"Enterprise" products have been doing this as long as i can remember. last year i was looking for a new tape library and most of them license the slots at ridiculous prices. ended up buying an HP MSL 8096 with no nonsense all licensed slots. same thing with fiber SAN switches. they will sell you a "low end" $6000 switch that is the same hardware as the $50,000 switch. only difference is that most of the ports and features are disabled. you buy the keys to unlock the features.
all this nonsense started around the time that RSA lost some patents due them expiring
don't have an ipad, but i've been thinking of going the desktop/ipad route. the last 10 years or so notebook sales have grown faster and outpaced desktop sales. a lot of consumers never take the laptop out of the house, like some people i know they just don't want to be tied down to the corner with the computer desk for their computing. if they want to surf the internet on the couch, they want to do so.
the iPad has around 80% of a laptop's functionality, nice lite casual gaming capabilities and if you have kids there are hundreds of good kid friendly apps in the app store. it's a lot easier to take the ipad with you instead of a laptop and if you have netflix you have access to a lot of media anywhere you go. and they even have board games coming to the iPad so you don't have to run to toys r us for them and have clutter at home. you can do it all on the ipad
same with business users. it's easier to carry around than a laptop and it has enough functionality to make people prefer it over the laptop
as an example years ago when i did helpdesk i liked the giant dell laptops with 17" screens, zip drives and a long list of cool specs. i bought them for my users and they hated them. they wanted something lighter and smaller to carry around even if it had a shorter list of specs.
we've had years of hardware improvements where the only difference between the prior and new generations has been better graphics. multi-player has always been there with the online factor only allowing you to play over the internet and without having your TV cut up into smaller boxes. but the basic play with the same controls has been around for decades.
motion gaming is a nice breath of fresh air and sometimes it seems like a catch-22. people here call for game devs to make something new and now that they have done it people complain how they want more of the same thing
except the 21st cloud is magical. need more resources? no need to buy memory or hard drives. it magically creates everything when you provision a new instance
farmville is already on the iphone/ipad and links to facebook. and there is enough porn out there that works on the iphone/ipad that lack of flash isn't that big a deal. worst case you can download your porn yourself using firefox on your PC, convert using handbrake and carry all your porn with you
there is some "browser" i have on my iphone that does the same thing. it's like transfering PC Anywhere or VNC. painfully slow and PITA to control the other website
other than my bad math there is also cash flow. in finance classes i learned that it's easy for a fast growing company to run out of cash. revenue and profit is not always cash since you may get the cash months after the revenue is recognized. but in the mean time you have bills to pay that have to be paid in cash right now.
if they spent too much on developement and didn't have enough cash to cover their debt, salary and other costs while waiting for the cash to be paid that would do it
50 guys with an average cost of $100,000 per year is $50,000,000 per year. not everyone makes $100,000 per year in salary but when you figure in health benefits, taxes and other employee costs it's about right.
If it's emc then you need to be a global fortune 10 company to afford it
I used to joke that they are like crack dealers. The initial hardware is not that much, but they get you on the disk upgrades, licenses to go above some storage size, backend bandwith, etc
We have deduce and plain old tape. 20 lot-4 tapes cost $700. That's 20 - 60 terabytes depending on compression.
We also pay$20,000 a year in support for a dedupe software app. Plus the disk, servers and power to keep it running and you have to buy at least 2 since if your os crashes then your data is gone
Cheap disk my ass
The tape backup was a little pricey at first but the tapes hold so much and are so fast that we hardly buy any more tape. Like we used to blow $25,000 a year or more for dlt tape
car companies went to stable brand names years ago where each car has a name and a year to show when it was made. Apple is close with the iPhone. Verizon is learning with the Droid.
why can't Samsung and HTC figure this out and stop the constant stream of new phone names every month? cell phones are as much fashion accessories/penis extenders as tools and having the cool phone is important. if you release new phones constantly then the old one is forgotten and kids and others who are your biggest customers will buy the competition.
twitter was originally designed for kids and serial texters to have a web based view of messages. the fact that it's replacing some forums and google for some things wasn't even dreamed about when the company started up
it was one thing when there was only twitpic, but now with so many picture and video and other add on services the mobile clients can't keep up and you have to open media in a browser instead of within the tweet
firefox 4 beta supports hardware acceleration only on DX10 which means no XP. technically you can run FF4 on windows 2000 when it comes out, but you will need Vista for the really good new features
all iOS devices have the same input. Android phones have keyboards, touch, some have stock android, some have OEM overlays, etc. with iOS all you do is test on the current OS and the previous version if needed. all the hardware will support it.
you won't beat MS with a direct battle on the desktop. they caught the winds of technological change and are wiping the floor with MS in the mobile space while MS kept on selling the same crappy mobile OS for years while concentrating on desktops, servers and the enterprise space.
my guess is that in 10 years mobile will continue to grow and apple and google will use this as a way to introduce ARM based ^nix desktops or somehow tie the iphone to Mac's and google will do something similar and clean up the desktop market. or things will just calm down and MS will continue to rule desktops with apple and google ruling the mobile space
but linux will not have any market share worth mentioning unless it's a form of Android
until earlier this year NYC required time warner cable to carry analog cable signals which slowed down the data speeds. time warner has tried to get rid of analog for years since it's a money loser and too expensive to maintain but always failed. this is even as digital cable cost the same as analog.
i noticed that right around the time they shut down analog they started advertising much higher broadband speeds. you can blame the local goverments most of the time. either forcing ISP's to use outdated tech or stopping wireless carriers from building cell towers because they would ruin the view.
applies to NYC as well. someone wants to build a new sky scraper and they agreed to spend $100 million on improving local public transportation and subway stations. happens all the time here. most of the NYC subway escalators are paid for by private industry as a condition of getting permits to build something
i think the name of the movie was Michael with John Travolta. he was the arch-angel Michael who wanted to travel the US and see the sights no one else does. one was a big ball of yarn some where
PS and you pay the interest whether you are providing a service or not. you get the cash and then it will probably take a year or so to initially deploy your new wires and start service and the bond holders still expect their interest payments that year. and if your break even point is say 3 years you still pay interest.
i remember the days when 33kpbs dial up was $30 or $40 a month. today i'm paying $120 a month for cable TV, digital unlimited phone over my cable, a DVR and the lowest level of broadband from time warner which averages out to 5mbps on average. sometimes hits 10 depending on time of day. DSL which was close to $50 when it first came out can be had for $15 a month these days.
otherwise there is a big difference in the business models. to build a laptop you need very little resources for the engineering and most of the cost is buying the parts and software. even in the 1990's companies like alienware and falcon northwest started very small because other than the engineering/QA costs your biggest cost is buying the parts which are repaid when you sell the computer.
the ISP/telecom business is different. you need a huge capital investment to lay the wires and upgrade your network. this is usually financed by long term bonds where you pay 8% or so interest on average. in the case of Verizon that spent $10 billion or so to deploy FIOS the interest cost is approximately $800,000,000 PER YEAR. if i'm wrong about the figures then find them yourself and calculate the interest. then you have to buy the equipment whether it's cable modems or FIOS modems or whatever which is very expensive when you are first deploying new tech. i've read estimates that Verizon spent $400 per customer for the equipment. and don't forget about each hick town forcing you to finance a yarn museum or some other nonsense because you are huge company that is going to make a killing on the poor residents and you should pay up
it's almost like the console business where the initial customers are money losers and you make your profits later on
Slashdot Mirror
"Enterprise" products have been doing this as long as i can remember. last year i was looking for a new tape library and most of them license the slots at ridiculous prices. ended up buying an HP MSL 8096 with no nonsense all licensed slots. same thing with fiber SAN switches. they will sell you a "low end" $6000 switch that is the same hardware as the $50,000 switch. only difference is that most of the ports and features are disabled. you buy the keys to unlock the features.
all this nonsense started around the time that RSA lost some patents due them expiring
don't have an ipad, but i've been thinking of going the desktop/ipad route. the last 10 years or so notebook sales have grown faster and outpaced desktop sales. a lot of consumers never take the laptop out of the house, like some people i know they just don't want to be tied down to the corner with the computer desk for their computing. if they want to surf the internet on the couch, they want to do so.
the iPad has around 80% of a laptop's functionality, nice lite casual gaming capabilities and if you have kids there are hundreds of good kid friendly apps in the app store. it's a lot easier to take the ipad with you instead of a laptop and if you have netflix you have access to a lot of media anywhere you go. and they even have board games coming to the iPad so you don't have to run to toys r us for them and have clutter at home. you can do it all on the ipad
same with business users. it's easier to carry around than a laptop and it has enough functionality to make people prefer it over the laptop
as an example years ago when i did helpdesk i liked the giant dell laptops with 17" screens, zip drives and a long list of cool specs. i bought them for my users and they hated them. they wanted something lighter and smaller to carry around even if it had a shorter list of specs.
we've had years of hardware improvements where the only difference between the prior and new generations has been better graphics. multi-player has always been there with the online factor only allowing you to play over the internet and without having your TV cut up into smaller boxes. but the basic play with the same controls has been around for decades.
motion gaming is a nice breath of fresh air and sometimes it seems like a catch-22. people here call for game devs to make something new and now that they have done it people complain how they want more of the same thing
except the 21st cloud is magical. need more resources? no need to buy memory or hard drives. it magically creates everything when you provision a new instance
farmville is already on the iphone/ipad and links to facebook. and there is enough porn out there that works on the iphone/ipad that lack of flash isn't that big a deal. worst case you can download your porn yourself using firefox on your PC, convert using handbrake and carry all your porn with you
there is some "browser" i have on my iphone that does the same thing. it's like transfering PC Anywhere or VNC. painfully slow and PITA to control the other website
and by that time facebook will add some more features and get up to a billion registered users
other than my bad math there is also cash flow. in finance classes i learned that it's easy for a fast growing company to run out of cash. revenue and profit is not always cash since you may get the cash months after the revenue is recognized. but in the mean time you have bills to pay that have to be paid in cash right now.
if they spent too much on developement and didn't have enough cash to cover their debt, salary and other costs while waiting for the cash to be paid that would do it
salaries, rent, servers, electricity, etc
50 guys with an average cost of $100,000 per year is $50,000,000 per year. not everyone makes $100,000 per year in salary but when you figure in health benefits, taxes and other employee costs it's about right.
i still have hope that someone will have an all text version
If it's emc then you need to be a global fortune 10 company to afford it
I used to joke that they are like crack dealers. The initial hardware is not that much, but they get you on the disk upgrades, licenses to go above some storage size, backend bandwith, etc
No shit
We have deduce and plain old tape. 20 lot-4 tapes cost $700. That's 20 - 60 terabytes depending on compression.
We also pay$20,000 a year in support for a dedupe software app. Plus the disk, servers and power to keep it running and you have to buy at least 2 since if your os crashes then your data is gone
Cheap disk my ass
The tape backup was a little pricey at first but the tapes hold so much and are so fast that we hardly buy any more tape. Like we used to blow $25,000 a year or more for dlt tape
you want battery and thin you get an iphone. you want power you get everything else. just like PC vs mac and everything else
car companies went to stable brand names years ago where each car has a name and a year to show when it was made. Apple is close with the iPhone. Verizon is learning with the Droid.
why can't Samsung and HTC figure this out and stop the constant stream of new phone names every month? cell phones are as much fashion accessories/penis extenders as tools and having the cool phone is important. if you release new phones constantly then the old one is forgotten and kids and others who are your biggest customers will buy the competition.
twitter was originally designed for kids and serial texters to have a web based view of messages. the fact that it's replacing some forums and google for some things wasn't even dreamed about when the company started up
yep
it was one thing when there was only twitpic, but now with so many picture and video and other add on services the mobile clients can't keep up and you have to open media in a browser instead of within the tweet
firefox 4 beta supports hardware acceleration only on DX10 which means no XP. technically you can run FF4 on windows 2000 when it comes out, but you will need Vista for the really good new features
all iOS devices have the same input. Android phones have keyboards, touch, some have stock android, some have OEM overlays, etc. with iOS all you do is test on the current OS and the previous version if needed. all the hardware will support it.
yet my WIndows 7 desktop and laptop seems to work with the 10 year old laserjet 4 printers on our network using ancient drivers
you won't beat MS with a direct battle on the desktop. they caught the winds of technological change and are wiping the floor with MS in the mobile space while MS kept on selling the same crappy mobile OS for years while concentrating on desktops, servers and the enterprise space.
my guess is that in 10 years mobile will continue to grow and apple and google will use this as a way to introduce ARM based ^nix desktops or somehow tie the iphone to Mac's and google will do something similar and clean up the desktop market. or things will just calm down and MS will continue to rule desktops with apple and google ruling the mobile space
but linux will not have any market share worth mentioning unless it's a form of Android
until earlier this year NYC required time warner cable to carry analog cable signals which slowed down the data speeds. time warner has tried to get rid of analog for years since it's a money loser and too expensive to maintain but always failed. this is even as digital cable cost the same as analog.
i noticed that right around the time they shut down analog they started advertising much higher broadband speeds. you can blame the local goverments most of the time. either forcing ISP's to use outdated tech or stopping wireless carriers from building cell towers because they would ruin the view.
applies to NYC as well. someone wants to build a new sky scraper and they agreed to spend $100 million on improving local public transportation and subway stations. happens all the time here. most of the NYC subway escalators are paid for by private industry as a condition of getting permits to build something
i think the name of the movie was Michael with John Travolta. he was the arch-angel Michael who wanted to travel the US and see the sights no one else does. one was a big ball of yarn some where
PS and you pay the interest whether you are providing a service or not. you get the cash and then it will probably take a year or so to initially deploy your new wires and start service and the bond holders still expect their interest payments that year. and if your break even point is say 3 years you still pay interest.
i remember the days when 33kpbs dial up was $30 or $40 a month. today i'm paying $120 a month for cable TV, digital unlimited phone over my cable, a DVR and the lowest level of broadband from time warner which averages out to 5mbps on average. sometimes hits 10 depending on time of day. DSL which was close to $50 when it first came out can be had for $15 a month these days.
otherwise there is a big difference in the business models. to build a laptop you need very little resources for the engineering and most of the cost is buying the parts and software. even in the 1990's companies like alienware and falcon northwest started very small because other than the engineering/QA costs your biggest cost is buying the parts which are repaid when you sell the computer.
the ISP/telecom business is different. you need a huge capital investment to lay the wires and upgrade your network. this is usually financed by long term bonds where you pay 8% or so interest on average. in the case of Verizon that spent $10 billion or so to deploy FIOS the interest cost is approximately $800,000,000 PER YEAR. if i'm wrong about the figures then find them yourself and calculate the interest. then you have to buy the equipment whether it's cable modems or FIOS modems or whatever which is very expensive when you are first deploying new tech. i've read estimates that Verizon spent $400 per customer for the equipment. and don't forget about each hick town forcing you to finance a yarn museum or some other nonsense because you are huge company that is going to make a killing on the poor residents and you should pay up
it's almost like the console business where the initial customers are money losers and you make your profits later on