Cash is useless if they don't have a plan for it. The market values Microsoft at 240 billion dollars. The 40 billion in cash is only worth 40 billion dollars. If Microsoft's management can't come up with some reason that the rest of the company is worth 200 billion, the company will continue to lose value and investors will demand changes in leadership. A Microsoft without Ballmer and Gates is Microsoft in name only.
I once got an email marked "low priority" from a soft-spoken accountant. If that man ever sends me anything marked "high priority", I will flee the building.
I know you're trolling, but just for the education of those who think you are insightful, please suggest a succinct name for "personal computers based on the general spec for Microsoft Windows, often including such technologies as PCI, ACPI, DDR SDRAM, Intel processors, etc, but with no specific differentiating factor, usually but not necessarily running a version of Microsoft Windows." Something that fits in nicely to "Mac vs. PC", yet conveys all the details of this subtle distinction. Once upon a time we called this "IBM-compatible", but that became absurd when IBM became a minor player in the market.
You could be arguing that there is no such thing as a Mac; i.e., that it does not make sense to unite Apple's computer products under a single brand name, but you would not argue that by attempting to subvert the typical usage of calling a PC a PC and a Mac a Mac.
I've just disabled the "priority" column in Outlook, as all it tells me is that the email is from a certain person (who shall not be named) who seems to think that everything is urgent.
The disease I'd like to complain about today is the "read receipt". I can only imagine how much time people waste looking up whether I've read their message or not. You can turn that off, too, but some people really go crazy if they don't get their read receipts.
See, I've always assumed that the universe is a gigantic (by our standards) computer simulation running on a machine in some much larger universe. The same sort of principle applies when you run something like Conway's Life.
What I couldn't figure out is what use such a simulation would be, but now I have it -- it's a big ad for the computer that's simulating us. As we speak, there's somebody in a computer store in the REAL universe thinking something like, "well, those are interesting patterns, I guess, but it's pretty expensive..."
Totally. That's what I tell my girlfriend when she's bugging me to play Crystal Chronicles: "I'm sorry, but I need to learn to accept responsibility, so I need to spend my time posting trolls to Slashdot."
The Revolution/Wii seems like a very inconvenient gaming experience
I'm responding to you mostly because this comment fits in so well with the sig I've had for years. But to be on-topic, I suppose none of us have seen this controller in use, but why do you assume that it will be so much more movement than, say, moving a mouse around?
There have been many different experiments involving brain waves and video games, and as far as I know there is not a scientific consensus on what they all mean. The brain waves we measure today are only simplistic gross observations of what is actually a subtle and complex process, so it's difficult to support a claim that brain wave measurements prove anything much.
It's not as if moving your arm is frickin' hard. Next you'll be complaining that you have to push a button to fire the standard cannon in Metroid -- "it has unlimited ammo anyway, so why doesn't the computer just push the button for me?"
Also, what's with this notion that video games are supposed to be "relaxing"? If you want to "veg out", why not just watch TV? Is this the idea that's responsible for unplayable semi-interactive fiction like FFX?
By "truly primitive" you're referring to every trackball ever made, as far as I know. Obviously a ball could be made that detected twisting but I've never even heard of such a thing. It also seems like it would be difficult to twist the ball unless it were large, like a globe. That might be cool, but I'm not sure that it would be more natural or better than the dual-analog setup that the game currently uses.
A trackball wouldn't work for Katamari Damacy. Moving the ball constantly would be extremely annoying and there isn't a way to distinguish turning from strafing. I think it's a stretch to go from "a trackball has a ball" to "a trackball is the best way to move a ball around in a video game."
This is a link to a story on a blog that consists of a link to a story on another blog that doesn't cite any sources. This is an interesting way to create a news story, but I can't figure out how to tag it. "metablogging" came to mind, but that doesn't really seem to sum it up very well. Can anybody think of something better?
It's completely improper to define a "flop" in terms of overall market penetration percentage. If I start a small car company and 0.01% of people on the planet buy my car, I'll be in a pretty good position.
Though I loathe that particular error, I think he has an important idea that reaches to the soul of language. This has little to do with an error that is only slightly above the typographical class.
Language is used between people to discuss ideas and express their emotions to each other. Corporate speak is used for precisely the opposite, to cloud ideas behind a vineer of self assumed intellect.
The problem is that the veneer is an important part of one of society's Big Lies: that people know what they are doing. The truth is that most people, even in technical fields, have no clue what they are doing and never will. Given our economic structure it is necessary to employ these people lest society collapse.
This is most true the higher up the corporate ladder you go. An average executive could go on and on about their qualifications, but nothing they succeed at is actually hard and most of what they fail at is actually easy. How many of you believe that you could have done a better job of running HP than Carly? Personally, I think most of you are right.
For those of you who DO know what you're doing, understand that when people talk in corporatespeak, they are trying to believe that they have skills. There's no way to win by talking corporatespeak back, as it's cleverly designed to prevent people with skills from standing out.
I remain without a solution to the problem that corporatespeak squashes all of my great ideas, but it has occurred to me that possibly I don't know what I'm doing either, so maybe it is for the best.
I think your comments apply best to people who see games as the primary purpose of their computer. For most people games are only one use among many. The hard-core gaming market is not a good place for Apple, as a computer designed for hard-core gamers (with the latest graphics card, etc) will be expensive, noisy, and large.
The mechanism is that more people will have Macs, and perhaps most of them will prefer MacOS, and so they will prefer to run games in MacOS to avoid the hassle of rebooting. Over time they will prefer not to pay for upgrades to Windows if they only play games with it anyway. As this happens they will look for games in the Mac section of the store first, and that will create an economic incentive for Mac games.
Slashdot Mirror
Cash is useless if they don't have a plan for it. The market values Microsoft at 240 billion dollars. The 40 billion in cash is only worth 40 billion dollars. If Microsoft's management can't come up with some reason that the rest of the company is worth 200 billion, the company will continue to lose value and investors will demand changes in leadership. A Microsoft without Ballmer and Gates is Microsoft in name only.
I once got an email marked "low priority" from a soft-spoken accountant. If that man ever sends me anything marked "high priority", I will flee the building.
I know you're trolling, but just for the education of those who think you are insightful, please suggest a succinct name for "personal computers based on the general spec for Microsoft Windows, often including such technologies as PCI, ACPI, DDR SDRAM, Intel processors, etc, but with no specific differentiating factor, usually but not necessarily running a version of Microsoft Windows." Something that fits in nicely to "Mac vs. PC", yet conveys all the details of this subtle distinction. Once upon a time we called this "IBM-compatible", but that became absurd when IBM became a minor player in the market.
You could be arguing that there is no such thing as a Mac; i.e., that it does not make sense to unite Apple's computer products under a single brand name, but you would not argue that by attempting to subvert the typical usage of calling a PC a PC and a Mac a Mac.
I've just disabled the "priority" column in Outlook, as all it tells me is that the email is from a certain person (who shall not be named) who seems to think that everything is urgent.
The disease I'd like to complain about today is the "read receipt". I can only imagine how much time people waste looking up whether I've read their message or not. You can turn that off, too, but some people really go crazy if they don't get their read receipts.
That explains a lot.
See, I've always assumed that the universe is a gigantic (by our standards) computer simulation running on a machine in some much larger universe. The same sort of principle applies when you run something like Conway's Life.
What I couldn't figure out is what use such a simulation would be, but now I have it -- it's a big ad for the computer that's simulating us. As we speak, there's somebody in a computer store in the REAL universe thinking something like, "well, those are interesting patterns, I guess, but it's pretty expensive..."
Totally. That's what I tell my girlfriend when she's bugging me to play Crystal Chronicles: "I'm sorry, but I need to learn to accept responsibility, so I need to spend my time posting trolls to Slashdot."
The Revolution/Wii seems like a very inconvenient gaming experience
I'm responding to you mostly because this comment fits in so well with the sig I've had for years. But to be on-topic, I suppose none of us have seen this controller in use, but why do you assume that it will be so much more movement than, say, moving a mouse around?
There have been many different experiments involving brain waves and video games, and as far as I know there is not a scientific consensus on what they all mean. The brain waves we measure today are only simplistic gross observations of what is actually a subtle and complex process, so it's difficult to support a claim that brain wave measurements prove anything much.
Of course, I'm not a neuroscientist.
It's not as if moving your arm is frickin' hard. Next you'll be complaining that you have to push a button to fire the standard cannon in Metroid -- "it has unlimited ammo anyway, so why doesn't the computer just push the button for me?"
Also, what's with this notion that video games are supposed to be "relaxing"? If you want to "veg out", why not just watch TV? Is this the idea that's responsible for unplayable semi-interactive fiction like FFX?
Whatever.
Or you can keep the sensible interface and just use Apple Lossless.
Just in case anybody is inclined to believe this troll, iPod sales continue to increase.
By "truly primitive" you're referring to every trackball ever made, as far as I know. Obviously a ball could be made that detected twisting but I've never even heard of such a thing. It also seems like it would be difficult to twist the ball unless it were large, like a globe. That might be cool, but I'm not sure that it would be more natural or better than the dual-analog setup that the game currently uses.
A trackball wouldn't work for Katamari Damacy. Moving the ball constantly would be extremely annoying and there isn't a way to distinguish turning from strafing. I think it's a stretch to go from "a trackball has a ball" to "a trackball is the best way to move a ball around in a video game."
Not to repeat myself, but would "Mario Kart" be a better game if you called it "Troll Racer"?
This is a link to a story on a blog that consists of a link to a story on another blog that doesn't cite any sources. This is an interesting way to create a news story, but I can't figure out how to tag it. "metablogging" came to mind, but that doesn't really seem to sum it up very well. Can anybody think of something better?
Would it be a better game if they called it "Troll Racer"?
It's completely improper to define a "flop" in terms of overall market penetration percentage. If I start a small car company and 0.01% of people on the planet buy my car, I'll be in a pretty good position.
"fdisk" has been deprecated. Now you use Disk Administrator, which is better than fdisk was.
Jack Welch is exceptional, and hardly a useful standard. How about Steve Ballmer?
Though I loathe that particular error, I think he has an important idea that reaches to the soul of language. This has little to do with an error that is only slightly above the typographical class.
Language is used between people to discuss ideas and express their emotions to each other. Corporate speak is used for precisely the opposite, to cloud ideas behind a vineer of self assumed intellect.
The problem is that the veneer is an important part of one of society's Big Lies: that people know what they are doing. The truth is that most people, even in technical fields, have no clue what they are doing and never will. Given our economic structure it is necessary to employ these people lest society collapse.
This is most true the higher up the corporate ladder you go. An average executive could go on and on about their qualifications, but nothing they succeed at is actually hard and most of what they fail at is actually easy. How many of you believe that you could have done a better job of running HP than Carly? Personally, I think most of you are right.
For those of you who DO know what you're doing, understand that when people talk in corporatespeak, they are trying to believe that they have skills. There's no way to win by talking corporatespeak back, as it's cleverly designed to prevent people with skills from standing out.
I remain without a solution to the problem that corporatespeak squashes all of my great ideas, but it has occurred to me that possibly I don't know what I'm doing either, so maybe it is for the best.
That would be plain stupid, as the first post can quite easily be redundant.
I think your comments apply best to people who see games as the primary purpose of their computer. For most people games are only one use among many. The hard-core gaming market is not a good place for Apple, as a computer designed for hard-core gamers (with the latest graphics card, etc) will be expensive, noisy, and large.
The mechanism is that more people will have Macs, and perhaps most of them will prefer MacOS, and so they will prefer to run games in MacOS to avoid the hassle of rebooting. Over time they will prefer not to pay for upgrades to Windows if they only play games with it anyway. As this happens they will look for games in the Mac section of the store first, and that will create an economic incentive for Mac games.