Xbox still loses MS money. Even after Halo the net to MS bottom line has been a loss. They recently made a little profit on it. Clearly it is the most subsidised console out there. Most businesses couldn't/wouldn't bankroll something like this and not see dollar one. This has been quite apparent since MS now reports profits/losses by divisions.
Where I work, we have classes. And the instructor takes his notebook out and hooks into the network, pulls his powerpoint. During the class a window pops up... Oh, he says, its just a virus, it pops up from time to time, and procedes to reboot and keep going.
After class the computer goes back in the bag for a month, as he has a desktop in his office. The virus hibernates....
Digital camera are a great thing for the digital camera makers/sellers. Unlike old camera you can't upgrade them by using better film. In a sense they are picture taking computers. Conversly its not a good time to be a film maker.
When in college I was using a 10 year old camera with great results. 10 year old digital camera is maybe 1 megapixel and probably doesn't have a zoom. As cameras get better and more functionality (12x image stablized zooms!) people want better ones. Film cameras features are pretty stable and people hold on to them longer as a result (new film cameras didn't really have must have features and the leaps in image quality that digital has over the last few years).
I think digitals growth is because the technology is getting better so much faster people who bought a camera a couple years ago are buying a new one now. I think as the technology matures the growth of digital will subside. But film is going to be harder to find in 10 years. 35mm film will probably become niche market like medium format/ large format film is today. Artists will long for grainy images and someone will come up with a photoshop filter to add it.
I like digital and film. Both have there place. I think my film images have a better quality than my 8 megapixel DSLR, but I take a lot of wildlife shots and save a lot of film with the digital. And digital is more fun. It will be interesting to see if in 20 years I can pull up all my digital images or will they disapear in a hd/backup crash...I know my negatives should sill be around.
They don't have to stop piracy completely, they're trying to make it more difficult for everyone to find what they want when they want it. And thereby push people to use pay services.
Take Napster. They hated napster, because everyone used napster, the selection was fantastic, and it was easy and fast.
If the RIAA can break the piracy up into smaller "p2p" networks it becomes more difficult to find want you want instantly on the different networks. Scare some of the big sharers off and its even harder to search.
All of a sudden 99 cents seems a nice price versus hours of searching. Steve Jobs noted when he released itunes, they had to make it easier/faster/more reliable/better quality than the free networks. They couldn't compete on price, (unless you count time).
As someone who is pretty busy(instert slashdot reading joke here) 1 dollar a song seems fair. Now if they'd make TV shows and other content available, things would look up.
My favorite mouse has a nub (pressure sensative Joystick used on thinkpads. They don't make them any more. I liked it for the multi directional scrolling. Glad the idea didn't die completely..
One of the reason this type of practice doesn't work (attacking back) on the internet, beside the obvious right/wrong arguments is that these attacts can be redirected. What I mean is that if I'm a spammer I could just use a competetors opt out site address, send spam and watch my competor be DOSed. Its not hard to do.
Your paying for allofmp3, who returns nothing to the artists/publishers and just puts the profits in there own pockets.
It your going that unethical route anyway (which you should think hard about, being a worker, I enjoy be compensated for my work), I suggest you just pirate the stuff and not provide the Allofmp3 the profits. At least p2p your peers aren't getting rich off you.
The switch is a huge mindshare loss for PPC. While most people dont' care what processor is in there computer, it hurts the PPC in software development/ mindshare.
its only a short matter of time (5 years I guess) before gcc and associated free software stuff is not ported to PPC. Linux will be much more expensive, if available at all. You will still be able to buy compilers from IBM/Freescale and development kits and the like, but for the home hobbiest the platform is dead. Nobody is buying POWER boxes from IBM to develop Linux on due to excessive cost.
I work on HPUX which is a platform on the outs. Some gnu tools come our way, but not a lot compared to linux/freebsd/solaris. There are not a lot of HP pa-risc machines floating around that allow development testing and optimization to occur.
Also I know a couple of folks working in the embeded space with PPC. Have a supply of workers that can get up to speed on PPC is much easier when you have a computer platform based on it.
Maybe its the competetion from C#/ Open java (jcg), or the fact that the java programmers seem to be listening to developers http://www.java.net/ . Or maybe its eclipse which is a great ide. It seems java development is picking up steam of late. More people I know are now doing java than c , and thats a good change (&*&*&**&&*&!!!).
Like all technology, when you first use it, its like "wow amazing". The ipod was like this. As time has past and the newness has worn off, the ipod is one easy to use reliable player. I use it almost daily and it just works...
This might sound obvious.. I'm a photographer.. I have a 2 bay firewire drive set I use for "HD" backup of my photos and video. Its 700 gig. I also burn DVDs.
When I backup my stills onto dvd I use jpeg 2000, its lossy but really not that bad once the image is in a good state.. I did some tests in college on jpeg/jpeg2000 vs tiff (uncompressed) of the smae image to see how much is lost. Not a lot it turns out. I love uncompressed images, but the loss when storing as jpeg isn't so great to matter unless you do a lot more manipulation. I'm also still shooting film which can always be rescanned at a later date.
However, you shouldn't backup all the DV (raw video) you dump on the computer. The original tap e can act as the backup. its still on the tape even after you dump it into the computer. Label it and set the right protect notch. Voili, instant backup footage.
I'm assuming you edit this down and give the client a dvd/video. Just keep a DVD copy for yourself. Thats all they can really ask you for. If they come back at a later date, because the dvd is bad try yours. If that doesn't work you have to go back to the tape and redit and recharge.
My GF picked up a book on CSS (for dummies). The author suggested that standards didn't matter so much as the market was pretty much all internet explorer, so why bother checking with any other browser.
I couldn't beleive I was reading this. Its actually repeated in a different section of the book. But then again the book was for dummies.
For what its worth firefox plugins like webdeveloper make designing/checking web pages (especially css) so much easier, hopefully it will make traction into web development shops.
My dad has AOL, I had AOL many years back. They give you excellent financial analysis data on companies not available free on the internet (those pay for reports...). Or at least they did 4 years ago.
Linspire seems pretty solid, although I haven't played with it that much. It is definetely one of the most "out of the box" friendly system for non linux familiar people to use. So you can sell it to anyone not just those familiar with linux. I think thats the point of it.
Also, and importantly they also offer support http://support.linspire.com/ , which has bulliten boards and phone numbers. The phone is slow. But when you want to retail a linux box, that support becomes critical to your sales, so linspire shares the support of the OS.
Michael Robertson the ceo is alos very agressive, giving it marketshare with prominent partners Compusa/Bestbuy etc....
With the exception of java most libraries don't seem to be as complete a cross platform solution. There are other solutions, they're just trying to make a quality cross platform solution, there are alternatives, but you have to collect the parts and put them together yourself, and test etc...
There is GTK which is cross platform for windowing and widgets. (GNOME is built on this)
If you don't like it don't buy it, but I love the irony of software developers whinning about software prices (or pirating for that matter).
Back in the OS 9 days, a company called connectix (bought by MS) created a product for the mac called "vitural playstation". It allowed your mac to play playstation games. It was cool and worked well on the hardware of the day (around 400 mhz?) . Life was good.
Then someone pointed out, OMG, if this software get s better than noone will write Mac games (mac games were few and far between), because you could just buy a virtual playstation and playstation games.
It never happened. People still created mac games as emulated while fine, wasn't as good.Sony sued connectix and lost and ended up buying the virtual playstation and deep sixing it. Connectix went on create virtual PC and get purchased by MS (insert speculation about xbox 2 emulation here)
Native apps matter. They look and feel better. itunes is a mac app on windows and at work it looks and feels wierd on Windows, even though it acts like a normal mac app. (I'm os agnostic, I regularly us Mac (home) Solaris/Hp-ux and windows (work).
What would be cool is a port of the Mac libraries to linux (GNUSTEP http://www.gnustep.org/ ) so one could write mac/linux apps.
Who is going to buy a PPC mac now?? back to 32
on
Apple Switching to Intel
·
· Score: 3, Insightful
Seriously. Who would drop many $1000s on a piece of hardware that has a lifespan of 2-3 years. You know the support for ppc apps will last a couple years before companies compile for X86 only.
And going back to 2 gig memory limit and 32 bits is going to be really fun.
Slashdot Mirror
Xbox still loses MS money. Even after Halo the net to MS bottom line has been a loss. They recently made a little profit on it. Clearly it is the most subsidised console out there. Most businesses couldn't/wouldn't bankroll something like this and not see dollar one. This has been quite apparent since MS now reports profits/losses by divisions.
Where are my mod points when I need them?
Where I work, we have classes. And the instructor takes his notebook out and hooks into the network, pulls his powerpoint. During the class a window pops up... Oh, he says, its just a virus, it pops up from time to time, and procedes to reboot and keep going.
After class the computer goes back in the bag for a month, as he has a desktop in his office. The virus hibernates....
Our IT folks must love this..
Digital camera are a great thing for the digital camera makers/sellers. Unlike old camera you can't upgrade them by using better film. In a sense they are picture taking computers. Conversly its not a good time to be a film maker.
When in college I was using a 10 year old camera with great results. 10 year old digital camera is maybe 1 megapixel and probably doesn't have a zoom. As cameras get better and more functionality (12x image stablized zooms!) people want better ones. Film cameras features are pretty stable and people hold on to them longer as a result (new film cameras didn't really have must have features and the leaps in image quality that digital has over the last few years).
I think digitals growth is because the technology is getting better so much faster people who bought a camera a couple years ago are buying a new one now. I think as the technology matures the growth of digital will subside. But film is going to be harder to find in 10 years. 35mm film will probably become niche market like medium format/ large format film is today. Artists will long for grainy images and someone will come up with a photoshop filter to add it.
I like digital and film. Both have there place. I think my film images have a better quality than my 8 megapixel DSLR, but I take a lot of wildlife shots and save a lot of film with the digital. And digital is more fun. It will be interesting to see if in 20 years I can pull up all my digital images or will they disapear in a hd/backup crash...I know my negatives should sill be around.
They don't have to stop piracy completely, they're trying to make it more difficult for everyone to find what they want when they want it. And thereby push people to use pay services.
Take Napster. They hated napster, because everyone used napster, the selection was fantastic, and it was easy and fast.
If the RIAA can break the piracy up into smaller "p2p" networks it becomes more difficult to find want you want instantly on the different networks. Scare some of the big sharers off and its even harder to search.
All of a sudden 99 cents seems a nice price versus hours of searching. Steve Jobs noted when he released itunes, they had to make it easier/faster/more reliable/better quality than the free networks. They couldn't compete on price, (unless you count time).
As someone who is pretty busy(instert slashdot reading joke here) 1 dollar a song seems fair. Now if they'd make TV shows and other content available, things would look up.
The old "one button" mouse had the whole base as a button. I'm not sure if this does. However it will "click" as it has a built in speaker.
See
http://www.apple.com/mightymouse/design.html
My favorite mouse has a nub (pressure sensative Joystick used on thinkpads. They don't make them any more. I liked it for the multi directional scrolling. Glad the idea didn't die completely..
It really does. It just never act like I expect in many ways. I just want a "right click" open folder in new window.
Either it always opens in a new window or never does.
One of the reason this type of practice doesn't work (attacking back) on the internet, beside the obvious right/wrong arguments is that these attacts can be redirected. What I mean is that if I'm a spammer I could just use a competetors opt out site address, send spam and watch my competor be DOSed. Its not hard to do.
Your paying for allofmp3, who returns nothing to the artists/publishers and just puts the profits in there own pockets.
It your going that unethical route anyway (which you should think hard about, being a worker, I enjoy be compensated for my work), I suggest you just pirate the stuff and not provide the Allofmp3 the profits. At least p2p your peers aren't getting rich off you.
The switch is a huge mindshare loss for PPC. While most people dont' care what processor is in there computer, it hurts the PPC in software development/ mindshare.
its only a short matter of time (5 years I guess) before gcc and associated free software stuff is not ported to PPC. Linux will be much more expensive, if available at all. You will still be able to buy compilers from IBM/Freescale and development kits and the like, but for the home hobbiest the platform is dead. Nobody is buying POWER boxes from IBM to develop Linux on due to excessive cost.
I work on HPUX which is a platform on the outs. Some gnu tools come our way, but not a lot compared to linux/freebsd/solaris. There are not a lot of HP pa-risc machines floating around that allow development testing and optimization to occur.
Also I know a couple of folks working in the embeded space with PPC. Have a supply of workers that can get up to speed on PPC is much easier when you have a computer platform based on it.
Maybe its the competetion from C#/ Open java (jcg), or the fact that the java programmers seem to be listening to developers http://www.java.net/ . Or maybe its eclipse which is a great ide. It seems java development is picking up steam of late. More people I know are now doing java than c , and thats a good change (&*&*&**&&*&!!!).
Now you have a retro gaming machine, and with 50 gig per blue-ray disc, lots of room left over!
Eclipse is confusing.. its really 2 things in 1.
1. Its an Itergrated Development Environment (IDE) which allows plug ins to extend its usefullyness.
2. Its written in java with SWT (native platorm windowing extentions). It can be used as a framework for building your own java applications.
Like all technology, when you first use it, its like "wow amazing". The ipod was like this. As time has past and the newness has worn off, the ipod is one easy to use reliable player. I use it almost daily and it just works...
This might sound obvious.. I'm a photographer.. I have a 2 bay firewire drive set I use for "HD" backup of my photos and video. Its 700 gig. I also burn DVDs.
When I backup my stills onto dvd I use jpeg 2000, its lossy but really not that bad once the image is in a good state.. I did some tests in college on jpeg/jpeg2000 vs tiff (uncompressed) of the smae image to see how much is lost. Not a lot it turns out. I love uncompressed images, but the loss when storing as jpeg isn't so great to matter unless you do a lot more manipulation. I'm also still shooting film which can always be rescanned at a later date.
However, you shouldn't backup all the DV (raw video) you dump on the computer. The original tap e can act as the backup. its still on the tape even after you dump it into the computer. Label it and set the right protect notch. Voili, instant backup footage.
I'm assuming you edit this down and give the client a dvd/video. Just keep a DVD copy for yourself. Thats all they can really ask you for. If they come back at a later date, because the dvd is bad try yours. If that doesn't work you have to go back to the tape and redit and recharge.
My GF picked up a book on CSS (for dummies). The author suggested that standards didn't matter so much as the market was pretty much all internet explorer, so why bother checking with any other browser.
I couldn't beleive I was reading this. Its actually repeated in a different section of the book. But then again the book was for dummies.
For what its worth firefox plugins like webdeveloper make designing/checking web pages (especially css) so much easier, hopefully it will make traction into web development shops.
My dad has AOL, I had AOL many years back. They give you excellent financial analysis data on companies not available free on the internet (those pay for reports...). Or at least they did 4 years ago.
Thats the only thing I can think of.
Linspire seems pretty solid, although I haven't played with it that much. It is definetely one of the most "out of the box" friendly system for non linux familiar people to use. So you can sell it to anyone not just those familiar with linux. I think thats the point of it.
Also, and importantly they also offer support http://support.linspire.com/ , which has bulliten boards and phone numbers. The phone is slow. But when you want to retail a linux box, that support becomes critical to your sales, so linspire shares the support of the OS.
Michael Robertson the ceo is alos very agressive, giving it marketshare with prominent partners Compusa/Bestbuy etc....
http://www.macdevcenter.com/pub/a/mac/2005/05/10/q t7.html?page=2
Better compression. Takes longer to compress though..
Quicktime 7 has h.264, and the next gen dvd players will use it..
They seem to think that they're being fair..
http://www.trolltech.com/company/model.html
With the exception of java most libraries don't seem to be as complete a cross platform solution. There are other solutions, they're just trying to make a quality cross platform solution, there are alternatives, but you have to collect the parts and put them together yourself, and test etc...
There is GTK which is cross platform for windowing and widgets. (GNOME is built on this)
If you don't like it don't buy it, but I love the irony of software developers whinning about software prices (or pirating for that matter).
MS used to recruit all the best talent out of Borland, back when borland had a better compiler.
c net
Borland filed suit to stop them. They weren't successful (obviously), although MS admitting to recruiting 34 employees of Borland.
article about it. http://news.com.com/2100-1023-279561.html?legacy=
MS is sneaky this way. Napster/Yahoo pay MS to licence its DRM.
Then MS decideds to open its store.. I'm sure its not using any of its licencing fees to undercut the competetion....
MS always gets huge payement from competors. Sony pays for Windows and gets a subsidised XBOX (which has cost MS millions).
I'm really surprised any company would partner with MS that didn't need the OS.
Back in the OS 9 days, a company called connectix (bought by MS) created a product for the mac called "vitural playstation". It allowed your mac to play playstation games. It was cool and worked well on the hardware of the day (around 400 mhz?) . Life was good.
Then someone pointed out, OMG, if this software get s better than noone will write Mac games (mac games were few and far between), because you could just buy a virtual playstation and playstation games.
It never happened. People still created mac games as emulated while fine, wasn't as good.Sony sued connectix and lost and ended up buying the virtual playstation and deep sixing it. Connectix went on create virtual PC and get purchased by MS (insert speculation about xbox 2 emulation here)
Native apps matter. They look and feel better. itunes is a mac app on windows and at work it looks and feels wierd on Windows, even though it acts like a normal mac app. (I'm os agnostic, I regularly us Mac (home) Solaris/Hp-ux and windows (work).
What would be cool is a port of the Mac libraries to linux (GNUSTEP http://www.gnustep.org/ ) so one could write mac/linux apps.
Seriously. Who would drop many $1000s on a piece of hardware that has a lifespan of 2-3 years. You know the support for ppc apps will last a couple years before companies compile for X86 only.
And going back to 2 gig memory limit and 32 bits is going to be really fun.