Yeah, that was the thing that jumped out from the IDC methodology and said hi for me.
The problem is this - let's look at Rogers Cable, up in Canada, who are putting out a set top box with a version of Linux. It could be BSD too, for all it matters.
The main problem is they may have only five paid copies and hundreds of thousands of boxes running Linux or BSD that they did not pay for a copy of the OS.
It's free software, open source. So long as the industry uses the wrong metrics, asks the wrong questions, they'll continue to underestimate the number of Open Source OS boxen out there.
Let's look at your average Fortune 500 company using Linux. They probably buy 10 licensed copies and a support agreement, but since they standardize on only three PC versions (laptop, desktop, workstation), that's all they need. And they have tens of thousands of PCs running Linux or BSD. They may have only one-third of their PCs running Windows (any flavor) and two-thirds of their PCs running Linux or BSD, but IDC and other industry groups will report that Linux and BSD have less than one percent of the OS share, because they measure only paid OS copies.
You must measure something correctly to be able to make correct decisions. In modern accounting, pollution has no cost, only trying to stop pollution has a cost. So a CEO will try to increase pollution, not decrease it.
Think about it, Skippy the GBA Worm Light. Comes with his own terrarium, you feed him nutrients and he's bioluminescent.
Of course, you'll need to get him a worm collar (only $19.95!) and a worm stand (only $19.95!) and a racing jacket (only $24.95, choose your own team logo! - Pikachu Electric Yellow is $29.95).
Almost all cars made or for sale in the US have speed limiters which cut out your accellerator when you go faster than 125 mph, anyway, even though you could technically go that fast in certain portions of Montana and not disobey the speed limit.
But since GPS is fairly faulty and jumps a lot, this is likely subject to a court challenge and quite winnable - unless you're going in a straight line from one city to another and stay there for a while.
I used to have a GPS on my Saturn SC2, as part of a pilot project for one of those talking map things, and it would fry out in extreme heat or cold - you had to press the manual reset buttons (which they hid) to get it to work again.
But... do you have enough spare time and energy to challenge it? Or were you really breaking the speed limit and knew it, in which case, do you have any ethical defense?
But I found that, while it was very useful in cutting down on wasted trips, it didn't find me any of my top 5 house choices. Even with virtual tours and online pictures and search databases that listed properties in the area I wanted.
Look, the thing is we all have different things that matter to us in a house. For me, location was important, and ambience, and closeness to a good school, and what kind of neighbors were there.
So, the Net did help me find lots of properties and figure out if I should check them out, and cut my search time in half, but the houses I really wanted I found by driving and walking around the neighborhood area I was interested in.
Because a lot of listings aren't in those large databases. The best was a local firm that listed all their properties with pics and had database searches based on price range and neighborhood, and also included ALL the MLS listings that were online as well, and any pics they had.
But one of the houses I almost bought was because a friend told me one of her neighbors was selling (it's a very nice set of townhouses in a wonderful location). And another was one I found by walking nearby my son's school. And the one I bought I just walked into cause it had an open house sign up and I was walking by.
Maybe, in the future, when we all have WAP cell phone/PDA/wrist watches I can just be driving by and houses in a 2 block radius will just advertise themselves to me, but for now it's a useful tool, but it's not the total solution.
FYI, a MBA takes 2 years full time. A Phd takes on average 4 years full time.
Your mileage may vary. Most of the people I know, many of whom are techies or semi-tech, seem to take between 2.5 and 3.5 years to do their MBAs and between 3 and 4.5 years to do their PhDs.
A lot of that is because of dissertations and all that.
Getting a PhD. usually entails a pretty big sacrific. You research and disseration are always hanging over you. The research process in itself is somehting you have to learn as well. You usually have research and/or teaching assignments taking up lots of time. And even with scholarships, still a major paycut from industry And then there is all the other academic stuff you have to worry about: conferences,articles, committees, seminars....
I was referring to after you get the PhD. The total number of hours spent to get a PhD for someone with drive and tech understanding is only a bit more than that to get an MBA. Figure an extra 8 months to a year if you apply yourself.
But, the bonus is that it can lead you to the more rewarding positions without all the extra hours during the work week, and allows you to really get into the meaty subjects, rather than the grunge of people-oriented stuff.
I say this based on friends with both, and how long it really took them to get through both types of programs.
So, ask yourself - am I really a techie who just wants to tell the big shots the real truth without all those interfering labels and who loves the tech side, or do I want to go the people skills route and become part of management itself. If you are a true techie, the PhD route will be more rewarding. If you are a techie who'd like to switch to management, go the MBA route. If you're not sure, think about a Tech MBA program.
It's a two-edged sword - an MBA is, indeed, a great way to move into management, where your personal communications skills will be stressed more than your technical ability. The hours in tech management are generally longer, but you won't be making more per hour worked in general, although your stress level will go up.
If you're a good manager, you'll be doing all the shielding for your techies to keep the other PHBs and Users from driving them crazy or distracting them from cranking out good code.
Some places offer tech MBAs (e.g. University of Washington), which are probably more rewarding for most techies.
And, yes, you may have to deposit your soul in a safe deposit box until you retire, but that's up to you.
If you want to stay techie, but get more into theoretical stuff, you should consider the PhD route in a tech field - this may be just as rewarding and the hours aren't quite as bad.
Note I say this knowing a number of MBAs who are great people, and my brother's a lawyer (many many hours, pay about the same per hour as mine but I have a life), so it's not just theoretical.
Since MSFT has announced it no longer will support Win95 and other prior code bases, when will MSFT provide the source code under an open source license, so that the legitimate "purchased for life" software users can maintain their own code?
[yeah, I know, but OReilly won't let me post since I'm behind a firewall...]
But...If I were, I would in turn sue the state of WA for violating the constitution of the United States of a America for trying to exercise juris-prudence in what is clearly federal territory. This will shoot down or limit the WA law quite quickly. I repeat, you can NOT sue me in a STATE court for something that happens across a border, you can ONLY do it in a federal court.
Still wrong. We can sue you, just as anyone with a small software firm registered in one state can sue a licensee who qualifies under civil statute for breaking the license condition. And just like most corporate suits are handled in state courts, for actions which cross state boundaries.
You can run, but you can't hide. We can't hinder legal commerce, but we can regulate how you conduct commerce on an equal basis with all our residents. Like if you are in Portland, Oregon and advertise for a Spiffy Gas Enhancer for cars and someone in Vancouver, Washington buys it by mail or email - they can go to small claims court in Washington state, since they live there.
And in the above case, you get sued for violating Washington State consumer protections. We don't care what your state has for regs, we just care what our state has to protect consumers.
I'm not saying CAUSE regulations are the coolest thing since sliced bread, just that they exist.
And, no matter how you slice it, we Washingtonians can sue your butt for spam, unless you use true headers with non-misleading subject lines. Just truth in advertising, my friend...
Suppose, for the nonce, that I chose to protest this law by attempting to notify my neighbors that it does not appear to have a loophole for anonymous political speech. Suppose, further, that I attempted to reach as many of the relevant people as possible by sending out bulk electronic mail. And finally suppose that I decided not to use my own private account, which is easily associated with my employer, say because I work for a large Redmond, Washington-based company which would probably not wish to be associated with my activities. In fact, in order to protect my job, let's just say that I hid behind a pseudonym.
None of these are problems, in that you're not trying to use it for commercial purposes. But you're still a lying cheat and should just photocopy it and post it on all the telephone polls - oh, wait, that's illegal in Seattle.
Anyway, you're exempted. But if you try to fundraise in the spam, you're guilty.
IANAL either. No, I just was praying for lots of "Make Money Fast" spam so I could take those spamsters to court and build that hottub on my roof deck.
I didn't specifically ask a specific person to do it. I just asked to be included on their lists so I could get their money and their house and let them live in the poverty that spamsters so richly (poorly?) deserve...
No, I meant that I have eight email addresses for my two mailing lists, and get spam to all eight of them. So I get to sue you for eight spams sent to a Washington State resident's email, hosted on a Washington State ISP that specifically states on it's main web page that it is owned and operated by a Washington State resident in the physical domain of Washington State.
Which means I get eight judgements against the spamster who was trolling for valid email addresses.
I can't sue for all the list members. But I can pass on the instructions for how to sue to the ones who are Washington State residents, which, since they're email lists for the Pacific Northwest, is about three-fourths of the list members.
Yeah, that means you could be out tens of thousands of dollars from just spamming me eight times. Plus the ISP can get a judgement against you. Plus court costs for each of these.
I'm not a spammer, but WA laws don't apply in the state of FL. Since also its Civil laws, I highly doubt extradiction laws apply and even if they did, the constition clearly says your laws don't apply to me.
Wrong. Just as a corporation based in Maryland can sue your butt off for pirating their software when you live in Florida, even if you bought it in Georgia and then moved to Florida, I can take you to small claims court and win a legal enforceable judgement against you and then attach your assets under common law.
It's illegal to send spam to Washington residents. Or Washington ISPs.
I have to make my mortgage payment. C'mon, you don't need all that money, I do! I've already registered all my email accounts and domain names with Washington State, now just do your UCE duty and send me spam so I can take you to the cleaners!
Sorry, Charlie, this means that if you send spam with forged headers or inactive Reply-to: or From: or implicit take me off this list reply lines or invalid subject header line to any self-identified ISP which has announced that all its subscribers are residents of Washington by reason of commercial location (e.g. eskimo.com resides in Ballard, part of Seattle, Washington, and specifically disallows spam) THEN
you are subject to civil prosecution and all court costs and reasonable fees as detailed in the law.
The charge is per spam email sent. So, when someone spams my email lists, I can collect $400 from them for each spam. And eskimo.com can collect tens of thousands of dollars.
And you are liable when sending any email to me, since all my accounts are registered with the State of Washington email database as belonging to a resident citizen of the State of Washington.
Which means I can sue your butt off in court if you spam me. It is illegal, as the ruling shows, for you to send me email with false or misleading subject or other header lines.
This does not stop you from sending me an email with your true From: line and a valid Subject: line (e.g. Subject: Buy my book of spam tips!) and full correct routing info and valid reply emails. You are also required to drop me from your list of email addresses when I reply to you saying do so, and never ever ever send me spam again or sell or give my email address to another enterprise.
Since I live in Fremont, the Center of the Universe, surrounded by Seattle, I can safely say that:
All your GPS are belong to us.
As we have universal copyrights, these trump any geocache or US copyrights.
Anyone ignoring our artistic and universal copyrights will be located, using Universal GPS of course, and targeted by our rocket. We're not sure what the payload is, but it's sure to be mind-altering.
And, if that's not enough, we still have some UFOs left over from our End of the Millenium Ball. Not even the USAF can intercept those babies...
There are a few reasons why Nintendo, according to all the press releases and annual reports me and my son get, is waiting for Sony and Microsoft to do it first.
The most important reason, and one that has served Nintendo well in the past, is to let the other guys work out the bugs while Nintendo concentrates on getting better games than the other game box makers.
The second reason, and one that also has done well for Nintendo is simple - cost. By waiting for Microsoft, Sony, and their ilk to do all the intro and absorb the development costs, Nintendo can let the dust settle and implement it for a fraction of the cost once workable methods and devices are created. Sure, it misses a quarter or two at intro time, but in return each box makes a profit. And, with proper marketing, e.g. "Pikachu Player-to-Player modules! Buy them now! Trade with your friends!", Nintendo can keep the box price low enough ($200USD) to beat out xBox and the others, and have the players who want the add-on pay a small cost to upgrade; this is only part of the market - cause bad dads like me don't buy stuff that lets their kids play on the Net.
It's like number of registered users. And, for that matter, I couldn't get the article to load, so there's no way for me to have known. Since I couldn't read the article.
Again, who gives us the metrics on the numbers? Are these audited numbers?
I'll give you this, those are fairly impressive counts, though. I remember back when the largest game system had about 10,000 active accounts.
First, are we saying five per cent of all Koreans alive? Or five per cent of all Koreans online? Or five per cent of all Koreans who play games? Or five per cent of all Koreans who use computers at home?
Seriously, I had to keep myself from yawning. The problem is that chip speed is far less important nowadays than it was 2 years ago. The bus speed matters a little bit, and it will be nice, but with recent Intel fiascos, I just don't see the point.
Perhaps I'm wrong, but I was recently pricing computers over at Gateway, since I got my son a copy of Black & White and I can't run it on any of my Linux boxen, so I decided to donate my old Win98 box to a friend and pick up WinME on a box that matches the demand specs of the game. And I looked at all the nice 1.1 GHz Intel chips and then saw that I could buy an 850 MHz AMD chip in a box for about $800 instead of shelling out $1600 for the "faster" Intel chip that I knew wasn't really faster.
So, what I'm saying is - so what? Until Intel finds some way to deliver faster Net access, it's all a bunch of hype about meaningless benchmarks that have no connection with my reality. And I'll still buy Linux for my servers, so I really just don't care.
Slashdot Mirror
Yeah, that was the thing that jumped out from the IDC methodology and said hi for me.
The problem is this - let's look at Rogers Cable, up in Canada, who are putting out a set top box with a version of Linux. It could be BSD too, for all it matters.
The main problem is they may have only five paid copies and hundreds of thousands of boxes running Linux or BSD that they did not pay for a copy of the OS.
It's free software, open source. So long as the industry uses the wrong metrics, asks the wrong questions, they'll continue to underestimate the number of Open Source OS boxen out there.
Let's look at your average Fortune 500 company using Linux. They probably buy 10 licensed copies and a support agreement, but since they standardize on only three PC versions (laptop, desktop, workstation), that's all they need. And they have tens of thousands of PCs running Linux or BSD. They may have only one-third of their PCs running Windows (any flavor) and two-thirds of their PCs running Linux or BSD, but IDC and other industry groups will report that Linux and BSD have less than one percent of the OS share, because they measure only paid OS copies.
You must measure something correctly to be able to make correct decisions. In modern accounting, pollution has no cost, only trying to stop pollution has a cost. So a CEO will try to increase pollution, not decrease it.
Think about it, Skippy the GBA Worm Light. Comes with his own terrarium, you feed him nutrients and he's bioluminescent.
...
Of course, you'll need to get him a worm collar (only $19.95!) and a worm stand (only $19.95!) and a racing jacket (only $24.95, choose your own team logo! - Pikachu Electric Yellow is $29.95).
Operators are standing by
Almost all cars made or for sale in the US have speed limiters which cut out your accellerator when you go faster than 125 mph, anyway, even though you could technically go that fast in certain portions of Montana and not disobey the speed limit.
... do you have enough spare time and energy to challenge it? Or were you really breaking the speed limit and knew it, in which case, do you have any ethical defense?
But since GPS is fairly faulty and jumps a lot, this is likely subject to a court challenge and quite winnable - unless you're going in a straight line from one city to another and stay there for a while.
I used to have a GPS on my Saturn SC2, as part of a pilot project for one of those talking map things, and it would fry out in extreme heat or cold - you had to press the manual reset buttons (which they hid) to get it to work again.
But
Man, don't you hate when you forget to close those href brackets ... darn.
...
Anyway, it should have been Burning Man, but this will teach me to use preview next time
Actually, there's a few tens of thousands of us who go to Burning Man>/a> each year who might find these very useful, since the entire event is held in the desert (on the playa near Black Rock, Nevada).
...
And those hand-cranked flashlights are kind of useful there, too.
Maybe this might also have some kind of military application, too
But I found that, while it was very useful in cutting down on wasted trips, it didn't find me any of my top 5 house choices. Even with virtual tours and online pictures and search databases that listed properties in the area I wanted.
Look, the thing is we all have different things that matter to us in a house. For me, location was important, and ambience, and closeness to a good school, and what kind of neighbors were there.
So, the Net did help me find lots of properties and figure out if I should check them out, and cut my search time in half, but the houses I really wanted I found by driving and walking around the neighborhood area I was interested in.
Because a lot of listings aren't in those large databases. The best was a local firm that listed all their properties with pics and had database searches based on price range and neighborhood, and also included ALL the MLS listings that were online as well, and any pics they had.
But one of the houses I almost bought was because a friend told me one of her neighbors was selling (it's a very nice set of townhouses in a wonderful location). And another was one I found by walking nearby my son's school. And the one I bought I just walked into cause it had an open house sign up and I was walking by.
Maybe, in the future, when we all have WAP cell phone/PDA/wrist watches I can just be driving by and houses in a 2 block radius will just advertise themselves to me, but for now it's a useful tool, but it's not the total solution.
FYI, a MBA takes 2 years full time. A Phd takes on average 4 years full time.
Your mileage may vary. Most of the people I know, many of whom are techies or semi-tech, seem to take between 2.5 and 3.5 years to do their MBAs and between 3 and 4.5 years to do their PhDs.
A lot of that is because of dissertations and all that.
Getting a PhD. usually entails a pretty big sacrific. You research and disseration are always hanging over you. The research process in itself is somehting you have to learn as well. You usually have research and/or teaching assignments taking up lots of time. And even with scholarships, still a major paycut from industry And then there is all the other academic stuff you have to worry about: conferences,articles, committees, seminars....
I was referring to after you get the PhD. The total number of hours spent to get a PhD for someone with drive and tech understanding is only a bit more than that to get an MBA. Figure an extra 8 months to a year if you apply yourself.
But, the bonus is that it can lead you to the more rewarding positions without all the extra hours during the work week, and allows you to really get into the meaty subjects, rather than the grunge of people-oriented stuff.
I say this based on friends with both, and how long it really took them to get through both types of programs.
So, ask yourself - am I really a techie who just wants to tell the big shots the real truth without all those interfering labels and who loves the tech side, or do I want to go the people skills route and become part of management itself. If you are a true techie, the PhD route will be more rewarding. If you are a techie who'd like to switch to management, go the MBA route. If you're not sure, think about a Tech MBA program.
It's a two-edged sword - an MBA is, indeed, a great way to move into management, where your personal communications skills will be stressed more than your technical ability. The hours in tech management are generally longer, but you won't be making more per hour worked in general, although your stress level will go up.
If you're a good manager, you'll be doing all the shielding for your techies to keep the other PHBs and Users from driving them crazy or distracting them from cranking out good code.
Some places offer tech MBAs (e.g. University of Washington), which are probably more rewarding for most techies.
And, yes, you may have to deposit your soul in a safe deposit box until you retire, but that's up to you.
If you want to stay techie, but get more into theoretical stuff, you should consider the PhD route in a tech field - this may be just as rewarding and the hours aren't quite as bad.
Note I say this knowing a number of MBAs who are great people, and my brother's a lawyer (many many hours, pay about the same per hour as mine but I have a life), so it's not just theoretical.
If you get /.ed, the image on your monitor turns into random jumbles, kind of like looking at an etch-a-sketch.
And what happens when you spill coffee on it?
Since MSFT has announced it no longer will support Win95 and other prior code bases, when will MSFT provide the source code under an open source license, so that the legitimate "purchased for life" software users can maintain their own code?
...]
[yeah, I know, but OReilly won't let me post since I'm behind a firewall
Actually, I repeat, I'm not a spammer.
...
But...If I were, I would in turn sue the state of WA for violating the constitution of the United States of a America for trying to exercise juris-prudence in what is clearly federal territory. This will shoot down or limit the WA law quite quickly. I repeat, you can NOT sue me in a STATE court for something that happens across a border, you can ONLY do it in a federal court.
Still wrong. We can sue you, just as anyone with a small software firm registered in one state can sue a licensee who qualifies under civil statute for breaking the license condition. And just like most corporate suits are handled in state courts, for actions which cross state boundaries.
You can run, but you can't hide. We can't hinder legal commerce, but we can regulate how you conduct commerce on an equal basis with all our residents. Like if you are in Portland, Oregon and advertise for a Spiffy Gas Enhancer for cars and someone in Vancouver, Washington buys it by mail or email - they can go to small claims court in Washington state, since they live there.
And in the above case, you get sued for violating Washington State consumer protections. We don't care what your state has for regs, we just care what our state has to protect consumers.
I'm not saying CAUSE regulations are the coolest thing since sliced bread, just that they exist.
And, no matter how you slice it, we Washingtonians can sue your butt for spam, unless you use true headers with non-misleading subject lines. Just truth in advertising, my friend
Suppose, for the nonce, that I chose to protest this law by attempting to notify my neighbors that it does not appear to have a loophole for anonymous political speech. Suppose, further, that I attempted to reach as many of the relevant people as possible by sending out bulk electronic mail. And finally suppose that I decided not to use my own private account, which is easily associated with my employer, say because I work for a large Redmond, Washington-based company which would probably not wish to be associated with my activities. In fact, in order to protect my job, let's just say that I hid behind a pseudonym.
None of these are problems, in that you're not trying to use it for commercial purposes. But you're still a lying cheat and should just photocopy it and post it on all the telephone polls - oh, wait, that's illegal in Seattle.
Anyway, you're exempted. But if you try to fundraise in the spam, you're guilty.
The first story is here, from the Seattle Times.
The second story is here, from the Seattle Post-Intelligencer.
IANAL either. No, I just was praying for lots of "Make Money Fast" spam so I could take those spamsters to court and build that hottub on my roof deck.
...
I didn't specifically ask a specific person to do it. I just asked to be included on their lists so I could get their money and their house and let them live in the poverty that spamsters so richly (poorly?) deserve
No, I meant that I have eight email addresses for my two mailing lists, and get spam to all eight of them. So I get to sue you for eight spams sent to a Washington State resident's email, hosted on a Washington State ISP that specifically states on it's main web page that it is owned and operated by a Washington State resident in the physical domain of Washington State.
Which means I get eight judgements against the spamster who was trolling for valid email addresses.
I can't sue for all the list members. But I can pass on the instructions for how to sue to the ones who are Washington State residents, which, since they're email lists for the Pacific Northwest, is about three-fourths of the list members.
Yeah, that means you could be out tens of thousands of dollars from just spamming me eight times. Plus the ISP can get a judgement against you. Plus court costs for each of these.
Deal with it.
I'm not a spammer, but WA laws don't apply in the state of FL. Since also its Civil laws, I highly doubt extradiction laws apply and even if they did, the constition clearly says your laws don't apply to me.
Wrong. Just as a corporation based in Maryland can sue your butt off for pirating their software when you live in Florida, even if you bought it in Georgia and then moved to Florida, I can take you to small claims court and win a legal enforceable judgement against you and then attach your assets under common law.
It's illegal to send spam to Washington residents. Or Washington ISPs.
Deal with it.
I have to make my mortgage payment. C'mon, you don't need all that money, I do! I've already registered all my email accounts and domain names with Washington State, now just do your UCE duty and send me spam so I can take you to the cleaners!
Operators are standing by!
Sorry, Charlie, this means that if you send spam with forged headers or inactive Reply-to: or From: or implicit take me off this list reply lines or invalid subject header line to any self-identified ISP which has announced that all its subscribers are residents of Washington by reason of commercial location (e.g. eskimo.com resides in Ballard, part of Seattle, Washington, and specifically disallows spam) THEN
you are subject to civil prosecution and all court costs and reasonable fees as detailed in the law.
The charge is per spam email sent. So, when someone spams my email lists, I can collect $400 from them for each spam. And eskimo.com can collect tens of thousands of dollars.
Plus court and collection costs.
And you are liable when sending any email to me, since all my accounts are registered with the State of Washington email database as belonging to a resident citizen of the State of Washington.
Which means I can sue your butt off in court if you spam me. It is illegal, as the ruling shows, for you to send me email with false or misleading subject or other header lines.
This does not stop you from sending me an email with your true From: line and a valid Subject: line (e.g. Subject: Buy my book of spam tips!) and full correct routing info and valid reply emails. You are also required to drop me from your list of email addresses when I reply to you saying do so, and never ever ever send me spam again or sell or give my email address to another enterprise.
It's called opt-out, deal with it.
Since I live in Fremont, the Center of the Universe, surrounded by Seattle, I can safely say that:
...
All your GPS are belong to us.
As we have universal copyrights, these trump any geocache or US copyrights.
Anyone ignoring our artistic and universal copyrights will be located, using Universal GPS of course, and targeted by our rocket. We're not sure what the payload is, but it's sure to be mind-altering.
And, if that's not enough, we still have some UFOs left over from our End of the Millenium Ball. Not even the USAF can intercept those babies
There are a few reasons why Nintendo, according to all the press releases and annual reports me and my son get, is waiting for Sony and Microsoft to do it first.
The most important reason, and one that has served Nintendo well in the past, is to let the other guys work out the bugs while Nintendo concentrates on getting better games than the other game box makers.
The second reason, and one that also has done well for Nintendo is simple - cost. By waiting for Microsoft, Sony, and their ilk to do all the intro and absorb the development costs, Nintendo can let the dust settle and implement it for a fraction of the cost once workable methods and devices are created. Sure, it misses a quarter or two at intro time, but in return each box makes a profit. And, with proper marketing, e.g. "Pikachu Player-to-Player modules! Buy them now! Trade with your friends!", Nintendo can keep the box price low enough ($200USD) to beat out xBox and the others, and have the players who want the add-on pay a small cost to upgrade; this is only part of the market - cause bad dads like me don't buy stuff that lets their kids play on the Net.
It's like number of registered users. And, for that matter, I couldn't get the article to load, so there's no way for me to have known. Since I couldn't read the article.
Again, who gives us the metrics on the numbers? Are these audited numbers?
I'll give you this, those are fairly impressive counts, though. I remember back when the largest game system had about 10,000 active accounts.
First, are we saying five per cent of all Koreans alive? Or five per cent of all Koreans online? Or five per cent of all Koreans who play games? Or five per cent of all Koreans who use computers at home?
...
These are all different numbers
Seriously, I had to keep myself from yawning. The problem is that chip speed is far less important nowadays than it was 2 years ago. The bus speed matters a little bit, and it will be nice, but with recent Intel fiascos, I just don't see the point.
Perhaps I'm wrong, but I was recently pricing computers over at Gateway, since I got my son a copy of Black & White and I can't run it on any of my Linux boxen, so I decided to donate my old Win98 box to a friend and pick up WinME on a box that matches the demand specs of the game. And I looked at all the nice 1.1 GHz Intel chips and then saw that I could buy an 850 MHz AMD chip in a box for about $800 instead of shelling out $1600 for the "faster" Intel chip that I knew wasn't really faster.
So, what I'm saying is - so what? Until Intel finds some way to deliver faster Net access, it's all a bunch of hype about meaningless benchmarks that have no connection with my reality. And I'll still buy Linux for my servers, so I really just don't care.
But it is a cool trade show, I'll give you that.