When a computer comes with Microsoft Windows XP, Microsoft Internet Explorer, and a subscription to Microsoft Network, what choice does the user have? I feel sorry for those computer users stuck in MSN. It's sort of like being stuck in a walled garden not knowing that there is an entire world outside waiting to be discovered.
What's the practial difference between $999,999,999,999.00 of ad revenue and $999,999,999,998.95 of ad revenue? (My point is that Microsoft simply doesn't care about you and me; they are still laughing all the way to the bank)
So, instead of condemning their business practices, you are condemning their software testing practices. Either way, Microsoft is acting out of malice or incompetence, both of which they are very good at.
There are several significant categories that will be nearly untouched by on-line sales tax. Travel (airlines, hotels, rental cars), Books (much better selection on-line), and non-x86 computers & software (e.g., UNIX secondary markets) are the ones that immediately come to mind. Just think of those things that can't be bought at Wal-Mart, Best Buy, the local car dealer, or the grocery store, and you'll see all sorts of things that will thrive in on-line sales.
The aspects of on-line sales that will be hurt are those that probably never needed to be on-line in the first place. For example, I saw an ad for mail-order firewood a few days ago...what the hell are they thinking?!?
Now the show seems so geared towards an age group far younger than mine, I hardly bother trying to catch it anymore.
Actually, my take on the show is that it went from being entertaining to bright college students who appreciate a good sitcom to being entertaining to insecure lower-tier college students that will laugh because it's supposed to be funny.
I felt bad when watching some of the newer episodes when I simply couldn't laugh at them. I sat and tried to think if there was something I missed...sadly, there didn't seem to be.
Sun really should either stick with what they have or adopt something significantly better than RPM. By this I'm thinking about Red Hat's rpm command. It is among the top examples of feature bloat and convolution among the Open Source software offerings. Sun's pkgadd command, however, is pretty damn simple. If the RPM file format is superior, then that's another matter, but Sun would need their own command implementation in that case.
Frankly I think CDE was getting a little bit outdated.
How? Just because it doesn't have animated options for menus and rarely excersized theme options doesn't make it outdated. CDE really is a good workstation desktop. It is spartan yet functional--it lets people do work without getting too much in the way.
Your argument that CDE is outdated needs more substance. Other than looking pretty, are there features in Gnome that will genuinely postitively impact the day-to-day work of workstation users everywhere?
Sun's move to Gnome is more likely a marketing tactic, where people have come to expect eye-candy from their desktops. This really has nothing to do with the underlying desktop, it is more like an appeal to the superficial masses of end-users out there.
I think the optimistic viewpoint is that the world is heading for an equilibrium. Think European Union only world-wide (I guess the currency would be the Eartho?).
The main problem in the world right now is unequality from place to place. Consider thermodynamics...where does the heat go? In chemistry, where does the higher concentration go? I know it sucks right now, but we really have to hope for the long term (as long as Gulf War II doesn't screw everything up). Once the Earth reaches equilibrium, then all we'll have to worry about is the cheap jobs going to Khronos or something (the real optimists hold out for universe-wide equilibrium).
HT can increase performance a lot more than more cache
I disagree with this, because page faults are are pretty expensive relative to a trip-up in a CPU pipeline. HT is a gimmick that truly benefits few applications. A larger cache is not a gimmick and would benefit nearly all applications. Remember, Intel sells marketing buzzwords more than anything else.
...now I can put Linux on that 256-node NUMA cluster sitting in my spare bedroom...
Seriously, though, this is one of the strengths of the GPL and is proof that the Linux kernel can only advance in time as it sucks up more and more features that will never go away (I hope 'refactoring' is in the developers' vocabularies!).
We also backup all buildings, over the WAN and at night, to a file on the hard drive of another building.
I think this is also common among universities for registrar data. At the univerisity I attended, there was a big-ass HP server at each corner of campus running replicated databases. A disaster would have to take out several square miles of land before all hope was lost for the data. This makes all but atomic or cosmic disasters survivable.
Re:Is there anything that WON'T be $1B by 2005?
on
Advergames
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· Score: 1
I bet if I paid them enough they would say my penis will be a $1 billion industry by 2005.
Interesting, but I'd bet you won't have the first billion-dollar penis. What about the big (pun intended) porn stars who have been prominantly featured (pun intended) in many movies, some of which are re-released due to popular demand (John Holmes, etc.)?
Would porn advertisements provide a whole new in-your-face (pun intended) gaming experience?
Re:I don't necessarily see this as a bad thing...
on
Advergames
·
· Score: 1, Insightful
...price point.
What, exactly, is a price point? Is it different than the price?
The insurance industry, by charging high-premiums for bad IT management, bad security, bad policy, and bad software, could force companies to improve themselves.
This is how insurance companies can actually act on behalf of the consumers. While personal injury lawyers make insurance companies out to be money-grubbing scum-sucking urine-soaked bug feces, we can't forget that those same insurance companies finance car crash testing and safety reporting for the their own and the public's benefit. We also can't forget it is the insurance companies who can actually challenge run-a-way medical costs for their own and the public's benefit. The same goes for construction (flood plains, building codes, etc.), too.
Insurance companies could be Microsoft's worst nightmare.
Microsoft has a very interesting way of taking over something and making it work just well enough to kill what spawned the idea.
Microsoft Linux now implementing all of the kernel API with our new and super tasty value enhancing features...which, of course, are not compatible with the real Linux kernel but are being quickly adopted by all the drooling idiotic Microsoft zombies (er, customers) at a record pace. This is a great awesome thing!!! It's just like their awesome indispensible enhancements to Java, HTML, SOAP, and the new upcoming Microsoft MSTCP-IP Internet of the future!!!
...why not engage Fujitsu to develop kernel code for their SPARC64GP processor line?
From what I've read, the Fujitsu implementations are genuine mainframe-class UNIX boxes. Even more so than the Sun Fire/Blade machines. I'm not sure that many people could afford them (not like individuals can afford UltraSPARC III boxes, anyway). However, there does appear to be a secondary market for SPARC64 (Google search) with prices that are in reach.
Depending on your requirements, perhaps commercial UNIX isn't so bad after all. This isn't intended to be a troll; I'm trying to say that Free GNU/Linux is complementary to the commercial UNIX business model in the real marketplace. Even RedHat is willing to sell you extended support, which furthers this argument (i.e., RedHat is becoming more like the commercial UNIX vendors in time).
Tim also said, "We're right across the street from Microsoft. We sell a lot of stuff to Microsoft people. There's a lot of Linux running at Microsoft. A lot of Microsoft developers prefer to work with Linux."
When given a choice, engineers will choose the best tool rather than follow corporate dogma. This quote speaks volumes.
We got rid of it in favor of Hummingbird's product.
MKS is also a fair option. In fact, I think at least one of the versions of SFU was based on MKS.
Then again, why not just dump Windows and get the real SFU--i.e., Solaris, Linux, BSD, AIX, etc. I always thought twisting Windows to behave like UNIX was kind of dumb.
The same politicians that sold your jobs off through GATT and NAFTA are the same politicians who have to bring a "Made In USA" set around with them just in case they give a speech in a wharehouse where everything says "Made In China".
Yeah, that incident with the boxes was pretty pathetic. Was was even more sad was how poorly it was covered up. Inspires confidence, it does.
I heard education in the US sucked, but it's another thing to see it confirmed.
Well, troll or not, schools in the U.S. are highly varied. For public primary and secondary education (K-12), the quality of the schools is often proportional to the community's property tax income or proximity to a strong university or large industry. I've seen a few public schools in the U.S. that rival private schools in things like science and art. I've seen other schools in the U.S. that are deplorable and barely teach basic reading and math. It all depends whether you are lucky (or rich), but good education does exist in the U.S. if you look around.
Additionally, the universities in the U.S. (even many state-supported schools) are among the best in the world.
dammit, right after I buy a book to finally learn XML in detail, they change the standards.:P
In many respects the buzz about XML is still just that--buzz but no real substance. There is a lot of good XML stuff out there and it is promising, but XML and the standards that surround it are really still very immature. I was very suprised when I saw that XML as a standard is just a few years old and most of the other standards weren't standards until 2001 or 2002!
I think XML and some of the surrounding standards really will revolutionize some aspects of the WWW...just not today nor tomorrow (probably in about five years). I'm very happy right now that I'm on an older project that isn't pushing all the XML-this and XML-that hype, because the standards are still evolving (sort of like J2EE before useful tag libraries or people understood container-managed persistence).
Similarly misleading, the inclusion of the useless "32MB" number.
I think they are trying to put the research into a context the people might understand. They say that one 32MB chip equates to X amount of resources used. Now Average Joe looks inside of his computer and sees Y chips implying that it took X * Y resources to make his computer. This is more for dramatic value than anything else.
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Why would anyone want to visit msn.com anyway?
When a computer comes with Microsoft Windows XP, Microsoft Internet Explorer, and a subscription to Microsoft Network, what choice does the user have? I feel sorry for those computer users stuck in MSN. It's sort of like being stuck in a walled garden not knowing that there is an entire world outside waiting to be discovered.
Microsoft will notice the lack of ad revenue.
What's the practial difference between $999,999,999,999.00 of ad revenue and $999,999,999,998.95 of ad revenue? (My point is that Microsoft simply doesn't care about you and me; they are still laughing all the way to the bank)
i have a feeling this is a mistake of some sort.
So, instead of condemning their business practices, you are condemning their software testing practices. Either way, Microsoft is acting out of malice or incompetence, both of which they are very good at.
There are several significant categories that will be nearly untouched by on-line sales tax. Travel (airlines, hotels, rental cars), Books (much better selection on-line), and non-x86 computers & software (e.g., UNIX secondary markets) are the ones that immediately come to mind. Just think of those things that can't be bought at Wal-Mart, Best Buy, the local car dealer, or the grocery store, and you'll see all sorts of things that will thrive in on-line sales.
The aspects of on-line sales that will be hurt are those that probably never needed to be on-line in the first place. For example, I saw an ad for mail-order firewood a few days ago...what the hell are they thinking?!?
Now the show seems so geared towards an age group far younger than mine, I hardly bother trying to catch it anymore.
Actually, my take on the show is that it went from being entertaining to bright college students who appreciate a good sitcom to being entertaining to insecure lower-tier college students that will laugh because it's supposed to be funny.
I felt bad when watching some of the newer episodes when I simply couldn't laugh at them. I sat and tried to think if there was something I missed...sadly, there didn't seem to be.
an RPM like interface
Sun really should either stick with what they have or adopt something significantly better than RPM. By this I'm thinking about Red Hat's rpm command. It is among the top examples of feature bloat and convolution among the Open Source software offerings. Sun's pkgadd command, however, is pretty damn simple. If the RPM file format is superior, then that's another matter, but Sun would need their own command implementation in that case.
Frankly I think CDE was getting a little bit outdated.
How? Just because it doesn't have animated options for menus and rarely excersized theme options doesn't make it outdated. CDE really is a good workstation desktop. It is spartan yet functional--it lets people do work without getting too much in the way.
Your argument that CDE is outdated needs more substance. Other than looking pretty, are there features in Gnome that will genuinely postitively impact the day-to-day work of workstation users everywhere?
Sun's move to Gnome is more likely a marketing tactic, where people have come to expect eye-candy from their desktops. This really has nothing to do with the underlying desktop, it is more like an appeal to the superficial masses of end-users out there.
I liked it because of all of the gaping security holes [securityfocus.com] in tooltalk that take Sun forever to patch whenever they crop up.
Well, hopefully no one is running ToolTalk and CDE on their servers. It isn't needed and just eats up useful virtual memory.
I think the optimistic viewpoint is that the world is heading for an equilibrium. Think European Union only world-wide (I guess the currency would be the Eartho?).
The main problem in the world right now is unequality from place to place. Consider thermodynamics...where does the heat go? In chemistry, where does the higher concentration go? I know it sucks right now, but we really have to hope for the long term (as long as Gulf War II doesn't screw everything up). Once the Earth reaches equilibrium, then all we'll have to worry about is the cheap jobs going to Khronos or something (the real optimists hold out for universe-wide equilibrium).
HT can increase performance a lot more than more cache
I disagree with this, because page faults are are pretty expensive relative to a trip-up in a CPU pipeline. HT is a gimmick that truly benefits few applications. A larger cache is not a gimmick and would benefit nearly all applications. Remember, Intel sells marketing buzzwords more than anything else.
...now I can put Linux on that 256-node NUMA cluster sitting in my spare bedroom...
Seriously, though, this is one of the strengths of the GPL and is proof that the Linux kernel can only advance in time as it sucks up more and more features that will never go away (I hope 'refactoring' is in the developers' vocabularies!).
We also backup all buildings, over the WAN and at night, to a file on the hard drive of another building.
I think this is also common among universities for registrar data. At the univerisity I attended, there was a big-ass HP server at each corner of campus running replicated databases. A disaster would have to take out several square miles of land before all hope was lost for the data. This makes all but atomic or cosmic disasters survivable.
I bet if I paid them enough they would say my penis will be a $1 billion industry by 2005.
Interesting, but I'd bet you won't have the first billion-dollar penis. What about the big (pun intended) porn stars who have been prominantly featured (pun intended) in many movies, some of which are re-released due to popular demand (John Holmes, etc.)?
Would porn advertisements provide a whole new in-your-face (pun intended) gaming experience?
...price point.
What, exactly, is a price point? Is it different than the price?
The insurance industry, by charging high-premiums for bad IT management, bad security, bad policy, and bad software, could force companies to improve themselves.
This is how insurance companies can actually act on behalf of the consumers. While personal injury lawyers make insurance companies out to be money-grubbing scum-sucking urine-soaked bug feces, we can't forget that those same insurance companies finance car crash testing and safety reporting for the their own and the public's benefit. We also can't forget it is the insurance companies who can actually challenge run-a-way medical costs for their own and the public's benefit. The same goes for construction (flood plains, building codes, etc.), too.
Insurance companies could be Microsoft's worst nightmare.
When a company buys insurance they are 100% guarenteed to recover losses from a crack.
What is the value of a lost reputation? What is the value of a system administrator that built that reputation?
Insurance is for the short-sighted.
Microsoft has a very interesting way of taking over something and making it work just well enough to kill what spawned the idea.
Microsoft Linux now implementing all of the kernel API with our new and super tasty value enhancing features...which, of course, are not compatible with the real Linux kernel but are being quickly adopted by all the drooling idiotic Microsoft zombies (er, customers) at a record pace. This is a great awesome thing!!! It's just like their awesome indispensible enhancements to Java, HTML, SOAP, and the new upcoming Microsoft MSTCP-IP Internet of the future!!!
...why not engage Fujitsu to develop kernel code for their SPARC64GP processor line?
From what I've read, the Fujitsu implementations are genuine mainframe-class UNIX boxes. Even more so than the Sun Fire/Blade machines. I'm not sure that many people could afford them (not like individuals can afford UltraSPARC III boxes, anyway). However, there does appear to be a secondary market for SPARC64 (Google search) with prices that are in reach.
Depending on your requirements, perhaps commercial UNIX isn't so bad after all. This isn't intended to be a troll; I'm trying to say that Free GNU/Linux is complementary to the commercial UNIX business model in the real marketplace. Even RedHat is willing to sell you extended support, which furthers this argument (i.e., RedHat is becoming more like the commercial UNIX vendors in time).
Tim also said, "We're right across the street from Microsoft. We sell a lot of stuff to Microsoft people. There's a lot of Linux running at Microsoft. A lot of Microsoft developers prefer to work with Linux."
When given a choice, engineers will choose the best tool rather than follow corporate dogma. This quote speaks volumes.
We got rid of it in favor of Hummingbird's product.
MKS is also a fair option. In fact, I think at least one of the versions of SFU was based on MKS.
Then again, why not just dump Windows and get the real SFU--i.e., Solaris, Linux, BSD, AIX, etc. I always thought twisting Windows to behave like UNIX was kind of dumb.
The same politicians that sold your jobs off through GATT and NAFTA are the same politicians who have to bring a "Made In USA" set around with them just in case they give a speech in a wharehouse where everything says "Made In China".
Yeah, that incident with the boxes was pretty pathetic. Was was even more sad was how poorly it was covered up. Inspires confidence, it does.
I heard education in the US sucked, but it's another thing to see it confirmed.
Well, troll or not, schools in the U.S. are highly varied. For public primary and secondary education (K-12), the quality of the schools is often proportional to the community's property tax income or proximity to a strong university or large industry. I've seen a few public schools in the U.S. that rival private schools in things like science and art. I've seen other schools in the U.S. that are deplorable and barely teach basic reading and math. It all depends whether you are lucky (or rich), but good education does exist in the U.S. if you look around.
Additionally, the universities in the U.S. (even many state-supported schools) are among the best in the world.
dammit, right after I buy a book to finally learn XML in detail, they change the standards. :P
In many respects the buzz about XML is still just that--buzz but no real substance. There is a lot of good XML stuff out there and it is promising, but XML and the standards that surround it are really still very immature. I was very suprised when I saw that XML as a standard is just a few years old and most of the other standards weren't standards until 2001 or 2002!
I think XML and some of the surrounding standards really will revolutionize some aspects of the WWW...just not today nor tomorrow (probably in about five years). I'm very happy right now that I'm on an older project that isn't pushing all the XML-this and XML-that hype, because the standards are still evolving (sort of like J2EE before useful tag libraries or people understood container-managed persistence).
Similarly misleading, the inclusion of the useless "32MB" number.
I think they are trying to put the research into a context the people might understand. They say that one 32MB chip equates to X amount of resources used. Now Average Joe looks inside of his computer and sees Y chips implying that it took X * Y resources to make his computer. This is more for dramatic value than anything else.