The only problem we need to address is the cost of internet access. The flat-fee-all-you-can-gorge-yourself access model is the problem and has set up a classic tragedy of the commons type of problem. The solution is to charge per megabyte for download. Say 10 cents per mega byte. Instead of paying a fixed amount. Bye bye piracy, traffic shaping, heavy use problems. I think this is a far better solution then the draconion DRM that has been suggested which is impinging on fair use and ultimately will threaten privacy.
Better to remove the tradgedy-of-the-commons problem that is the internet with flat rate pricing than to bend over for DRM and all kinds of privacy invading technologies that are going to be foisted on us. Some businesses (like spamming) will become less profitable when you have to pay for the resources that you use, and these businesses will fail. New businesses that are efficient in the new pricing scheme will arise to replace them. Linux does not depend on either model. You can order your Linux install CD from many sources and don't require flat rate pricing for success.
How do you make an online economy work without intrusive DRM? Simple, a universal tax on bandwith at $0.001 per megabyte (or ~$1 per gigabyte). Now it costs you $6 to download a CD full of audio from a pirate site and will totally change the dynamics of digital content distribution.
All lot of alleged problems with the internet are only problems because the incremental cost of bandwidth is negligable. The government should tax transmission of data at $.01 / megabyte. This will remove Spam and copyright problems. The money generated should be used to fund the Social Security fund.
I didn't vote for Mr. Bush and I was disappointed that he won (Nader supporter). I think the biggest problem that the democrats have is that their socially liberal message is not attractive to a majority of US citizens. Someone once said (I forget who), that outside of the coasts, USA is as religious as India and I think this election is good evidence of this tendency. I'm not saying that being pro-gay and pro-abortion aren't noble goals. Unfortunately, these items are hot button issues with a lot of people in the crucial swing states. You see those deeply crimson counties in Ohio? Those are the anti-gay, anti-abortion people coming out to prevent the further advancement of those agendas.
I don't think that Bush's victory is a total doom and gloom scenario. First, I think his re-election sends the right message to the islamic terrorists that USA is steadfast in the pursuit of our goals. This message will most quickly get us out of Iraq under acceptable terms.
Second, I believe Mr. Bush now understands the consequences of military action and will be much less likely to get involved in any other foreign adventures. Notwithstanding Bush's state of mind, the army doesn't have the manpower to do anything other than Iraq for remainder of Bush's presidency.
Third, I think that the neo cons at the DOD have been discredited by the Iraq ordeal. This means that Collin Powel and the state department are ascendant. They are more internationalist and more likely to work with allies and the UN. I'm betting that the army is going to get expanded and more troops sent to Iraq. This will be a direct rebuke to Mr. Rumsfeld, whose hi-tech warfare mantra is one of the major reasons that invasion and occupation were attempted without sufficient forces in the first place.
So despite the horrible record of the first term, I think things will be better in the second.
Now what we really should be afraid of is that rising interest rates which will pop our real estate bubble. Unfortunately this was going to be a problem no matter who won the election.
This whole anti-P2P thing and the DCMA thing is wrong and will most likely fail to stop piracy. Consumer fair use has to be balanced against copyright. The old system of copyright and fair use worked reasonably well until the internet and widespread adoption of PCs made digital copying ubiquitous. My proposal is that DCMA be abolished and P2P networks should be treated as any other legitimate business. The government should tax data transfer at $0.01 per megabyte and blank CDR/DVD at $0.01 per 10 megabytes of capacity. This puts digital media approximately on the same footing as paper media. You can photo copy a book but it will cost something and you don't get the nice binding, color art, etc. Under this proposal digital media would be the same- it would cost a nominal amount and you wouldn't get the nifty case, inserts or disc art. It seems to have worked with the photocopy technology- it just might work with digital too.
If the second screen is truely a touch screen I think Nintendo just invented the latest texting device. Wireless connection, palm pilot style handwritting recognition. This could actuall be really cool. I suck at texting on a mobile phone handset. There are only 9 buttons and they are too small for my hands. A Gameboy like device with a small screen that lets me write with a stylus and then texts my buddy sitting within wireless range...that rock big time. Nintendo may have a winner here.
Probably not. This is probably a play by Eolas to be bought out by MS or to license their patent portfolio to MS. In fact MS bending over so easily may indicate that this is exactly what is happening and MS is just strenghtening the patent rights they are about to acquire. IE maybe the only browser that can use said plugins in a year or so.
This old skool notebook is cheap (25-75 on ebay) has a full size keyboard and runs for about 15 hours on 4 AA batteries (get a charger and 8 AA recharable batteries for ~30 and you can use them with your other electronics as well). This is all you will need for taking notes in class. Yep its only got 32K of memory but you upload everything to your desktop each night using the serial cable so this is enough for a days worth of text-only notes. Its also dirt simple and all programs are stored in a ROM so its about a tough as a notebook can get (OK not waterproof so don't spill anything on it) If its gets stolen or run over by a car...meh... buy another one ebay. Save the 900-1200 you would otherise spend on a fancy, theft-prone laptop and use it for food and beer.
Why do we need a GUI on the BIOS configuration ? Why do we need to replace a simple, perfectly usable and debugged PC start up system ? I can think one major reason: they need to implement a fancy pants encryption and verfication system from the moment power hits the chip so that a secure computing environment (DRM) can be implemented. I think the GUI config tools are a lame marketing bullet point to make you think you need this stuff. I just don't get it.
Killer Technology, now they just need a kiler app
on
Xbox Live Goes Online
·
· Score: 1
Wow voice technology is something that I have always wanted in an online game...stopping to type while trying to play a fast paced game was not too fun. This is potentialy a great strategic move by MS as they finally have something the PS2 will not be able to easily duplicate. IMHO you need the band width of broadband to do voice simultatneous with game data and the Xbox is broad band only. In the console world the lowest common denominator is the target for developers. With the xbox the lowest is good enough for voice. This is not true for the PS2. Now MS just needs a killer app using this technology...
I think Apple's position has everything to do with preventing someone from reverse engineering Aqua/Quartz for the X86 rather than trying to stifle innovation. Imagine if the KDE or Gnome guys got a hold of of the complete Aqua / Quartz API spec... do you think they could create an X86 version ??? This would kill Apple.
This type of review is good because it punishes the management for allowing Beta software out the door. The sick little thing about the game industry is that most QA departments are very good - I'm pretty sure that Ubi-soft knew all about the problems in Myst 3. However some manager had a revenue target to meet so the game went out the door. The really sick thing is that under the current accounting rules said manager got to book all the revenue for the game the day they put the pallets on the trucks... it didn't matter how many were sold or returned at the retailer. The moral here - never buy a game shipped at the end of a company fiscal quarter or fiscal year - these are bug filled revenue specials.
I looked at this article and I find both propositions highly unlikely. The authors think that there will be 128 MB memory in the xbox because the dev kits shipped with 128 MB. This is does not follow. Dev systems need to have more memory than a target system to allow all of the code with debugging hooks to be tested on the target hardware. In addition, the extra 64 MB of memory would increase component cost approximately $30-40 - not very likely in a $299 retail machine. As for the digital vcr - the $500 price point makes me think not. The xbox will have to be $299 or less to succeed as a game machine. Now MS might also release an xbox+ with the larger HD and digital vcr for 500 but the vanilla xbox will be a $299 game console - not a digital vcr.
Re:Intel inside? Doesn't make sense.
on
Salon on the XBox
·
· Score: 1
Actually I was surprised about Intel inside. I thought that AMD would be the best choice based on price of the processor. Upon further reflection I can see the advantages of Intel -
1) Cheap. It probably costs MS the same price as an AMD CPU. The difference in retail price between AMD and INTEL CPUs is based on what the consumer will pay for the CPU not how much it costs intel/AMD to manufacture each part. Although AMD does seem to be getting better yeilds at high clock speeds there is probably very little difference in cost to manufacture at the 700 MHz level.
2) Plentiful. Intel can make A LOT of 700 MHz CPUs. Again AMD does seem to have more availability at high clock speeds - but at 700 MHz INTEL has the manufacturing capacity to make the millions of CPUs that would be necessary.
3) Integrated Chipsets. Intel CPU allows MS several possible integrated chipset solutions. This means less chips on the PCB and more importantly no chipset product development costs. Originally I assumed that the xbox would use the Timna (P3 core with integrated northbridge). After reading that Nvidia is getting to the chipset business I believe that the xbox will use an integrated nvidia/northbridge chip and sound/southbridge chip. This probably wouldn't be possible with an AMD (or other RISC architecture) without substantial product developement costs.
4) Compatible Instruction Set. Windows 2000 kernal, Direct X 8, Nvidia detonator drivers - debugged, mature, and most importantly already running on x86 architecture.
I disagree ! Xbox is a good thing because it will bring competition to the console market - not because it will kill off PC gaming. PC gaming is not being killed by the high barrior to entry caused by open platform / constant technology thrashing- rather it is not attracting enough new bodies because there is a cognitive barrier to entry. In general PC games are getting more complex, more detailed and less newbie friendly. This means that the PC audience has not grown and is increasingly hardcore. This situation is very similar to what happened to the board wargaming industry in the early eighties. Combine a static audience with ever increasing development budgets and you eventually have an unprofitable industry.
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Patent rights only last 20 years from filing. Copyright however, is much longer. Don't get your IP protections schemes all tied in a bunch!
The only problem we need to address is the cost of internet access. The flat-fee-all-you-can-gorge-yourself access model is the problem and has set up a classic tragedy of the commons type of problem. The solution is to charge per megabyte for download. Say 10 cents per mega byte. Instead of paying a fixed amount. Bye bye piracy, traffic shaping, heavy use problems. I think this is a far better solution then the draconion DRM that has been suggested which is impinging on fair use and ultimately will threaten privacy.
Better to remove the tradgedy-of-the-commons problem that is the internet with flat rate pricing than to bend over for DRM and all kinds of privacy invading technologies that are going to be foisted on us. Some businesses (like spamming) will become less profitable when you have to pay for the resources that you use, and these businesses will fail. New businesses that are efficient in the new pricing scheme will arise to replace them. Linux does not depend on either model. You can order your Linux install CD from many sources and don't require flat rate pricing for success.
How do you make an online economy work without intrusive DRM? Simple, a universal tax on bandwith at $0.001 per megabyte (or ~$1 per gigabyte). Now it costs you $6 to download a CD full of audio from a pirate site and will totally change the dynamics of digital content distribution.
bicycle or city bus.
All lot of alleged problems with the internet are only problems because the incremental cost of bandwidth is negligable. The government should tax transmission of data at $.01 / megabyte. This will remove Spam and copyright problems. The money generated should be used to fund the Social Security fund.
I didn't vote for Mr. Bush and I was disappointed that he won (Nader supporter). I think the biggest problem that the democrats have is that their socially liberal message is not attractive to a majority of US citizens. Someone once said (I forget who), that outside of the coasts, USA is as religious as India and I think this election is good evidence of this tendency. I'm not saying that being pro-gay and pro-abortion aren't noble goals. Unfortunately, these items are hot button issues with a lot of people in the crucial swing states. You see those deeply crimson counties in Ohio? Those are the anti-gay, anti-abortion people coming out to prevent the further advancement of those agendas.
I don't think that Bush's victory is a total doom and gloom scenario. First, I think his re-election sends the right message to the islamic terrorists that USA is steadfast in the pursuit of our goals. This message will most quickly get us out of Iraq under acceptable terms.
Second, I believe Mr. Bush now understands the consequences of military action and will be much less likely to get involved in any other foreign adventures. Notwithstanding Bush's state of mind, the army doesn't have the manpower to do anything other than Iraq for remainder of Bush's presidency.
Third, I think that the neo cons at the DOD have been discredited by the Iraq ordeal. This means that Collin Powel and the state department are ascendant. They are more internationalist and more likely to work with allies and the UN. I'm betting that the army is going to get expanded and more troops sent to Iraq. This will be a direct rebuke to Mr. Rumsfeld, whose hi-tech warfare mantra is one of the major reasons that invasion and occupation were attempted without sufficient forces in the first place.
So despite the horrible record of the first term, I think things will be better in the second.
Now what we really should be afraid of is that rising interest rates which will pop our real estate bubble. Unfortunately this was going to be a problem no matter who won the election.
Hi-
This whole anti-P2P thing and the DCMA thing is wrong and will most likely fail to stop piracy. Consumer fair use has to be balanced against copyright. The old system of copyright and fair use worked reasonably well until the internet and widespread adoption of PCs made digital copying ubiquitous. My proposal is that DCMA be abolished and P2P networks should be treated as any other legitimate business. The government should tax data transfer at $0.01 per megabyte and blank CDR/DVD at $0.01 per 10 megabytes of capacity. This puts digital media approximately on the same footing as paper media. You can photo copy a book but it will cost something and you don't get the nice binding, color art, etc. Under this proposal digital media would be the same- it would cost a nominal amount and you wouldn't get the nifty case, inserts or disc art. It seems to have worked with the photocopy technology- it just might work with digital too.
If the second screen is truely a touch screen I think Nintendo just invented the latest texting device. Wireless connection, palm pilot style handwritting recognition. This could actuall be really cool. I suck at texting on a mobile phone handset. There are only 9 buttons and they are too small for my hands. A Gameboy like device with a small screen that lets me write with a stylus and then texts my buddy sitting within wireless range...that rock big time. Nintendo may have a winner here.
Probably not. This is probably a play by Eolas to be bought out by MS or to license their patent portfolio to MS. In fact MS bending over so easily may indicate that this is exactly what is happening and MS is just strenghtening the patent rights they are about to acquire. IE maybe the only browser that can use said plugins in a year or so.
This old skool notebook is cheap (25-75 on ebay) has a full size keyboard and runs for about 15 hours on 4 AA batteries (get a charger and 8 AA recharable batteries for ~30 and you can use them with your other electronics as well). This is all you will need for taking notes in class. Yep its only got 32K of memory but you upload everything to your desktop each night using the serial cable so this is enough for a days worth of text-only notes. Its also dirt simple and all programs are stored in a ROM so its about a tough as a notebook can get (OK not waterproof so don't spill anything on it) If its gets stolen or run over by a car...meh... buy another one ebay. Save the 900-1200 you would otherise spend on a fancy, theft-prone laptop and use it for food and beer.
http://www.zapcom.net/~webtech/Tandy102/
Why do we need a GUI on the BIOS configuration ? Why do we need to replace a simple, perfectly usable and debugged PC start up system ? I can think one major reason: they need to implement a fancy pants encryption and verfication system from the moment power hits the chip so that a secure computing environment (DRM) can be implemented. I think the GUI config tools are a lame marketing bullet point to make you think you need this stuff. I just don't get it.
Wow voice technology is something that I have always wanted in an online game...stopping to type while trying to play a fast paced game was not too fun. This is potentialy a great strategic move by MS as they finally have something the PS2 will not be able to easily duplicate. IMHO you need the band width of broadband to do voice simultatneous with game data and the Xbox is broad band only. In the console world the lowest common denominator is the target for developers. With the xbox the lowest is good enough for voice. This is not true for the PS2. Now MS just needs a killer app using this technology...
I think Apple's position has everything to do with preventing someone from reverse engineering Aqua/Quartz for the X86 rather than trying to stifle innovation. Imagine if the KDE or Gnome guys got a hold of of the complete Aqua / Quartz API spec... do you think they could create an X86 version ??? This would kill Apple.
This type of review is good because it punishes the management for allowing Beta software out the door. The sick little thing about the game industry is that most QA departments are very good - I'm pretty sure that Ubi-soft knew all about the problems in Myst 3. However some manager had a revenue target to meet so the game went out the door. The really sick thing is that under the current accounting rules said manager got to book all the revenue for the game the day they put the pallets on the trucks... it didn't matter how many were sold or returned at the retailer. The moral here - never buy a game shipped at the end of a company fiscal quarter or fiscal year - these are bug filled revenue specials.
I looked at this article and I find both propositions highly unlikely. The authors think that there will be 128 MB memory in the xbox because the dev kits shipped with 128 MB. This is does not follow. Dev systems need to have more memory than a target system to allow all of the code with debugging hooks to be tested on the target hardware. In addition, the extra 64 MB of memory would increase component cost approximately $30-40 - not very likely in a $299 retail machine. As for the digital vcr - the $500 price point makes me think not. The xbox will have to be $299 or less to succeed as a game machine. Now MS might also release an xbox+ with the larger HD and digital vcr for 500 but the vanilla xbox will be a $299 game console - not a digital vcr.
Actually I was surprised about Intel inside. I thought that AMD would be the best choice based on price of the processor. Upon further reflection I can see the advantages of Intel - 1) Cheap. It probably costs MS the same price as an AMD CPU. The difference in retail price between AMD and INTEL CPUs is based on what the consumer will pay for the CPU not how much it costs intel/AMD to manufacture each part. Although AMD does seem to be getting better yeilds at high clock speeds there is probably very little difference in cost to manufacture at the 700 MHz level. 2) Plentiful. Intel can make A LOT of 700 MHz CPUs. Again AMD does seem to have more availability at high clock speeds - but at 700 MHz INTEL has the manufacturing capacity to make the millions of CPUs that would be necessary. 3) Integrated Chipsets. Intel CPU allows MS several possible integrated chipset solutions. This means less chips on the PCB and more importantly no chipset product development costs. Originally I assumed that the xbox would use the Timna (P3 core with integrated northbridge). After reading that Nvidia is getting to the chipset business I believe that the xbox will use an integrated nvidia/northbridge chip and sound/southbridge chip. This probably wouldn't be possible with an AMD (or other RISC architecture) without substantial product developement costs. 4) Compatible Instruction Set. Windows 2000 kernal, Direct X 8, Nvidia detonator drivers - debugged, mature, and most importantly already running on x86 architecture.
I disagree ! Xbox is a good thing because it will bring competition to the console market - not because it will kill off PC gaming. PC gaming is not being killed by the high barrior to entry caused by open platform / constant technology thrashing- rather it is not attracting enough new bodies because there is a cognitive barrier to entry. In general PC games are getting more complex, more detailed and less newbie friendly. This means that the PC audience has not grown and is increasingly hardcore. This situation is very similar to what happened to the board wargaming industry in the early eighties. Combine a static audience with ever increasing development budgets and you eventually have an unprofitable industry.