Re:The Achilles heel of this...
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Phoenix BIOSOS?
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· Score: 1
In a perfect world, all drivers would be open source, but sadly, this world is far from perfect.
It would be nice however if the hardware vendors for older/outdated devices would just open source the drivers once the product has reached its end of life.
Additionally, if a company goes out of business, the software produced by that company should automatically fall into the public domain. Of course this would require the company to give a rats ass at that point, and actually release the source.
I agree that 11 returns seems excessive. But of the eight people I personally know who own xbox 360s (not including myself), ALL OF THEM (including me) have experienced a failure that required a replacement. Of those eight, four of them have had to replace the console more than once. And one of them just sent in his third.
Granted, this is a small sampling of the overall Xbox 360 ownership population, but since these people are geographically spread across the United States, and purchased thier original consoles at different times, it's unlikely they recieved the consoles from the same manufacturing run. So I feel that while small, it's probably a fairly good sampling.
I'm currently replacing my first one which lasted a solid 5 months. I know that I dont have any power problems because I monitor the line quality via my UPS. In addition, I had the console plugged in to a high end surge supressor to eliminate any spikes. Ventillation shouldn't have been an issue either as the console was placed on top of my entertainment system's cabinet. So I dont feel that I used it in an unusual way or that the environment should have played a role in it's demise. I will say that it ran HOT! So there's a good chance a lot of people are roasting them inside of an enclosure of some type.
Bottom line is that it seems to me that these console do have a problem! Most likely a thermal one. I'm not a statistician, but Microsoft's claim of a 3-5% failure rate is probably a tad on the low side of reality.
Back in 92, I worked for a company called VideoCart who was probably the supplier for the screens you're refer to.
These carts did everything mentioned in the article, with the exception of email.
Although it *seemed* a good concept, the public never caught on.
The project lasted several months in the store I maintained up in Sacramento, but it was pulled within a year due to a lack of public interest. Most people back then would just grab one of the non-equipped carts. Perhaps the concept will be better received now that the general public is more open to technology in general.
The beeping distress calls didn't do much to save them from becoming a decoration in someone's living room either. We had numerous carts go missing, but very few were ever recovered. And they made a tempting target for vandals. I'd say that on average, we were replacing at least 2 smashed LCD screens per week.
I must agree with the general sigh of relief that the FCC is taking the Hands Off approach
but..
I've had my cable modem (Century @Home) for approximately four months now. In the beginning I was extreemely happy with it's performance! My linux box has never been so happy!:) Then @Home decided to limit my upstream to 128k. Well, needless to say I was a bit unhappy. My first reaction was to simply cancel service. Then cognative reasoning emerged, and I realized that 128k up wasnt that bad, and regardless, it is better than 33.6!
All of this took place within a month of my signing up. Now, three months later, the connection speeds have degraded so sharply that (at times) it almost would be worth my while to return to dialup! Unfortunately, DSL is not available to my residence (yet?) and even if it was, my limited DSL experience has shown me that it really isn't the answer I am hoping for anyway.
So, I am left with @Home's severely congested network. I sure would like to see an alternative!
I understand that it was @Home's money which paid for all of the equipment, but I would like to see some "allowed" competition. @Home uses only one channel of bandwidth. my cable company offers in neighborhood of 60 channels of programming. This leaves quite a lot of room for alternate services.
Another (equally less likely) option would be for @Home to place the blame where it belongs. Perhaps some of you reading this know more than I, but this is how I understand it. Please correct me if I'm worng.
Back in the early days of @Home, they engineered a network which was well designed, and very fast. They began offering services to select areas (East coast I believe) and everyone was happy. In fact the response was so overwhelming (and unexpected) that within a short period, the network was brought virtually to it's knees forcing @Home to make some decisions. A. Increase network capacity to handle to extra load, or B. limit bandwidth and continue using the existing infrastructure.
I guess we know which option they've chosen. Publicly they have stated that this move is intended to dicourage those of us who run servers (Yes, I am guilty as charged! after all, it's a Linux box. what would you do?!?). However, this not only stops me from running a decent FTP/WEB/Whatever else server, it also prohibits me from sending small avi's (thats a relative term) of my son to my father because even though we both have "high-speed" internet access, it takes ages to send.
Other Cable ISPs that I am aware of such as RoadRunner have no anti-server policy so long as you are not using it for commercial purposes. This seems like a real win-win for @Home. Not only can they bring on more customers with thier existing infrastructure, but they also can reap the benefits of forcing us to subscribe to @Work so that we can run our personal FTP/WEB servers. This seems unfair to me.
Bottom line. I am happy to see what the FCC is (or isn't) doing, but at the same time I hope cable ISPs (specifically @Home) will start to provide us with better service by upgrading thier backbone and not placing the blame on those of us who really make use of thier services. Lets face it, while there are a lot of us out there who use the service, and utilize bandwidth, the vast majority of internet users are simply surfing the web and reading email, and dont know that the service they recieve may be "sub-standard". If we are ever to reach a point where the internet is cheaply available at acceptable speeds to nearly everyone (utopian society??) so that more and more users can experience the joy of videoconferencing and host their own websites etc., then competition will be necessary to provide higher quality of service at lower prices.
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In a perfect world, all drivers would be open source, but sadly, this world is far from perfect.
It would be nice however if the hardware vendors for older/outdated devices would just open source the drivers once the product has reached its end of life.
Additionally, if a company goes out of business, the software produced by that company should automatically fall into the public domain. Of course this would require the company to give a rats ass at that point, and actually release the source.
Just my opinion.
I agree that 11 returns seems excessive. But of the eight people I personally know who own xbox 360s (not including myself), ALL OF THEM (including me) have experienced a failure that required a replacement. Of those eight, four of them have had to replace the console more than once. And one of them just sent in his third.
Granted, this is a small sampling of the overall Xbox 360 ownership population, but since these people are geographically spread across the United States, and purchased thier original consoles at different times, it's unlikely they recieved the consoles from the same manufacturing run. So I feel that while small, it's probably a fairly good sampling.
I'm currently replacing my first one which lasted a solid 5 months. I know that I dont have any power problems because I monitor the line quality via my UPS. In addition, I had the console plugged in to a high end surge supressor to eliminate any spikes. Ventillation shouldn't have been an issue either as the console was placed on top of my entertainment system's cabinet. So I dont feel that I used it in an unusual way or that the environment should have played a role in it's demise. I will say that it ran HOT! So there's a good chance a lot of people are roasting them inside of an enclosure of some type.
Bottom line is that it seems to me that these console do have a problem! Most likely a thermal one.
I'm not a statistician, but Microsoft's claim of a 3-5% failure rate is probably a tad on the low side of reality.
Yup, more than 10 years ago =)
Back in 92, I worked for a company called VideoCart who was probably the supplier for the screens you're refer to.
These carts did everything mentioned in the article, with the exception of email.
Although it *seemed* a good concept, the public never caught on.
The project lasted several months in the store I maintained up in Sacramento, but it was pulled within a year due to a lack of public interest. Most people back then would just grab one of the non-equipped carts. Perhaps the concept will be better received now that the general public is more open to technology in general.
The beeping distress calls didn't do much to save them from becoming a decoration in someone's living room either. We had numerous carts go missing, but very few were ever recovered. And they made a tempting target for vandals. I'd say that on average, we were replacing at least 2 smashed LCD screens per week.
Is it just me?
Were the Animators/Story Writers making a subtle reference to Linux with the Squeaky character?
I must agree with the general sigh of relief that the FCC is taking the Hands Off approach
:)
but..
I've had my cable modem (Century @Home) for approximately four months now.
In the beginning I was extreemely happy with it's performance! My linux box has never been so happy!
Then @Home decided to limit my upstream to 128k. Well, needless to say I was a bit unhappy. My first reaction was to simply cancel service. Then cognative reasoning emerged, and I realized that 128k up wasnt that bad, and regardless, it is better than 33.6!
All of this took place within a month of my signing up. Now, three months later, the connection speeds have degraded so sharply that (at times) it almost would be worth my while to return to dialup! Unfortunately, DSL is not available to my residence (yet?) and even if it was, my limited DSL experience has shown me that it really isn't the answer I am hoping for anyway.
So, I am left with @Home's severely congested network. I sure would like to see an alternative!
I understand that it was @Home's money which paid for all of the equipment, but I would like to see some "allowed" competition. @Home uses only one channel of bandwidth. my cable company offers in neighborhood of 60 channels of programming. This leaves quite a lot of room for alternate services.
Another (equally less likely) option would be for @Home to place the blame where it belongs. Perhaps some of you reading this know more than I, but this is how I understand it. Please correct me if I'm worng.
Back in the early days of @Home, they engineered a network which was well designed, and very fast.
They began offering services to select areas (East coast I believe) and everyone was happy. In fact the response was so overwhelming (and unexpected) that within a short period, the network was brought virtually to it's knees forcing @Home to make some decisions. A. Increase network capacity to handle to extra load, or B. limit bandwidth and continue using the existing infrastructure.
I guess we know which option they've chosen. Publicly they have stated that this move is intended to dicourage those of us who run servers (Yes, I am guilty as charged! after all, it's a Linux box. what would you do?!?). However, this not only stops me from running a decent FTP/WEB/Whatever else server, it also prohibits me from sending small avi's (thats a relative term) of my son to my father because even though we both have "high-speed" internet access, it takes ages to send.
Other Cable ISPs that I am aware of such as RoadRunner have no anti-server policy so long as you are not using it for commercial purposes. This seems like a real win-win for @Home. Not only can they bring on more customers with thier existing infrastructure, but they also can reap the benefits of forcing us to subscribe to @Work so that we can run our personal FTP/WEB servers. This seems unfair to me.
Bottom line. I am happy to see what the FCC is (or isn't) doing, but at the same time I hope cable ISPs (specifically @Home) will start to provide us with better service by upgrading thier backbone and not placing the blame on those of us who really make use of thier services. Lets face it, while there are a lot of us out there who use the service, and utilize bandwidth, the vast majority of internet users are simply surfing the web and reading email, and dont know that the service they recieve may be "sub-standard". If we are ever to reach a point where the internet is cheaply available at acceptable speeds to nearly everyone (utopian society??) so that more and more users can experience the joy of videoconferencing and host their own websites etc., then competition will be necessary to provide higher quality of service at lower prices.
Any Thoughts?
Cheers!