What should I care about Mom-Pop businesses as long as I get low prices?
Because ultimately there is a better distribution of wealth in our country when more of the commerce is happening amongst small businesses. Let's say you spend $10 at walmart. Where does that $10 go?
Some very small portion of it goes to pay the employees of the local walmart. Because of their low pay scale, many cannot afford health insurance, so some of your tax money also goes to support them. So, technically speaking, you are paying a bit more than that $10. But I digress.
A portion of that money goes to the Walmart corporation, and the rest of it goes to the suppliers in China. Now, if you spend that $10 at a mom and pop, some of that money will go to a supplier, but it's far more likely to be closer to your home, or at least in the US. The rest of that money will go to the owners of the store who live in your community, and the employees of that store who live in your community.
The result is that more of the money you spend is being spent back within your community. That means an overall better standard of living in your community. That's of benefit to you because that means better opportunities, lower crime, etc. Yeah, you may have a slightly lower standard of living because your dollar doesn't go as far, but the effect is bringing up the overall quality of the community.
"Well, I'll buy the Apple because they make good machines, and if OS X is crap then I'll just install Windows."
Yup, that's exactly what I've been thinking. In about two years, I'll be ready to get a new system. I love Apple's hardware, but it's not practical for me because I do play games and such in Windows. But, if I can run my Windows/Linux stuff on the same box, there's no reason I wouldn't buy from Apple.
I have to say that sending a polite, could you not do this, e-mail is very cool of google. For a time, I ran a radio station off of my server. Not many people listened to it, but anyhow, I got a letter from ASCAP asking me to not do it.
There's letter was much more legalese ridden, etc, ultimately, they had the decency to send me a warning notice before they sicked a pack of lawyers onto me. After it was clear to me that they were serious about it, I stopped.
If I was swapping songs and the RIAA sent me a letter saying, "hey could you please stop?", I probably would. Instead, they'd probably just sue me, and charge me a lot of money I don't have.
So yeah, there's something to be said for how you say things.
Realisistically, how long before the average cell phone has basic video recording capabilities? Most phones now have still cameras, and the main limitation on video is just storage capacity. So, I should think that within 5 years, video cell phones will be standard and then this device is totally irrelevant.
This may not be a bad thing for Linux really. How long has the concept of Linux on the desktop been out there? How close are we really getting to that reality? Perhaps Linux on the desktop isn't necessarily a great idea.
I don't think this will cause harm for Linux in the end. It's going to do two things:
1) Force the desktop development of Linux into thinking of a paradigm other than "not worse than Windows"
2) Encourage more resources to be spent on the server end of things
I think the smart enterprise linux companies should see OSX as a huge opportunity for them. Focus on the server market, and position 0SX as their Linux on the desktop. I think they are spending a lot of resources to make a desktop system when they have such a long way to go, practically speaking. Here they can leap ahead onto a platform that's quite solid and use it to enhance the viability of their server offerings.
So in the end, I think it will be good for Linux. Disruptive? Sure, but that's evolution for you folks.
All of this would assume that they wanted the information kept secret. I have little doubt that if news.com was publishing this information, Apple didn't have that big of an interest in keeping it secret. With individual product releases, they are quite a bit more protective because they want to control how the products are treated in the media.
A good example of how this can work, if information came out on the shuffle well in advance of release, you'd see lots of reviews picking it apart for it's lack of a display, etc. So, before it ever hit the streets there would be a certain image of the device that could hurt their sales. But when Apple released it, they managed to spin the lack of display as a sort of feature. That the shuffle is about random playing, not picking songs out of a large library.
As far as this change goes, it doesn't really need to be handled in any particular way. They needed to keep it officially secret as a publicly traded company, but practically speaking I don't think they really cared. Ultimately the people most effected by it, ISV's, seem to have had some awareness ahead of time under NDA's (at least the bigger ones).
The end users of macs, for the most part, won't even understand what this means, or care. As long as the next mac they buy runs the software they have now and works as well as what they have now, they won't care.
But ultimately this isn't about graphics, it's about the type of games you play and where you play them. I am a big fan of strategy and FPS games. The best device for playing FPS games is a mouse with keyboard. Even if I can connect a keyboard to an X-box, I'd have nowhere to sit comfortable to play it.
If I'm going to play an RPG, sports game, fighting game, etc, then sure, a console makes perfect sense. If I'm going to play GTA, of course i'm going to play it on a console. But a number of games simply do not play well on consoles.
Of the people I know who are the core gaming crowd, they all have consoles and they all have PC's, and frankly, most of them play PC games more than console games.
What happens if I, as the consumer, just dump my old monitor or CPU into the dumpster? The tax was paid, but the money was never spent and the computer is right where it shouldn't be.
The problem right now is that there's no incentive, other than my conscience, to recycle now. Even if it was free, it still doesn't make people want to get off their butts and do the right thing.
Taxing items when they are sold is worthless because people buy a lot of this stuff on the Internet where tax collection is going to be iffy at best. So the best approach is to just build it into sanitation fees and add into this a bounty for recycling computers.
If I was going to get a few bucks for doing it, it might be worth my while. More to the point, it'll be much more worth the while of scrap collectors if they see my old burned out monitor in the alley.
I mean, realistically, who's going to pay to dispose of an item if it's easier and cheaper to just dispose of it incorrectly? So in essence, you'd be taxing the environmentally responsible.
Well obviously if you have a CRT right now that works perfectly fine, it'd be silly to get an LCD.
As for your points:
-CRT's have a lot more contrast, but the contrast of LCD's has improved dramatically and will continue to do so. Honestly I find the contrast on my LCD's to be far superior to any monitor I've owned.
-CRT's do get dead or stuck pixels in manufacturing. Some manufacturers have begun to warranty against even one dead pixel. Once it's done and on your desktop you aren't going to lose additional pixels.
-CRT's have a better viewing angle, true, but that's good or bad depending on your perspective. Personally I'm not thrilled about having people looking over my shoulder. Furthermore, many LCD's have improved viewing angles significantly.
-Response times on LCD's have improved dramatically, especially at the higher end where they are trying to appeal to the gamer segment.
-Color accuracy. Fine I'll give you that one so far as I know. I think for most people it's irrelevant though.
-Lifespan on LCD's should be similar if not better. The only part on an LCD prone to problems is the backlight. On a CRT, you've got three electron guns and each one can wear out.
As for electricity savings, I don't think anybody is going out and tossing a perfectly workable CRT for electrical savings. But it's certainly a plus that my monitor is sucking up less power.
Personally I got an LCD for three reasons:
1) My 19" CRT had developed an irritating flicker 2) It saved desk space 3) I wasn't likely to cause myself injury lifting it onto said desk space
But the short version of all of this is that the issues you point out with LCD's are things that have been improving or are irrelevant to most people. For those who care about having very good color accuracy, they'll still be able to get CRT's because there will be demand for it (either that or LCD's will be improved to handle it). They will probably pay a premimum for it, but if it's worthwhile, then I guess they'll pay it.
Certainly the question of their capability is important, but I think that will be solved over time. Certainly the intelligence put into the Roomba is pretty primitive, but over time, as we understand more about artificial intelligence, more complex robots would be possible.
But here's an important question that's often avoided: should we do this even if it's possible? I mean, what do health care and day care workers do if a robot becomes capable of replacing them. We've already seen the impact of cheap labor through overseas manufacturing and automation on blue collar jobs. What happens as the robotics gets more sophisticated and is capable of replacing higher skilled inviduals.
A thought I've always had is this: what would happen in a capitalist system where there was no job for humans? Capitalism is entirely based on the notion of people earning money by productive input into the economy. But if all production could be handled by automated systems, how could people earn money?
It's unrealistic that all human labor will ever be replaced, but if the human population increases expontentially, and the demand for human labor decreases, there is an obvious problem that we run into. How does one earn a living in that economy if you're job is one that can be automated?
Today, the greater threat to users is having their password stolen somewhere in the network. The number of passwords stolen by actually going up to somebody's desk and reading it is, much lower in comparison.
The advantage of this is that you can use relatively obscure and complex passwords because you don't actually have to burn brain cells to keep track of them.
In the grand scheme, yes, 95% of what will be podcast is drivel nobody would really want to listen to. But podcasting makes it pretty easy to routinely listen to the 5% that's worthwhile. Furthermore, you can have podcasting "stations" that aggregate the best of the content that's out there. Because everything is done with RSS, it's pretty easy to do this.
I see it as sort of a tivo'ing of audio content on the net. Rather than everything having to be done in real time, you can get content as it's developed, and listen to it when it's convenient for you. You don't have to pay attention to how often content is created, you'll just get it downloaded automagically.
I think the long term power of this is the possibility for episodic audio and video programming to be produced by relative amateurs. Yes, most of the content out there will be worthless, but it won't take a huge investment for the truly talented to get their ideas out there. Just combine an RSS feed with bittorrent, and you don't even need much bandwidth to do it.
The web made it possible for anybody that wanted to write to publish. Now this is making it possible for anybody who wants to sing, talk, etc, to publish. It also lays the ground work for anybody doing video to publish. It's not going to be a revolution, but more of a completion of the revolution that started about a decade ago.
Having better quality video isn't going to improve communication significantly over current capabilities. The value of face to face meetings will never go away. It's not what happens in a specific meeting that is so key, but rather the rappore that is developed around the meetings.
It's going into a room sitting down, shaking hands, chatting about the family before the meeting starts that makes all the difference. It's going out for lunch, playing a game of golf, etc, that build the real rapport. Talking over video conferencing does allow you to see body language, etc, so it's certainly an improvement over a mere phone call, but it is not even close to the same as being there in person.
1080P, so that's 1080 lines right? Right now on my desktop I'm doing 1280x1024 for all the games I play. So this would be just a hair above that, non?
I've got a 6600 GT, which is able to keep that 1280x1024 filled with data, no problem. So if the card on the PS3 is equivalent to an SLI linked pair of 6800's, it's got more than enough power to pull that off with insane levels of detail.
It seems to me that the XBox is an evolutionary step, taking the XBox, making it a better performing system, and including the obvious enhancements. The PS3 seems to be trying to set the ground work for the next level. Sony is thinking way beyond being the next generation game platform and media hub here.
While XBox can play on HD, what formats does it support? It's just a DVD player, non? The PS3 does Blu-ray, and that will allow it to play high definition movies. Of all the features on the PS3, this is the key piece of the pizzle. Now you may be thinking, nobody has high def movies, but Sony knows that too. Why have a format war over the next high def format when Sony can pre-empt that by having millions of PS3's that already do blu-ray? Expect Sony to begin releasing a lot of their films on Blu Ray when PS3 launches.
This is the first time I've seen Sony really take advantage of all their pieces. I mean Blu Ray has no obvious benefits over HDDVD, but if I've already got a PS3, it has a huge benefit. No matter what people think of the 360, the PS3 will sell millions of units, and that will give Sony it's foot hold. From there, they make money on:
1) Selling games 2) Royalties on the Blue Ray format 3) Selling everybody their favorite movies all over again in high definition 4) Selling TV's that take advantage of all of these capabilities
Very very smart, IMHO. Microsoft has a serious problem here because they can only make up their hardware losses on game licensing. Sony has a lot of channels they can use and it actually will create markets for them that do no currently exist. Microsoft will just sell more games but otherwise be doing the same thing they have done.
For all the noise I've heard about the difficult of programming for these systems, we really won't know the results until the boxes are out and the games start flowing. The original XBox had an obvious benefit in this regard as it was essentially a PC, but that advantage won't exist this time.
So, who knows. My guess would be that the XBox will be easier because Microsoft has a lot of experience in development tools. But who knows, it may be the sort of thing where it's easier on Xbox, but a skilled programmer can get more out of the PS3. But I guarantee that right now only programmers bound by a bunch of NDA's have any idea.
This won't be difficult to get passed at all. It's giving the FCC a very specific mandate to regulate something. So there should be minimal concern about broader implications. Furthermore, all the media companies will be pumping the election funds full of cash to get it passed.
This is going to be an interesting thing to see develop over the next few decades. Nuclear power went from this supposed clean and perfect energy source to becoming the demon of nuclear war, chernobyl and three mile island. When you say nuclear power to people, they get images of three-eyed fish, cancer, etc.
Having said that, safe nuclear power, which is entirely feasible right now, is really our best option for dealing with energy shortages in the near future. The pebble bed nuclear reactor technology doesn't melt down, provides copious energy, and doesn't emit a gram of CO2. Plus, if I'm not mistaken, the disposal of the pebbles is less troublesome than the leftovers from the more traditional reactors.
A nuclear battery that could last 10 years would be way better, not only for the users of the batteries, but also for the environment. Think about how much energy you have to use to charge a laptop. All of that energy is primarily coming from fossil fuels. Then when you are done with the battery, you throw it in a dump (at least most people do), and the heavy metals that go into most of those batteries leak into the environment.
Of course, in order for any of this progress to happen, you're going to have to get people comfy with having a radioactive source a few inches away from their crotch. It might have all the shielding in the world, but it's still going to make a lot of people nervous.
That's exactly why I think Apple won't be losing ground here anytime soon. Apple excels at design. The Ipod is as popular as it is because it was the first really well designed MP3 player on the market. Even today I'm hard pressed to think of a music player that's on par with the Ipod in size, features, and quality of design.
So imagine doing the convergence that gates is talking about but with Apple's design people running the show. Imagine a device slightly smaller than comparable products with elegant apple design, and an intuitive interface. Dock your phone with your computer and not only does it sync your music but it also syncs your e-mail and address book now. Plust what about using MMS to do limited sharing of music files with your friends?
Computers are mostly functional devices. Style is a minimal concern. With phones though, style is as much a part of it as the function. As long as the phone can answer calls, view e-mail, and have an address book, the rest is just fluff. So I think Microsoft will have quite a fight on their hands.
If you read the article you see this:...the manufactured cost for a 40-inch NED panel could be under $400.
That's the MANUFACTURED cost. That's not what you'd be paying for it at Best Buy. Wholesale price would probably be at least double that, and then you're looking at probably another 50% markup on top of that to give you the retail price.
So really you're probably going to be paying $1000-1500 when all is said and done. Currently an HD flat panel is going to be in the $3000+ price range. So that's still a tremendous improvement, but it's a far cry from $400.
Fortunately for Hilary Rosen, there's a simple solution to this problem. All she has to do is go download a copy of Hymn, which will peel off all the license restrictions from the ITunes file. Then she can play her music anywhere.
Far be it for me to reply to an obvious troll, of course nothing is perfect. What I'm considering is what the relative security stength is between the two products. While FireFox is probably more secure than IE, it's hard to do an apples/apples comparison of it because FireFox doesn't have nearly the market share IE does.
Mozilla and Firefox have been recommended as alternatives to IE for security reasons. Yet, lately, it seems that there's quite a lot of security problems being uncovered in Firefox. So I'm trying to figure out how to read this.
I suspect that Firefox is somewhat more secure on the simple basis that it is not as tightly integrated with the rest of the operating system as IE is. What makes IE exploits so nasty is that they tend to become email and other exploits too.
My concern is that if Firefox gains some more ground and does become a more active target for exploits, that it may become a poster child Microsoft can use to point out that open source software's "many eyes" theory is hogwash. Maybe it is hogwash.
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What should I care about Mom-Pop businesses as long as I get low prices?
Because ultimately there is a better distribution of wealth in our country when more of the commerce is happening amongst small businesses. Let's say you spend $10 at walmart. Where does that $10 go?
Some very small portion of it goes to pay the employees of the local walmart. Because of their low pay scale, many cannot afford health insurance, so some of your tax money also goes to support them. So, technically speaking, you are paying a bit more than that $10. But I digress.
A portion of that money goes to the Walmart corporation, and the rest of it goes to the suppliers in China. Now, if you spend that $10 at a mom and pop, some of that money will go to a supplier, but it's far more likely to be closer to your home, or at least in the US. The rest of that money will go to the owners of the store who live in your community, and the employees of that store who live in your community.
The result is that more of the money you spend is being spent back within your community. That means an overall better standard of living in your community. That's of benefit to you because that means better opportunities, lower crime, etc. Yeah, you may have a slightly lower standard of living because your dollar doesn't go as far, but the effect is bringing up the overall quality of the community.
Yup, five years. So what I'm lead to wonder is which we'll see first:
1) A good command line for Windows
2) A good GUI for Linux
I also have to wonder if Microsoft would be putting an ounce of effort into developing a command line if that wasn't something beneficial in Linux.
"Well, I'll buy the Apple because they make good machines, and if OS X is crap then I'll just install Windows."
Yup, that's exactly what I've been thinking. In about two years, I'll be ready to get a new system. I love Apple's hardware, but it's not practical for me because I do play games and such in Windows. But, if I can run my Windows/Linux stuff on the same box, there's no reason I wouldn't buy from Apple.
I have to say that sending a polite, could you not do this, e-mail is very cool of google. For a time, I ran a radio station off of my server. Not many people listened to it, but anyhow, I got a letter from ASCAP asking me to not do it.
There's letter was much more legalese ridden, etc, ultimately, they had the decency to send me a warning notice before they sicked a pack of lawyers onto me. After it was clear to me that they were serious about it, I stopped.
If I was swapping songs and the RIAA sent me a letter saying, "hey could you please stop?", I probably would. Instead, they'd probably just sue me, and charge me a lot of money I don't have.
So yeah, there's something to be said for how you say things.
Realisistically, how long before the average cell phone has basic video recording capabilities? Most phones now have still cameras, and the main limitation on video is just storage capacity. So, I should think that within 5 years, video cell phones will be standard and then this device is totally irrelevant.
This may not be a bad thing for Linux really. How long has the concept of Linux on the desktop been out there? How close are we really getting to that reality? Perhaps Linux on the desktop isn't necessarily a great idea.
I don't think this will cause harm for Linux in the end. It's going to do two things:
1) Force the desktop development of Linux into thinking of a paradigm other than "not worse than Windows"
2) Encourage more resources to be spent on the server end of things
I think the smart enterprise linux companies should see OSX as a huge opportunity for them. Focus on the server market, and position 0SX as their Linux on the desktop. I think they are spending a lot of resources to make a desktop system when they have such a long way to go, practically speaking. Here they can leap ahead onto a platform that's quite solid and use it to enhance the viability of their server offerings.
So in the end, I think it will be good for Linux. Disruptive? Sure, but that's evolution for you folks.
All of this would assume that they wanted the information kept secret. I have little doubt that if news.com was publishing this information, Apple didn't have that big of an interest in keeping it secret. With individual product releases, they are quite a bit more protective because they want to control how the products are treated in the media.
A good example of how this can work, if information came out on the shuffle well in advance of release, you'd see lots of reviews picking it apart for it's lack of a display, etc. So, before it ever hit the streets there would be a certain image of the device that could hurt their sales. But when Apple released it, they managed to spin the lack of display as a sort of feature. That the shuffle is about random playing, not picking songs out of a large library.
As far as this change goes, it doesn't really need to be handled in any particular way. They needed to keep it officially secret as a publicly traded company, but practically speaking I don't think they really cared. Ultimately the people most effected by it, ISV's, seem to have had some awareness ahead of time under NDA's (at least the bigger ones).
The end users of macs, for the most part, won't even understand what this means, or care. As long as the next mac they buy runs the software they have now and works as well as what they have now, they won't care.
But ultimately this isn't about graphics, it's about the type of games you play and where you play them. I am a big fan of strategy and FPS games. The best device for playing FPS games is a mouse with keyboard. Even if I can connect a keyboard to an X-box, I'd have nowhere to sit comfortable to play it.
If I'm going to play an RPG, sports game, fighting game, etc, then sure, a console makes perfect sense. If I'm going to play GTA, of course i'm going to play it on a console. But a number of games simply do not play well on consoles.
Of the people I know who are the core gaming crowd, they all have consoles and they all have PC's, and frankly, most of them play PC games more than console games.
What happens if I, as the consumer, just dump my old monitor or CPU into the dumpster? The tax was paid, but the money was never spent and the computer is right where it shouldn't be.
The problem right now is that there's no incentive, other than my conscience, to recycle now. Even if it was free, it still doesn't make people want to get off their butts and do the right thing.
Taxing items when they are sold is worthless because people buy a lot of this stuff on the Internet where tax collection is going to be iffy at best. So the best approach is to just build it into sanitation fees and add into this a bounty for recycling computers.
If I was going to get a few bucks for doing it, it might be worth my while. More to the point, it'll be much more worth the while of scrap collectors if they see my old burned out monitor in the alley.
I mean, realistically, who's going to pay to dispose of an item if it's easier and cheaper to just dispose of it incorrectly? So in essence, you'd be taxing the environmentally responsible.
Well obviously if you have a CRT right now that works perfectly fine, it'd be silly to get an LCD.
As for your points:
-CRT's have a lot more contrast, but the contrast of LCD's has improved dramatically and will continue to do so. Honestly I find the contrast on my LCD's to be far superior to any monitor I've owned.
-CRT's do get dead or stuck pixels in manufacturing. Some manufacturers have begun to warranty against even one dead pixel. Once it's done and on your desktop you aren't going to lose additional pixels.
-CRT's have a better viewing angle, true, but that's good or bad depending on your perspective. Personally I'm not thrilled about having people looking over my shoulder. Furthermore, many LCD's have improved viewing angles significantly.
-Response times on LCD's have improved dramatically, especially at the higher end where they are trying to appeal to the gamer segment.
-Color accuracy. Fine I'll give you that one so far as I know. I think for most people it's irrelevant though.
-Lifespan on LCD's should be similar if not better. The only part on an LCD prone to problems is the backlight. On a CRT, you've got three electron guns and each one can wear out.
As for electricity savings, I don't think anybody is going out and tossing a perfectly workable CRT for electrical savings. But it's certainly a plus that my monitor is sucking up less power.
Personally I got an LCD for three reasons:
1) My 19" CRT had developed an irritating flicker
2) It saved desk space
3) I wasn't likely to cause myself injury lifting it onto said desk space
But the short version of all of this is that the issues you point out with LCD's are things that have been improving or are irrelevant to most people. For those who care about having very good color accuracy, they'll still be able to get CRT's because there will be demand for it (either that or LCD's will be improved to handle it). They will probably pay a premimum for it, but if it's worthwhile, then I guess they'll pay it.
Certainly the question of their capability is important, but I think that will be solved over time. Certainly the intelligence put into the Roomba is pretty primitive, but over time, as we understand more about artificial intelligence, more complex robots would be possible.
But here's an important question that's often avoided: should we do this even if it's possible? I mean, what do health care and day care workers do if a robot becomes capable of replacing them. We've already seen the impact of cheap labor through overseas manufacturing and automation on blue collar jobs. What happens as the robotics gets more sophisticated and is capable of replacing higher skilled inviduals.
A thought I've always had is this: what would happen in a capitalist system where there was no job for humans? Capitalism is entirely based on the notion of people earning money by productive input into the economy. But if all production could be handled by automated systems, how could people earn money?
It's unrealistic that all human labor will ever be replaced, but if the human population increases expontentially, and the demand for human labor decreases, there is an obvious problem that we run into. How does one earn a living in that economy if you're job is one that can be automated?
Today, the greater threat to users is having their password stolen somewhere in the network. The number of passwords stolen by actually going up to somebody's desk and reading it is, much lower in comparison.
The advantage of this is that you can use relatively obscure and complex passwords because you don't actually have to burn brain cells to keep track of them.
In the grand scheme, yes, 95% of what will be podcast is drivel nobody would really want to listen to. But podcasting makes it pretty easy to routinely listen to the 5% that's worthwhile. Furthermore, you can have podcasting "stations" that aggregate the best of the content that's out there. Because everything is done with RSS, it's pretty easy to do this.
I see it as sort of a tivo'ing of audio content on the net. Rather than everything having to be done in real time, you can get content as it's developed, and listen to it when it's convenient for you. You don't have to pay attention to how often content is created, you'll just get it downloaded automagically.
I think the long term power of this is the possibility for episodic audio and video programming to be produced by relative amateurs. Yes, most of the content out there will be worthless, but it won't take a huge investment for the truly talented to get their ideas out there. Just combine an RSS feed with bittorrent, and you don't even need much bandwidth to do it.
The web made it possible for anybody that wanted to write to publish. Now this is making it possible for anybody who wants to sing, talk, etc, to publish. It also lays the ground work for anybody doing video to publish. It's not going to be a revolution, but more of a completion of the revolution that started about a decade ago.
You want to know what really dims the magic of movies? A Darth Vader Slurpee.
I'm sorry folks but it's no longer high art when you get a slurpee named for it. I'll recant on this if they launch the new Van Gogh flavored slurpee.
They are consulting with legal experts" - certainly with at least some good and honest lawyers ... Okay, we're screwed! :)
... Nous sommes screwed! :)
Oh wait, this is europe.
Having better quality video isn't going to improve communication significantly over current capabilities. The value of face to face meetings will never go away. It's not what happens in a specific meeting that is so key, but rather the rappore that is developed around the meetings.
It's going into a room sitting down, shaking hands, chatting about the family before the meeting starts that makes all the difference. It's going out for lunch, playing a game of golf, etc, that build the real rapport. Talking over video conferencing does allow you to see body language, etc, so it's certainly an improvement over a mere phone call, but it is not even close to the same as being there in person.
1080P, so that's 1080 lines right? Right now on my desktop I'm doing 1280x1024 for all the games I play. So this would be just a hair above that, non?
I've got a 6600 GT, which is able to keep that 1280x1024 filled with data, no problem. So if the card on the PS3 is equivalent to an SLI linked pair of 6800's, it's got more than enough power to pull that off with insane levels of detail.
It seems to me that the XBox is an evolutionary step, taking the XBox, making it a better performing system, and including the obvious enhancements. The PS3 seems to be trying to set the ground work for the next level. Sony is thinking way beyond being the next generation game platform and media hub here.
While XBox can play on HD, what formats does it support? It's just a DVD player, non? The PS3 does Blu-ray, and that will allow it to play high definition movies. Of all the features on the PS3, this is the key piece of the pizzle. Now you may be thinking, nobody has high def movies, but Sony knows that too. Why have a format war over the next high def format when Sony can pre-empt that by having millions of PS3's that already do blu-ray? Expect Sony to begin releasing a lot of their films on Blu Ray when PS3 launches.
This is the first time I've seen Sony really take advantage of all their pieces. I mean Blu Ray has no obvious benefits over HDDVD, but if I've already got a PS3, it has a huge benefit. No matter what people think of the 360, the PS3 will sell millions of units, and that will give Sony it's foot hold. From there, they make money on:
1) Selling games
2) Royalties on the Blue Ray format
3) Selling everybody their favorite movies all over again in high definition
4) Selling TV's that take advantage of all of these capabilities
Very very smart, IMHO. Microsoft has a serious problem here because they can only make up their hardware losses on game licensing. Sony has a lot of channels they can use and it actually will create markets for them that do no currently exist. Microsoft will just sell more games but otherwise be doing the same thing they have done.
For all the noise I've heard about the difficult of programming for these systems, we really won't know the results until the boxes are out and the games start flowing. The original XBox had an obvious benefit in this regard as it was essentially a PC, but that advantage won't exist this time.
So, who knows. My guess would be that the XBox will be easier because Microsoft has a lot of experience in development tools. But who knows, it may be the sort of thing where it's easier on Xbox, but a skilled programmer can get more out of the PS3. But I guarantee that right now only programmers bound by a bunch of NDA's have any idea.
This won't be difficult to get passed at all. It's giving the FCC a very specific mandate to regulate something. So there should be minimal concern about broader implications. Furthermore, all the media companies will be pumping the election funds full of cash to get it passed.
It'll pass with ease.
This is going to be an interesting thing to see develop over the next few decades. Nuclear power went from this supposed clean and perfect energy source to becoming the demon of nuclear war, chernobyl and three mile island. When you say nuclear power to people, they get images of three-eyed fish, cancer, etc.
Having said that, safe nuclear power, which is entirely feasible right now, is really our best option for dealing with energy shortages in the near future. The pebble bed nuclear reactor technology doesn't melt down, provides copious energy, and doesn't emit a gram of CO2. Plus, if I'm not mistaken, the disposal of the pebbles is less troublesome than the leftovers from the more traditional reactors.
A nuclear battery that could last 10 years would be way better, not only for the users of the batteries, but also for the environment. Think about how much energy you have to use to charge a laptop. All of that energy is primarily coming from fossil fuels. Then when you are done with the battery, you throw it in a dump (at least most people do), and the heavy metals that go into most of those batteries leak into the environment.
Of course, in order for any of this progress to happen, you're going to have to get people comfy with having a radioactive source a few inches away from their crotch. It might have all the shielding in the world, but it's still going to make a lot of people nervous.
That's exactly why I think Apple won't be losing ground here anytime soon. Apple excels at design. The Ipod is as popular as it is because it was the first really well designed MP3 player on the market. Even today I'm hard pressed to think of a music player that's on par with the Ipod in size, features, and quality of design.
So imagine doing the convergence that gates is talking about but with Apple's design people running the show. Imagine a device slightly smaller than comparable products with elegant apple design, and an intuitive interface. Dock your phone with your computer and not only does it sync your music but it also syncs your e-mail and address book now. Plust what about using MMS to do limited sharing of music files with your friends?
Computers are mostly functional devices. Style is a minimal concern. With phones though, style is as much a part of it as the function. As long as the phone can answer calls, view e-mail, and have an address book, the rest is just fluff. So I think Microsoft will have quite a fight on their hands.
If you read the article you see this: ...the manufactured cost for a 40-inch NED panel could be under $400.
That's the MANUFACTURED cost. That's not what you'd be paying for it at Best Buy. Wholesale price would probably be at least double that, and then you're looking at probably another 50% markup on top of that to give you the retail price.
So really you're probably going to be paying $1000-1500 when all is said and done. Currently an HD flat panel is going to be in the $3000+ price range. So that's still a tremendous improvement, but it's a far cry from $400.
Fortunately for Hilary Rosen, there's a simple solution to this problem. All she has to do is go download a copy of Hymn, which will peel off all the license restrictions from the ITunes file. Then she can play her music anywhere.
Far be it for me to reply to an obvious troll, of course nothing is perfect. What I'm considering is what the relative security stength is between the two products. While FireFox is probably more secure than IE, it's hard to do an apples/apples comparison of it because FireFox doesn't have nearly the market share IE does.
Mozilla and Firefox have been recommended as alternatives to IE for security reasons. Yet, lately, it seems that there's quite a lot of security problems being uncovered in Firefox. So I'm trying to figure out how to read this.
I suspect that Firefox is somewhat more secure on the simple basis that it is not as tightly integrated with the rest of the operating system as IE is. What makes IE exploits so nasty is that they tend to become email and other exploits too.
My concern is that if Firefox gains some more ground and does become a more active target for exploits, that it may become a poster child Microsoft can use to point out that open source software's "many eyes" theory is hogwash. Maybe it is hogwash.