, he's saying that OSS users--a group who believes that good technology shoudl win over all--should respect MS becase a) they're good at ***marketing*** (which is the exact opposite of "the best technology should win") and b) for "fending off competition"--which, history has shown us, means "crushing" and "illegally abusing a monopoly" when it comes to MS.
Yeah. Good call. That's *exactly* whom we should hold up as role models.
I'm not limiting it to desktops. Linux undoubtedly has more servers than Apple, but there are many, many more desktops in the world than servers. I think that more than makes up the difference.
And Apple very much is relevant to this story. A Linux guy, talking about openness and happiness and everything else, says there's only two OSs in the world? WTF?!?!? Aren't these love-everyone, we're-all-equal, everyone's-a-winner types supposed to show love for ALL OSs, down to the last BeOS, OS/2, and Amiga user?
As for the mods, I probably got that point for the first half of my post. I probably would have done better if I would have left it at that.
I bet he thinks that if we're nice to them, they'll be nice to us.
Yeah. That didn't work in Kindergarten, and it doesn't work now.
From TFA: "Open source vendors have to recognise that Windows is here to stay and that together with Microsoft it will form a duopoly in the market for operating systems."
Um, what abour Mac OS X? You know, that "other" OS with a higher market share than Linux?
There's got to be an opportunity in there somewhere for the FOSS movement. Imagine if we could convince the "I hate computers" brigade that what they mainly hate is Microsoft ...
:-)
Yes, it certainly is an opportunity. And it's something that LUGs, advocates, and others in the FOSS movement have been trying to convince the world of since at least 1998, which is when I became aware of it. You can see how well it's gone so far. Maybe we could ask Mac users for tips--they've been making that same argument for about twice as long. They must be good at convincing people by now.
Screw all this. I'm gonna start my own working group... with blackjack and hookers! In fact, forget the working group.
- That, of course, would belong in the much anticipated <bender> tag.
This has nothing to do with following standards.
Unless the viewport is specifically stated, then it doesn't know how to render the page. When it starts to assume things about the page and how to render it, is when non-compliant issues start to arise.
Huh??? All it needs to do is render the page as if it were being displayed in a 320px-wide window--which, in fact, it is. What's non-standard about that? Any browser on any PDA will do exactly that. Do we use 'viewport' to specify that text should wrap naturally on 640, 800, 1024, 1280, 1400, 1600, 1680, 1920, and 2560 pixel screens?
All I want is the exact same default behavior that the iPhone already uses when you're looking at an unstyled site in landscape mode.
... is the way that, if you look at a plain-vanilla HTML page--one without a single table or div anywhere, like this ebook of The Invisible Man--it INSISTS on showing you a shrunken version that you've got to zoom in and scroll around to read, or turn the iPhone sideways. Why, when faced with such a page, can't it just present you a 100% view at 320px wide? Looking at plain pages like that (and yes, there are plenty, especially ones that I use for work--I've put lots of documentation online in the plainest possible format for the widest possible compatability) is one thing that works better on my Axim. That, and the fact that when you're doing lots and lots of reading, it is nice to just press a hardware button and scroll down exactly one page, rather than doing a finger-flick scroll.
:-) If not, it would be a cool hack to use the volume up/down buttons as page up/page down if no audio is playing.
Hmm... maybe Apple will release Boot Camp for the iPhone and let us dual-boot with Windows Mobile?
I can't resist: "Read the Source, Luke!"
:-)
Mods: don't waste points on this.
Cute. Yes, we do have a DirecTV subscription with premium channels, 1.5M/256k DSL, two cell phones with texting, a Wii, and a TiVo, but those bills pale in comparison to electricity, food, water, mortgage, and insurance for car, home, health, and life. Cutting out the extras would not be enough to cover quitting one job. Not even close.
So, where does it say you're entitled to make a living doing what you enjoy? Where does it say that if you play music people like, you deserve to become a superstar? And finally, if the Internet didn't exist and the music weren't available for free, how many would still buy it? Please tell me you're not falling for the MAFIAA's logic that every copied track == 1 lost sale.
I work with quite a few artists (painters, sculptors, etc.) as well as several musicians. None are rich. None are megastars. They do it because they like it. Would they like to be the next big thing? Sure. Will they? Probably not. Do they accept the fact that performing is not the road to riches? YES. (By the way, I myself have two jobs. I don't clean grease pits because I've got other talents but I've had plenty of crappy jobs. Do I cry myself to sleep every night because no one wants to pay to watch me doing what I enjoy? No.)
Why do people have this idea that "because I'm an artist, I'll devote myself to my craft and live like shit." What's wrong with "I know I love doing this, but I want to have a decent life, so I'll get a decent job somewhere and play in my off time?" If someone is really, really driven to create art, and doesn't want to devote any time to anything else, that's great--that's what some of the best artists in history have done--but don't fucking expect me to cry for you if that's the decision you make! And don't blame the big, bad Internet for your lot in life. This fucking sense of entitlement has got to go.
Also, plenty of artists HAVE succeeded since Napster was all the rage. Guess what? It's about the same number that it's always been. Your brother's band isn't a hit? Well, I guess they need to be better. "Quite popular locally" != "1 step away from mega-riches." Also, "quite popular locally" != "we'd be rich if it weren't for those thieving kids."
There is a HUGE continuum of talent. Ranging from "no one will listen" to "you are rich." Along that continuum is "good enough to listen to for free, but not so good that I feel compelled to pay."
PS: They're hoping for a contract? Better read this.
And if he did sentence her to jail, there would be such a major public uproar that it would bring the MPAA and Crown to their knees.
You must be new here. And by "here" I mean America. Or Earth.
(Just kidding. No disrespect intended. I wish what you say would actually happen. But it won't.)
That is the only time in your life where you'll be able to (in some cases legally) to screw teen girls while everything is tight and where it is supposed to be. Gravity takes a toll on the old human body as you get older.
:-)
That's why they let you buy alcohol once you're 21.
Because...
- back when I had upgraded from regular cable to TW's "digital" service, (around 1999/2000 or so) channels 2-73 (i.e., all the good ones) were analog, so we switched to DirecTV; DirecTV's picture quality was even better than the actual digital channels, let alone the analog ones
- I then bought a DirecTiVo, which existed (3 years? 5 years?) before the local cable company offered DVRs (remember--for a loooong time there was only TiVo and Replay TV; cable-company-supplied DVRs are a pretty new beast)
- DirecTiVos have had two tuners since forever, so even a standalone TiVo+cable wouldn't have been as good
- plus that would have required two patched-together boxes, instead of an integrated solution
- plus with DirecTV, the TiVo doesn't do any encoding--it just saves the ones and zeroes as they are broadcast into the dish, so watching a recording == watching a zero-gen copy (not sure if cable-company-supplied boxes do this, but I'm guessing they do; in any case, this was another feature that DirecTiVo had long before cable-company-supplied DVRs even existed)
- because the TiVo works exactly the way you would think it should: season passes can be first-run only or new+reruns, can specify how many to keep, whether to automatically save them forever once recorded, start early/end late, and everything else that should be there is (with rare exception) and you can figure it all out without ever looking at the manual. And, Mac-like, it all just works
- because in 5+ years of ownership there have been maaaybe 5 things where I said "I wish my TiVo could..." Basically, if I would have written a list of everything a DVR could do, that's pretty much what the TiVo is.
- because it's so easy that everyone in the family can easily use it
- because I still have, and am very happy with, a standard-def TV
- because with DirecTV, the TiVo subscription is only $5 per box per month.
- because TiVo's engineers are SO FUCKING AWESOME. I hacked my TiVo (40 GB -> 120 GB drive upgrade) and forgot to reconnect the fan. I awoke the next morning to a black screen that said "Your TiVo overheated. It has shut itself off to prevent damage." I cracked it open, reconnected the fan, and it has been humming along ever since.
- And, to answer your original question: after using a TiVo for so long, going to a friend's house and poking around on their cable DVR is like fingers on a blackboard.
That's all I can come up with off the top of my head. There are probably that many more reasons if I would have written down every good TiVo thought I've had over the years.Until they have free subscriptions they aren't going to get any market share.
Score: -1, factually incorrect. They already have some market share. I admit that it's probably waning in the face of cheap boxes from cable companies, but it's not like they're nonexistent. MythTV has no service charges and look at their market share: maybe 10% of Slashdotters and 0.001% of the real world. I love Myth, but just like with Linux, the last decade has proven that "free" does not automatically equal "winner."
Is some of your post missing? There seems to be a chunk missing between talking to her and being amazed at what she did. Or is it...
1) Talk with mother
2) ?
3) Profit! (for TiVo)
What a long, strange trip it's been.
First there was Netscape, the browser, which of course grew to include a mail reader (as all apps must), then with NS4 it became a suite with an HTML editor and what-all else.
Then it became Mozilla, which started life as a NS4-style suite, but people wanted a non-bloated browser, so they made Phoenix/Firebird/Firefox (which of course went on to become quite popular) along with the suite, then they started offering all (most? whatever) portions of the suite available as separate apps, which is when Thunderbird arrived. (And Sunbird, the calendar.)
Then, they mostly got out of the suite business--the suite isn't even listed on the front page of mozilla.org--and now, they're going to ditch the standalone email client.
In other words, they've gone browser, browser+email, suite, suite, browser + other individual apps + a suite if you wanted, browser + other apps but no suite, and now just browser. My question is this: how long until they say "You know, Firefox is a great browser, but what we really need now is make an equally-nice email client."
I say within 18 months. Any takers?
Personally, I've got two jobs and am almost never home, and when I am home, I'm more likely to be using my laptop on the couch while watching TV than I am to be sitting at my desk. I've been webmail-only for four years now.
Is "currently being slashdotted" one of the diagnoses?
And on a related note, I never understood why everyone gushed over LaserDisc. The color and sound were great but you couldn't watch a movie straight through! AT BEST you only had to flip the disc ONCE during playback (60 minutes per side on CLV (I think) discs); at worst, you'd have to swap the disc or turn it over a half-dozen times! How could cinephiles possibly accept that? Nothing pulls you out of the movie-going mood like 4 intermissions in Star Wars.
:-) Thank God DVD finally came along.
My friend had a player that could move the internal mechanism and automatically play the other side but there was still several seconds of blue screen while it did the change and you still had to swap the discs. Ebert used to go on about them and I agree that the picture quality was great (and it was usually the only way to get letterboxed titles) but once I'm really absorbed in a good movie, those finer points disappear--but the aggravation of repeated mandatory jolts back to reality doesn't. I'd rather watch a good movie on a 13" B/W set than have the spell broken like that.
OTOH, for showing off your home theater system with scenes from Jurassic Park or T2, nothing was better.
Greetings! I'm also posting from a parallel universe--a world where Mac OS is based on UNIX, is respected by geeks, and runs on Intel CPUs. Freaky huh?
MacBooks come with digital audio (5.1 optical, in and out) and DVI. Can't help you with the cards, though. :-)
Hmm... maybe people will have *gasp* a desktop and a notebook?!? Desktops still have many big advantages over notebooks; mainly, you aren't tied to a particular screen or keyboard. There are two good reasons why notebook sales (especially in terms of % of computers sold) are growing--the PCs people bought in the last few years are still "good enough" and don't need to be replaced just yet, and notebook prices continue to drop, becoming more and more attractive with each passing month--but that doesn't necessarily mean that they'll eventually be >90% of the market.
Yes, you can use external keyboards and displays with laptops, but that isn't an ideal solution. And leaving a notebook plugged in all the time kills the battery. I wouldn't be surprised to see Apple do something really cool that would let you easily sync your notebook with your desktop. All they've got to do is expand what they've done with the iPhone. (And, while they're at it, they should introduce a 10" subnotebook with no optical or hard drive--just ~10GB of solid-state storage. Think of the boot times! *drool*)
What would be even more amazing would be if it came with an actual Microsoft Vista install DVD. Anyone know if it comes with one? Or is it just a restore DVD, or something else (like a *gack* restore partition)? TFA didn't say and the Everex site itself seems to be down.
Also: anyone know how a 1.5GHz VIA C7 performs? Comparable to a 1 GHz PIII at least?
Not trolling here, just being half serious/half funny--
"...they fear its take up will slow the adoption of Linux..."
I started going to LUG meetings over nine years ago. As much I love Linux, I don't think its rate of adoption could go much slower than it already is.
And 32" SD CRTs cost about half that.