I love Linux as much as anyone, but let's be realistic. If Dell had an option on their order page to pick Microsoft XP or RedHat 8.0, %99.9+ of users would pick XP. Furthermore, Dell probably doesn't want the added tech support of a Linux machine. You can't just shove someone through a three-week training course and have them fix Linux boxes, you need people with some degree of skill. I know Microsoft has used illegal tactics to award OEM contracts, which I'm sure we all hate, but in the end *most* OEM's wouldn't want the extra hassle of dealing with Linux.
And if you think the reason Microsoft dominates the desktop is marketing, you need to slow down and take an honest look at the situation. Marketing never hurts, but having an OS that can be run (and maintained) by a slobbering idiot doesn't hurt either. See also: Apple.
Easy to install? Why? If linux is that difficult that you can't get it installed, forget about doing any real work with it. Easy to install means being both network-deployable and well documented, not having braindead Microsoft-style next..next...next menus.
I don't want a free lunch. I want quality software. If I see software that can potentially compromise my system in the name of "digital rights", I dismiss it. If I see software that exists as Yet Another Linux Wannabe, I dismiss it. Show me a company innovating and furthering your "movement" and I might give a damn. Don't exalt Mandrake just because they're fighting again the big evil companies. They have little that's unique to Linux. Cut them out and open the door for some innovation, I say. Maybe even somebody that can put together an original distro.
And your comment about market philosophy bullshit was unwarrented. There is a demand for quality Linux software. Mandrake is not it.
If not economic darwinism, then why do companies (like Mandrake) fail? Chance? Stupid consumers? A lack of central economic planning? People spend their money on products they like. Currently, this is Microsoft's products, and to a lesser extend RedHat. If Mandrake can't get enough money together to ship a distro, maybe there just isn't enough support behind their current operation. Maybe they're a little too ambitious in their entire design -- trying to operate an OS producing company without sufficient interest? Or maybe *gasp* the competitor they ripped their product off from is doing it better?
No, Mandrake can't be at fault here. After all, we love a good underdog! It's Microsoft's fault!
You have to remember there are a few existing large companies producing CPUs that could fill the gap though. The cost of entry can be offset over a few years time for a firm with existing infrastructure (Motorola, Transmeta, Via, (insert favorite underdog here)) while they play "catch-up" to Intel. Basically, bang out whatever crap you can till you make enough to put together a quality R&D department and a fab plant or two. Easier said then done, I'm sure, but entirely possible.
As for their return, it's certainly tenuous when you're competing with someone like Intel, but their possible payoff is tremendous. I think someone will be there trying to get it. I'll be interested to see who.
Many people choose the higher price/performance ratio of AMD proc's over Intel. But you have to keep in mind that many disciminating in-the-know users still prefer Intel's slight lead in motherboard (chipset) stability. A quick look at any x86 server-class rig will show you that Intel is still recognized for their stability. (Note: I'm not trying to start a fight here, as I own procs from both companies, but you have to admit not many servers run AMD stuff.)
The other big factor is marketing. Intel spends much more money marketing their stuff, and they seem to be doing it in an efficient way. AMD is still thought of by many people who don't know any better as a "cheap imitation."
As far as R&D goes, they seemed to be doing quite well until recently. Maybe someone else can shed some light on this for us.
When there are no competing products in a market, the door is wide open for competition. As the equilibrium price rises (out of lack of competition), the barrier to entry lowers. As the barrier is lowered, competing firms will surface. These firms will fight it out until one "wins" by forcing the others out of business. Then there are no competitors in the market, and the door is wide open for competition...
Pine was my first e-mail app too. But a single view of those old text menus (and memories of mails lost/rewritten) would send me running to the nearest GUI-driven mail program I could find. Use only as needed (imho).
All the fear mongering here is somewhat misplaced, at least considering the long term. ICANN simply generates a bunch of policies that people *voluntarily* choose to abide by. ICANN has little in the way of enforcement. What legal settlements have transpired have been caused by contracts/agreements (AFAIK) and not laws stating ICANN owns/controls anything. ICANN has no teeth. This is nothing that can't be solved by an alert internet populace. See also: openNIC.
I hope the democrats.com fanboys so often found on/. take a close look at this before throwing out more anti-republican clichés. As has been said many times before, the bipartisan greed caucus is alive and well.
You want to push your music further out? Marketing is only one of your problems. From your writing and the audio samples on your website, you have a way to go yet.
First off you can quit painting yourself as some romantic "indie" band against the big evil goliaths that are trying to destroy music. Any group of thirteen-year old kids with a banjo and a couple buckets can call themselves "indies." Throw in a few grand of their own money for a record and they (like you) haven't accomplished anything yet. Furthermore, I wouldn't assume excited crowds will equal record sales. People have much lower expectations of live music than they do of recorded music. This isn't to say you should ignore what success you've had; just don't get your hopes up yet. Drop the music snobbery, and quit feeling sorry for yourselves.
And you might want to take a hard listen to your band's sound. I planned on checking out a few of the tracks, but after the first one I didn't need to. Everything I heard was derivative. Yeah, this "life sucks, authority sucks, government sucks, people are greedy liars, lets go kill ourselves" stuff is cute to high school students, but it's been done and done better. Don't complain you can't get attention if all you want to do is rehash this week's anti-popular trend in music.
Your problem isn't big evil record companies or clueless consumers. Your band is getting blended in with a sea of other similar groups desperately trying to get noticed. As it stands, this band will not get noticed. The few bands that do will find some way to differentiate themselves from groups like yours.
On a GeForce 4 4600 Quake 3 in 1024x768 32bit High Quality runs at 220 fps. (Source: Tom's Hardware VGA Charts.) Now, 80% of 220 = 176. A Geforce 3 (standard) runs the same benchmark at 173.8 - roughly 80%. A GeForce 3 can be had for $91 according to pricewatch. Granted, it may not have the same "DX9" support, but I'm sure it will run without any problems with DX9. In fact, I'm sure it will run any game on your local computer retailer's shelf. It will also run under Linux. It will also have new drivers released next year. It also works with your choice of virtually any AGP slotted motherboard being sold today. It will not cause random lockups because you bought a cheap NIC. It has flawless OpenGL AND Direct3D support. And any game manufacturer that produces a game that doesn't run under it will go out of business.
Don't get me wrong, I love market competition as much as anyone. I hope Trident can compete with Nvidia and ATI, but even if this PR bullshit proves true, they're still behind the curve as far as I can tell.
I'm sticking to my principles. My principles state simply that I purchase products that I think are worth buying. I don't use my money to try and support "ethical" business practices (otherwise I couldn't buy much...) Blizzard has produced a game I enjoy the hell out of, especially multiplayer. As long as b.net is free, I can overlook the bnetd thing. I don't suffer from not having a bnetd option right now. If the situation gets worse (and I recognize it might) then I would consider not buying blizz stuff in the future. As it stands for me, war3 > alternative b.net. If b.net becomes so bad (via subscription or horrible service) that I dislike it, I would consider your boycott.
I want to know if they've included all the features of the win32 version. Does the game still occasionally lock and cause reboots? Does b.net randomly disconnect you during close ladder matches? Do the European players still have to play on USEast due to disconnects and lag? Are nightelves still overpowered? Is the dev team on the forum still no help at all? These are all crucial elements to enjoying War3, and I hope they carry over properly.
By your own logic, we shouldn't fund U.S. Army commercials either. Commericals are, after all, propaganda paid for by Americans.
The theory behind this game is that the cost/benefit ratio will be much higher than traditional advertising. That is, it costs X dollars to recruit one soldier from commercials, and something less than X per recruit from this video game. All else being equal, this would in fact save American's tax money.
The argument is whether or not this provides more cost effective than traditional "propaganda." If it is, your concern is moot. If not, I'll agree with you.
I've never been convinced that the internet needs laws different than those affecting standard print. Obviously, some laws concerning technology will need to be implemented. But those should strive to mirror the intent of existing laws as much as possible. The law as it stands in the U.S. concerning speech works for the most part (don't bother posting all three of your examples that don't work - I've seen them). Aside from speech it's hard to argue that theft, fraud etc. need to be treated differently online. We still want identity theft and credit fraud to be illegal.
It is important to remember that when the laws on the internet are derived from existing laws, the protections also carry over. No premptive restrictions on speech, no causing imminent danger with inciteful speech and the ability to trash the government and so on exist here because we apply "real" world laws to the internet. There will certainly be some exceptions, but they must remain that. Exceptions. We have spent 200+ years forging laws that work, and we certainly don't need to throw them out the window because of a few idealogical extremists.
I really doubt this will be a serious problem. I'm sure Gamespy will offer a patch for a small monthly fee. Or better yet, maybe if you subscribe to their eXtreme 3d++ platinum gamers edition fileservers for a few bucks maybe they'll sell you someone elses virus scanner demo with no long-term value. Or even better yet, maybe if you purchase one of their programs you can connect to an online scanner paid for and maintained out of someone elses pocket.
The issue is, to many, a bit more complicated than that. Legislating away the powers of business can, and often does, have consequences far beyond what people initially understand. Granted, if the fly-by-night operators others have mentioned (selling investment opportunity, porn, and such - often on shaky legal ground) dissapeared, they won't be missed. But do you want to act in an irrational manner that would genuinely hurt legitamte business, in that one powerful tool of communication would be denied to them if the proposed law wasn't clear or too harsh?
If such a law were to be proposed, it would have to respect not only the rights of the individual, but the ability for the business to conduct itself in a fair and efficient manner. Many here have brought up some excellent points, involving opt-in only, always having a valid return adress and so on. Under a fair set of guidelines "spam" can be both containable and beneficial to us. Banning it all outright seems a bit overkill when we've actually done little (federally at least) to try to solve this problem, though I agree with you the attempts haven't gotten us far.
Easy, 400 leagues over the spot where those three rocks make a small triangle the engine should engage to point the craft down roughly four spans. A few orbits in, the thrusters will be fired to reduce the elliptical orbit by about a thousand rods.
I'm not terribly worried by any "unfair and deceptive practices" that may ensue with regard to privacy. Any information given to Microsoft is done so in a completely voluntary manner: any leak of that information would certainly become well-known in a very short amount of time.
The success of the passport system, and quite possibly their.NET "architecture", relies in significant part on the confidentiality of any personal information stored. As the system aspires to collect an amount of personal info I've never seen one company (truthfully) attempt to aquire, I would expect consumers to be very wary. If any of this personal data should be stolen, the repercussions for their entire system could be enormous. In short, I think the market will sort this problem out. Though, given the track record of Microsoft, I certainly don't want to be a test subject while it does.
What's even more interesting, to me, is the fact Microsoft is using it's very large distribution channel to advertise and promote services in which it's competing against non-monopolistic companies. Messenger vs. ICQ (and others), Hotmail vs. many free email services, etc. I can't help but wonder if the FTC will look into this, rather than just the special interest groups concern.
I agree that ending their practice of "favoring" certain manufacturers is a fair penalty. Another possible punishment may end up forcing them to liscense their code to competitors. I still think it a bit stiff, even though it would help linux and other OS compatibility.
Absolutely. In our free market economy, we all have the power to decide that we aren't going to purchase Microsoft products anymore. The end result of such a decision is obvious. In any political structure where the ultimate decision of market viability is given to anyone other than the masses, a much worse situation can and will develop. And if the recent (~100 years) trend of socialism throughout the world is to be used as any indicator of success, Microsoft could simply purchase the nescessary officals to ensure their everlasting domanance. I'd much rather have their presence by an elective choice.
The elements that they (i.d.) used to "initially make the genre great" was to create games the fans wanted to play, NOT games that would fly off the shelf at wal-mart. I.d. knowingly took a risk by releasing a muiltiplayer-only title, and suffered a loss in sales compared to what your ideal version of Q3 would have been like. The success of Q1-Q2 multiplayer stood testament to the viability (though at reduced sales) of a multiplayer-only game, and fans like myself were eager to see them refine what I enjoyed most about these games. While I can sympathize with the people who wanted a massive single-player campaign, I applaud the rare gaming company these days willing to take a risk to create something for their fans, not what a publisher thinks is "hot" this week.
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I love Linux as much as anyone, but let's be realistic. If Dell had an option on their order page to pick Microsoft XP or RedHat 8.0, %99.9+ of users would pick XP. Furthermore, Dell probably doesn't want the added tech support of a Linux machine. You can't just shove someone through a three-week training course and have them fix Linux boxes, you need people with some degree of skill. I know Microsoft has used illegal tactics to award OEM contracts, which I'm sure we all hate, but in the end *most* OEM's wouldn't want the extra hassle of dealing with Linux.
And if you think the reason Microsoft dominates the desktop is marketing, you need to slow down and take an honest look at the situation. Marketing never hurts, but having an OS that can be run (and maintained) by a slobbering idiot doesn't hurt either. See also: Apple.
Easy to install? Why? If linux is that difficult that you can't get it installed, forget about doing any real work with it. Easy to install means being both network-deployable and well documented, not having braindead Microsoft-style next..next...next menus.
I don't want a free lunch. I want quality software. If I see software that can potentially compromise my system in the name of "digital rights", I dismiss it. If I see software that exists as Yet Another Linux Wannabe, I dismiss it. Show me a company innovating and furthering your "movement" and I might give a damn. Don't exalt Mandrake just because they're fighting again the big evil companies. They have little that's unique to Linux. Cut them out and open the door for some innovation, I say. Maybe even somebody that can put together an original distro.
And your comment about market philosophy bullshit was unwarrented. There is a demand for quality Linux software. Mandrake is not it.
If not economic darwinism, then why do companies (like Mandrake) fail? Chance? Stupid consumers? A lack of central economic planning? People spend their money on products they like. Currently, this is Microsoft's products, and to a lesser extend RedHat. If Mandrake can't get enough money together to ship a distro, maybe there just isn't enough support behind their current operation. Maybe they're a little too ambitious in their entire design -- trying to operate an OS producing company without sufficient interest? Or maybe *gasp* the competitor they ripped their product off from is doing it better?
No, Mandrake can't be at fault here. After all, we love a good underdog! It's Microsoft's fault!
You have to remember there are a few existing large companies producing CPUs that could fill the gap though. The cost of entry can be offset over a few years time for a firm with existing infrastructure (Motorola, Transmeta, Via, (insert favorite underdog here)) while they play "catch-up" to Intel. Basically, bang out whatever crap you can till you make enough to put together a quality R&D department and a fab plant or two. Easier said then done, I'm sure, but entirely possible.
As for their return, it's certainly tenuous when you're competing with someone like Intel, but their possible payoff is tremendous. I think someone will be there trying to get it. I'll be interested to see who.
Many people choose the higher price/performance ratio of AMD proc's over Intel. But you have to keep in mind that many disciminating in-the-know users still prefer Intel's slight lead in motherboard (chipset) stability. A quick look at any x86 server-class rig will show you that Intel is still recognized for their stability. (Note: I'm not trying to start a fight here, as I own procs from both companies, but you have to admit not many servers run AMD stuff.)
The other big factor is marketing. Intel spends much more money marketing their stuff, and they seem to be doing it in an efficient way. AMD is still thought of by many people who don't know any better as a "cheap imitation."
As far as R&D goes, they seemed to be doing quite well until recently. Maybe someone else can shed some light on this for us.
When there are no competing products in a market, the door is wide open for competition. As the equilibrium price rises (out of lack of competition), the barrier to entry lowers. As the barrier is lowered, competing firms will surface. These firms will fight it out until one "wins" by forcing the others out of business. Then there are no competitors in the market, and the door is wide open for competition...
Pine was my first e-mail app too. But a single view of those old text menus (and memories of mails lost/rewritten) would send me running to the nearest GUI-driven mail program I could find.
Use only as needed (imho).
All the fear mongering here is somewhat misplaced, at least considering the long term. ICANN simply generates a bunch of policies that people *voluntarily* choose to abide by. ICANN has little in the way of enforcement. What legal settlements have transpired have been caused by contracts/agreements (AFAIK) and not laws stating ICANN owns/controls anything. ICANN has no teeth. This is nothing that can't be solved by an alert internet populace. See also: openNIC.
I hope the democrats.com fanboys so often found on /. take a close look at this before throwing out more anti-republican clichés. As has been said many times before, the bipartisan greed caucus is alive and well.
You want to push your music further out? Marketing is only one of your problems. From your writing and the audio samples on your website, you have a way to go yet.
First off you can quit painting yourself as some romantic "indie" band against the big evil goliaths that are trying to destroy music. Any group of thirteen-year old kids with a banjo and a couple buckets can call themselves "indies." Throw in a few grand of their own money for a record and they (like you) haven't accomplished anything yet. Furthermore, I wouldn't assume excited crowds will equal record sales. People have much lower expectations of live music than they do of recorded music. This isn't to say you should ignore what success you've had; just don't get your hopes up yet. Drop the music snobbery, and quit feeling sorry for yourselves.
And you might want to take a hard listen to your band's sound. I planned on checking out a few of the tracks, but after the first one I didn't need to. Everything I heard was derivative. Yeah, this "life sucks, authority sucks, government sucks, people are greedy liars, lets go kill ourselves" stuff is cute to high school students, but it's been done and done better. Don't complain you can't get attention if all you want to do is rehash this week's anti-popular trend in music.
Your problem isn't big evil record companies or clueless consumers. Your band is getting blended in with a sea of other similar groups desperately trying to get noticed. As it stands, this band will not get noticed. The few bands that do will find some way to differentiate themselves from groups like yours.
On a GeForce 4 4600 Quake 3 in 1024x768 32bit High Quality runs at 220 fps. (Source: Tom's Hardware VGA Charts.) Now, 80% of 220 = 176. A Geforce 3 (standard) runs the same benchmark at 173.8 - roughly 80%. A GeForce 3 can be had for $91 according to pricewatch. Granted, it may not have the same "DX9" support, but I'm sure it will run without any problems with DX9. In fact, I'm sure it will run any game on your local computer retailer's shelf. It will also run under Linux. It will also have new drivers released next year. It also works with your choice of virtually any AGP slotted motherboard being sold today. It will not cause random lockups because you bought a cheap NIC. It has flawless OpenGL AND Direct3D support. And any game manufacturer that produces a game that doesn't run under it will go out of business.
Don't get me wrong, I love market competition as much as anyone. I hope Trident can compete with Nvidia and ATI, but even if this PR bullshit proves true, they're still behind the curve as far as I can tell.
I'm sticking to my principles. My principles state simply that I purchase products that I think are worth buying. I don't use my money to try and support "ethical" business practices (otherwise I couldn't buy much...) Blizzard has produced a game I enjoy the hell out of, especially multiplayer. As long as b.net is free, I can overlook the bnetd thing. I don't suffer from not having a bnetd option right now. If the situation gets worse (and I recognize it might) then I would consider not buying blizz stuff in the future. As it stands for me, war3 > alternative b.net. If b.net becomes so bad (via subscription or horrible service) that I dislike it, I would consider your boycott.
I want to know if they've included all the features of the win32 version. Does the game still occasionally lock and cause reboots? Does b.net randomly disconnect you during close ladder matches? Do the European players still have to play on USEast due to disconnects and lag? Are nightelves still overpowered? Is the dev team on the forum still no help at all? These are all crucial elements to enjoying War3, and I hope they carry over properly.
By your own logic, we shouldn't fund U.S. Army commercials either. Commericals are, after all, propaganda paid for by Americans.
The theory behind this game is that the cost/benefit ratio will be much higher than traditional advertising. That is, it costs X dollars to recruit one soldier from commercials, and something less than X per recruit from this video game. All else being equal, this would in fact save American's tax money.
The argument is whether or not this provides more cost effective than traditional "propaganda." If it is, your concern is moot. If not, I'll agree with you.
Overconsumption is certainly a dangerous problem, but we cannot forget that:
a mpaign _id=3937
/
s /PDF/f ut0003/will_machines_take_over.pdf
m l
Mammals are almost extinct: http://www.abc.net.au/am/s560989.htm
Global Warming will kill us all:
http://www.greenpeace.org/campaigns/intro?c
Asteroid impacts are almost certain:
http://impact.arc.nasa.gov/reports/aiaa
Machines will rule us all:
http://www.corp.aventis.com/future/download
Doom and gloom run rampant:
http://www.insteadof.com/doom/
The next Ice Age will kill us all:
http://unfccc.int/resource/iuckit/fact08.ht
Oh, and the sky is falling.
I've never been convinced that the internet needs laws different than those affecting standard print. Obviously, some laws concerning technology will need to be implemented. But those should strive to mirror the intent of existing laws as much as possible. The law as it stands in the U.S. concerning speech works for the most part (don't bother posting all three of your examples that don't work - I've seen them). Aside from speech it's hard to argue that theft, fraud etc. need to be treated differently online. We still want identity theft and credit fraud to be illegal.
It is important to remember that when the laws on the internet are derived from existing laws, the protections also carry over. No premptive restrictions on speech, no causing imminent danger with inciteful speech and the ability to trash the government and so on exist here because we apply "real" world laws to the internet. There will certainly be some exceptions, but they must remain that. Exceptions. We have spent 200+ years forging laws that work, and we certainly don't need to throw them out the window because of a few idealogical extremists.
I really doubt this will be a serious problem. I'm sure Gamespy will offer a patch for a small monthly fee. Or better yet, maybe if you subscribe to their eXtreme 3d++ platinum gamers edition fileservers for a few bucks maybe they'll sell you someone elses virus scanner demo with no long-term value. Or even better yet, maybe if you purchase one of their programs you can connect to an online scanner paid for and maintained out of someone elses pocket.
The issue is, to many, a bit more complicated than that. Legislating away the powers of business can, and often does, have consequences far beyond what people initially understand. Granted, if the fly-by-night operators others have mentioned (selling investment opportunity, porn, and such - often on shaky legal ground) dissapeared, they won't be missed. But do you want to act in an irrational manner that would genuinely hurt legitamte business, in that one powerful tool of communication would be denied to them if the proposed law wasn't clear or too harsh?
If such a law were to be proposed, it would have to respect not only the rights of the individual, but the ability for the business to conduct itself in a fair and efficient manner. Many here have brought up some excellent points, involving opt-in only, always having a valid return adress and so on. Under a fair set of guidelines "spam" can be both containable and beneficial to us. Banning it all outright seems a bit overkill when we've actually done little (federally at least) to try to solve this problem, though I agree with you the attempts haven't gotten us far.
Easy, 400 leagues over the spot where those three rocks make a small triangle the engine should engage to point the craft down roughly four spans. A few orbits in, the thrusters will be fired to reduce the elliptical orbit by about a thousand rods.
I'm not terribly worried by any "unfair and deceptive practices" that may ensue with regard to privacy. Any information given to Microsoft is done so in a completely voluntary manner: any leak of that information would certainly become well-known in a very short amount of time.
.NET "architecture", relies in significant part on the confidentiality of any personal information stored. As the system aspires to collect an amount of personal info I've never seen one company (truthfully) attempt to aquire, I would expect consumers to be very wary. If any of this personal data should be stolen, the repercussions for their entire system could be enormous. In short, I think the market will sort this problem out. Though, given the track record of Microsoft, I certainly don't want to be a test subject while it does.
The success of the passport system, and quite possibly their
What's even more interesting, to me, is the fact Microsoft is using it's very large distribution channel to advertise and promote services in which it's competing against non-monopolistic companies. Messenger vs. ICQ (and others), Hotmail vs. many free email services, etc. I can't help but wonder if the FTC will look into this, rather than just the special interest groups concern.
I agree that ending their practice of "favoring" certain manufacturers is a fair penalty. Another possible punishment may end up forcing them to liscense their code to competitors. I still think it a bit stiff, even though it would help linux and other OS compatibility.
Absolutely. In our free market economy, we all have the power to decide that we aren't going to purchase Microsoft products anymore. The end result of such a decision is obvious. In any political structure where the ultimate decision of market viability is given to anyone other than the masses, a much worse situation can and will develop. And if the recent (~100 years) trend of socialism throughout the world is to be used as any indicator of success, Microsoft could simply purchase the nescessary officals to ensure their everlasting domanance. I'd much rather have their presence by an elective choice.
The elements that they (i.d.) used to "initially make the genre great" was to create games the fans wanted to play, NOT games that would fly off the shelf at wal-mart. I.d. knowingly took a risk by releasing a muiltiplayer-only title, and suffered a loss in sales compared to what your ideal version of Q3 would have been like. The success of Q1-Q2 multiplayer stood testament to the viability (though at reduced sales) of a multiplayer-only game, and fans like myself were eager to see them refine what I enjoyed most about these games. While I can sympathize with the people who wanted a massive single-player campaign, I applaud the rare gaming company these days willing to take a risk to create something for their fans, not what a publisher thinks is "hot" this week.