The tool that Microsoft are distributing is very similar to what OS X includes, where you can choose your default browser, email client etc from a menu. It doesn't pick up every possible option automatically either (I imagine those apps have to register themselves with the system to say they are web browsers). It's hardly a big deal. I thought it was pretty straightforward too, so they're really just moaning for the sake of moaning.
Frankly I just wish these companies would just stop bitching all the time and just produce something better for us all to use. If they spent half as much time and effort on revolutionising computer software and hardware as they did writing reports to get at MS, I figure I'd be coding Perl by telekinesis by now.
Valve haven't actually been working on TF2 properly for as long as DNF has been in production over at 3D Realms.
Their excuse? They've written their own engine, from the ground up. And Steam, their content delivery system. And really helped their Half-Life mod community.
3D Realms excuse? Er... I don't think they have one. Been using the Unreal engine for pretty much the whole time (started with the Q2 engine). Must be terrible team management. What they have showed (at last years E3) wasn't even that impressive.
"iTools being renamed.Mac.....which is so inherently stupid it isn't even funny"
Well, that one is based on pretty strong facts I'm afraid. All references to iTools in the latest version of the Jaguar beta's have been replaced with.mac instead. Any Apple news freak knows that.
All these time servers are based on an atomic clock somewhere (there's a few of them, one in France I know of, or in all GPS satellites), but because time is not a constant, the time according to an atomic clock is not necessarily the current time at your location.
Due to this, don't be annoyed if your clock is a few seconds (or even minutes) out. The next time you're late for work, just politely explain to your boss that your watch isn't in the same location as his, and therefore don't share the same time.
Just bought it last night, and it works perfectly. Seamless install, plugged in my iPod, appeared as an f: drive on my system, browsed through perfectly (it uses nice XP style icons, even though I'm not on XP) and dragged and dropped a whole bunch of folders on it which were sent to the iPod super quick. Even copied four sets of folders at the same time with no noticable slowdown.
Lovely.
Can I also say that I've had the iPod for months because I have a Powerbook G4, it's just easier for me on the Windows machine because that's where my 13Gb MP3 collection is (I ripped every CD I own), hooked up to my slimp3 (http://www.slimdevices.com).
I read recently that you cache many of the more popular pages every 15 minutes, which was a surprise. Exactly how many pages are counted in this "popular" set, how do you decide when to move a page from the normal every 28 day rotation to this one, and what's the process for getting one of these pages (say from my server) cached on yours, indexed, page ranked and available across your whole server farm for searching.
I did 55,000 entirely dynamic page views (pulling stuff out of a mySQL database) with Perl one day for my messageboard system (Chatbear) when news of Valve's Steam beta test boards spread across the web. Not even full mod_perl, no caching, no fancy compile options, 128Mb and a P550 processor. All pages generated in less than a second.
So Perl does the job fine. If you know how to use it.
I can find you plenty of real-world examples of people who have used ColdFusion and moved away from it as it buckled under any kind of pressure, or PHP users who ended up getting bits written in Perl or C to keep the speed up.
I just hate PHP-style langauges embedded in HTML I'm afraid.
I've used IE every day for 5 or so years. Never once had a problem. I use Outlook (and used to use Outlook Express over that time) and never had a virus. I stay up to date with Windows Update when patches are made available, I don't open attachments I don't know, I don't click on links on strange web pages that try to fool stupid users. I run 11 free bsd servers, 4 linux servers, 4 websites, write perl for a living... need I go on?
I've had a Linux box hacked because of holes in the SSH server. So don't tell me open source software is always perfect. You can see that from Bugtraq yourself. Do you stop using Apache when you saw the list of holes it's had over time?
Yes b0rked IIS servers affect me too, but open your own eyes for a second and see that every platform has security holes, not just Microsoft made ones. Don't think Moz is going to be magically free of them either.
MS's description of how to use every tag IE understands is second to none. Both of the standard and their own stuff. They also tell you what standard something is part of.
http://msdn.microsoft.com/ie/
It's helped me out loads of times when writing javascript stuff.
CNET complaining that it doesn't render pages built for IE is a bit stupid. Blame the page designers, there's no real reason for any half decent web designer to build a site like that (I should know, I am one).
I've gone through a whole series of different web browsers on Windows, OS X and Linux over the years. On Linux, I'd choose Mozilla 1.0 without hesitation, clearly the best.
On Mac OS X, I stick with IE5. Omniweb, despite everybody saying it's brilliant, just doesn't do it for me. All the fonts are overly anti-aliased, and if you switch off anti-aliasing, they look rough. It also does strange things with simple tables and images on some pages. Chimera is almost there, fast, but still lacking a lot of features. Once it gets there, it'll be great. IE5 is slow, but it renders pages correctly, and 10.1.5 of X really helps with it's scroll speed on my Powerbook.
Windows 2000, IE6 is the no-brainer. And even with Moz out, it still is I'm afraid. The fact is, IE6 never crashes for me. Neither did IE5, on any of the Win2K machines I use. It never appears slow, renders every page I visit perfectly, gives me the font sizes I like, doesn't overly anti-alias text and for our internal office systems lets me do fun things with <div> tags. Where's the reason not to use it, other than for those who hate MS? I've never found any IE security hole to be a problem (how many people are going to be using Gopher links these days?) so I don't see that as a major selling point (and neither will the rest of the general public). And Moz's open-source status won't make it free from issues like that either, despite what people might think, just go look for known open-source security holes. There are lots. Apache, mySQL, PHP and more have all had them.
But in the end, Moz does a lot of things right, tabbed browsing is great (Opera may have had it first, but Opera never rendered pages for me as well as Moz does), the page rendering is almost always on par with IE6, as is the speed. I'm not a fan of the interface and I hate skins (pointless, useless things, just design an interface that looks good and works in the first place), but generally I was very impressed with it. Stupid things like forgetting the section I was last in when I go back to the Preferences, or continuously adding my shacknews password details to the store every time I posted, resulting in it asking me to keep selecting which username I wanted to use marred the experience somewhat.
What the Moz developers need to do now is stop copying every other browser out there, so they're not missing features, and start changing people's perception of how a browser should work to start with. Give people a reason to change. Think outside of the box. There's not been much change in the way a browser works since TBL created the web, even if HTML and the way people use the web has changed significantly. I'm interested to see if Apple do indeed produce an iWeb application (as is currently rumoured) because they would probably try something different.
Mozilla is still on my machine, but for now, I don't see much reason to switch.
People, please. Read the link to the UK TiVo community before posting in this thread. You're all asking the same questions over and over again. But since none of you will, since people on the web seem averse to actually reading...
1. It doesn't take up space, all TiVo's have reserved space on their drives for this kind of thing that you would never have been able to record on anyway. You're not getting any less space than you paid for.
2. It will NEVER delete anything you had to record this.
3. You DON'T have to watch it.
4. It will NEVER record this instead of something you wanted it to record.
I have a TiVo. This program is on my menu. Who the hell cares? I ignore it, and in a couple of days it'll disappear.
Never mind the $4.95 a month, its only $19.95 a YEAR. That's the much better deal.
I've been subscribed to their fast download service (which was also $19.95 a year) and it's been great. Two clicks to download all the latest files and more importantly their excellent video reviews and previews as fast as my modem can carry them. Those are something you can't get anywhere else and are more than worth 20 bucks a year.
New iMac is da bomb, I want one. That screen is just too damn cool.
Bigger screens on iBooks, excellent.
Really nice, free image program in the shape of iPhoto. Fab, since I just bought a new digital camera.
No change to the G4, so I should get a good price when I sell mine (and buy an iBook probably).
Bit disappointed there was nothing hugely surprising, but that's really just because everybody expects them to create world peace, when in fact they're just a computer company.
Guaranteed PC manufacturers up and down the country are now trying to work out how to copy the new iMac though.
The BBC, in their nature, are the most bias-free, impartial news reporting service in the world. The biggest alternatives, MSNBC are obviously going to edge more towards the side of MS related properties (whether or not they say otherwise) and CNN... well CNN is owned by the world's largest media-congolomerate - AOL Time Warner (a company much more scary and powerful than MS could ever hope to be). The BBC is owned by the people and is therefore advertisement free. It's fabulous.
Replacing their Real streams with Ogg is great for many reasons. It means I can get rid of the horrible, bloated application that is Real Player (now Real One) and use Winamp instead. It means on my Mac I can listen with the various OS X players (Real for OS X isn't available I believe) and it means that if I decided to move to a Linux desktop, I'd have it on there too.
In fact this is probably why the BBC want to move to. Not counting the fact that licensing Real costs them money, but part of the BBC mandate is to provide their services to as many people in the UK as possible (sorry to disappoint the folks across the world, but the BBC is a public service over here, so we come first:)) and Ogg is the way to do that because it can be used on all platforms. I'm surprised they've been testing Windows Media (they're actually testing that to a greater extent to Ogg) because that limits them so much. Real they use because it does video too, and was probably the best option when they originally setup their streaming services all those years ago.
It'll be interesting to see if they find an alternative to Real for video too, I believe they want to start doing BBC News 24 (their 24 hour digital TV news service) streaming over the net as well...
From the point of view of the British TV license owner, for a little over £100 a year the BBC provide us with at least 2 TV channels (more if you have digital), an amazingly comprehensive online service, countless radio stations (at least 5, with others depending on your region) and all of it is completely and utterly advertising free. And, thanks to their promise (they make yearly promises to the British public of things they'll do) to reach out to as many people as possible, and make everything integrate as well as possible - all the radio is available online too. Programs on digital TV are interactive, most programs have a website, and they don't treat the Internet as some mystical magical place for geeks, but as another part of everyday life, just like the Radio and TV.
Everybody always likes to jump down Microsoft's throat every time they try and breathe. But please, stop for a second and get a grip on reality.
Keeping up with the usernames and passwords for every account I have is a complete nightmare. I have hundreds of them, I can't remember them all, its nuts. Passport solves that problem by giving me one password to go along with my email address (that's my normal email address, not a Hotmail address).
Now everybody seems to have plenty downsides to this convienence, most of which are uninformed rubbish (a site using passport doesn't suddenly get all my information, they only get the information I want them to have for instance) - some of it important (if I break the terms of use, I get cut off all sites). But does anybody have a better method of solving the multiple account problem?
Sun are going to have all the same issues with theirs, so is anybody else trying to do the same thing. They're all going to be the target of every script kiddie under the sun, they're all going to have terms of use that can be broken and you use access to them all, they'll all have the problem of being hacked and the hacker getting your information for all sites. Other companies won't be invulnerable to these problems just because they aren't Microsoft. And don't think that Microsoft aren't going to get all the best security they can on these things either, they're not THAT dumb (not when they're business really depends on it that much).
Using Windows 2000 without a mouse is in fact very easy indeed. I do it regulary, because I find it quicker to use the keyboard. I could browse the internet, my local filesystem, copy files from place to place, write documents, spreadsheets, code Perl, the lot - without touching the mouse once (and most other things you'd want to do at a PC, including configuration).
It sounds to me as if you just don't know the right keys to press (and no, they're not complex either).
It's hapenned before, it was called 3DO, and it failed miserably.
Why?
Well the high cost of the system was the reason - and this is because of the way the console business works. The hardware is sold at a loss and then the games are sold with a licensing fee going to the hardware manufacturer, in order for them to make up the difference (it's the printer and shaving model also). If you have 5 different companies making the same hardware, and they're all out courting developers to get them making games - who gets the licensing fee for each copy sold?
You're also promoting your competitors system everytime you advertise. Panasonic spend a fortune promoting the 3DO name and system, so people to go the store to buy a 3DO and end up walking out with the Sony one instead. To them, it's still a 3DO, and it's got a brand they know on it. It sounds stupid, but that's the way these things go.
So in the end, they don't sell the console at a loss, they sell it at the actual price, and nobody buys them because they cost $500 each. Game Over.
This was Microsoft's original plan with the Xbox, but since nobody was interested (they spoke to Dell, Compaq etc) they just decided to make it themselves.
No DVD in the GameCube allows them to be $100 cheaper than both the PS2 and the Xbox. That sounds like a good first reason for not having it. Secondly, they're marketing it as a GAMES machine, not a home-entertainment centre for your living room. And thirdly, Playstation 2 got off to a dreadful start in Japan because a ton of people bought them just as a cheap DVD player (which was somewhat of a rare thing in Japan at the time). That means they didn't buy games, the companies who created PS2 launch titles lost a fortune (like Namco) and Sony lost money too, because of course they make money from the game sales.
Thats your other reason for no DVD in the GC. And also the reason why most Japanese developers are now happy to create games for all three consoles, instead of putting all their eggs in one basket and getting burnt again (like they did with the PS2, losing them money and killing the Dreamcast).
Slashdot Mirror
The tool that Microsoft are distributing is very similar to what OS X includes, where you can choose your default browser, email client etc from a menu. It doesn't pick up every possible option automatically either (I imagine those apps have to register themselves with the system to say they are web browsers). It's hardly a big deal. I thought it was pretty straightforward too, so they're really just moaning for the sake of moaning.
Frankly I just wish these companies would just stop bitching all the time and just produce something better for us all to use. If they spent half as much time and effort on revolutionising computer software and hardware as they did writing reports to get at MS, I figure I'd be coding Perl by telekinesis by now.
Team Sportscast Network broadcast the speech live, which is what the MP3 came from.
For the speech... http://www.fileshack.com/file.x?fid=855
Valve haven't actually been working on TF2 properly for as long as DNF has been in production over at 3D Realms.
Their excuse? They've written their own engine, from the ground up. And Steam, their content delivery system. And really helped their Half-Life mod community.
3D Realms excuse? Er... I don't think they have one. Been using the Unreal engine for pretty much the whole time (started with the Q2 engine). Must be terrible team management. What they have showed (at last years E3) wasn't even that impressive.
"iTools being renamed .Mac.....which is so inherently stupid it isn't even funny"
.mac instead. Any Apple news freak knows that.
Well, that one is based on pretty strong facts I'm afraid. All references to iTools in the latest version of the Jaguar beta's have been replaced with
All these time servers are based on an atomic clock somewhere (there's a few of them, one in France I know of, or in all GPS satellites), but because time is not a constant, the time according to an atomic clock is not necessarily the current time at your location.
Due to this, don't be annoyed if your clock is a few seconds (or even minutes) out. The next time you're late for work, just politely explain to your boss that your watch isn't in the same location as his, and therefore don't share the same time.
Except of course that Back to the Future was co-written and directed by Robert Zemeckis and it was just Spielberg's production company (Amblin).
Just bought it last night, and it works perfectly. Seamless install, plugged in my iPod, appeared as an f: drive on my system, browsed through perfectly (it uses nice XP style icons, even though I'm not on XP) and dragged and dropped a whole bunch of folders on it which were sent to the iPod super quick. Even copied four sets of folders at the same time with no noticable slowdown.
Lovely.
Can I also say that I've had the iPod for months because I have a Powerbook G4, it's just easier for me on the Windows machine because that's where my 13Gb MP3 collection is (I ripped every CD I own), hooked up to my slimp3 (http://www.slimdevices.com).
I read recently that you cache many of the more popular pages every 15 minutes, which was a surprise. Exactly how many pages are counted in this "popular" set, how do you decide when to move a page from the normal every 28 day rotation to this one, and what's the process for getting one of these pages (say from my server) cached on yours, indexed, page ranked and available across your whole server farm for searching.
-- Chatbear - http://www.chatbear.com -- Free messageboards, Highly Customisable
I did 55,000 entirely dynamic page views (pulling stuff out of a mySQL database) with Perl one day for my messageboard system (Chatbear) when news of Valve's Steam beta test boards spread across the web. Not even full mod_perl, no caching, no fancy compile options, 128Mb and a P550 processor. All pages generated in less than a second. So Perl does the job fine. If you know how to use it. I can find you plenty of real-world examples of people who have used ColdFusion and moved away from it as it buckled under any kind of pressure, or PHP users who ended up getting bits written in Perl or C to keep the speed up. I just hate PHP-style langauges embedded in HTML I'm afraid.
I've used IE every day for 5 or so years. Never once had a problem. I use Outlook (and used to use Outlook Express over that time) and never had a virus. I stay up to date with Windows Update when patches are made available, I don't open attachments I don't know, I don't click on links on strange web pages that try to fool stupid users. I run 11 free bsd servers, 4 linux servers, 4 websites, write perl for a living... need I go on?
I've had a Linux box hacked because of holes in the SSH server. So don't tell me open source software is always perfect. You can see that from Bugtraq yourself. Do you stop using Apache when you saw the list of holes it's had over time?
Yes b0rked IIS servers affect me too, but open your own eyes for a second and see that every platform has security holes, not just Microsoft made ones. Don't think Moz is going to be magically free of them either.
MS's description of how to use every tag IE understands is second to none. Both of the standard and their own stuff. They also tell you what standard something is part of.
http://msdn.microsoft.com/ie/
It's helped me out loads of times when writing javascript stuff.
CNET complaining that it doesn't render pages built for IE is a bit stupid. Blame the page designers, there's no real reason for any half decent web designer to build a site like that (I should know, I am one).
I've gone through a whole series of different web browsers on Windows, OS X and Linux over the years. On Linux, I'd choose Mozilla 1.0 without hesitation, clearly the best.
On Mac OS X, I stick with IE5. Omniweb, despite everybody saying it's brilliant, just doesn't do it for me. All the fonts are overly anti-aliased, and if you switch off anti-aliasing, they look rough. It also does strange things with simple tables and images on some pages. Chimera is almost there, fast, but still lacking a lot of features. Once it gets there, it'll be great. IE5 is slow, but it renders pages correctly, and 10.1.5 of X really helps with it's scroll speed on my Powerbook.
Windows 2000, IE6 is the no-brainer. And even with Moz out, it still is I'm afraid. The fact is, IE6 never crashes for me. Neither did IE5, on any of the Win2K machines I use. It never appears slow, renders every page I visit perfectly, gives me the font sizes I like, doesn't overly anti-alias text and for our internal office systems lets me do fun things with <div> tags. Where's the reason not to use it, other than for those who hate MS? I've never found any IE security hole to be a problem (how many people are going to be using Gopher links these days?) so I don't see that as a major selling point (and neither will the rest of the general public). And Moz's open-source status won't make it free from issues like that either, despite what people might think, just go look for known open-source security holes. There are lots. Apache, mySQL, PHP and more have all had them.
But in the end, Moz does a lot of things right, tabbed browsing is great (Opera may have had it first, but Opera never rendered pages for me as well as Moz does), the page rendering is almost always on par with IE6, as is the speed. I'm not a fan of the interface and I hate skins (pointless, useless things, just design an interface that looks good and works in the first place), but generally I was very impressed with it. Stupid things like forgetting the section I was last in when I go back to the Preferences, or continuously adding my shacknews password details to the store every time I posted, resulting in it asking me to keep selecting which username I wanted to use marred the experience somewhat.
What the Moz developers need to do now is stop copying every other browser out there, so they're not missing features, and start changing people's perception of how a browser should work to start with. Give people a reason to change. Think outside of the box. There's not been much change in the way a browser works since TBL created the web, even if HTML and the way people use the web has changed significantly. I'm interested to see if Apple do indeed produce an iWeb application (as is currently rumoured) because they would probably try something different.
Mozilla is still on my machine, but for now, I don't see much reason to switch.
Noise is an easy problem to solve - http://www.quietpc.com. Always done a great job for me.
Slashdotted within minutes. The Google cache only has the old version of the article too.
:)
I just wanted to see if they picked my software for MP3 playing (or whether it was a Linux only article).
People, please. Read the link to the UK TiVo community before posting in this thread. You're all asking the same questions over and over again. But since none of you will, since people on the web seem averse to actually reading...
1. It doesn't take up space, all TiVo's have reserved space on their drives for this kind of thing that you would never have been able to record on anyway. You're not getting any less space than you paid for.
2. It will NEVER delete anything you had to record this.
3. You DON'T have to watch it.
4. It will NEVER record this instead of something you wanted it to record.
I have a TiVo. This program is on my menu. Who the hell cares? I ignore it, and in a couple of days it'll disappear.
Never mind the $4.95 a month, its only $19.95 a YEAR. That's the much better deal.
I've been subscribed to their fast download service (which was also $19.95 a year) and it's been great. Two clicks to download all the latest files and more importantly their excellent video reviews and previews as fast as my modem can carry them. Those are something you can't get anywhere else and are more than worth 20 bucks a year.
New iMac is da bomb, I want one. That screen is just too damn cool.
Bigger screens on iBooks, excellent.
Really nice, free image program in the shape of iPhoto. Fab, since I just bought a new digital camera.
No change to the G4, so I should get a good price when I sell mine (and buy an iBook probably).
Bit disappointed there was nothing hugely surprising, but that's really just because everybody expects them to create world peace, when in fact they're just a computer company.
Guaranteed PC manufacturers up and down the country are now trying to work out how to copy the new iMac though.
This is too cool.
:)) and Ogg is the way to do that because it can be used on all platforms. I'm surprised they've been testing Windows Media (they're actually testing that to a greater extent to Ogg) because that limits them so much. Real they use because it does video too, and was probably the best option when they originally setup their streaming services all those years ago.
The BBC, in their nature, are the most bias-free, impartial news reporting service in the world. The biggest alternatives, MSNBC are obviously going to edge more towards the side of MS related properties (whether or not they say otherwise) and CNN... well CNN is owned by the world's largest media-congolomerate - AOL Time Warner (a company much more scary and powerful than MS could ever hope to be). The BBC is owned by the people and is therefore advertisement free. It's fabulous.
Replacing their Real streams with Ogg is great for many reasons. It means I can get rid of the horrible, bloated application that is Real Player (now Real One) and use Winamp instead. It means on my Mac I can listen with the various OS X players (Real for OS X isn't available I believe) and it means that if I decided to move to a Linux desktop, I'd have it on there too.
In fact this is probably why the BBC want to move to. Not counting the fact that licensing Real costs them money, but part of the BBC mandate is to provide their services to as many people in the UK as possible (sorry to disappoint the folks across the world, but the BBC is a public service over here, so we come first
It'll be interesting to see if they find an alternative to Real for video too, I believe they want to start doing BBC News 24 (their 24 hour digital TV news service) streaming over the net as well...
From the point of view of the British TV license owner, for a little over £100 a year the BBC provide us with at least 2 TV channels (more if you have digital), an amazingly comprehensive online service, countless radio stations (at least 5, with others depending on your region) and all of it is completely and utterly advertising free. And, thanks to their promise (they make yearly promises to the British public of things they'll do) to reach out to as many people as possible, and make everything integrate as well as possible - all the radio is available online too. Programs on digital TV are interactive, most programs have a website, and they don't treat the Internet as some mystical magical place for geeks, but as another part of everyday life, just like the Radio and TV.
So three cheers for the BBC.
I'll shut up now.
http://www.shacknews.com
/. does - for gamers.
That's the got the comment community
Everybody always likes to jump down Microsoft's throat every time they try and breathe. But please, stop for a second and get a grip on reality.
Keeping up with the usernames and passwords for every account I have is a complete nightmare. I have hundreds of them, I can't remember them all, its nuts. Passport solves that problem by giving me one password to go along with my email address (that's my normal email address, not a Hotmail address).
Now everybody seems to have plenty downsides to this convienence, most of which are uninformed rubbish (a site using passport doesn't suddenly get all my information, they only get the information I want them to have for instance) - some of it important (if I break the terms of use, I get cut off all sites). But does anybody have a better method of solving the multiple account problem?
Sun are going to have all the same issues with theirs, so is anybody else trying to do the same thing. They're all going to be the target of every script kiddie under the sun, they're all going to have terms of use that can be broken and you use access to them all, they'll all have the problem of being hacked and the hacker getting your information for all sites. Other companies won't be invulnerable to these problems just because they aren't Microsoft. And don't think that Microsoft aren't going to get all the best security they can on these things either, they're not THAT dumb (not when they're business really depends on it that much).
So how do you propose these problems are solved?
Using Windows 2000 without a mouse is in fact very easy indeed. I do it regulary, because I find it quicker to use the keyboard. I could browse the internet, my local filesystem, copy files from place to place, write documents, spreadsheets, code Perl, the lot - without touching the mouse once (and most other things you'd want to do at a PC, including configuration).
It sounds to me as if you just don't know the right keys to press (and no, they're not complex either).
It's hapenned before, it was called 3DO, and it failed miserably.
Why?
Well the high cost of the system was the reason - and this is because of the way the console business works. The hardware is sold at a loss and then the games are sold with a licensing fee going to the hardware manufacturer, in order for them to make up the difference (it's the printer and shaving model also). If you have 5 different companies making the same hardware, and they're all out courting developers to get them making games - who gets the licensing fee for each copy sold?
You're also promoting your competitors system everytime you advertise. Panasonic spend a fortune promoting the 3DO name and system, so people to go the store to buy a 3DO and end up walking out with the Sony one instead. To them, it's still a 3DO, and it's got a brand they know on it. It sounds stupid, but that's the way these things go.
So in the end, they don't sell the console at a loss, they sell it at the actual price, and nobody buys them because they cost $500 each. Game Over.
This was Microsoft's original plan with the Xbox, but since nobody was interested (they spoke to Dell, Compaq etc) they just decided to make it themselves.
I hate Gran Turismo. But anyway...
No DVD in the GameCube allows them to be $100 cheaper than both the PS2 and the Xbox. That sounds like a good first reason for not having it. Secondly, they're marketing it as a GAMES machine, not a home-entertainment centre for your living room. And thirdly, Playstation 2 got off to a dreadful start in Japan because a ton of people bought them just as a cheap DVD player (which was somewhat of a rare thing in Japan at the time). That means they didn't buy games, the companies who created PS2 launch titles lost a fortune (like Namco) and Sony lost money too, because of course they make money from the game sales.
Thats your other reason for no DVD in the GC. And also the reason why most Japanese developers are now happy to create games for all three consoles, instead of putting all their eggs in one basket and getting burnt again (like they did with the PS2, losing them money and killing the Dreamcast).
CNN eyewitness account...u s. crash.1211.wav
http://europe.cnn.com/2001/WORLD/asiapcf/11/12/
Eyewitness reports on BBC Radio 5 report hearing an explosion before it went down and claim fighters alongside plane before crashing.