You are absolutely right on that point. I think something happens to a company when they get used to high margins (IBM, Sun, SGI, ect..) that keeps them from re-entering the lower margin market. IBM bled money for 2 years, Sun has had to drastically change it's pricing model and SGI is on life support.
The key to drawing many bittorrent users is video Quality. If they can get a Hi-Def version of the show online that they can't get via TV then there is a reason to get it from the studio.
A 45 min episode of LOST in 720p Xvid Hi-Def looks GREAT. H.264 would be nice but most computers just can't hack it yet.
SGI's was doomed by keeping to the proprietary hardware model. Sure it was great in the early 90's when graphics chips were MUCH less complex to design, but as soon as the likes of NVIDIA, 3dfx, Matrox, ect. came on the market with mass produced hardware it accelerated the development of these types of chipsets into the commodity. SGI made money off of making expensive custom hardware (IRIX was just another *nix clone) and to a lesser extent (but some would say had a much greater impact) software.
There was just NO way they could justify the same margins on expensive workstation gear when people could buy commodity PC's with Intel/AMD and AGP video cards.
All I have is a dumb CIS degree from a biz college (just so I could have the paper). I've worked as a sysadmin, network administrator, network security consultant and now general IT consultant. I make 77K a year.
Did you try increasing the size? There are two video modes, small and large. Large looked fairly decent (when I tested it a couple of min ago). MUCH better than 320x240 quicktime off of itunes (but then again you can't take it with you)
In the interests of full transparency the news article should state if the author, news organization, or parent of the news organization (if it has one) owns ANY stock in Symantec who makes (as far as I know) the only Mac Anti-virus product.
Hey...I never said is'nt wrong. I just read posts that sound like "hey...look! Gee Gawd! Only GW would ever do something like that!"
Like "executive priv" has never been used before.
Personally, I'm jaded. I've voted both democratic and republican. Both parties get into the white house defend the same policies (basically) when it comes to executive power.
When the next democratic president gets into office you can be SURE that if any precedant has been set by GW, the new president will defend those new rights even if they dumped on the prior administration while running for office.
Look...so many people say Cringley is full of S**T, but where are all those people who said it would be a cold day in Hell when Apple moved to Intel chips? I seem to recall most of them saying if Apple tried it, it would cause the company to go into a tailspin.
All of those predictions so far don't seem to be holding up.
Apple buying Adobe? I don't think it's a matter of IF..but a matter of WHEN. Apple, financially is in better position now then any other time in their history (thanks to the IPOD). By buying Adobe they not only get Photoshop, but also Macromedia and by extension FLASH and Dreamweaver.
Buying Adobe makes sense, it gives them BIG leverage in the Windoze world to make things OS X happy.
Internet2 was NOT supposed to be the "net of the future". It was designed to allow researchers and universities high connectivity for education/research purposes. It's a recreation of what NSFnet was doing back in the 80's before it became a commercial entity.
Internet2 is not designed for or planned for the general public.
How many of you have jacked your monitor as high as it can go and THEN increased the size of the fonts so that they were as large on your monitor before you increased the resolution?
What you find is that the fonts look INCREDIBLY better. Much more like reading paper.
Most video cards and monitors can support MUCH higher resolutions and I'd love to surf the web with my monitor at super high resolutions with fonts to proportion (so that they are highly detailed). Problem is a LOT of web sites break horribly because everything around the fonts are not designed for high resolution screens.
The fact of the matter is, NOT having standardized methods for things like graphical installation of software (like MS installer) is a BIG drag on desktop adoption.
Having so many linux distros is good for competition between distros and innovation, but horrible for commercial software vendors wanting to create products that will be bought by many people.
Graphical installers that pull software from repositories are still (generally) too complicated. I have to hand-hack X11 config files to get multi-monitor configurations to work. Stuff still just does not work "out of the box" as well as windoze in many important respects.
Get ready...if Apple ever decides to use the LINUX kernel (unlikely) it should put a WHOLE lot of pressure on LINUX distros to clean up their acts.
you can flame me now...I have my asbestos fire suit on
"Here is the deal, codeweavers have been working their asses off to get win32 apps to run on linux. Thus far they have barely scratched the surface and can only run like.005% of Windows apps. In fact they are falling behind. How does that possibly help Apple? It doesn't."
Percentages don't matter, what matters are the apps that people run. If they can run the apps that they want, it will be enough.
I had an apple rep show me a beta of Codeweavers Crossover Office working with OS X in a demo 3 weeks ago (Alpha version).
It does not need to run 100% of apps to REALLY be a hit. If the majority of vanilla apps run with little or no issues then I know of MANY People who would dump windows.
What if Apple bought codeweavers? With the Windows API in hand they could probably take their modified codebase and get it running even better than it is now.
With the Windows API in hand (if the cross licensing thingy Cringley says is true) I see no problem with Apple creating a compatibilty "box" environment like we had in early versionf of OS X that ran old OS 9 apps.
This really all depends if the licensing thing is true.....is there ANY evidence of this or is Cringley just making it up?
Hmmm...don't know if the person next to me on the plane would appreciate the puffs of black smoke comming from my rig (hey! Punmonster strikes!). Plus there is the greasy film that would get on the LCD.
Slashdot Mirror
You are absolutely right on that point. I think something happens to a company when they get used to high margins (IBM, Sun, SGI, ect..) that keeps them from re-entering the lower margin market. IBM bled money for 2 years, Sun has had to drastically change it's pricing model and SGI is on life support.
The key to drawing many bittorrent users is video Quality. If they can get a Hi-Def version of the show online that they can't get via TV then there is a reason to get it from the studio.
A 45 min episode of LOST in 720p Xvid Hi-Def looks GREAT. H.264 would be nice but most computers just can't hack it yet.
6250bpi round reel tape drives. I don't know of any Microcomputer system (or mini that is left) that still uses round reel.
:)
Mainframes (old ones and new ones with legacy data requirements) still do (but don't have to)
SGI's was doomed by keeping to the proprietary hardware model. Sure it was great in the early 90's when graphics chips were MUCH less complex to design, but as soon as the likes of NVIDIA, 3dfx, Matrox, ect. came on the market with mass produced hardware it accelerated the development of these types of chipsets into the commodity. SGI made money off of making expensive custom hardware (IRIX was just another *nix clone) and to a lesser extent (but some would say had a much greater impact) software.
There was just NO way they could justify the same margins on expensive workstation gear when people could buy commodity PC's with Intel/AMD and AGP video cards.
Just my opinion of course.
Now I can die.
The Danger is not from POD people it's from CRAB people!
They caved once, now the other muggers are enboldened to try it again.
Moral of the story..When the bully comes after you the FIRST time, defend yourself to the end. Use a baseball bat if nessessary.
"Those who beat their swords into plowshares will plow for those who don't" - Thomas Jefferson
All I have is a dumb CIS degree from a biz college (just so I could have the paper). I've worked as a sysadmin, network administrator, network security consultant and now general IT consultant. I make 77K a year.
I've never needed a cert...why do I need one now?
OK..so there are TWO antivirus products for the mac :) Impressive!
Did you try increasing the size? There are two video modes, small and large. Large looked fairly decent (when I tested it a couple of min ago). MUCH better than 320x240 quicktime off of itunes (but then again you can't take it with you)
In the interests of full transparency the news article should state if the author, news organization, or parent of the news organization (if it has one) owns ANY stock in Symantec who makes (as far as I know) the only Mac Anti-virus product.
Hey...I never said is'nt wrong. I just read posts that sound like "hey...look! Gee Gawd! Only GW would ever do something like that!"
Like "executive priv" has never been used before.
Personally, I'm jaded. I've voted both democratic and republican. Both parties get into the white house defend the same policies (basically) when it comes to executive power.
When the next democratic president gets into office you can be SURE that if any precedant has been set by GW, the new president will defend those new rights even if they dumped on the prior administration while running for office.
I find it funny how people are complaining about this particular tactic NOW. As if GW cooked it up and invented it.
I don't recall people complaining when the clinton administration used it.
Personally I think it sucks without oversight. When spewing this or that about the current administration, have some historical perspective.
Look...so many people say Cringley is full of S**T, but where are all those people who said it would be a cold day in Hell when Apple moved to Intel chips? I seem to recall most of them saying if Apple tried it, it would cause the company to go into a tailspin.
All of those predictions so far don't seem to be holding up.
Apple buying Adobe? I don't think it's a matter of IF..but a matter of WHEN. Apple, financially is in better position now then any other time in their history (thanks to the IPOD). By buying Adobe they not only get Photoshop, but also Macromedia and by extension FLASH and Dreamweaver.
Buying Adobe makes sense, it gives them BIG leverage in the Windoze world to make things OS X happy.
Is'nt that the NERD fraternaity from "Revenge of the Nerds?"
Internet2 was NOT supposed to be the "net of the future". It was designed to allow researchers and universities high connectivity for education/research purposes. It's a recreation of what NSFnet was doing back in the 80's before it became a commercial entity.
Internet2 is not designed for or planned for the general public.
"My crack pipe...My crack pipe!....suck...suck....It's not working right!"
Did you go to the site, if you click on most of the games you will find that what is released is ONLY the source code.
How many of you have jacked your monitor as high as it can go and THEN increased the size of the fonts so that they were as large on your monitor before you increased the resolution?
What you find is that the fonts look INCREDIBLY better. Much more like reading paper.
Most video cards and monitors can support MUCH higher resolutions and I'd love to surf the web with my monitor at super high resolutions with fonts to proportion (so that they are highly detailed). Problem is a LOT of web sites break horribly because everything around the fonts are not designed for high resolution screens.
I love LINUX...use it...endorce it...but...
The fact of the matter is, NOT having standardized methods for things like graphical installation of software (like MS installer) is a BIG drag on desktop adoption.
Having so many linux distros is good for competition between distros and innovation, but horrible for commercial software vendors wanting to create products that will be bought by many people.
Graphical installers that pull software from repositories are still (generally) too complicated. I have to hand-hack X11 config files to get multi-monitor configurations to work. Stuff still just does not work "out of the box" as well as windoze in many important respects.
Get ready...if Apple ever decides to use the LINUX kernel (unlikely) it should put a WHOLE lot of pressure on LINUX distros to clean up their acts.
you can flame me now...I have my asbestos fire suit on
"Here is the deal, codeweavers have been working their asses off to get win32 apps to run on linux. Thus far they have barely scratched the surface and can only run like .005% of Windows apps. In fact they are falling behind. How does that possibly help Apple? It doesn't."
Percentages don't matter, what matters are the apps that people run. If they can run the apps that they want, it will be enough.
I had an apple rep show me a beta of Codeweavers Crossover Office working with OS X in a demo 3 weeks ago (Alpha version).
It does not need to run 100% of apps to REALLY be a hit. If the majority of vanilla apps run with little or no issues then I know of MANY People who would dump windows.
What if Apple bought codeweavers? With the Windows API in hand they could probably take their modified codebase and get it running even better than it is now.
With the Windows API in hand (if the cross licensing thingy Cringley says is true) I see no problem with Apple creating a compatibilty "box" environment like we had in early versionf of OS X that ran old OS 9 apps.
This really all depends if the licensing thing is true.....is there ANY evidence of this or is Cringley just making it up?
Hey! Diesel powered laptop?!
Hmmm...don't know if the person next to me on the plane would appreciate the puffs of black smoke comming from my rig (hey! Punmonster strikes!). Plus there is the greasy film that would get on the LCD.
How do they intend to packet shape these apps when they use encryption so they look like standard encrypted web traffic?