After a month, choose several random spammers as targets to "test the efficacity of our cyberwarfare teams"
You assume that spammers have a network to attack. I assure you, they do not. All this spam is coming from large networks of zombie machines. To launch a cyberattack on the source of the spam would effectively be a scorched Earth tactic. It might get rid of your spam, but it will also get rid of the architecture you're defending...
Considering that I'm not for any particular browser, analyst, or other specific entity, I find your claim of being a "paid shill" to be as bizarre as it hilarious.
I could return the compliment based on your arguments in favor of Microsoft, but you're simply not well spoken enough to be on anyone's payroll. (Especially not Microsoft's. From the Microsoft employees I've publicly spoken with, they are masters at projecting a particular image while skirting around the core of the issue.)
People stopped using NN because it started to suck. It would crash on me multiple times a day.
And people have stopped using Internet Explorer because it has started to suck. It's the vector for a number of viruses and it does a poor job rendering many websites. What's your point?
If people stop using IE completely, it will be extinct regardless of whether or not Microsoft ships it.
Analysts are notroriously wrong a large portion of the time
Doesn't matter. They still determine the course of much of the market. Those analyses combined with the existing market forces to move toward webapps with greater sophistication leaves Microsoft's Trident engine poorly positioned to compete. Its market share will continue to dwindle. The probability of anything else happening are extremely poor; barring major corrective action by Microsoft.
There's also the question that the Mozilla foundation could disband in 2011 if their market share doesn't significantly increase and Google doesn't feel the money it's paying, that accounts for the majority of Mozilla's revenue, is worth it. Especially now that they have their own independent browser offering.
Disbanding Mozilla would appear to be a low probability at this time. Google stopping payments is a medium risk, which is why Mozilla is looking for alternative income sources.
Microsoft having to do something about Trident in the future is an extremely high probability. They have already indicated that shipping an alternative engine is an option they are considering. Based on their previous behavior, Microsoft isn't likely to continue to push a dead product. They will move on and find other ways to fight the market.
It's one thing to speculate, it's another thing to come across like a FUD campaign that rivals the big boys. Or optimistic vs dellussional.
I agree. Stop being so optimistic about IE's chances and spreading FUD that IE is still a viable platform. Everything in the market suggests that Microsoft's chances are nil at this point. To think otherwise is either hopelessly optimistic and/or delusional.
While the generic benchmarks have ALL browsers listed, the article that made the claim about popularity was the one with the table. And that table is comparing apples to apricots.
It's easy to make bizarre claims when you're rigging the data.
Bullshit. These are experimental options. They're NOT turned on for a reason. Specially, HTTP pipelines really fraks with some of the less sophisticated web servers on the market. They get confused and don't deliver the right set of responses. Firefox has the feature for testing and developer evaluation, but it's not ready yet.
That being said, the vast majority of the sites you visit won't have problems. But you have to know enough to understand what those are and whether it is worth it to you to enable this feature.
For those interested in the technical side, HTTP pipelining is a feature that makes use of the asynchronous nature of TCP/IP sockets. Rather than doing the usual HTTP/1.1 request/response, request/response cycle of HTTP/1.1, pipelining batch-sends all the requests, then batch receives all the responses. In effect, it looks like request/request/request/request, response/response/response/response. Very effective at reducing delays from network latency, but potentially very confusing for the server.
Dodos are extinct, as long as IE is installed by default in Windows, IE will not be extinct for a long time.
Netscape 4 was pre-installed on computers long after people stopped using it. Just because it's available doesn't mean it isn't effectively extinct. There's also the question of whether Microsoft will conceded defeat if their market share drops too low. It's perfectly possible that Triton will stop shipping with Windows. At least as an end-user browser. (It may be maintained as a legacy ActiveX control.)
Analysts don't determine what browser people use, they just try and predict it. If analysts are controlling the browser market it is through FUD and self fulfilling prophecy.
What is the purpose of prediction if it doesn't create a self-fulfilling prophecy? Analysts direct companies toward the solutions that make the most sense in the future market. Companies pay quite a bit of money to have an analyst tell them these things so they can be as competitive as possible. Most of it is absolute B.S. IMHO, and often gets companies into a lot of trouble. But that does not negate the very real effects these analyses have.
That's my point. There is no guarantee what is going to happen. It could get worse it could get better it could stay the same.
Everything is a probability. I can say with a high degree of confidence that I will be going to work tomorrow. Yet in reality, I could get a cold. Or a family emergency could develop. Or there could be a snow day in May tomorrow.
That last one has about the same probability as any of the current versions of Internet Explorer recovering market share.
That's fair, at least. I ran SunSpider for comparison, and I found their full benchmarks are much closer to the real world values. i.e. There's about a 20% performance difference between FF3.5b4 and Chrome 1.0.154.59 and a ~50% performance difference between FF3.5b4 and Safari 4 Beta. Which is far more competitive than the rather massive 300% performance gap between FF3 and Safari 4 Beta. (aka Yellow Journalism)
Anyway... can we stop saying stupid crap like "Once IE's market share goes the way of the Dodo"?
Like it or not, IE is going the way of the Dodo. It's not market trends that are determining that, it's the fact that IE is an absolutely craptastic browser that the market has taken a dim view on. If anything, it has held up fairly well in the trends despite a growing disdain for its existence.
When every analyst in the market (short of those on the Microsoft payroll) is allied against you, you're not going to maintain a leading spot forever.
My personal expectation is that IE market share decline will accelerate over the next year rather than slow. i.e. The hockey stick effect tends to work both ways.
It could be that most of their Safari visitors are using the beta, while most of their Firefox visitors are using a release version.
So FutureMark is telling us that the number of Safari 4 users who have explicitly downloaded the beta upgrade, significantly outnumber the Safari 3 users who got it bundled, managed, and updated with their Operating System?
If this was IE vs. another browser, I could see that being the case. But since we're talking about a beta revision of the same browser, I find that statement highly suspect.
Once IE's market share goes the way of the Dodo will web developers start cursing Firefox?
Do the words "TraceMonkey" mean anything to the authors? It's the core Javascript engine of the upcoming revision of Firefox. And it is fast. Some benchmarks suggest that it is highly competitive with V8 (Chrome) and SquirrelFish (Safari).
(Speaking of which, isn't it a bit disingenous to compare Safari 4 BETA to the current version of Firefox? Why not compare the Firefox beta then? Smells of yeller-bellied journalism to me.)
Javascript is currently a hugely competitive area. Every browser revision is trying to boost performance. (Including Microsoft.) It only makes sense that the older and cruftier engines would have a harder time competing with the newer and more nimble engines created by these upstart competitors. However, with the exception of Microsoft who's stuck updating JScript (haha, bundle FAIL!), all the other competitors can and are swapping out engines for faster and faster performance.
Hockey sticks aren't linear. I don't know why you have that idea. They are called hockey sticks because they curve upward slowly, change direction sharply, then continue the growth until terminal mass is reached. The slopes between the data points in a hockey stick chart are radically different and cannot by any means be considered "linear".
Linear would be if the slopes remained approximately constant.
A hockey stick looks more like the left side of this chart:
IE4 was a piece of garbage. It was slow, it was bloated, it crashed regularly, it had odd rendering bugs, it tried to take over the desktop with a metric load of ActiveDesktop crud, and its usability was fairly poor.
IE5 was faster, smaller, and generally a very good browser for its time. Which is why it was finally able to dethrone Netscape. All Microsoft did after that was fix a few bugs, add features nobody wanted, called it IE6, then sat on their fat arses for a decade.
Firefox will rise at a linear rate until it captures its natural market share.
Why do you assume linear change? In my experience, once products reach a critical mass over the competition, they tend to "hockey stick". Which is to say, they make sudden, explosive gains, leveling out near their natural market share.
I think the 2013 number is bogus, but only because I'm guessing we'll see a hockey stick sometime within the next year or so.
I think you've put your finger on the strongest barriers to entry that Microsoft has erected. However, I'd like to point out that this list is the list of barriers they've retreated to. Bundling used to work in favor of IE. No longer. IE's reputation as the most compatible browser worked in their favor. No longer. Microsoft's hold over the development community meant that applications used to target IE. No longer.
Microsoft has retreated to the safety of corporate apps. They are slow to change, and in result are dependable. Yet their market share continues to drop. And here's the catch-22: Companies who rely on IE specific technologies (and thus maintain IE as the "standard") stick with IE6. They are now experiencing pressures to change their browser standards. Eventually they will cave to those pressures.
My expectation is that companies aren't going to be friendly to another round of Microsoft lock-in. They've done this song and dance too many times. Some will fall for it, but I have a feeling Microsoft's market share will vaporize as companies make an effort to target web standards rather than IE-specific technologies.
So that evil percentage you gave won't be the stopping point for IE. It's going to the bottom whether Microsoft likes it or not.
The train would require 110 megawatts of electricity
Oh. Well that makes tons more sense. In fact, let me just get out these multi-megawatt solar panels I have sitting around...
Seriously, this is a rather larger undertaking. Generating 110 megawatts (per train, I imagine?) is no small feat. Especially for solar paneling. That's usually the type of thing you need your own power plant for. It's a nice idea, but you'll forgive me if I'm a bit skeptical of:
a) Solar Power only above the rails being effective b) The practicality of any design that relied only on the rail footprint c) The realistic cost benefits of this idea d) That maintenance costs won't be overwhelming e) That consumer demand for service won't result in the train operating during periods where it will be forced to pull from the grid. Frustratingly, very likely during the hours when demand is high for home lighting/heating/etc.
Reminds me of Cingular purchasing AT&T, then rebranding as AT&T. Cingular had a lot of goodwill for its excellent pricing, good coverage, and top notch service*. AT&T was seen as a dinosaur that was stuck in the past. They offered lousy pricing, terrible coverage, and some of the worst service in the industry.
Result? Cingular took all their goodwill and flushed it down the toilet in exchange for a brand name that no one wanted to have as their carrier. Even worse, their service took a nosedive after the merger, leading to a LOT of irate customers. Absolutely brilliant.:-/
* For a cellular company, anyway. We have to speak in relative terms here.:-P
Over the past decade or so, I've watched companies freak out over source code becoming more and more available to the recipients of software. First it was Java and how "easy" it was to decompile. Then it was HTML/Javascript and how easy it was for someone to steal unobfuscated code. Nowadays, practically every bit of compiled code is easy to reverse.
Invariably, this caused managers to attempt to buy into bizarre technical solutions to "protect" their investments. Which was ridiculous. The correct hammer to use was a legal one. If someone stole your code and tried to hide it (which isn't easy to do successfully, as the GPL violators can testify), the correct hammer is a legal one. It's much easier to legally go after someone dumb enough to steal code rather than running around like chicken little trying to protect something that's inherently unprotectable.
Fast forward to today, where the core concern is content and the theft thereof. Again, the industry tried the technological hammer (DRM) and predictably failed. Now they're trying the legal hammer. Which is only partially a correct tool to use. Yes, feel free to root out the pirate organizations. But for the vast majority of the users, the real solution is proper paid access to the content.
I remember when MP3s first came into existence. I said then, "The music companies should sell their music online. That would prevent people from illegally distributing MP3s." As expected, the music industry was not going to go that direction. What happened? Well, the market found what it wanted: Napster. And the music industry lost BIG TIME. A service like Napster with fees for song downloads could have been huge. But instead, the industry allowed the public to get a taste of the "free" mentality.
Even so, it's still possible to reverse the effects. (To some degree.) The correct solution is to continue embracing digital distribution. Offer a fair product at a fair price and people will pay for it. For the vast majority of users, their time is worth more than tooling around trying to find the content they're interested in. But as long as companies make it worth more to run through virus-laden torrent sites than to download off of their websites or iTunes, then consumers will go for the virus-laden torrent sites.
Welcome to the new competition media industry. For the first time ever, you have to compete. And guess what? You're competing against yourselves.;-)
While gamers (of adult age) have by and large won the right to this entertainment
Does anyone read To Kill a Mockingbird or Scarlet Letter for entertainment? Hardly. People read these books to explore the human condition and take a hard look at where society fails the individual.
Does anyone play an "adult" videogame to explore the human condition. Heck no. It's all about juvenille self-indulgence. Real adults are far past that stage and have no real desire to subject themselves to unsavory sights and sounds.
We've covered it before on Columbine to Fallujah, but I noticed through GamePolitics recently a large trend in severely controversial video games.
The funny part is that the Fallujah game is the type of controversial topic that can use video games for exploring the human condition. Which is exactly why it's blocked while *cough*"adult entertainment"*cough* runs rampant. No one really wants to take a hard look at the unpleasentries that need to change. Books like Mockingbird were once burned for their controversal nature. Let's see if someone has the guts to watch a few of their DVDs burn.
the DS isn't "connected" in the sense that it doesn't have inherent networking capabilities that are designed to push apps.
You mean the DSiShop channel? I don't see how it's any less integral than the iPhone's app store.
I do think Nintendo rushed the DSi to market. The hardware is fine, but there is absolutely zero software for it. There are no DSi enhanced or exclusive carts and the downloadable games are all ripped from other GBA and DS titles. (With the exception of WarioWare Snap, which is pretty much a tech-demo showing off the camera system.) However, things are unlikely to remain this way. Developers are already working with the DSi, and targeted games will be showing up soon. Mighty Flip Champs, for example, is expected to be a killer app for the online service.
Sooo... not quite sure where you're going with your argument?
I think the point is that the DS and DSi are focused gaming devices whereas the PSP is an unfocused, be everything to everyone, "device". Which I don't think is an entirely fair criticism.
IMHO, the PSP is not a game console. It just sucks as a portable game console. By the time you get your game loaded, you're already at your bus stop. Not to mention that the games tend to have the long-gameplay sensibilities of a home console rather than a portable system. I won't even get into the portability comparisons between the PSP and DS games.
The PSP is almost focused as if it were a Playstation that you could take to a friend's house. Or a portable DVD player. Or an emulator. In fact, it focuses well on just about everything except being a portable game console. (Whoops.)
Oddly, the DSi has bridged the jack-of-all-trades barrier a bit itself. It is not only a portable game system, but it is also a camera, music player, and portable web browser. It seems to succeed at these things not because it was so well designed for them, but rather because they were grown out of its existing capabilities rather than made a central focus of the system. In many ways the DSi does these features worse than the PSP, but the users appear to be happier with them. (Anyone notice that there is a DSiCade for the browser, but no PSPCade?)
Sony lacks focus. That is their core business issue, and why the PS3 and PSP have not been competing as well as they should.
Slashdot Mirror
You assume that spammers have a network to attack. I assure you, they do not. All this spam is coming from large networks of zombie machines. To launch a cyberattack on the source of the spam would effectively be a scorched Earth tactic. It might get rid of your spam, but it will also get rid of the architecture you're defending...
Considering that I'm not for any particular browser, analyst, or other specific entity, I find your claim of being a "paid shill" to be as bizarre as it hilarious.
I could return the compliment based on your arguments in favor of Microsoft, but you're simply not well spoken enough to be on anyone's payroll. (Especially not Microsoft's. From the Microsoft employees I've publicly spoken with, they are masters at projecting a particular image while skirting around the core of the issue.)
And people have stopped using Internet Explorer because it has started to suck. It's the vector for a number of viruses and it does a poor job rendering many websites. What's your point?
If people stop using IE completely, it will be extinct regardless of whether or not Microsoft ships it.
Doesn't matter. They still determine the course of much of the market. Those analyses combined with the existing market forces to move toward webapps with greater sophistication leaves Microsoft's Trident engine poorly positioned to compete. Its market share will continue to dwindle. The probability of anything else happening are extremely poor; barring major corrective action by Microsoft.
Disbanding Mozilla would appear to be a low probability at this time. Google stopping payments is a medium risk, which is why Mozilla is looking for alternative income sources.
Microsoft having to do something about Trident in the future is an extremely high probability. They have already indicated that shipping an alternative engine is an option they are considering. Based on their previous behavior, Microsoft isn't likely to continue to push a dead product. They will move on and find other ways to fight the market.
I agree. Stop being so optimistic about IE's chances and spreading FUD that IE is still a viable platform. Everything in the market suggests that Microsoft's chances are nil at this point. To think otherwise is either hopelessly optimistic and/or delusional.
While the generic benchmarks have ALL browsers listed, the article that made the claim about popularity was the one with the table. And that table is comparing apples to apricots.
It's easy to make bizarre claims when you're rigging the data.
Bullshit. These are experimental options. They're NOT turned on for a reason. Specially, HTTP pipelines really fraks with some of the less sophisticated web servers on the market. They get confused and don't deliver the right set of responses. Firefox has the feature for testing and developer evaluation, but it's not ready yet.
That being said, the vast majority of the sites you visit won't have problems. But you have to know enough to understand what those are and whether it is worth it to you to enable this feature.
For those interested in the technical side, HTTP pipelining is a feature that makes use of the asynchronous nature of TCP/IP sockets. Rather than doing the usual HTTP/1.1 request/response, request/response cycle of HTTP/1.1, pipelining batch-sends all the requests, then batch receives all the responses. In effect, it looks like request/request/request/request, response/response/response/response. Very effective at reducing delays from network latency, but potentially very confusing for the server.
Netscape 4 was pre-installed on computers long after people stopped using it. Just because it's available doesn't mean it isn't effectively extinct. There's also the question of whether Microsoft will conceded defeat if their market share drops too low. It's perfectly possible that Triton will stop shipping with Windows. At least as an end-user browser. (It may be maintained as a legacy ActiveX control.)
What is the purpose of prediction if it doesn't create a self-fulfilling prophecy? Analysts direct companies toward the solutions that make the most sense in the future market. Companies pay quite a bit of money to have an analyst tell them these things so they can be as competitive as possible. Most of it is absolute B.S. IMHO, and often gets companies into a lot of trouble. But that does not negate the very real effects these analyses have.
Everything is a probability. I can say with a high degree of confidence that I will be going to work tomorrow. Yet in reality, I could get a cold. Or a family emergency could develop. Or there could be a snow day in May tomorrow.
That last one has about the same probability as any of the current versions of Internet Explorer recovering market share.
That's fair, at least. I ran SunSpider for comparison, and I found their full benchmarks are much closer to the real world values. i.e. There's about a 20% performance difference between FF3.5b4 and Chrome 1.0.154.59 and a ~50% performance difference between FF3.5b4 and Safari 4 Beta. Which is far more competitive than the rather massive 300% performance gap between FF3 and Safari 4 Beta. (aka Yellow Journalism)
Since when does 3.0.10 == 3.5 Beta?
FTFA:
Table: Browser performance and popularity in Peacekeeper (beta)
Browser Version Peacekeeper Score* Visitors to Futuremark
Safari 4.0 Beta 1222 0.8%
Chrome 1.0.154.49 874 3.7%
Opera 9.64 463 6.3%
Firefox 3.0.10 397 31.5%
Internet Explorer 8.0 280 57.3%
Like it or not, IE is going the way of the Dodo. It's not market trends that are determining that, it's the fact that IE is an absolutely craptastic browser that the market has taken a dim view on. If anything, it has held up fairly well in the trends despite a growing disdain for its existence.
When every analyst in the market (short of those on the Microsoft payroll) is allied against you, you're not going to maintain a leading spot forever.
My personal expectation is that IE market share decline will accelerate over the next year rather than slow. i.e. The hockey stick effect tends to work both ways.
So FutureMark is telling us that the number of Safari 4 users who have explicitly downloaded the beta upgrade, significantly outnumber the Safari 3 users who got it bundled, managed, and updated with their Operating System?
If this was IE vs. another browser, I could see that being the case. But since we're talking about a beta revision of the same browser, I find that statement highly suspect.
Whachoo talkn'bout Willis?
They compared Safari 4 Beta. Why is asking for them to test Firefox 3.5 beta such a stretch?
You're telling me that you need to read a webpage to configure Firefox? Gee, that's making a lot of assumptions, don't you think?
What about the cases where you don't have a web browser?!?!
Do the words "TraceMonkey" mean anything to the authors? It's the core Javascript engine of the upcoming revision of Firefox. And it is fast. Some benchmarks suggest that it is highly competitive with V8 (Chrome) and SquirrelFish (Safari).
(Speaking of which, isn't it a bit disingenous to compare Safari 4 BETA to the current version of Firefox? Why not compare the Firefox beta then? Smells of yeller-bellied journalism to me.)
Javascript is currently a hugely competitive area. Every browser revision is trying to boost performance. (Including Microsoft.) It only makes sense that the older and cruftier engines would have a harder time competing with the newer and more nimble engines created by these upstart competitors. However, with the exception of Microsoft who's stuck updating JScript (haha, bundle FAIL!), all the other competitors can and are swapping out engines for faster and faster performance.
Hockey sticks aren't linear. I don't know why you have that idea. They are called hockey sticks because they curve upward slowly, change direction sharply, then continue the growth until terminal mass is reached. The slopes between the data points in a hockey stick chart are radically different and cannot by any means be considered "linear".
Linear would be if the slopes remained approximately constant.
A hockey stick looks more like the left side of this chart:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Internet-explorer-usage-data.svg
Note the slow growth at the bottom, followed by a sharp curve that steepens with time.
IE4 was a piece of garbage. It was slow, it was bloated, it crashed regularly, it had odd rendering bugs, it tried to take over the desktop with a metric load of ActiveDesktop crud, and its usability was fairly poor.
IE5 was faster, smaller, and generally a very good browser for its time. Which is why it was finally able to dethrone Netscape. All Microsoft did after that was fix a few bugs, add features nobody wanted, called it IE6, then sat on their fat arses for a decade.
Why do you assume linear change? In my experience, once products reach a critical mass over the competition, they tend to "hockey stick". Which is to say, they make sudden, explosive gains, leveling out near their natural market share.
I think the 2013 number is bogus, but only because I'm guessing we'll see a hockey stick sometime within the next year or so.
I think you've put your finger on the strongest barriers to entry that Microsoft has erected. However, I'd like to point out that this list is the list of barriers they've retreated to. Bundling used to work in favor of IE. No longer. IE's reputation as the most compatible browser worked in their favor. No longer. Microsoft's hold over the development community meant that applications used to target IE. No longer.
Microsoft has retreated to the safety of corporate apps. They are slow to change, and in result are dependable. Yet their market share continues to drop. And here's the catch-22: Companies who rely on IE specific technologies (and thus maintain IE as the "standard") stick with IE6. They are now experiencing pressures to change their browser standards. Eventually they will cave to those pressures.
My expectation is that companies aren't going to be friendly to another round of Microsoft lock-in. They've done this song and dance too many times. Some will fall for it, but I have a feeling Microsoft's market share will vaporize as companies make an effort to target web standards rather than IE-specific technologies.
So that evil percentage you gave won't be the stopping point for IE. It's going to the bottom whether Microsoft likes it or not.
1.21 gigawatts?!?! What?!?!?
Oh. Well that makes tons more sense. In fact, let me just get out these multi-megawatt solar panels I have sitting around...
Seriously, this is a rather larger undertaking. Generating 110 megawatts (per train, I imagine?) is no small feat. Especially for solar paneling. That's usually the type of thing you need your own power plant for. It's a nice idea, but you'll forgive me if I'm a bit skeptical of:
a) Solar Power only above the rails being effective
b) The practicality of any design that relied only on the rail footprint
c) The realistic cost benefits of this idea
d) That maintenance costs won't be overwhelming
e) That consumer demand for service won't result in the train operating during periods where it will be forced to pull from the grid. Frustratingly, very likely during the hours when demand is high for home lighting/heating/etc.
Actually, that explains the SBC nosedive as well... :-P
Reminds me of Cingular purchasing AT&T, then rebranding as AT&T. Cingular had a lot of goodwill for its excellent pricing, good coverage, and top notch service*. AT&T was seen as a dinosaur that was stuck in the past. They offered lousy pricing, terrible coverage, and some of the worst service in the industry.
Result? Cingular took all their goodwill and flushed it down the toilet in exchange for a brand name that no one wanted to have as their carrier. Even worse, their service took a nosedive after the merger, leading to a LOT of irate customers. Absolutely brilliant. :-/
* For a cellular company, anyway. We have to speak in relative terms here. :-P
Over the past decade or so, I've watched companies freak out over source code becoming more and more available to the recipients of software. First it was Java and how "easy" it was to decompile. Then it was HTML/Javascript and how easy it was for someone to steal unobfuscated code. Nowadays, practically every bit of compiled code is easy to reverse.
Invariably, this caused managers to attempt to buy into bizarre technical solutions to "protect" their investments. Which was ridiculous. The correct hammer to use was a legal one. If someone stole your code and tried to hide it (which isn't easy to do successfully, as the GPL violators can testify), the correct hammer is a legal one. It's much easier to legally go after someone dumb enough to steal code rather than running around like chicken little trying to protect something that's inherently unprotectable.
Fast forward to today, where the core concern is content and the theft thereof. Again, the industry tried the technological hammer (DRM) and predictably failed. Now they're trying the legal hammer. Which is only partially a correct tool to use. Yes, feel free to root out the pirate organizations. But for the vast majority of the users, the real solution is proper paid access to the content.
I remember when MP3s first came into existence. I said then, "The music companies should sell their music online. That would prevent people from illegally distributing MP3s." As expected, the music industry was not going to go that direction. What happened? Well, the market found what it wanted: Napster. And the music industry lost BIG TIME. A service like Napster with fees for song downloads could have been huge. But instead, the industry allowed the public to get a taste of the "free" mentality.
Even so, it's still possible to reverse the effects. (To some degree.) The correct solution is to continue embracing digital distribution. Offer a fair product at a fair price and people will pay for it. For the vast majority of users, their time is worth more than tooling around trying to find the content they're interested in. But as long as companies make it worth more to run through virus-laden torrent sites than to download off of their websites or iTunes, then consumers will go for the virus-laden torrent sites.
Welcome to the new competition media industry. For the first time ever, you have to compete. And guess what? You're competing against yourselves. ;-)
You think Scarlet Letter was bad? Try getting stuck with House of Seven Gables as an assignment. Wow, was that ever a chore to read! 0_o
I am about to become very unpopular...
Does anyone read To Kill a Mockingbird or Scarlet Letter for entertainment? Hardly. People read these books to explore the human condition and take a hard look at where society fails the individual.
Does anyone play an "adult" videogame to explore the human condition. Heck no. It's all about juvenille self-indulgence. Real adults are far past that stage and have no real desire to subject themselves to unsavory sights and sounds.
The funny part is that the Fallujah game is the type of controversial topic that can use video games for exploring the human condition. Which is exactly why it's blocked while *cough*"adult entertainment"*cough* runs rampant. No one really wants to take a hard look at the unpleasentries that need to change. Books like Mockingbird were once burned for their controversal nature. Let's see if someone has the guts to watch a few of their DVDs burn.
Ok mods. I've said my piece. Backlash time.
You mean the DSiShop channel? I don't see how it's any less integral than the iPhone's app store.
I do think Nintendo rushed the DSi to market. The hardware is fine, but there is absolutely zero software for it. There are no DSi enhanced or exclusive carts and the downloadable games are all ripped from other GBA and DS titles. (With the exception of WarioWare Snap, which is pretty much a tech-demo showing off the camera system.) However, things are unlikely to remain this way. Developers are already working with the DSi, and targeted games will be showing up soon. Mighty Flip Champs, for example, is expected to be a killer app for the online service.
Sooo... not quite sure where you're going with your argument?
I think the point is that the DS and DSi are focused gaming devices whereas the PSP is an unfocused, be everything to everyone, "device". Which I don't think is an entirely fair criticism.
IMHO, the PSP is not a game console. It just sucks as a portable game console. By the time you get your game loaded, you're already at your bus stop. Not to mention that the games tend to have the long-gameplay sensibilities of a home console rather than a portable system. I won't even get into the portability comparisons between the PSP and DS games.
The PSP is almost focused as if it were a Playstation that you could take to a friend's house. Or a portable DVD player. Or an emulator. In fact, it focuses well on just about everything except being a portable game console. (Whoops.)
Oddly, the DSi has bridged the jack-of-all-trades barrier a bit itself. It is not only a portable game system, but it is also a camera, music player, and portable web browser. It seems to succeed at these things not because it was so well designed for them, but rather because they were grown out of its existing capabilities rather than made a central focus of the system. In many ways the DSi does these features worse than the PSP, but the users appear to be happier with them. (Anyone notice that there is a DSiCade for the browser, but no PSPCade?)
Sony lacks focus. That is their core business issue, and why the PS3 and PSP have not been competing as well as they should.