I managed to soak my cell phone during the huge floods we had in Houston last summer. I was pushing my car out of the water and forgot I had my cell in my pocket. It was a Nokia 5100 series phone with an aftermarket Lithium vibrating battery. I just left it sitting on the counter for a week and it worked fine. Still works, in fact, same battery and all. I thought it would be much more sensitive but after I recharged it it worked fine. There's a little corrosion on the battery (it has a clear case) but all the water is gone. You shouldn't need an oven, just let it dry by itself.
Actually the cost involved in the three aspects you list is involved with a lot of things other than movies. You have to set aside retail space for anything you sell, you have to keep food freshly stocked, and producing DVD media costs pennies (packaging is cheap, look at AOL CDs.
No, in truth, the real cost in RENTING movies comes from keeping track of them. It costs extra money to keep a database (be it paper or otherwise) of where your movies are. Not to mention rental copies of movies are often priced MUCH higher than retail copies (ever wonder why you see $120 DVDs on Amazon? Those are rental copies.) Selling one-time-use discs would be logistically no different than selling Funyuns.
My main problem with these discs is that they essentially take away one of the most appealing features of home video, namely the ability to stop the movie and go do something else. Even some pay-per-view channels have this feature, as DirecTV does PPV showings of movies every half hour, and if you pay for one of them, you have access to all of them for the next 24 hours. If the discs destroy themselves after being watched, you can't go back and watch something you might have missed while on the can or talking on the phone.
Also, I really doubt the MPAA is going to like this too much. If these things become ubiquitous, then they'll be there to copy (and someone WILL find a way to copy them.) Go buy one of these cheap throwaway movies, stick it in your DVD-R (they're not common now, but by the time these things hit the market, they will be) and make a permanent copy you can watch as many times as you want instead of paying the $30 for the real one. True, you can rent movies and copy them like this as well, but then you have the hassle of having to take it back (which IS a hassle for the largest group of movie pirates, college students, many of whom don't have cars. I don't enjoy walking a mile to the nearest Blockbuster.)
Yes, but if other parties can dilute.NET with non-Microsoft content, then MS loses its stranglehold. This is actually not a bad idea, by embracing Microsoft technology, we can dilute the market and make it ubiquitous, thus reducing MS' claim to a copyright or control of the network. They've probably been counting on non-MS flunkies totally boycotting.NET so they can gain complete control over it. It'll be interesting to watch..
I used to beta test for Ambrosia about 6 or 7 years ago on AOL. Their programs are really cool, and it's even cooler that they give them out as shareware. While very little of their stuff is incredibly original, it IS very well done and the final product is always very polished (I still play Swoop and Apeiron.) These guys make very cool stuff, and it'd be a shame to see them go totally commercial because a bunch of lamers are pirating their stuff. Personally I bought their stuff, mostly because it was cool and I wanted to support Mac shareware. It is true though, while I have no problem pirating software from large companies, I feel for the little guy and usually buy the stuff from the smaller companies. Piracy really does hurt the little guy more.
Linux has been a buzzword for years. Though it was more symbolic of a "hacker" culture, i.e. if a company wanted to seem cutting edge and "cool," they would hire "hackers" to do stuff on Linux. This is changed recently, however. A lot of ISPs I've known have, over the past few years, been migrating their servers OFF Linux to either Solaris or FreeBSD. Why? Linux now has a sort of negative connotation in the business world as being very ameteurish (just like many of the "hackers" hired during the dot-com boom.) Anyway, this will probably be seen as flamebait (god forbid I say anything negative about Linux on slashdot) but whatever, I've got karma to burn.:)
Yeah, except anyone that would be paying out the nose for Oracle is willing to pay the money not to have to go through the process of switching to a less secure, less featured and slower database. Also, the reason you pay for Oracle is the same reason people buy Cisco support contracts. If something fucks up, they will fix it immediately, it doesn't matter if it's 3am on a Sunday night, someone who definately knows what they're doing will be there within 15 minutes. You don't get that with PostgreSQL, or any other "free" software.
What I'm saying here is that the many thousands of dollars per month large companies pay for Oracle is worth the absolute assurance that their database will be usable 24/365(6). Sometimes, it's just cheaper to pay the money than lose out on $100,000,000 worth of money transfers during the hour you're down.
AIM is the "free service" while AOL is the "premium service." It also has the added benefit of allowing the AOL customers to chat with their non-AOL friends, which is a service to their customers. The point of AIM is not to sell ads, it's to sell AOL.
Actually, CHRP wasn't the clone boards-- it actually IS PPCP. They just changed the name. The only thing that really prevented anyone from building a PowerPC based system in the past was the lack of a chipset, which is what this article is about. With some work, these could probably run OS X. The trick lies not in the hardware, but in OpenFirmware (the BIOS, sort of.) Old-school PowerPC Linux hackers will remember having to boot from OpenFirmware and set nvram parameters to get Linux to boot. The functionality of OF would have to be duplicated in order to be able to boot OS X without modifying it.
The PowerMacs are not meant to be cheap, decent, general-use machines. That's what the iMac is for. The PowerMac G4 is meant to be a production machine for graphics, audio and video. Most production Macs that I've seen aren't very close to stock configuration. Most have a few SCSI cards and high-speed drives, all totally necessary if dealing with large (>500 MB) Photoshop files, video editing, or multi-track audio. Yes, you could do this with an Athlon based box, and probably $500 cheaper-- but who cares about $500 if you're spending $10000 to soup up a machine anyway, the components are exactly the same between the platforms.
And that brings up another point. Apple has an EXCELLENT reputation for build quality and stability. You buy a Mac, and you know it's going to work, plus the case isn't going to fall apart. This is the same reason you'd buy, say, an Adaptec SCSI card over an off-brand. Sure, you pay a little bit more for piece of mind, but it's worth it if you need it.
Compaq, for example, is notorious for building complete shit. It is cheap, and if you just need a machine to bang out some letters and surf the web, go for the Compaq. I wouldn't really reccomend doing any professional video or graphics editing on it though. Yes, I know there exist professional quality x86 boxen, but these are actually about on par price wise with the PowerMacs. It all depends on the market, and looking at Apple's profit margins compared with those of other PC makers (or lack of them,) I'd say that Apple is doing pretty well.
Actually, the more reliable and conservative part of the rumor mill is pretty much saying the same thing.. with the noted omission of USB 2.0. Supposedly, Apple doesn't think it's ready for prime time, but my guess is Apple doesn't want USB to crowd in on their own technology (1394b). FireWire2 will undoubtedly be faster than USB 2.0 (just as FireWire blew USB away, speed wise) but USB 2.0 already has some pretty wide support, and is still inexpensive. FireWire devices tend to be a bit pricey still. I'd hate to see Apple slip back into their proprietary technology (ADB, DIN-8 serial, HD-15 video, just to name a few) just to pick a fight with Intel over USB.
In an optimal world, this would happen. And the DoSers would then just hack cable modems (via open SOCKS servers, this is in fact how it is often done) and launch direct attacks from them. A friend of mine traffics in some rather large movie files, and the system they use is one of open FTPs and proxies. They essentially scan entire IP blocks (/16s, not piddly/24s) looking for open FTP or proxy servers, and then use these to store and transfer their files. DoSers, I am told, use a very similar procedure. If everyone were concerned about security, this would happen. But the fact is most people just don't give a fuck.
Heh, most DoS attacks these days are brute-force attacks (like spamming a web server on port 80 with forged IPs, mailbombs, etc.) There's not much you can really do against these, all they do is eat up an enormous amount of bandwidth and CPU. You can't trace them because they're spoofed, you can't block them because they're usually random. Kinda sucks, but all you can do is accept that it comes with the territory and buy more bandwidth.
No, my only point was that Baseball has a government anti-trust exemption. And a lot of teams DON'T sell out the seats (Montreal, for example, averaged less fans per game than the average WNBA game.) Most MLB teams bleed cash, and of the few that do make a profit, only one team (the Yankees, who, ironically, are playing in a 70-year-old stadium) would be considered "successful."
Without the antitrust exemption the owners couldn't charge $75 a seat, and thus couldn't afford to pay the players what they do. They also wouldn't be able to extort massive amounts of money from cities like they do now, which is the only reason baseball is profitable (or at least breaks even.)
Microsoft is a monopoly because they own 95% of the desktop operating system market. Essentially, if software companies want to sell anything, they have to make it for Windows. And if businesses want to be able to use off-the-shelf software, all their employees, clients and vendors use Windows, so they must as well. It's a total catch-22.
Microsoft also operates in many different areas of the computer industry. Almost all of them, in fact. And the fact that they own the operating system means that they get to plaster Windows with "Buy MS Office!" and "Use MSN!" messages. And now, everyone uses MS Office, so it's the same problem. There has to be some standard interface between companies, and file formats have to be compatible and work *exactly as they are expected to*. Thus, people use Windows and MS Office.
Also, have you looked at Microsoft's pricing lately? I'm currently in college, and MS has some incredible discounts (as in $5 for Office, though this is also to train an entire generation to use their software, so the businesses that hire them will use it as well;) but Windows 2000 was something on the order of $300, Office is about the same. They really can charge whatever they want, and people will pay it, but they keep pricing at these levels so that they can defend themselves as "reasonable" in court.
Microsoft does have many competitors. Many small ones. If someone tried to develop an office suite comparable to MS Office, Microsoft would just buy the company for an insane amount of money. They're so big, they can crush the smaller players. They're having some trouble with Sony in the console wars, but only because Sony uses many of these same tactics (VGS and Connectix ring any bells?)
Intel never really had quite the monopoly Microsoft had. AMD/Cyrix/VIA have always been there, just not as a large presence, but large enough that Intel couldn't sweep them away. Intel just got unlucky actually, AMD decided to make a strong push on an existing market as Intel was trying to force a major (and expensive) technological change down the consumers' throats (RDRAM.)
And AMD's success is also largely due to consolidation within the marketplace. When Compaq bought Digital, most of the Alpha engineers bailed and went to AMD. The Alpha was an extremely advanced chip, so they brought their experience with them to AMD and helped design the Athlon, which was finally a product which could challenge Intel for real (they had been a major player in the budget market for years with the K6 series.) The Athlon is not just a "fight the man" sort of thing, it really is a good piece of engineering at a fair price.
Actually MLB has an antitrust exemption from the federal government. Which basically means they can do whatever they want and get away with it, which is why pitchers (who only play between 1/4 and 1/5 of the games, and in the AL, they don't even have to hit) get $15 million a year and fans have to pony up at least a hundred bucks to go see one of EIGHTY home games. And this is our "national pastime." I could go further, but this is already offtopic, so I'll stop now.:)
Heh, I don't think Sony is really worried about the X-Box. Just look at the Christmas sales alone. The PS2 outsold both the X-Box and GameCube. Plus the PS2 already has a large installed user base and a lot of games. I don't think anyone is going to concede the console race to Sony just yet, but they are far and away the frontrunner.
As far as I know, they didn't really sell anything, they just ported the executables of Windows games to Linux. Without selling anything, you bleed cash. The ironic thing is, games are probably the ONLY thing you can really sell on Linux. Most everything (web servers, office software, etc) has a Free alternative, but games are unique. The sad thing is, they just released the executables, so people bought the windows game and downloaded the binary and libraries and just copied the maps/textures.
The question is now, with Loki gone, will the commercial Linux game market disappear? id was gung-ho about it with Q3, but after abyssmal Linux boxed sales, decided it wasn't such a smart idea. Most other game companies don't have plans to port things to Linux, and Loki was usually the company that did all the work. Now that they're gone, do Linux game addicts have to break down and install Windows?
Or will the Linux gaming community shift its focus towards emulation, with projects such as Lindows and WINE? These projects are becoming quite mature, and can already run complex games like Half-Life. It's an interesting situation, and I'll be watching how it unfolds over the next few months.
I don't see why hardware sites insist on seeing which chip "is fastest." I'd be more interested in an acceptable price/performance ratio. The Athlon XP 2000+ (which can still hold its own fairly well against a P4 2200) costs LESS THAN HALF of a P4 2200. Why anyone would spend the extra $350 on a P4 for the minimal performance gains (relative to the cost) is beyond me. And for those who want absolute, unforgiving, raw performance.. For the same price as a P4 2200 with a decent motherboard, you can buy a Tyan Tiger MP with a pair of Athlon XP 2000s and a bunch of DDR memory (AMD reccomends you use Athlon MPs but there's no reason the XPs won't work.) Sure, graphs and kernel compile times are pretty and all, but eventually you have to think about what is practical..
Economies of scale also suffer from such a thing as the law of diminishing returns. That is, after a certain volume (which FedEx almost certainly already moves) adding any more to it will not significantly lower price. Supply and demand curves for shipping mail are not linear, so eventually the benefits from adding more load simply don't matter. In other words, if FedEx already has no problems filling up an airplane with mail, then it will not cost the end user any less if they have to fill two planes with mail. It just doubles their costs and their profits. The object of a business is to maximize profits, not be nice to the customer (though this is often a means to that end) so FedEx will not lower prices if it won't bring them any more cash.
The USPS, on the other hand, is a government entity, and exists solely to provide a service. That's why it costs like $0.34 to send a letter. And like I said, look at the postal system of another country (Mexico, or even Canada) and you'll see that mail isn't nearly as reliable as it is here. Yes, it's not the best, but it's $0.34, so don't complain. "Priority Mail" and all that other junk is just the USPS trying to compete with FedEx and UPS using their existing infrastructure to generate some revenue to cover what's lost delivering first-class mail.
Have you seen FedEx's prices lately? The reason it gets there in two days with tracking is because it costs about $10 to ship anything UNDER one pound. The reason the USPS exists is to ship mail reasonably quickly (compare the USPS to other national postal services and you'll see what I mean) and for a negligable cost. This isn't a very profitable enterprise, thus why the government runs it.
This is the real world, not X-files. No organization as large as AOL/TW (and the US Government) can keep a secret. And usually once the secret is exposed, they fess up to it. This is obviously not a merger, and it makes little sense for AOL to buy RH. Their markets don't overlap in any way, shape or form. Maybe people should think for themselves before crying "Cover up! Conspiracy!":)
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I managed to soak my cell phone during the huge floods we had in Houston last summer. I was pushing my car out of the water and forgot I had my cell in my pocket. It was a Nokia 5100 series phone with an aftermarket Lithium vibrating battery. I just left it sitting on the counter for a week and it worked fine. Still works, in fact, same battery and all. I thought it would be much more sensitive but after I recharged it it worked fine. There's a little corrosion on the battery (it has a clear case) but all the water is gone. You shouldn't need an oven, just let it dry by itself.
Actually the cost involved in the three aspects you list is involved with a lot of things other than movies. You have to set aside retail space for anything you sell, you have to keep food freshly stocked, and producing DVD media costs pennies (packaging is cheap, look at AOL CDs.
No, in truth, the real cost in RENTING movies comes from keeping track of them. It costs extra money to keep a database (be it paper or otherwise) of where your movies are. Not to mention rental copies of movies are often priced MUCH higher than retail copies (ever wonder why you see $120 DVDs on Amazon? Those are rental copies.) Selling one-time-use discs would be logistically no different than selling Funyuns.
My main problem with these discs is that they essentially take away one of the most appealing features of home video, namely the ability to stop the movie and go do something else. Even some pay-per-view channels have this feature, as DirecTV does PPV showings of movies every half hour, and if you pay for one of them, you have access to all of them for the next 24 hours. If the discs destroy themselves after being watched, you can't go back and watch something you might have missed while on the can or talking on the phone.
Also, I really doubt the MPAA is going to like this too much. If these things become ubiquitous, then they'll be there to copy (and someone WILL find a way to copy them.) Go buy one of these cheap throwaway movies, stick it in your DVD-R (they're not common now, but by the time these things hit the market, they will be) and make a permanent copy you can watch as many times as you want instead of paying the $30 for the real one. True, you can rent movies and copy them like this as well, but then you have the hassle of having to take it back (which IS a hassle for the largest group of movie pirates, college students, many of whom don't have cars. I don't enjoy walking a mile to the nearest Blockbuster.)
Why wouldn't it be? I mean, we'd still have KDE, and we all know which one is better... ;)
Yes, but if other parties can dilute .NET with non-Microsoft content, then MS loses its stranglehold. This is actually not a bad idea, by embracing Microsoft technology, we can dilute the market and make it ubiquitous, thus reducing MS' claim to a copyright or control of the network. They've probably been counting on non-MS flunkies totally boycotting .NET so they can gain complete control over it. It'll be interesting to watch..
No, when we see someone on screen using a brand we recognize, it's easier to relate the world of the movie to our world. Thus making it more "real."
I used to beta test for Ambrosia about 6 or 7 years ago on AOL. Their programs are really cool, and it's even cooler that they give them out as shareware. While very little of their stuff is incredibly original, it IS very well done and the final product is always very polished (I still play Swoop and Apeiron.) These guys make very cool stuff, and it'd be a shame to see them go totally commercial because a bunch of lamers are pirating their stuff. Personally I bought their stuff, mostly because it was cool and I wanted to support Mac shareware. It is true though, while I have no problem pirating software from large companies, I feel for the little guy and usually buy the stuff from the smaller companies. Piracy really does hurt the little guy more.
Linux has been a buzzword for years. Though it was more symbolic of a "hacker" culture, i.e. if a company wanted to seem cutting edge and "cool," they would hire "hackers" to do stuff on Linux. This is changed recently, however. A lot of ISPs I've known have, over the past few years, been migrating their servers OFF Linux to either Solaris or FreeBSD. Why? Linux now has a sort of negative connotation in the business world as being very ameteurish (just like many of the "hackers" hired during the dot-com boom.) Anyway, this will probably be seen as flamebait (god forbid I say anything negative about Linux on slashdot) but whatever, I've got karma to burn. :)
Yeah, except anyone that would be paying out the nose for Oracle is willing to pay the money not to have to go through the process of switching to a less secure, less featured and slower database. Also, the reason you pay for Oracle is the same reason people buy Cisco support contracts. If something fucks up, they will fix it immediately, it doesn't matter if it's 3am on a Sunday night, someone who definately knows what they're doing will be there within 15 minutes. You don't get that with PostgreSQL, or any other "free" software.
What I'm saying here is that the many thousands of dollars per month large companies pay for Oracle is worth the absolute assurance that their database will be usable 24/365(6). Sometimes, it's just cheaper to pay the money than lose out on $100,000,000 worth of money transfers during the hour you're down.
AIM is the "free service" while AOL is the "premium service." It also has the added benefit of allowing the AOL customers to chat with their non-AOL friends, which is a service to their customers. The point of AIM is not to sell ads, it's to sell AOL.
OS X is very much UNIX. It just has a prettier face.
Actually, CHRP wasn't the clone boards-- it actually IS PPCP. They just changed the name. The only thing that really prevented anyone from building a PowerPC based system in the past was the lack of a chipset, which is what this article is about. With some work, these could probably run OS X. The trick lies not in the hardware, but in OpenFirmware (the BIOS, sort of.) Old-school PowerPC Linux hackers will remember having to boot from OpenFirmware and set nvram parameters to get Linux to boot. The functionality of OF would have to be duplicated in order to be able to boot OS X without modifying it.
The PowerMacs are not meant to be cheap, decent, general-use machines. That's what the iMac is for. The PowerMac G4 is meant to be a production machine for graphics, audio and video. Most production Macs that I've seen aren't very close to stock configuration. Most have a few SCSI cards and high-speed drives, all totally necessary if dealing with large (>500 MB) Photoshop files, video editing, or multi-track audio. Yes, you could do this with an Athlon based box, and probably $500 cheaper-- but who cares about $500 if you're spending $10000 to soup up a machine anyway, the components are exactly the same between the platforms.
And that brings up another point. Apple has an EXCELLENT reputation for build quality and stability. You buy a Mac, and you know it's going to work, plus the case isn't going to fall apart. This is the same reason you'd buy, say, an Adaptec SCSI card over an off-brand. Sure, you pay a little bit more for piece of mind, but it's worth it if you need it.
Compaq, for example, is notorious for building complete shit. It is cheap, and if you just need a machine to bang out some letters and surf the web, go for the Compaq. I wouldn't really reccomend doing any professional video or graphics editing on it though. Yes, I know there exist professional quality x86 boxen, but these are actually about on par price wise with the PowerMacs. It all depends on the market, and looking at Apple's profit margins compared with those of other PC makers (or lack of them,) I'd say that Apple is doing pretty well.
Actually, the more reliable and conservative part of the rumor mill is pretty much saying the same thing.. with the noted omission of USB 2.0. Supposedly, Apple doesn't think it's ready for prime time, but my guess is Apple doesn't want USB to crowd in on their own technology (1394b). FireWire2 will undoubtedly be faster than USB 2.0 (just as FireWire blew USB away, speed wise) but USB 2.0 already has some pretty wide support, and is still inexpensive. FireWire devices tend to be a bit pricey still. I'd hate to see Apple slip back into their proprietary technology (ADB, DIN-8 serial, HD-15 video, just to name a few) just to pick a fight with Intel over USB.
In an optimal world, this would happen. And the DoSers would then just hack cable modems (via open SOCKS servers, this is in fact how it is often done) and launch direct attacks from them. A friend of mine traffics in some rather large movie files, and the system they use is one of open FTPs and proxies. They essentially scan entire IP blocks (/16s, not piddly /24s) looking for open FTP or proxy servers, and then use these to store and transfer their files. DoSers, I am told, use a very similar procedure. If everyone were concerned about security, this would happen. But the fact is most people just don't give a fuck.
Heh, most DoS attacks these days are brute-force attacks (like spamming a web server on port 80 with forged IPs, mailbombs, etc.) There's not much you can really do against these, all they do is eat up an enormous amount of bandwidth and CPU. You can't trace them because they're spoofed, you can't block them because they're usually random. Kinda sucks, but all you can do is accept that it comes with the territory and buy more bandwidth.
No, my only point was that Baseball has a government anti-trust exemption. And a lot of teams DON'T sell out the seats (Montreal, for example, averaged less fans per game than the average WNBA game.) Most MLB teams bleed cash, and of the few that do make a profit, only one team (the Yankees, who, ironically, are playing in a 70-year-old stadium) would be considered "successful."
Without the antitrust exemption the owners couldn't charge $75 a seat, and thus couldn't afford to pay the players what they do. They also wouldn't be able to extort massive amounts of money from cities like they do now, which is the only reason baseball is profitable (or at least breaks even.)
Microsoft is a monopoly because they own 95% of the desktop operating system market. Essentially, if software companies want to sell anything, they have to make it for Windows. And if businesses want to be able to use off-the-shelf software, all their employees, clients and vendors use Windows, so they must as well. It's a total catch-22.
Microsoft also operates in many different areas of the computer industry. Almost all of them, in fact. And the fact that they own the operating system means that they get to plaster Windows with "Buy MS Office!" and "Use MSN!" messages. And now, everyone uses MS Office, so it's the same problem. There has to be some standard interface between companies, and file formats have to be compatible and work *exactly as they are expected to*. Thus, people use Windows and MS Office.
Also, have you looked at Microsoft's pricing lately? I'm currently in college, and MS has some incredible discounts (as in $5 for Office, though this is also to train an entire generation to use their software, so the businesses that hire them will use it as well;) but Windows 2000 was something on the order of $300, Office is about the same. They really can charge whatever they want, and people will pay it, but they keep pricing at these levels so that they can defend themselves as "reasonable" in court.
Microsoft does have many competitors. Many small ones. If someone tried to develop an office suite comparable to MS Office, Microsoft would just buy the company for an insane amount of money. They're so big, they can crush the smaller players. They're having some trouble with Sony in the console wars, but only because Sony uses many of these same tactics (VGS and Connectix ring any bells?)
Intel never really had quite the monopoly Microsoft had. AMD/Cyrix/VIA have always been there, just not as a large presence, but large enough that Intel couldn't sweep them away. Intel just got unlucky actually, AMD decided to make a strong push on an existing market as Intel was trying to force a major (and expensive) technological change down the consumers' throats (RDRAM.)
And AMD's success is also largely due to consolidation within the marketplace. When Compaq bought Digital, most of the Alpha engineers bailed and went to AMD. The Alpha was an extremely advanced chip, so they brought their experience with them to AMD and helped design the Athlon, which was finally a product which could challenge Intel for real (they had been a major player in the budget market for years with the K6 series.) The Athlon is not just a "fight the man" sort of thing, it really is a good piece of engineering at a fair price.
Actually MLB has an antitrust exemption from the federal government. Which basically means they can do whatever they want and get away with it, which is why pitchers (who only play between 1/4 and 1/5 of the games, and in the AL, they don't even have to hit) get $15 million a year and fans have to pony up at least a hundred bucks to go see one of EIGHTY home games. And this is our "national pastime." I could go further, but this is already offtopic, so I'll stop now. :)
Heh, I don't think Sony is really worried about the X-Box. Just look at the Christmas sales alone. The PS2 outsold both the X-Box and GameCube. Plus the PS2 already has a large installed user base and a lot of games. I don't think anyone is going to concede the console race to Sony just yet, but they are far and away the frontrunner.
Loki did a great service for the Linux community.
I'm surprised they survived as long as they did.
As far as I know, they didn't really sell anything, they just ported the executables of Windows games to Linux. Without selling anything, you bleed cash. The ironic thing is, games are probably the ONLY thing you can really sell on Linux. Most everything (web servers, office software, etc) has a Free alternative, but games are unique. The sad thing is, they just released the executables, so people bought the windows game and downloaded the binary and libraries and just copied the maps/textures.
The question is now, with Loki gone, will the commercial Linux game market disappear? id was gung-ho about it with Q3, but after abyssmal Linux boxed sales, decided it wasn't such a smart idea. Most other game companies don't have plans to port things to Linux, and Loki was usually the company that did all the work. Now that they're gone, do Linux game addicts have to break down and install Windows?
Or will the Linux gaming community shift its focus towards emulation, with projects such as Lindows and WINE? These projects are becoming quite mature, and can already run complex games like Half-Life. It's an interesting situation, and I'll be watching how it unfolds over the next few months.
I don't see why hardware sites insist on seeing which chip "is fastest." I'd be more interested in an acceptable price/performance ratio. The Athlon XP 2000+ (which can still hold its own fairly well against a P4 2200) costs LESS THAN HALF of a P4 2200. Why anyone would spend the extra $350 on a P4 for the minimal performance gains (relative to the cost) is beyond me. And for those who want absolute, unforgiving, raw performance.. For the same price as a P4 2200 with a decent motherboard, you can buy a Tyan Tiger MP with a pair of Athlon XP 2000s and a bunch of DDR memory (AMD reccomends you use Athlon MPs but there's no reason the XPs won't work.) Sure, graphs and kernel compile times are pretty and all, but eventually you have to think about what is practical..
Economies of scale also suffer from such a thing as the law of diminishing returns. That is, after a certain volume (which FedEx almost certainly already moves) adding any more to it will not significantly lower price. Supply and demand curves for shipping mail are not linear, so eventually the benefits from adding more load simply don't matter. In other words, if FedEx already has no problems filling up an airplane with mail, then it will not cost the end user any less if they have to fill two planes with mail. It just doubles their costs and their profits. The object of a business is to maximize profits, not be nice to the customer (though this is often a means to that end) so FedEx will not lower prices if it won't bring them any more cash.
The USPS, on the other hand, is a government entity, and exists solely to provide a service. That's why it costs like $0.34 to send a letter. And like I said, look at the postal system of another country (Mexico, or even Canada) and you'll see that mail isn't nearly as reliable as it is here. Yes, it's not the best, but it's $0.34, so don't complain. "Priority Mail" and all that other junk is just the USPS trying to compete with FedEx and UPS using their existing infrastructure to generate some revenue to cover what's lost delivering first-class mail.
Have you seen FedEx's prices lately? The reason it gets there in two days with tracking is because it costs about $10 to ship anything UNDER one pound. The reason the USPS exists is to ship mail reasonably quickly (compare the USPS to other national postal services and you'll see what I mean) and for a negligable cost. This isn't a very profitable enterprise, thus why the government runs it.
This is the real world, not X-files. No organization as large as AOL/TW (and the US Government) can keep a secret. And usually once the secret is exposed, they fess up to it. This is obviously not a merger, and it makes little sense for AOL to buy RH. Their markets don't overlap in any way, shape or form. Maybe people should think for themselves before crying "Cover up! Conspiracy!" :)