I looked long and hard at investing in @Home since they had a dominant position and just kept getting cheaper. The biggest problem is that all their contracts are up in the next year or two. So even if they were making money hand over fist now, there's no long term business. They won't get such a good deal as before when there was no market and they were giving away huge blocks of stock (@home was largely given to the major cable providers to get them to use it initially). Comcast and Cox (two very large providers) have already cancelled their contracts effective December 7. (Funny those press releases from a year ago extolling their relationship to 2006).
Plus looking at their financial announcement, they're only getting about $15/month/subscriber for mail/news/DNS/long-haul links. The rest goes to the cable company which provides marketing/installation/technical support/local loop (for the gripers -- most of their lame tech support is at the local cable company -- mine is incompetent but friendly and quick to answer the phone). Now that long-haul links are cheap and they're on the ropes with close sibling AT&T Broadband you can imagine what the renewal rates will be.
Speaking of Atari 2600s, there's a whole group of people dedicated to classic gaming consoles (these computers are actually still useful). There's even Classic Gamer magazine . I focus on Intellivision, ColecoVision, and Atari 5200 since they're somewhat rare, in the nostalgia range of guys like me who have money to buy the cartridges I couldn't afford when 12, and have decent enough graphics/gameplay to be playable today.
Most interesting is that a niche market of game designers for these ancient games has started and are publishing a couple games a year.
The argument that code signing is bad is entirely specious. I don't know how many times I've messed up my own machines by installing beta hardware drivers. Fortunately, I have the knowledge to fix it. My clients on the other hand call me:)
All code signing does is warn the user (earlier versions actually blocked the install and I believe that can be set for enterprise use) of the potential consequences of their actions and recommend they check the vendors web site. Click install anyway and you're set to go. You can knock Windows compatibility testing all you want (slow, expensive, somewhat pointless come to mind) but when you see the garbage that many second and third tier hardware vendors produce without it its a long time coming.
Real must have gotten used to Microsoft pushing Media Player by this point -- I doubt Photoshop is quaking at a souped up Microsoft Paint. In former years, we called the arduous hoops competitors had to jump through to compete against these powerhouses software installation.
Dan Gillmor needs to stick with the key arguments (how online registration will be enforced, Java, Passport) and quit trying to pad his laundry list.
My wife always complains that I watch ads on shows I tape with my VCR -- the reason is that I almost always read at the same time and reading during the ads keeps sufficient momentum to allow reading during the slow parts of the show.
Slashdot Mirror
The above message is a good explanation.
I looked long and hard at investing in @Home since they had a dominant position and just kept getting cheaper. The biggest problem is that all their contracts are up in the next year or two. So even if they were making money hand over fist now, there's no long term business. They won't get such a good deal as before when there was no market and they were giving away huge blocks of stock (@home was largely given to the major cable providers to get them to use it initially). Comcast and Cox (two very large providers) have already cancelled their contracts effective December 7. (Funny those press releases from a year ago extolling their relationship to 2006).
Plus looking at their financial announcement, they're only getting about $15/month/subscriber for mail/news/DNS/long-haul links. The rest goes to the cable company which provides marketing/installation/technical support/local loop (for the gripers -- most of their lame tech support is at the local cable company -- mine is incompetent but friendly and quick to answer the phone). Now that long-haul links are cheap and they're on the ropes with close sibling AT&T Broadband you can imagine what the renewal rates will be.
Bangback
Speaking of Atari 2600s, there's a whole group of people dedicated to classic gaming consoles (these computers are actually still useful). There's even Classic Gamer magazine . I focus on Intellivision, ColecoVision, and Atari 5200 since they're somewhat rare, in the nostalgia range of guys like me who have money to buy the cartridges I couldn't afford when 12, and have decent enough graphics/gameplay to be playable today. Most interesting is that a niche market of game designers for these ancient games has started and are publishing a couple games a year.
The argument that code signing is bad is entirely specious. I don't know how many times I've messed up my own machines by installing beta hardware drivers. Fortunately, I have the knowledge to fix it. My clients on the other hand call me :)
All code signing does is warn the user (earlier versions actually blocked the install and I believe that can be set for enterprise use) of the potential consequences of their actions and recommend they check the vendors web site. Click install anyway and you're set to go. You can knock Windows compatibility testing all you want (slow, expensive, somewhat pointless come to mind) but when you see the garbage that many second and third tier hardware vendors produce without it its a long time coming.
Real must have gotten used to Microsoft pushing Media Player by this point -- I doubt Photoshop is quaking at a souped up Microsoft Paint. In former years, we called the arduous hoops competitors had to jump through to compete against these powerhouses software installation.
Dan Gillmor needs to stick with the key arguments (how online registration will be enforced, Java, Passport) and quit trying to pad his laundry list.
My wife always complains that I watch ads on shows I tape with my VCR -- the reason is that I almost always read at the same time and reading during the ads keeps sufficient momentum to allow reading during the slow parts of the show.