It wasn't a flop - it made a lot of money for a lot of people (programmers and companies specializing in Y2K). Flops don't tend to do that and how would we measure the "success" or "failure" of Y2K? Lack of problems that developed afterward means failures?
Also lack of problems doesn't mean it was all hype. (I like to think that the raised alarm saved problems later on, but I have severe doubts about whether it was worth the worry or hype it garnered.)
If Linux goes mainstream (and this is a great possibility in many countries not Europe/US) there is less to tie it to the x86 family as many things can just be recompiled.
But I don't really bet on the x86 being supplanted soon - even Intel couldn't do it. However, I don't see it lasting forever either.
When the gains for other designs are really a magnitude of an order greater than the current design, people will migrate. So far, other prospects were better, but only on the same scale, nothing outrageous better.
Today's announcement if the other labels go for it means that they have failed!!! failed!!!! FAILED!!!!!!!...at this very moment chairs are being lifted into orbit from Redmond.
Wow, there's a new business model here!
1. Strap payload to chair. 2. Place chair near Ballmer. 3. Thwart one of Microsoft's business plans. 3. Profit!
Consumer Reports gives it pretty poor ratings gives many cheaper more conventional vacs better ratings. Maybe their tests are off, or like an iPod - it simply gives the user a better experience while being technically inferior in some places.
I usually trust CR's ratings in several categories, but I have yet to put together how the vacuum revolutionized the industry (just look at the models offered in Walmart/Target/Kmart vs 10 yrs back - they are all Dyson copies now) with its poor showing.
Maybe it's the vacuum, or maybe it's the magazine that is at fault.
How come aren't there any diesel hybrids available? They should provide even more mpg than a prius.
While I'm thinking about it, why aren't the car engines run like the train engines, with the diesel motor running at a more or less constant rate refueling the batteries that run the electric motors that actually turn the wheels - the diesel engine could be much smaller than normal because it won't have to peak to provide power - just a nice steady constant - wouldn't even have to be a normal 4 stroke engine - it could be a stirling engine that is highly efficient but has problems speeding up - though Ford managed to get it's 0-60 speed down to 17 seconds while experimenting with alternate engines during the 70s oil crisis - making it's marriage to this application ideal.
Any thoughts on this? I admit I don't have much knowledge in this area and probably missed something very basic that is wrong with the idea.
You can still get a decent job with important benefits (health insurance) and security - be a teacher in a good (rich) school district or work for the government. I'm not kidding.
BTW, I wonder how many overpaid executives got laid off...
It looks like America is trying to bolster its economy by trying to take IP to a whole new level. There must be a school of thought wholly alien to me, that thinks that if 1 patent is good, 10 must be even better!
It might be that the U.S. is trying to bolster its position in the world by trying to a mass land grab at IP in the light of its waning influence/superpower status with China's dominance in the horizon.
And the steps we are taking as a nation are the absolute worst ones - instead of fostering innovation by demanding science/math be emphasized in the classrooms and good research being funded - we are making it easy for large corporations and patent trolls to stifle us all.
You run the risk of having consumers turn to the Xbox360 instead because 3 months after Christmas is a long time to wait for a console.
I don't know if that is what Nintendo did... but it would seem short sighted to lose a customer over the life of this product and reaping in game sales just to have better numbers in one quarter.
Keep a small Windows partition around. Edit the grub conf before you send it in to have it boot windows automatically with no delay. Get it back and use a live cd to edit the grub script again back to letting Ubuntu boot by default.
Hard drive capacity growth has slowed the last years in notebooks, they just haven't been increasing in size that fast as in the early 00s. I think flash will surpass notebook harddrives in size within 2-3 years. As it is, 64GB is in the same magnitude of existing typical notebook drives now, just halfway down on the scale.
The price may or not go down enough within that time period to kick out harddrives completely - in which case we'll just see hybrid drives take over.
Pricewatch.com lists 8gb for around $80 and 16GB for about $160.
So lets double the prices for whatever, and we are talking about $2500 of flash. Yes, too expensive to be a component on a notebook today, but really, the prices on this stuff is sinking.
Read the article, hopefully you get it there./. is a glorified weblog where nerdy stuff gets compiled into one place. It does no research, has no reporters, etcetera.
Other than the motto after its name, it doesn't really pretend to be objective - so you at least know what the angle is (would you prefer it to be hidden?)
Now, I wonder how many places around the country will start deciding not to give Diebold a shot at all by not inviting the company to showcase its products, to avoid the chance of getting sued. Good job Diebold! (And you would think that all the bad news the last years was justification enough not to pick Diebold.)
In other news, a Toyota dealer is suing a man who bought a Honda, because "based on the criteria set out by the purchaser, we had a fair degree of confidence we'd come out on top, and nothing we heard during the process dissuaded us of that confidence." Actually, Toyoto is a decent manufacturer, make it a Yugo dealer.
And it is better for Apple to strike before another company does it for them (I know there are phones that play music but none of them got it correct enough to hit critical mass).
So you think there should be no age of consent and children should be allowed to drink alcohol and drive a car and vote? Or are children only able to "know exactly what they are doing" when it's malicious?
This reasoning is bullshit, you either give children full rights and full responsibility or you accept that a child often lacks the morality and foresight we expect of adults.
Now what did I say? I did not say children should be treated exactly like adults, I said I think it is a bad idea to hold children to absolutely no liability. Children have limited rights but they still have rights. Going by your own reasoning, that means that they should have limited responsibility, which is exactly what was said.
Drinking, driving (which is not even a right but a priviledge), and sex are not the only rights in the world.
And I agree with you on some points, but unfortunately the law doesn't. See, you can sign yourself away to the army at 18: to defend and die for your country, or you can commit a murder and get the death penalty, but you still cannot drink alcohol legally.
I don't agree with it, but that is the current state of the law.
I have to disagree, some children know exactly what they are doing at a young age (talking about malicious acts here). That there are little consequences for them does not improve matters.
I agree that children under 14 should and can be prosecuted for certain crimes - albeit with a lighter sentence with a nod to maturity, maliciousness and other factors. Now, I am talking about murder, arson, etcetera with direct harm to other people.
Copyright Infringement is an abstract matter with a real but indefinite (but limited) financial harm involve. It should be accepted downloading music may have deprived the copyright holder of about $.99 for a single track or $15-20 for a CD. Let the punishment fit the crime - it should involve a slap on the wrist. It should not involve bankrupting parents or dragging them through endless court proceedings.
It should be accepted that by having the court involved that this sort of thing is costing society more than it is worth - that these cases should simply not be accepted. Go to small claims court to get back small claims. Do not claim 100K in fantasy damages to make one person the example to hold up to others. That is not justice.
That, imo, is a greater violence to the children. Just imagine some father or mother, having lost everything, taking it out on the children - physically or emotionally, after such an event. It doesn't even have to be intentional, just in the background. Or the knowledge that you caused your parents financial ruin growing up as a kid. The way this crap the RIAA pulls can destroy lives is criminal.
Okay, first off, let us stop pretending the RIAA cares about it's image - it doesn't. For their current strategy - it's actually beneficial to be despised, hopefully feared. It's the front man for several big music companies and as long as their names (Sony, BMG, etc) are out of the headlines, it is doing its job.
I just wonder if it will ever backfire - in that the Politicians stand up to them. But under what circumstances? Enough bad publicity? Who haven't they paid off? I'm cynical enough to believe it isn't happening. No matter what regime - political parties themselves are machines of corruption. Always have been, always will be.
CD sales are down, but that could be due to people buying the single digital tracks they want instead of entire albums. Other than that, the demograhic with the time and money to waste on music - teens and 20 somethings - just don't care. Now, I'm talking about your typical person there - not all of them. The reason is the majority of people like to believe they will never get caught. Like speeding tickets.
Artists - this will probably be the only weak point but that means they jump from one master to another, like iTunes. Still, some have rocked the boat, I hope others join in.
I believe nothing will change for a long time though I hope otherwise. I won't shed tears when the racket dies, but don't forsee the internet killing them off for a good long while.
I noticed when I do curve fitting, in a spreadsheet, that Open Office does the curve fitting, but does not bother to give the equation of the line it uses to fit onto the data which is braindead.
Slashdot Mirror
It wasn't a flop - it made a lot of money for a lot of people (programmers and companies specializing in Y2K). Flops don't tend to do that and how would we measure the "success" or "failure" of Y2K? Lack of problems that developed afterward means failures?
Also lack of problems doesn't mean it was all hype. (I like to think that the raised alarm saved problems later on, but I have severe doubts about whether it was worth the worry or hype it garnered.)
If Linux goes mainstream (and this is a great possibility in many countries not Europe/US) there is less to tie it to the x86 family as many things can just be recompiled.
But I don't really bet on the x86 being supplanted soon - even Intel couldn't do it. However, I don't see it lasting forever either.
When the gains for other designs are really a magnitude of an order greater than the current design, people will migrate. So far, other prospects were better, but only on the same scale, nothing outrageous better.
Wow, there's a new business model here!
1. Strap payload to chair.
2. Place chair near Ballmer.
3. Thwart one of Microsoft's business plans.
3. Profit!
See, no missing step!
And OTOH some of us have a life.
Consumer Reports gives it pretty poor ratings gives many cheaper more conventional vacs better ratings. Maybe their tests are off, or like an iPod - it simply gives the user a better experience while being technically inferior in some places.
I usually trust CR's ratings in several categories, but I have yet to put together how the vacuum revolutionized the industry (just look at the models offered in Walmart/Target/Kmart vs 10 yrs back - they are all Dyson copies now) with its poor showing.
Maybe it's the vacuum, or maybe it's the magazine that is at fault.
And not the article itself. Too bad, would have been nice to hear whether this was a real contender or not.
How come aren't there any diesel hybrids available? They should provide even more mpg than a prius.
While I'm thinking about it, why aren't the car engines run like the train engines, with the diesel motor running at a more or less constant rate refueling the batteries that run the electric motors that actually turn the wheels - the diesel engine could be much smaller than normal because it won't have to peak to provide power - just a nice steady constant - wouldn't even have to be a normal 4 stroke engine - it could be a stirling engine that is highly efficient but has problems speeding up - though Ford managed to get it's 0-60 speed down to 17 seconds while experimenting with alternate engines during the 70s oil crisis - making it's marriage to this application ideal.
Any thoughts on this? I admit I don't have much knowledge in this area and probably missed something very basic that is wrong with the idea.
I wasn't sure how the iPhone would fare, but now that Dvorak is against it - I can rest assured it will be a success.
You can still get a decent job with important benefits (health insurance) and security - be a teacher in a good (rich) school district or work for the government. I'm not kidding.
BTW, I wonder how many overpaid executives got laid off...
But the US is trying its hardest to export its IP system to other countries.
But I suppose any other criticism is supposed to be bashing to you.
It looks like America is trying to bolster its economy by trying to take IP to a whole new level. There must be a school of thought wholly alien to me, that thinks that if 1 patent is good, 10 must be even better!
It might be that the U.S. is trying to bolster its position in the world by trying to a mass land grab at IP in the light of its waning influence/superpower status with China's dominance in the horizon.
And the steps we are taking as a nation are the absolute worst ones - instead of fostering innovation by demanding science/math be emphasized in the classrooms and good research being funded - we are making it easy for large corporations and patent trolls to stifle us all.
You run the risk of having consumers turn to the Xbox360 instead because 3 months after Christmas is a long time to wait for a console.
I don't know if that is what Nintendo did... but it would seem short sighted to lose a customer over the life of this product and reaping in game sales just to have better numbers in one quarter.
to give to people interested in Open Source.
They are nicely packaged, have a CD with some art on there, etcetera.
Personally, I think nothing looks as cheap (in a bad way) or shadier than a burnt CD-R especially with permanent marker on there.
Is there any place that sells Open Source CDs or makes low runs of CDs with professional art at a low price?
Otherwise I may looking into a lightscribe burner - it look a little better.
Keep a small Windows partition around. Edit the grub conf before you send it in to have it boot windows automatically with no delay. Get it back and use a live cd to edit the grub script again back to letting Ubuntu boot by default.
Hard drive capacity growth has slowed the last years in notebooks, they just haven't been increasing in size that fast as in the early 00s. I think flash will surpass notebook harddrives in size within 2-3 years. As it is, 64GB is in the same magnitude of existing typical notebook drives now, just halfway down on the scale.
The price may or not go down enough within that time period to kick out harddrives completely - in which case we'll just see hybrid drives take over.
Pricewatch.com lists 8gb for around $80 and 16GB for about $160.
So lets double the prices for whatever, and we are talking about $2500 of flash. Yes, too expensive to be a component on a notebook today, but really, the prices on this stuff is sinking.
Read the article, hopefully you get it there. /. is a glorified weblog where nerdy stuff gets compiled into one place. It does no research, has no reporters, etcetera.
Other than the motto after its name, it doesn't really pretend to be objective - so you at least know what the angle is (would you prefer it to be hidden?)
Now, I wonder how many places around the country will start deciding not to give Diebold a shot at all by not inviting the company to showcase its products, to avoid the chance of getting sued. Good job Diebold! (And you would think that all the bad news the last years was justification enough not to pick Diebold.)
In other news, a Toyota dealer is suing a man who bought a Honda, because "based on the criteria set out by the purchaser, we had a fair degree of confidence we'd come out on top, and nothing we heard during the process dissuaded us of that confidence." Actually, Toyoto is a decent manufacturer, make it a Yugo dealer.
forgot that the original iPod came down in price too - what was it originally? $4-500?
In several iterations, if the iPhone is sucessful enough, I see a diversification of the product line just like the iPod, with the price coming down.
And it is better for Apple to strike before another company does it for them (I know there are phones that play music but none of them got it correct enough to hit critical mass).
Now what did I say? I did not say children should be treated exactly like adults, I said I think it is a bad idea to hold children to absolutely no liability. Children have limited rights but they still have rights. Going by your own reasoning, that means that they should have limited responsibility, which is exactly what was said.
Drinking, driving (which is not even a right but a priviledge), and sex are not the only rights in the world.
And I agree with you on some points, but unfortunately the law doesn't. See, you can sign yourself away to the army at 18: to defend and die for your country, or you can commit a murder and get the death penalty, but you still cannot drink alcohol legally.
I don't agree with it, but that is the current state of the law.
Sadly, in America, those companies might sue you back for slander (if you do that as a newspaper).
Hiding behind a trade group is the oldest trick in the book....
I have to disagree, some children know exactly what they are doing at a young age (talking about malicious acts here). That there are little consequences for them does not improve matters.
I agree that children under 14 should and can be prosecuted for certain crimes - albeit with a lighter sentence with a nod to maturity, maliciousness and other factors. Now, I am talking about murder, arson, etcetera with direct harm to other people.
Copyright Infringement is an abstract matter with a real but indefinite (but limited) financial harm involve. It should be accepted downloading music may have deprived the copyright holder of about $.99 for a single track or $15-20 for a CD. Let the punishment fit the crime - it should involve a slap on the wrist. It should not involve bankrupting parents or dragging them through endless court proceedings.
It should be accepted that by having the court involved that this sort of thing is costing society more than it is worth - that these cases should simply not be accepted. Go to small claims court to get back small claims. Do not claim 100K in fantasy damages to make one person the example to hold up to others. That is not justice.
That, imo, is a greater violence to the children. Just imagine some father or mother, having lost everything, taking it out on the children - physically or emotionally, after such an event. It doesn't even have to be intentional, just in the background. Or the knowledge that you caused your parents financial ruin growing up as a kid. The way this crap the RIAA pulls can destroy lives is criminal.
Okay, first off, let us stop pretending the RIAA cares about it's image - it doesn't. For their current strategy - it's actually beneficial to be despised, hopefully feared. It's the front man for several big music companies and as long as their names (Sony, BMG, etc) are out of the headlines, it is doing its job.
I just wonder if it will ever backfire - in that the Politicians stand up to them. But under what circumstances? Enough bad publicity? Who haven't they paid off? I'm cynical enough to believe it isn't happening. No matter what regime - political parties themselves are machines of corruption. Always have been, always will be.
CD sales are down, but that could be due to people buying the single digital tracks they want instead of entire albums. Other than that, the demograhic with the time and money to waste on music - teens and 20 somethings - just don't care. Now, I'm talking about your typical person there - not all of them. The reason is the majority of people like to believe they will never get caught. Like speeding tickets.
Artists - this will probably be the only weak point but that means they jump from one master to another, like iTunes. Still, some have rocked the boat, I hope others join in.
I believe nothing will change for a long time though I hope otherwise. I won't shed tears when the racket dies, but don't forsee the internet killing them off for a good long while.
I noticed when I do curve fitting, in a spreadsheet, that Open Office does the curve fitting, but does not bother to give the equation of the line it uses to fit onto the data which is braindead.
Has this been fixed in the meantime?