"Clearly their mark-up on Windows is pretty huge, given that they don't need to be making lots of money on every single copy."
Clearly this is the world of software as opposed to hardware. That's about the only thing that the details you've mentioned imply. The cost of mass-producing CD's and packaging (plus printing of that ever-so-pretty license) is minimal.
You may be right that Microsoft's using it's monopoly to make ridiculous profits, not arguing that bit. I'm juts saying that your argument doesn't automatically support that theory. Besides, the higher MS's prices, the lower the barrier of entry to competitors. MS's monopoly is that of a de-facto standard, not a "you can't use our rails/network/infastructure."
Thought I should chime in, here. I used to use Snapstream for capturing shows I wanted to watch. Eventually I replaced it with a Replay. No regrets really, but it was a different animal.
"1) Does your PC have to be in the same room as your TV."
Only if you want to watch on the TV. Watching on the computer was fine for me, though. I went on several business trips, each time I had a bunch of shows queued up ready to watch.
"2) Does your PC have to have somebody logged in? In other words can it run as a service under W2K."
Actually I don't remember. I think it does run as a service, but I wouldn't swear on my soul over it. I had a dedicated machine for it. It's not something you want running while you have a game or something playing. (Maybe if I had a dual proc machine for it...)
Frankly, I think there is room for both a TiVo and a Snapstream (or similar) system. The TiVo is great for catching those shows you definitely want to watch within a few days of capturing it. The Snapstream system, though, was much better for archival of shows. I don't expect many would find that all that interesting, but boy I sure did. When I first got the itch to try it, I found out that Quantum Leap was on at 4pm. DOH! I'm at the office at 4! A couple of weeks after I found that out, I noticed that the reruns would be starting over again from season 1. SWEET. So I set up the machine to record at a respectable data rate, then just let it record. When time permitted, I started watching the episodes in order from the beginning. Could I do that with the Replay? Eh maybe. The thing is, though, I don't have a whole heck of a lot of control over how small the files end up being. With the Snapstream, though, I had it doing roughly 300kbits a second at 320 by 240. A little blocky? Sure. A little blurry? Sure. Worse than VHS? Yeah somewhat. You'd be surprised how quick you get used to it, though, especially when the story's so engaging. I could fit approximately four eps per CD. I had a large hard drive so that wasn't an issue. Before long, I had something like 12 gigs of ALMOST every single episode of Quantum Leap. (Got a hell of a lot of MST3K and Enterprise for a while, too..)
The machine was Win2k. Make all the jokes you like about the stability of Windows, but that thing stayed up an average of 3 months, capturing video all the time. Eventually, though, the sound-driver gave up, and I'd have to reboot the machine. Oh well. Linux it is not, but it was more than acceptable, and I had to do very little fiddling to make everything work.
I wish I still had it today. Unfortunately, I just haven't had time to tinker with it. It'll probably be resurrected before too long, though. I'm finding more and more shows I'd like to watch.
Sorry for rambling here. Just brought up some fond memories here. I hope I can figure out how to get a PC talking to the Digital Cable box so I can enjoy the broader content.
"And this old box 1) "booted" immediately, just turn it on, 2) didn't get viruses, 3) didn't leak your credit card number to a script kiddy in Russia."
It also wasn't very satisfactory in the porn department, either.
"The joystick was awful, I always found it hard to use and that it lacked buttons (only has 1). The paddle however was cool."
Back in the day, my dad worked at K-Mart as an electronics salesman. I was not the most behaved little boy. It scared the hell out of me whenever he talked about bringing a paddle home.
Heh. Actually, an NT bluescreen can be quite useful. It tells you where it farted and why. That's how I found out that my dual Dell machine didn't like running at 2x AGP. Cranked it down to 1X and it ran smooth as silk. I expected more of Dell, but it was one of the first machines to use 2X AGP.
Thanks to the invention of TiVo and the VCR, people can play these games for hours on end. Frankly, in my Quake days, I did the same thing. I found that between 7pm and 9pm was the ideal time to get on for the particular servers I visited, everything else was put on hold.
This statement could be true, but I'm not sure I'd quite say that it's eating too heavily into TV. I can't speak for any household but my own, but when work or games interfere with my watching TV, other members of the family suddenly take an interest in it. Did TV go down or up?
Sorry Sony, but people still want to watch their favorite shows.
"Why can't car companies make an electric car that doesn't look like a bad futuristic science fiction movie?"
They're trying to appeal to early adopters. Somebody else replied that Honda has an electric version of the Civic that's virtually indistinct from the petrol model. Unfortunately, it's tough to make it the 'hip thing to do' when you make a car with such amazing fuel efficiency when you don't spot other people driving them.
I'm not saying that electric videos should look like something from an 80's flick, but making them distinct is something that helps get more of them out there. I can't help but think that an Apple designed car would sell like hotcakes to the Slashdot crowd. How long after that before they start becoming main-stream, just like the iPod?
Personally, I'd settle for a T-bird with a red light moving back and forth on the grill.
I interviewed for a web-admin job a few years ago. They asked me "How would you troubleshoot a blue screen of death?" With a smile on my face, I replied "I'd press F1 and ask Clippy!" Ah we all had a good chuckle at that. Heh. Didn't get the job, though.
I named a computer 'BUTTHEAD' once. It was the mail server. Unfortunately, this was my first mail server, and when I first built it it became an open relay. (Yes, it was Exchange. Bite me, I'm not a sysadmin.) We were blacklisted from a site. The CEO came into my office and said I had to change the name of the server immediately because the term 'BUTTHEAD' was offensive, and we were getting filtered for it. I just rolled with it, figured it was better that he the name of the server was the problem, as opposed to creating a security risk.
On a brighter note, shortly after they hired a full-time sysadmin once again!
"Is it just me, or is the concept of the Xbox 2 not having a hard-drive seem possible as a direct influence of piracy?"
No, not really. I think it had more to do with taking a loss on each unit and nobody making that effective of use of the drive. Piracy might be a distant 3rd.
Slashdot Mirror
"Why would I want to pay for an inferior, insecure product when I can get Linux for free? "
Because some of us who use computers do things outside of browsing Slashdot?
"Now how is MS able to pay for this generosity?
1. They abused their monopoly and are arguably paying for this kind of thing with their ill gotten gains.
2. They're just a good company. *snicker*"
3.) A CD is cheap to burn and a license is cheap to print.
"Clearly their mark-up on Windows is pretty huge, given that they don't need to be making lots of money on every single copy."
Clearly this is the world of software as opposed to hardware. That's about the only thing that the details you've mentioned imply. The cost of mass-producing CD's and packaging (plus printing of that ever-so-pretty license) is minimal.
You may be right that Microsoft's using it's monopoly to make ridiculous profits, not arguing that bit. I'm juts saying that your argument doesn't automatically support that theory. Besides, the higher MS's prices, the lower the barrier of entry to competitors. MS's monopoly is that of a de-facto standard, not a "you can't use our rails/network/infastructure."
"With the Apple, IBM, Next or Be equivalents we would be considerably FARTHER than we are today. "
Bullshit. This could only be true if Microsoft was always a monoply.
.. like the encyclopedia business has some competition. Perhaps they should innovate?
"Macs - the environmentally friendly choice!"
Man... 4 or 5 jokes popped in to my head with that line.
"Anyone got a mirror?"
I tried the mirror, but all I see is the unshaven face of an unemployeed IT worker.
"Sorry, went to download the demo- and it started putting .net on my computer.. I'll pass for now. "
Yeah! Billy's getting his tentacles everywhere! Well not HERE!!
There, that should recover some of my karma lost for that untimely Mac joke I made earlier.
Thought I should chime in, here. I used to use Snapstream for capturing shows I wanted to watch. Eventually I replaced it with a Replay. No regrets really, but it was a different animal.
"1) Does your PC have to be in the same room as your TV."
Only if you want to watch on the TV. Watching on the computer was fine for me, though. I went on several business trips, each time I had a bunch of shows queued up ready to watch.
"2) Does your PC have to have somebody logged in? In other words can it run as a service under W2K."
Actually I don't remember. I think it does run as a service, but I wouldn't swear on my soul over it. I had a dedicated machine for it. It's not something you want running while you have a game or something playing. (Maybe if I had a dual proc machine for it...)
Frankly, I think there is room for both a TiVo and a Snapstream (or similar) system. The TiVo is great for catching those shows you definitely want to watch within a few days of capturing it. The Snapstream system, though, was much better for archival of shows. I don't expect many would find that all that interesting, but boy I sure did. When I first got the itch to try it, I found out that Quantum Leap was on at 4pm. DOH! I'm at the office at 4! A couple of weeks after I found that out, I noticed that the reruns would be starting over again from season 1. SWEET. So I set up the machine to record at a respectable data rate, then just let it record. When time permitted, I started watching the episodes in order from the beginning. Could I do that with the Replay? Eh maybe. The thing is, though, I don't have a whole heck of a lot of control over how small the files end up being. With the Snapstream, though, I had it doing roughly 300kbits a second at 320 by 240. A little blocky? Sure. A little blurry? Sure. Worse than VHS? Yeah somewhat. You'd be surprised how quick you get used to it, though, especially when the story's so engaging. I could fit approximately four eps per CD. I had a large hard drive so that wasn't an issue. Before long, I had something like 12 gigs of ALMOST every single episode of Quantum Leap. (Got a hell of a lot of MST3K and Enterprise for a while, too..)
The machine was Win2k. Make all the jokes you like about the stability of Windows, but that thing stayed up an average of 3 months, capturing video all the time. Eventually, though, the sound-driver gave up, and I'd have to reboot the machine. Oh well. Linux it is not, but it was more than acceptable, and I had to do very little fiddling to make everything work.
I wish I still had it today. Unfortunately, I just haven't had time to tinker with it. It'll probably be resurrected before too long, though. I'm finding more and more shows I'd like to watch.
Sorry for rambling here. Just brought up some fond memories here. I hope I can figure out how to get a PC talking to the Digital Cable box so I can enjoy the broader content.
"And this old box 1) "booted" immediately, just turn it on, 2) didn't get viruses, 3) didn't leak your credit card number to a script kiddy in Russia."
It also wasn't very satisfactory in the porn department, either.
"The joystick was awful, I always found it hard to use and that it lacked buttons (only has 1). The paddle however was cool."
Back in the day, my dad worked at K-Mart as an electronics salesman. I was not the most behaved little boy. It scared the hell out of me whenever he talked about bringing a paddle home.
Breakout was fun, though.
Heh. Actually, an NT bluescreen can be quite useful. It tells you where it farted and why. That's how I found out that my dual Dell machine didn't like running at 2x AGP. Cranked it down to 1X and it ran smooth as silk. I expected more of Dell, but it was one of the first machines to use 2X AGP.
I stand corrected. Sorry bout that. :)
Thanks to the invention of TiVo and the VCR, people can play these games for hours on end. Frankly, in my Quake days, I did the same thing. I found that between 7pm and 9pm was the ideal time to get on for the particular servers I visited, everything else was put on hold.
This statement could be true, but I'm not sure I'd quite say that it's eating too heavily into TV. I can't speak for any household but my own, but when work or games interfere with my watching TV, other members of the family suddenly take an interest in it. Did TV go down or up?
Sorry Sony, but people still want to watch their favorite shows.
"Send your emails direct to LucasArts people."
I wonder what would happen if people started mailing $25 checks to LucasArts. "We'll pay you the other half the moment the game is released."
Excited? I was terrified! I started looking for an apartment building with underground parking!
"Why can't car companies make an electric car that doesn't look like a bad futuristic science fiction movie?"
They're trying to appeal to early adopters. Somebody else replied that Honda has an electric version of the Civic that's virtually indistinct from the petrol model. Unfortunately, it's tough to make it the 'hip thing to do' when you make a car with such amazing fuel efficiency when you don't spot other people driving them.
I'm not saying that electric videos should look like something from an 80's flick, but making them distinct is something that helps get more of them out there. I can't help but think that an Apple designed car would sell like hotcakes to the Slashdot crowd. How long after that before they start becoming main-stream, just like the iPod?
Personally, I'd settle for a T-bird with a red light moving back and forth on the grill.
I interviewed for a web-admin job a few years ago. They asked me "How would you troubleshoot a blue screen of death?" With a smile on my face, I replied "I'd press F1 and ask Clippy!" Ah we all had a good chuckle at that. Heh. Didn't get the job, though.
I named a computer 'BUTTHEAD' once. It was the mail server. Unfortunately, this was my first mail server, and when I first built it it became an open relay. (Yes, it was Exchange. Bite me, I'm not a sysadmin.) We were blacklisted from a site. The CEO came into my office and said I had to change the name of the server immediately because the term 'BUTTHEAD' was offensive, and we were getting filtered for it. I just rolled with it, figured it was better that he the name of the server was the problem, as opposed to creating a security risk.
On a brighter note, shortly after they hired a full-time sysadmin once again!
"Since it's just a hard drive with a CF interface, it will be much slower than actual flash memory. "
Does that mean that it would survive more read/writes, though? Pardon my naievety, I'm not up to speed on micro-drives.
"Maybe they could sell the parts in a box and let consumers put them together? It takes time to assemble them, hence the shortage. "
And a small handful of Linux users rejoice!
"Is it just me, or is the concept of the Xbox 2 not having a hard-drive seem possible as a direct influence of piracy?"
No, not really. I think it had more to do with taking a loss on each unit and nobody making that effective of use of the drive. Piracy might be a distant 3rd.
"So what you're saying is that Microsoft is totally abandoning their online strategy?"
What? How does not having an HD mean they're abandoning online strategy>
Dun wanna. I'm happy buying stuff. Especially after they have a demo to play.
You go ahead and expose yourself to trojans and half-cracked software.
"Re:Going Gold (Score:0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 04, @08:51PM (#8472503)
Thats cause you are a computer noob."
It's hard to take being called a 'computer noob' seriously by somebody who doesn't know how to log in.