One wonders why the nation's capital, our beloved ugly-ass tourist purgatory OTTAWA, never gets these cool things. Hell, I can't even get decent 100mbit, I have to source it from Toronto.
Government here is stunting progress, because it offers a thick cushion of bureaucracy and drives the sharper minds away to.. you guessed it.. Toronto.
It's an IDE hard drive with a firewire interface ASIC. That hardware is not patented by Alesis. What they possibly hold a patent to, is the bastardized filesystem they're using specifically to prevent interop. Why they're doing this I don't know, as you're already paying a premium for "audio-grade" hardware. Joe Idiot Movie Ripper isn't going to buy these for his media center PC. Perhaps they just don't want people using Alesis' hard drives with non-Alesis ADAT recorders.. the smart thing would be for everyone else to support generic USB and 1394 hard drives and leave Alesis in their self-inflicted proprietary hell.
We always hear of how far advanced Japanese telecommunications are, many "years" ahead of everyone else. Is anyone here able to explain just what they're doing better over there ? I'm of the camp that wants a phone to be a phone and nothing more. I don't want to play Madden 2006 on my phone, I don't want to buy MP3's on my phone, I don't even want a friggin camera on there. Hell, I'd pay someone to transcribe voice into text just so I don't have to waste my life listening to voice.
The sad thing about this is Norton users will blame everything but their software. In reality, it's Norton's software that sucks, and has sucked since the dawn of Win95. The last product that still commands respect in my nostalgia is Norton Utilities 8.0 for DOS. Every Windows-based Norton app has been prettyfied useless crap.
Hell, I'm using a free antivirus because it gets right to the point. No pretty 3-inch wide tray monitor, no HTMLized interface (that crashes the HTML engine half the time), nothing but virus scanning thank you very much. Firewall ? Comes with Windows, does the job just fine for me. I've got linux for my "important" network in the closet.
Re:Do we have evidence that Intel coerced...
on
AMD Subpoenas Skype
·
· Score: 1
This story is not about bundling, this is about locking out competitors altogether. Even if you buy a car with bundled stereo Brand-X, nothing's stopping you from replacing it with a latest and greatest Clarion and a firing squad of PG subs and it will work fine. In contrast, here Skype is synthetically crippling AMD users just for the fun of being jerks. Their claim could easily be proven wrong by modifying the CPUID check in Skype (or using a run-time intercept). Remove just that little CPUID check, and I bet my AMD box will crunch a 10-person conference call just fine. My ISP's bandwidth will likely be the bottleneck, not the CPU.
I understand the wiring issue.. while I've certainly never worked on airplanes, I have installed my share of decadent sound systems, particularly in cars where interference and line noise are major issues. With that in mind, why would it be so difficult to shield the passenger bay from interference ? It doesn't need to be 100% impermeable, but enough to attenuate whatever signal is coming from a tiny cell phone to a level where it can no longer excite navigational devices. Perhaps a reverse approach could work, where the intruding waveform gets mauled by a high-frequency modulator wave to dissipate its energy bands.
My immediate reaction upon reading the headline was "Why not radio signals / infrared / optical recognition".. the beauty of the knock system is that you can't be sitting 50 feet away with a scanner to sniff the airwaves, you really have to make physical contact with the door. That restricts eavesdropping quite dramatically. You might be able to detect vibrations on the adjacent walls, but then you get resonance/echo/thump issues that effectively garble the code.
It's not perfect, but it's certainly clever. When you're visiting a secret club, you don't yell "Jim Sent Me" from 50 feet away where everyone can hear, you rap on the door and stealthily answer the doorman's challenge, just like this little device does.
While the concept of DDR spam filtering is a load of McGriddle-induced dementia, the use of feet to control computers is not a new idea. Usually people type with both hands, so why not use the feet to do non-textual tasks ? Perhaps even mousing, with a little practice. A decent-sized touch sensor at your feet could allow you to work faster and more comfortably.
I recall many years back someone had prototyped a "kick box" that laid beneath the desk and housed several pressure switches along its sides. It was demonstrated using a diminutive flight simulator. Gentle tap the left side and your craft does a barrel-roll, kick the top and you perform a wheelstand. One of the main issues was strength: feet are strong and clumsy, and it's quite easy to damage the input device by kicking too hard, or even injure oneself, and what about people with short legs ?
I would see the combination of a touchpad-type sensor, pedals and/or rollers, and these kick sensors assuming they can be ridigly built. Mouse around with your feet, kick left/right to move back/forward in your browser, kick up for home. Use the pedals in Photoshop to affect brush size and pressure. Use rollers to scroll around. All this without moving your hands away from the keyboard.
What's the point of using a cell phone if you're umpteen thousand miles in the air ? You won't get any signal so shut the damned thing off already. On the other side, it seems rather foolish that an airplane would be scuttled by a ridiculously common consumer gadget. Reminds me of that super expensive bike lock that could be trivially opened with the butt end of a cheap Bic pen.
I mean, couldn't they put a tiny layer of shielding around these sensitive devices ? Is it really going to break their bank ?:P
If you can't fix the hardware, then you fix the software. Someone somewhere's going to come out with a software fix for this misery. It might not make Microsoft too happy, but it will be necessary if these companies dare take HDMI seriously.
Human perception and cognition are greatly misunderstood things in this world. Moving your head with headphones, yes the sound field follows you and this is unnatural relative to what you're viewing, but what you see and hear is accurate, and your brain will compensate because it is fully aware of your spatial arrangement. If you're watching a movie or playing a video game, and you turn your head 30 degrees, looking to the side of the display, your ears will be at the opposite angle relative to the speakers. Do you really WANT to hear sounds rotated 30 degrees ? No, because you're no longer paying attention to the material anyways.
Cute idea, but I've got enough real snow as it is. Canada sucks 5 months a year, but it's the country I hate least on this planet. Give me a game where the goal is to lounge on the beach all day, avoiding jellyfish during the day and diseased locals at night.
Not a bad point, but then why would they be so obsessed with the PPC to X86 switch if their real plan is to transition away from the computer business ? There is a dedicated (and growing) Mac user base and there probably will be for many years to come. People are getting frustrated with Windows just at the same time as Apple's offerings are getting sexier and more affordable.
Me, a die-hard Mac hater for 3/4 of my life, I have to struggle with my conscience whenever I walk past a Mac Mini. Lots of people bought iPods, and this was their first foray into the world of Apple. They were pleased, now they're curious to try out other Apple products. When's the last time Dell did anything good with their peripherals ? Dell MP3 Jukebox ? Dell Printer ? shite! Sony who ? you mean the TV manufacturer ?... They are coming back with great force, now isn't the time to squander the company's resources into an empire that declined three generations ago.
I can see where you're coming from as the two companies have striking similarities, especially when you look at their public image. They're both in the business of razor blades, yet they are blunt enough to ding you HARD on the razor itself. Apple sells iPods with the implied purpose of getting more people to shop on iTunes. Sony sells whatever shite in order to have you buy their movies, music, games and even media.
The fallacy I see here, is that Disney ain't all that anymore. Even kids today aren't so fond of Disney, because they have more ADD-enhanced crap from Bandai. Who wants to watch a baby lion make friends when they can watch japanese robots beat each other up instead.. Plus I don't see that many adults buying iPod Videos for their kids. Yes, there would be more than a handful of Disneyphiles who would stuff their iPods full of every Disney movie, even though they own every single goddamned VHS and DVD, but despite their frightening numbers, they still don't represent a large enough market for this kind of deal.
Who knows.. Disney is such a multi-faceted mess that Apple might see something digestible hidden in some dark corner of the empire.. or maybe this is just a rumour to fuel some failed analyst's 15 seconds of fame.
I'm a bit fascinated by this point. Why wouldn't Apple want to create its own unique PDA line ? Buying Palm would only mean they can use Palm technology and PalmOS, which is probably not what Apple would want to do anyway.. just slapping a sticker on a device does not make it an "Apple product" in the sense that it's not unique, uberdesigned and hypersexy. Not to mention that Palm's build quality is absolute puke, I've broken two Tungstens in a single year and wasn't impressed with the brittle plasticcy $600 smartphones either. It just wouldn't be up to their quality standards.
The difference between child porn in the US and child porn in China is that nobody speaks of it in China. Over here it's all you ever hear about, americans are obsessed with bastard sexuality to the point where you wonder how people end up having kids at all, conventional heterogamous relationships being so "boring" and "not risky enough". It's all about getting caught, and being a celebrity, even a criminal one.. it doesn't matter in today's overcrowded underfinanced world.
Games are interactive, movies aren't so much. The whole point of a game is that you are in control of the story, and there should be several ways to affect that story and varying outcomes. There is also an element of skill, where you might replay the same portion a few times until you master it.
I don't compare the fun of a $60 game to the entertainment value of four $15 movies. I compare a $60 game to other games. The latest whiz-bang console release from EA will probably entertain me less overall than a more deeply involved title such as an RPG or well orchestrated FPS. It has nothing to do with play length or how many long boring levels there are. Halo was fun why ? Because it had satisfying moments and the challenge was well balanced, plus I'm a sucker for co-op multiplayer ever since the original Doom. NHL is fun because, well, it's friggin hockey and you get to cram three of your best buddies in front of the TV and shove them when they pull a hat trick on your goalie.
Everyone has their favorites, and those games are worth every penny. It's all the other stuff that falls short, when you buy a game and regret your purchase that same evening. Take for example Mark Ecko's horrible "Getting Up" game, which is like Jet Set Radio minus the skating, plus a bunch of pointless "gangsta shit". It looks like it's 5 years too late, plays worse than a 2 week old tech demo, just a ginormous disappointment.. a modern-day Daikatana. Is it worth the same as Half-Life 2 ? Not to me anyways. So then why do they cost the same ?
That's why I like non-blockbuster games.. look at the Popcap model, or those cheesy $15 titles at Staples like computerized board games and whatnot. Yes, they're cheap, both in price and design, but you don't curse yourself for blowing $15 because you know exactly what to expect from it. When you blow $60 for a game that's less fun than that umpteenth Mahjong clone, you want to punch someone.. HARD.
So you define the "fun bits" as interesting plot advancement and new shiny things to click on. Did you never play Pacman or Asteroids ? Sometimes the fun is just doing the same thing you did for the past 3 hours, depending on the game. Gauntlet is just running around killing everything with the same weapon, over and over and over and over.. still fun.
The format wars are ridiculous. We're still dealing with DVD+/-R and spotty compatibility with consumer devices and that will never be fixed. We DON'T want to see another pair of formats duke it out like children, never admitting defeat. We will end up with devices that play both BluRay and HD-DVD, and do a half-assed job at both like they do today with regular DVD. I don't know whose side to pick, but someone has to emerge as the victor and be standardized. It's just a frickin' plastic disc with numbers on it for christsake.
Multicast will also open piracy issues like the airwaves. If it's out there, someone will be able to grab it without paying.
Now I wonder, how do the digital cable companies survive with their video-on-demand ? Isn't that essentially streaming MPEG-2 over your cable line ? They have far more than 150'000 viewers and yet everything runs smoothly. If Canada's biggest and dumbest telecom can do it (not Bell, the other one), then surely the rest of the world can do it better.
I think one big problem is the network itself: routers can only do so much before they start to buckle. It's not like everyone has 10 terabits to the next transit node either. Perhaps there will be a specialized distribution model for streaming data and other lag-insensitive applications.. perhaps Akamai-style caching with high-speed satellite links instead of hogging the IP backbones.
Let's backpedal a bit: What thy hell would Apple do with Disney ? Companies don't just buy each other out with their spare change unless it presents a strategic or financial advantage. Now I'm no market analyst, but I would tend to think if Apple, who is still an underdog in the computer world, wanted to strengthen its foothold in the world of capitalism, they would be looking at acquiring technology or IP from smaller companies, playing corporate PacMan. They're not be big enough to play dirty like Oracle and Microsoft just yet, so they have to think constructively.
Buying Disney would show diversity, which can also be interpreted as Apple losing focus and looking for a backup plan or exit strategy from the computer business. A company with cold feet does not fare well on wall street. Disney is not exactly in a position of great power either, it is past its prime. I think at this point Apple should focus on improving performance within its core operations, be it cost-cutting by acquiring certain part suppliers, or perhaps stepping up the marketing machine and pursuing untapped markets to significantly increase the sales volume. Anything that will give the company lasting power so that in a year or two, they will have grown and have the clout to perform more daring acquisitions. Right now a miscalculated buyout could leave Apple unprepared for things to come, sending them back into the dark ages.
Okay, but where the analogy falls apart is that you can install a different browser without having to rip the old one out. If you don't like MSIE or WMP or whatever bundled app, just don't use it. It's not like they don't let you set Mozilla or Opera as a default browser. Why don't people ask Apple to rip out Safari and Quicktime and Finder from their OS ? Rebels without a cause!
Don't believe me? Learn how to speak English and get an I.T. related degree. Bam! You're employed.
Well sir, I don't believe you. I'm not employed, I speak better english than most locals. I have an I.T. degree and the technolust to back it up, yet my employment has been unreliable for the last four years due to the fickle nature of I.T. careers. We're an expensive commodity, so companies feel no guilt in dropping us the moment a project is finished. There is no job security unless you're willing to work for 10$/hour in a shop while the teenagers make more money flipping burgers.
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One wonders why the nation's capital, our beloved ugly-ass tourist purgatory OTTAWA, never gets these cool things. Hell, I can't even get decent 100mbit, I have to source it from Toronto.
Government here is stunting progress, because it offers a thick cushion of bureaucracy and drives the sharper minds away to.. you guessed it.. Toronto.
It's an IDE hard drive with a firewire interface ASIC. That hardware is not patented by Alesis. What they possibly hold a patent to, is the bastardized filesystem they're using specifically to prevent interop. Why they're doing this I don't know, as you're already paying a premium for "audio-grade" hardware. Joe Idiot Movie Ripper isn't going to buy these for his media center PC. Perhaps they just don't want people using Alesis' hard drives with non-Alesis ADAT recorders.. the smart thing would be for everyone else to support generic USB and 1394 hard drives and leave Alesis in their self-inflicted proprietary hell.
We always hear of how far advanced Japanese telecommunications are, many "years" ahead of everyone else. Is anyone here able to explain just what they're doing better over there ? I'm of the camp that wants a phone to be a phone and nothing more. I don't want to play Madden 2006 on my phone, I don't want to buy MP3's on my phone, I don't even want a friggin camera on there. Hell, I'd pay someone to transcribe voice into text just so I don't have to waste my life listening to voice.
The sad thing about this is Norton users will blame everything but their software. In reality, it's Norton's software that sucks, and has sucked since the dawn of Win95. The last product that still commands respect in my nostalgia is Norton Utilities 8.0 for DOS. Every Windows-based Norton app has been prettyfied useless crap.
Hell, I'm using a free antivirus because it gets right to the point. No pretty 3-inch wide tray monitor, no HTMLized interface (that crashes the HTML engine half the time), nothing but virus scanning thank you very much. Firewall ? Comes with Windows, does the job just fine for me. I've got linux for my "important" network in the closet.
This story is not about bundling, this is about locking out competitors altogether. Even if you buy a car with bundled stereo Brand-X, nothing's stopping you from replacing it with a latest and greatest Clarion and a firing squad of PG subs and it will work fine. In contrast, here Skype is synthetically crippling AMD users just for the fun of being jerks. Their claim could easily be proven wrong by modifying the CPUID check in Skype (or using a run-time intercept). Remove just that little CPUID check, and I bet my AMD box will crunch a 10-person conference call just fine. My ISP's bandwidth will likely be the bottleneck, not the CPU.
I understand the wiring issue.. while I've certainly never worked on airplanes, I have installed my share of decadent sound systems, particularly in cars where interference and line noise are major issues. With that in mind, why would it be so difficult to shield the passenger bay from interference ? It doesn't need to be 100% impermeable, but enough to attenuate whatever signal is coming from a tiny cell phone to a level where it can no longer excite navigational devices. Perhaps a reverse approach could work, where the intruding waveform gets mauled by a high-frequency modulator wave to dissipate its energy bands.
My immediate reaction upon reading the headline was "Why not radio signals / infrared / optical recognition".. the beauty of the knock system is that you can't be sitting 50 feet away with a scanner to sniff the airwaves, you really have to make physical contact with the door. That restricts eavesdropping quite dramatically. You might be able to detect vibrations on the adjacent walls, but then you get resonance/echo/thump issues that effectively garble the code.
It's not perfect, but it's certainly clever. When you're visiting a secret club, you don't yell "Jim Sent Me" from 50 feet away where everyone can hear, you rap on the door and stealthily answer the doorman's challenge, just like this little device does.
While the concept of DDR spam filtering is a load of McGriddle-induced dementia, the use of feet to control computers is not a new idea. Usually people type with both hands, so why not use the feet to do non-textual tasks ? Perhaps even mousing, with a little practice. A decent-sized touch sensor at your feet could allow you to work faster and more comfortably.
I recall many years back someone had prototyped a "kick box" that laid beneath the desk and housed several pressure switches along its sides. It was demonstrated using a diminutive flight simulator. Gentle tap the left side and your craft does a barrel-roll, kick the top and you perform a wheelstand. One of the main issues was strength: feet are strong and clumsy, and it's quite easy to damage the input device by kicking too hard, or even injure oneself, and what about people with short legs ?
I would see the combination of a touchpad-type sensor, pedals and/or rollers, and these kick sensors assuming they can be ridigly built. Mouse around with your feet, kick left/right to move back/forward in your browser, kick up for home. Use the pedals in Photoshop to affect brush size and pressure. Use rollers to scroll around. All this without moving your hands away from the keyboard.
What's the point of using a cell phone if you're umpteen thousand miles in the air ? You won't get any signal so shut the damned thing off already. On the other side, it seems rather foolish that an airplane would be scuttled by a ridiculously common consumer gadget. Reminds me of that super expensive bike lock that could be trivially opened with the butt end of a cheap Bic pen.
:P
I mean, couldn't they put a tiny layer of shielding around these sensitive devices ? Is it really going to break their bank ?
If you can't fix the hardware, then you fix the software. Someone somewhere's going to come out with a software fix for this misery. It might not make Microsoft too happy, but it will be necessary if these companies dare take HDMI seriously.
Human perception and cognition are greatly misunderstood things in this world. Moving your head with headphones, yes the sound field follows you and this is unnatural relative to what you're viewing, but what you see and hear is accurate, and your brain will compensate because it is fully aware of your spatial arrangement. If you're watching a movie or playing a video game, and you turn your head 30 degrees, looking to the side of the display, your ears will be at the opposite angle relative to the speakers. Do you really WANT to hear sounds rotated 30 degrees ? No, because you're no longer paying attention to the material anyways.
Cute idea, but I've got enough real snow as it is. Canada sucks 5 months a year, but it's the country I hate least on this planet. Give me a game where the goal is to lounge on the beach all day, avoiding jellyfish during the day and diseased locals at night.
Not a bad point, but then why would they be so obsessed with the PPC to X86 switch if their real plan is to transition away from the computer business ? There is a dedicated (and growing) Mac user base and there probably will be for many years to come. People are getting frustrated with Windows just at the same time as Apple's offerings are getting sexier and more affordable.
... They are coming back with great force, now isn't the time to squander the company's resources into an empire that declined three generations ago.
Me, a die-hard Mac hater for 3/4 of my life, I have to struggle with my conscience whenever I walk past a Mac Mini. Lots of people bought iPods, and this was their first foray into the world of Apple. They were pleased, now they're curious to try out other Apple products. When's the last time Dell did anything good with their peripherals ? Dell MP3 Jukebox ? Dell Printer ? shite! Sony who ? you mean the TV manufacturer ?
I can see where you're coming from as the two companies have striking similarities, especially when you look at their public image. They're both in the business of razor blades, yet they are blunt enough to ding you HARD on the razor itself. Apple sells iPods with the implied purpose of getting more people to shop on iTunes. Sony sells whatever shite in order to have you buy their movies, music, games and even media.
The fallacy I see here, is that Disney ain't all that anymore. Even kids today aren't so fond of Disney, because they have more ADD-enhanced crap from Bandai. Who wants to watch a baby lion make friends when they can watch japanese robots beat each other up instead.. Plus I don't see that many adults buying iPod Videos for their kids. Yes, there would be more than a handful of Disneyphiles who would stuff their iPods full of every Disney movie, even though they own every single goddamned VHS and DVD, but despite their frightening numbers, they still don't represent a large enough market for this kind of deal.
Who knows.. Disney is such a multi-faceted mess that Apple might see something digestible hidden in some dark corner of the empire.. or maybe this is just a rumour to fuel some failed analyst's 15 seconds of fame.
I'm a bit fascinated by this point. Why wouldn't Apple want to create its own unique PDA line ? Buying Palm would only mean they can use Palm technology and PalmOS, which is probably not what Apple would want to do anyway.. just slapping a sticker on a device does not make it an "Apple product" in the sense that it's not unique, uberdesigned and hypersexy. Not to mention that Palm's build quality is absolute puke, I've broken two Tungstens in a single year and wasn't impressed with the brittle plasticcy $600 smartphones either. It just wouldn't be up to their quality standards.
The difference between child porn in the US and child porn in China is that nobody speaks of it in China. Over here it's all you ever hear about, americans are obsessed with bastard sexuality to the point where you wonder how people end up having kids at all, conventional heterogamous relationships being so "boring" and "not risky enough". It's all about getting caught, and being a celebrity, even a criminal one.. it doesn't matter in today's overcrowded underfinanced world.
Games are interactive, movies aren't so much. The whole point of a game is that you are in control of the story, and there should be several ways to affect that story and varying outcomes. There is also an element of skill, where you might replay the same portion a few times until you master it.
I don't compare the fun of a $60 game to the entertainment value of four $15 movies. I compare a $60 game to other games. The latest whiz-bang console release from EA will probably entertain me less overall than a more deeply involved title such as an RPG or well orchestrated FPS. It has nothing to do with play length or how many long boring levels there are. Halo was fun why ? Because it had satisfying moments and the challenge was well balanced, plus I'm a sucker for co-op multiplayer ever since the original Doom. NHL is fun because, well, it's friggin hockey and you get to cram three of your best buddies in front of the TV and shove them when they pull a hat trick on your goalie.
Everyone has their favorites, and those games are worth every penny. It's all the other stuff that falls short, when you buy a game and regret your purchase that same evening. Take for example Mark Ecko's horrible "Getting Up" game, which is like Jet Set Radio minus the skating, plus a bunch of pointless "gangsta shit". It looks like it's 5 years too late, plays worse than a 2 week old tech demo, just a ginormous disappointment.. a modern-day Daikatana. Is it worth the same as Half-Life 2 ? Not to me anyways. So then why do they cost the same ?
That's why I like non-blockbuster games.. look at the Popcap model, or those cheesy $15 titles at Staples like computerized board games and whatnot. Yes, they're cheap, both in price and design, but you don't curse yourself for blowing $15 because you know exactly what to expect from it. When you blow $60 for a game that's less fun than that umpteenth Mahjong clone, you want to punch someone.. HARD.
So you define the "fun bits" as interesting plot advancement and new shiny things to click on. Did you never play Pacman or Asteroids ? Sometimes the fun is just doing the same thing you did for the past 3 hours, depending on the game. Gauntlet is just running around killing everything with the same weapon, over and over and over and over.. still fun.
The format wars are ridiculous. We're still dealing with DVD+/-R and spotty compatibility with consumer devices and that will never be fixed. We DON'T want to see another pair of formats duke it out like children, never admitting defeat. We will end up with devices that play both BluRay and HD-DVD, and do a half-assed job at both like they do today with regular DVD. I don't know whose side to pick, but someone has to emerge as the victor and be standardized. It's just a frickin' plastic disc with numbers on it for christsake.
Multicast will also open piracy issues like the airwaves. If it's out there, someone will be able to grab it without paying.
Now I wonder, how do the digital cable companies survive with their video-on-demand ? Isn't that essentially streaming MPEG-2 over your cable line ? They have far more than 150'000 viewers and yet everything runs smoothly. If Canada's biggest and dumbest telecom can do it (not Bell, the other one), then surely the rest of the world can do it better.
I think one big problem is the network itself: routers can only do so much before they start to buckle. It's not like everyone has 10 terabits to the next transit node either. Perhaps there will be a specialized distribution model for streaming data and other lag-insensitive applications.. perhaps Akamai-style caching with high-speed satellite links instead of hogging the IP backbones.
Let's backpedal a bit: What thy hell would Apple do with Disney ? Companies don't just buy each other out with their spare change unless it presents a strategic or financial advantage. Now I'm no market analyst, but I would tend to think if Apple, who is still an underdog in the computer world, wanted to strengthen its foothold in the world of capitalism, they would be looking at acquiring technology or IP from smaller companies, playing corporate PacMan. They're not be big enough to play dirty like Oracle and Microsoft just yet, so they have to think constructively.
Buying Disney would show diversity, which can also be interpreted as Apple losing focus and looking for a backup plan or exit strategy from the computer business. A company with cold feet does not fare well on wall street. Disney is not exactly in a position of great power either, it is past its prime. I think at this point Apple should focus on improving performance within its core operations, be it cost-cutting by acquiring certain part suppliers, or perhaps stepping up the marketing machine and pursuing untapped markets to significantly increase the sales volume. Anything that will give the company lasting power so that in a year or two, they will have grown and have the clout to perform more daring acquisitions. Right now a miscalculated buyout could leave Apple unprepared for things to come, sending them back into the dark ages.
I guess retards would pwn us all with their watercooling rig! *rimshot*
Thanks, I'll be here all week!
Okay, but where the analogy falls apart is that you can install a different browser without having to rip the old one out. If you don't like MSIE or WMP or whatever bundled app, just don't use it. It's not like they don't let you set Mozilla or Opera as a default browser. Why don't people ask Apple to rip out Safari and Quicktime and Finder from their OS ? Rebels without a cause!
Holy batclocks batman! He's using 48-hour days!
Don't believe me? Learn how to speak English and get an I.T. related degree. Bam! You're employed.
Well sir, I don't believe you. I'm not employed, I speak better english than most locals. I have an I.T. degree and the technolust to back it up, yet my employment has been unreliable for the last four years due to the fickle nature of I.T. careers. We're an expensive commodity, so companies feel no guilt in dropping us the moment a project is finished. There is no job security unless you're willing to work for 10$/hour in a shop while the teenagers make more money flipping burgers.