Sure it was buggy and slow. But it really was the shiznit unless you liked the minimalist Lynx. What else was there? NetManage had some browser out. I can't think of anything else, although I'm sure there was something. I was a big Usenet-holic back then. I can remember there was a time when there were no negative posts about Netscape in general. Really. Maybe a post about something crashing, but that was in the Window 3.1 days and everything crashed back then.
Once Netscape announced their IPO, then the negative postings started to happen. Just like I remember a time before everyone was spam-proofing their email. Just like I can remember the original 'Green-Card' spam (may Canter and Siegel rot in hell, btw.)
I do remember the original flap over the 'blink' tag. But I swear there was a time when Usenet almost universally didn't have any negative comments about Netscape. I can't pinpoint it exactly, but I remember distinctly the first few times that I read Netscape flames. They kind of snowballed, just like spam-proofing did. If I had infinite time I'd read through groups on google to narrow it down, but I don't think I can be bothered. Maybe I have my rose-colored glasses on again, but I'd thought that Lasik had removed the need for them.:)
it's posted with the intent of staving off some of the "woohoo stick it to the man!" posts.
Woohoo!!! Stick it to the man!!
Whatever else you may think about why they're doing this, it still takes balls to ignore a court order. Imagine a cop walking up to you and telling you to get out of the car. You refuse on grounds that it's a free country and you aren't doing anything wrong. That takes balls. A little stupidity too, unless you're a really good lawyer, really rich, or both.
So yeah, stick it to the man. Don't you just love it when the underdog takes on the Man. Remember back, long ago, around 1995 or so, when Netscape could do no wrong? Man, those were some cool times. FTPing Mosaic. Then switching to Netscape. Laughing at IE 2.0. Those were the days.
What were we talking about? Can I get another hit?
Because when he goes into details he gets nit-picked to death by the trolls and/.-haters. For him to say something like: "I really loved the look of the Rock Troll" would be suicide. The purists would tell him that it wasn't an accurate portrayal. The nitpickers would point to faulty CGI in parts and ask him how he could possibly like this part. The/. trolls would come out to tell him that it wasn't a real troll, since it didn't scream 'First Post' in trollish when it lumbered into the room. The Taco haters would use it for ammunition to show how stupid he is, because, obviously, it isn't anywhere near the best part of the movie or even worth mentioning. And so on.
It's much easier for him to just say "I liked it" and minimze the amount of ammunition he gives to people who seem to have nothing better to do than berate people on here.
That may not be the only reason, but I bet it's at least part of it. The amount of flamage the staff of/. gets has got to be enormous. Minimizing your exposure is about all you can do, I guess. Just my opinion.
I remember giving a 5-minute oral book report on this in my 10th grade English class. Imagine this: Macon, GA; Catholic High School (Mount de Sales); 1979 or 1980; Peer pressure inherent in everyone being around 15/16 years old. Man, what was I thinking?
I just remember this sea of slack-jawed, wide-eyed faces, wondering what planet I'd come from. Here I am, talking about this really great book, throwing out terms like 'latent hermaphrodite'. Is it any wonder I had no real friends there? Or that I didn't have any dates with any of my classmates?
Ahh, high school. Anyone know how to excise 4 years of memories from my brain?
In order for me to pay 10 bucks a month they would have to do the following:
Put all music online.
Let me access it on any PC, anywhere.
Let me download it to a portable player.
It doesn't matter if it's on a proprietary player in a propietary format, so long as I can get to it anywhere I have net access and a sound card and that it sounds good. At that point, I might consider it an essential service that I would pay monthly for, like phone and utilities. I already pay extra for having a phone I can carry around with me, and since I love music, the idea of paying $120 a year (which is far less than I spend on music right now) for unlimited access to any music sounds good to me.
Wonder if there'll be subsidization for low-income families like there is for phones and such?
your portrayal of a solder with keen survival instincts
"The story of a solder's date with the soldering iron. Owen Wilson plays the part of a courageous solder, valiantly joining a chip and a board, creating the necessary contact to allow electrons to flow freely. It's a race against time as the imprisoned electrons race to perform their computing duties, only Wilson's solder allowing them to meet their destiny."
[Usenet] A posting ostentatiously correcting a previous article's spelling as a way of casting scorn on the point the article was trying to make, instead of actually responding to that point (compare dictionary flame). Of course, people who are more than usually slovenly spellers are prone to think any correction is a spelling flame. It's an amusing comment on human nature that spelling flames themselves often contain spelling errors.
The Ullman Exception is when someone makes spelling mistakes or typos whilst complaining about someone else's spelling. Then, according to Ullman, it is a moral imperative to flame the SOB.
Of course, it's likely that I'll make a spelling/grammar mistake here, then you'll flame me and so on. Spelling checker in the 'post comment' box, anyone?
I participated in this test. There were 3 samples of music, each encoded 6 different ways. I could not tell the difference between any of the 18 encoded files and the originals. No way, no how. As a caveat, I should mention that I was in the US Navy for 10 years and worked in an engine room for many of those years, so I was exposed to high decibels for long periods of time. I found a tone sweep somewhere and played it. I can't hear anything over about 13 kHz.
So, for me, this is overkill. I've been ripping my CD's to MP3's pretty steadily. I've found a few that sound bad. I'm marking them and when I get through with all of them, I'll re-encode those at a higher bit-rate. Total cost to me: 40GB hard disk - $200; Winamp - free; Lineout cables to preamp - $10. Already had the computer and sound card. At this point, I'm not sure 40GB is enough, but if it comes down to it, there's a lot of crap in amongst what I've ripped so far. (Not every song on every album is a good one.)
So, a word of advice from an old (38) geezer: Buy expensive stereo stuff when you're young. Also, don't blow out your ears too early - wear hearing protection at concerts, while shooting guns, perhaps at work if it's noisy there. You'll thank yourself later.
Well, maybe it would be safer not to fly, but this seems to have crashed in or near apartments, so if you had stayed home late this morning, well, work might have been a safer place today. I guess it's time to buy an old copper mine somewhere.
Besides, Microsoft is a software monopoly. There is no problem with (and indeed, the economy BENEFITS from) a company reaching out to several different markets.
Sigh. Imagine that 90% of the car market was owned by CarCo. Earnings are flat. Stockholders want a higher return on their investments. How do you make more money? Well, you can enter another market. Some bright guy says "Hey, we don't make the tires. We could start selling those." So they start making tires and start putting them on all their cars. Goodyear and co quietly go the way of the dodo. Next, the radio. Seat coverings. Whatever.
The problem with a for-profit company having a monopoly is that the only way to make more money is to enter new markets. Your stockholders demand that you make them more money. Once you go public, you HAVE to concentrate on making more money. There's all kinds of regulations that require you to do so. You might be able to sacrifice short-term profits for the sake of long-term ones, but you have to keep your stockholders, the SEC, and several government agencies happy while you do so. What else can MS do?
You don't want to make a big splash, (you're under anti-trust investigation, remember) so you don't undercut the others to start. You get people to buy your stuff. You give incentives to developers to develop for only your box and any PC versions to only work on your latest OS. (Remember, you've got $30 billion dollars in the bank.) I don't know what the exact plan is, but they could easily go to the large developers for the other boxes, and give them incentives to develop mainly (or perhaps only) for the Xbox. Without as many great games, well, you know the rest.
Look, I can't tell you how to live your life. This isn't blind MS bashing, it's common sense. We rail against the RIAA and MPAA here too. If you really want to hurt them, you have to write your congresscritters and not purchase their products. So, where you used to buy a CD a payday and see a movie a month, cut back. Send them a letter explaining why you're cutting back. Same thing with MS. "You don't want one, cool. I bet a lot of others do." Actually, I do want one. But, I think the PS2 and Gamecube are just as good in their own way and buying either one doesn't extend the reach of a monopolist. Sony and Nintendo would each probably love to be a monopoly, but they're not. They're probably no better, in an absolute sense, than MS, but neither is in control of a platform.
I have made a conscious decision to not buy any more MS products until their stranglehold is broken. That doesn't make me a zealot or a narrow-minded fascist pig or whatever corner you would like to paint me into. It just makes me a well-educated consumer exercising his right of choice.
Also, if you don't like posts with an anti-M$ slant, you're probably in the wrong forum. It's more difficult to filter out all the anti-MS posts than the Jon Katz stories some people seem to hate.:)
I'm afraid you don't get it. It's not that MS is producing this, it's that they are a MONOPOLY. They are using their monopoly in Operating Systems and, for all intents and purposes, in Office Suites, to enter other markets and prevent competition. Linus has said that he sees the optimal solution (paraphrasing) to being MSOS - 30%, Linux - 30%, MacOS - 30%, others 10%. That's what we should all be striving for. Variety in the marketplace is wonderful for us consumers. The Macs will innovate on beauty, Linux will innovate on stability, and MS will innovate on ergonomics. (Perhaps wrong on the particulars, but not on the general idea.)
Chrysler invents the minivan - soon everyone else is catching up. Remember the monopolist days in auto manufacturing? "You can have your Model T in any color, just so long as it's black." - Henry Ford. I remember those heady days back before MS Office became dominant. Lotus had the best spreadsheet. Word Perfect was the best word processor. Then Quattro Pro came out and did some cool things for a whole lot less than 1-2-3. That's what we want. Now, MS is giving us XP - about which they're saying the exact same thing they've said for every version of Windows, in like ever. It's more stable. Remember when Win95 came out. Stability was the big seller. Same with 98. There's always 'interface improvements'. Task switching is better. Yeah, OK. So it's incrementally better. There's no reason for them to be really innovative, though. They have no competition. They'll make it a little better and people will upgrade because eventually all the support programs will be written for the new version and eventually you won't be able to run the latest greatest thing on Win98 or whatever you have. I know people who run old accounting software in DOS because it works and they've never needed anything more than the functionality provided by it. If there's ever anything truly innovative done in computing, it won't be done by MS.
It's not that I'm anti-MS, it's that I'm anti-monopoly. They make $1 billion dollars a month in pure profit. They have $30 billion dollars in cash in the bank. They're using that money to enter other markets. And their actions have been so predatory, so anti-competitive that it's unlikely they'll ever play nice in any market they enter. That's why my post tried to get people not to buy into the Xbox hype. Feel free to do as you wish. Just make sure your choice is an intelligent one.
As for the fact that it has a DVD player - I want a DVD player that will play MP3 CD's and VCD's. There are some out there for under $200. With the $100 price difference between Xbox and Gamecube, it ain't a far reach to buy the cube and a separate DVD player. Along with the fact that many people's main viewing TV might be different than their gaming TV.
Oh, and about my comment:
>I can't tell if this is begging, sarcasm, funny, or insightful.
Correct answer: none of the above.
And independent review panel of my peers decided my comment was: Moderation Totals: Insightful=1, Interesting=1, Funny=1, Overrated=1, Total=4. So there.:P
I guess buying the bundle will be a little less painful if you get good games with the system.
And so it begins. The path to the dark side is so seductive, so easy to take. One wonders how many steps Michael has taken. Or, is it a slippery slope and he's just accelerating his slide?
Wake up, people. M$ is making money off this. Don't be tempted. Stay strong. Buy a Gamecube 3 days later. The less money they have, the sooner there will be parity in the marketplace. The same goes for keyboards and mice, too. Sure, their mice are nice but Logitech and others make good ones, too. Don't be sucked in! Stay strong.
(I can't tell if this is begging, sarcasm, funny, or insightful. Probably just flogging the old dead horse. Either way, I'm not buying one.)
This would be a much better article if the headline read "IBM breaks 100 petabyte barrier." Or Maxtor. Or Western Digital. Or perhaps Quantum. See what I mean?
The development version is $399. The regular version is supposed to be in the $500+ range. Sorry, Linux or no Linux, that's too much for a PDA. I can buy a used laptop for that price. I'll stick with my Handspring Visor. PalmOS is still not an MS OS, so either way I'm supporting variety in the marketplace.
Go to www.linuxdevices.com - they've got pictures. Try this: http://www.linuxdevices.com/articles/AT2134869242. html
But after reading the HUGE response on slashdot after the forth book won a Hugo
Boy, you should try the Modula and Lisp books next. Of course, the precursor to them all is the Algol one. A little hoary in spots, but still a good read. Ahh, the good ole days.
Add my voice to the clamor for a freakin' spell checker. (Go ahead and mark me as off-topic, moderator boy. Getting my karma knocked down to 48 will teach me! It'll probably take me at least a day or two to get back up to 50.) Feh! It's Monday. I can't be bothered to care about anything today.
Just wear a pizza delivery shirt and carry a big red bag.. Never fails, everyone trusts the pizza guy..
Not here. You have to wait with the receptionist, who will call whoever you say ordered the pizza. You don't get in, someone has to come get the food from you. Pizza, Chinese, Indian, whatever. Equal opportunity waiting.
It's funny when you leave to go to lunch and there's someone waiting with food, looking to see if you're the guy who'll take this food so they can go on to their next delivery. If I was the receptionist, I would have to eat early. Having all that food smell in the lobby when I was hungry would drive me nuts.
A $122 shell that you can put any size laptop hard drive into. 20GB drives sell for just a tad over $100 on PriceWatch. With shipping and handling, total of $250. Probably no Linux drivers, but it's USB instead of Firewire (which I don't have). Seems like a cheaper alternative. Especially if you have an old laptop laying around that you can cannibalize the hard drive off of. Anybody got one? What's the UI like? Thinking of getting myself one for the holidays.
Why does this story not appear on the front page? It should be right between the Aleph1 and Trolltech stories, according to time. I only found out about it due to meta-moderating. The only thing I've got turned off is 'Geeks in Space'. Everything else is turned on. I checked. What's going on?
Yeah, it's off-topic, sorta. Mod me down. Whoopee. It's a valid question. Who do I email? Cowboy Neal?
For that matter, I'm a firm believer that the subscription plans in place now (like cell phone bills) will eventually be dwindled to nothing based on current competition. There are only so many minutes a cell phone company can provide in a month. After a while you hit limits, and gradually the costs erode to practically nothing (similar to water and electricity, communication will eventually become publically-owned).
I pay about US$50 for water and sewer a month. About $110 for electricity. If all my communication came in at that price, it would be fine - that would include TV, broadband internet, and phone. 100 bucks for all that sounds about right. However, saying that this is 'practically nothing' is wrong. Lots of people out there are making minimum wage and can't afford this. People that are poor can qualify for a really cheap phone, for emergency use. Should they be able to get a basic internet connection for cheap also? Also, I'm pretty sure that I don't want communication to become publically owned. That's part of the reason that some third world countries are so poor. My little bit of economic knowledge tells me that capitalism and the profit motive work just fine for those industries, as long as there's no monopoly.
I figured they would run at least a couple of fiber optic lines to places like Berlin or Dresden. However, I never heard anything about them laying it anywhere else. What's the problem with DSL? The copper is bad? I would imagine that's likely. So you're saying that there's plenty of fiber going in, but 'the last mile' problem is bigger there? Or something else? I'm not sure what you mean by 'solution for fiber'.
I have some interest in this, since I'm an ex-German. (Born in Dachau. Naturalized American in 1982.)
Sometimes its better to be late but get good new technology.
A few years ago I saw the same thing about China - they were having problems laying copper because the peasants would dig it up and sell it on the scrap metal market. They were saying that fiber seemed a better option. Of course since then I haven't heard about any further fiber laying in China. A similar problem with East Germany after the fall of the Wall. They were laying copper cable there since fiber was just too damn expensive. I remember someone saying that the Wall fell too soon. (Isn't that ironic?)
So we've got an old cellphone network here in the US and Europe has got a newer one. What happens 5 years from now, when the next generation hits? Will your modern network be able to upgrade easily then? Or will you be in the same boat we are?
Similar thing with HDTV - don't want to make HD programs until people have the boxes, don't want to buy the box until there's a lot of digital programming (and the cost comes way down.)
These things have a way of sorting themselves out. It might be that Africa ends up being the most wired country, 50 years from now, because when they finally get around to building their infrastructure they will be using the brand new stuff and we'll all be stuck with the old crap.
During the 80's and Reagan's Voodo Economics, Japan was top dog, financially. They used to hold meetings to try to figure out how to help out the US economically. Now look at whose economy is in the crapper.
Uhhh... No. A minus b all squared does not equal a squared minus b squared. Multiplying out the left side of the equation gives you: a^2 - 2ab + b^2 unless I'm really misremembering 8th grade algebra from about 25 years ago.
You can still get to the conclusion you're trying to reach by dividing by zero, but you shouldn't put such obvious mistakes in along the way. Try taking some remedial math classes, Mr. Coward.
Jesus Christ was witnessed performing miracles by a bunch of ignorant people. There were probably rational explanations for all of the 'miracles'. There are lots of people who appear to be dead and get up again a few hours later. Turning water to wine is a stage trick any magician worth the name could easily duplicate. Which other 'miracles' are we talking about? The reports of him being alive again 3 days after he died? Hearsay. A story his disciples spread to make themselves look important. Lots of people make up stories like that every day. Look at how many people read (and believe) the National Enquirer.
All it would really take for Luke Skywalker to be worshipped 2000 years from now is for George Lucas to martyr him in the final story. People love martyrs. "No greater love..." and all that. Dying so that others may live. It's a very powerful meme that has allowed society to flourish.
So, George, kill Luke off in the final movie - have him save a world while dying. Then, take some of your millions and hire some 'disciples' to go and spread 'His' words. It would be hilarious. One-upping L. Ron Hubbard. Let's see who can come up with the kookiest philosophy that thousands of people will follow. Come on George: "There is no try. Only do." Do it for the humor. Have yourself cryogenically frozen, then when they thaw you out 2000 years from now you can die laughing.
You could easily make a Star Trek episode out of it, too - Kirk (or Bakula) and crew go to a planet where a few hundred years ago they got ahold of all the Star Wars movies. Based their whole society around it. That would be cool. Better than basing it on Chicago gangsters from the 1920's. Probably just as violent, though.
Slashdot Mirror
Once Netscape announced their IPO, then the negative postings started to happen. Just like I remember a time before everyone was spam-proofing their email. Just like I can remember the original 'Green-Card' spam (may Canter and Siegel rot in hell, btw.)
I do remember the original flap over the 'blink' tag. But I swear there was a time when Usenet almost universally didn't have any negative comments about Netscape. I can't pinpoint it exactly, but I remember distinctly the first few times that I read Netscape flames. They kind of snowballed, just like spam-proofing did. If I had infinite time I'd read through groups on google to narrow it down, but I don't think I can be bothered. Maybe I have my rose-colored glasses on again, but I'd thought that Lasik had removed the need for them. :)
Whatever else you may think about why they're doing this, it still takes balls to ignore a court order. Imagine a cop walking up to you and telling you to get out of the car. You refuse on grounds that it's a free country and you aren't doing anything wrong. That takes balls. A little stupidity too, unless you're a really good lawyer, really rich, or both.
So yeah, stick it to the man. Don't you just love it when the underdog takes on the Man. Remember back, long ago, around 1995 or so, when Netscape could do no wrong? Man, those were some cool times. FTPing Mosaic. Then switching to Netscape. Laughing at IE 2.0. Those were the days.
What were we talking about? Can I get another hit?
It's much easier for him to just say "I liked it" and minimze the amount of ammunition he gives to people who seem to have nothing better to do than berate people on here.
That may not be the only reason, but I bet it's at least part of it. The amount of flamage the staff of /. gets has got to be enormous. Minimizing your exposure is about all you can do, I guess. Just my opinion.
I just remember this sea of slack-jawed, wide-eyed faces, wondering what planet I'd come from. Here I am, talking about this really great book, throwing out terms like 'latent hermaphrodite'. Is it any wonder I had no real friends there? Or that I didn't have any dates with any of my classmates?
Ahh, high school. Anyone know how to excise 4 years of memories from my brain?
Put all music online.
Let me access it on any PC, anywhere.
Let me download it to a portable player.
It doesn't matter if it's on a proprietary player in a propietary format, so long as I can get to it anywhere I have net access and a sound card and that it sounds good. At that point, I might consider it an essential service that I would pay monthly for, like phone and utilities. I already pay extra for having a phone I can carry around with me, and since I love music, the idea of paying $120 a year (which is far less than I spend on music right now) for unlimited access to any music sounds good to me.
Wonder if there'll be subsidization for low-income families like there is for phones and such?
"Two gates up!" - System & Flux
"Solder my heart!" - Leonard Motherboard
Ahem. From The Jargon File:
spelling flame n. //
[Usenet] A posting ostentatiously correcting a previous article's spelling as a way of casting scorn on the point the article was trying to make, instead of actually responding to that point (compare dictionary flame ). Of course, people who are more than usually slovenly spellers are prone to think any correction is a spelling flame. It's an amusing comment on human nature that spelling flames themselves often contain spelling errors.
And from: http://www.advicemeant.com/flame/04psych.shtml
#475 Ullman Exception:
The Ullman Exception is when someone makes spelling mistakes or typos whilst complaining about someone else's spelling. Then, according to Ullman, it is a moral imperative to flame the SOB.
Of course, it's likely that I'll make a spelling/grammar mistake here, then you'll flame me and so on. Spelling checker in the 'post comment' box, anyone?
There recently was a post in for an audio test. Let's see... http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=01/10/31/212723 1&mode=thread, which leads to this: http://ff123.net/128test/instruct.html
I participated in this test. There were 3 samples of music, each encoded 6 different ways. I could not tell the difference between any of the 18 encoded files and the originals. No way, no how. As a caveat, I should mention that I was in the US Navy for 10 years and worked in an engine room for many of those years, so I was exposed to high decibels for long periods of time. I found a tone sweep somewhere and played it. I can't hear anything over about 13 kHz.
So, for me, this is overkill. I've been ripping my CD's to MP3's pretty steadily. I've found a few that sound bad. I'm marking them and when I get through with all of them, I'll re-encode those at a higher bit-rate. Total cost to me: 40GB hard disk - $200; Winamp - free; Lineout cables to preamp - $10. Already had the computer and sound card. At this point, I'm not sure 40GB is enough, but if it comes down to it, there's a lot of crap in amongst what I've ripped so far. (Not every song on every album is a good one.)
So, a word of advice from an old (38) geezer: Buy expensive stereo stuff when you're young. Also, don't blow out your ears too early - wear hearing protection at concerts, while shooting guns, perhaps at work if it's noisy there. You'll thank yourself later.
I don't know. I can shake a stick at a lot of RAM.
Well, maybe it would be safer not to fly, but this seems to have crashed in or near apartments, so if you had stayed home late this morning, well, work might have been a safer place today. I guess it's time to buy an old copper mine somewhere.
Mark Antony says it in "THE TRAGEDY OF JULIUS CAESAR". Might want to read up on stuff like that. It's the fabric of our civilization.
The problem with a for-profit company having a monopoly is that the only way to make more money is to enter new markets. Your stockholders demand that you make them more money. Once you go public, you HAVE to concentrate on making more money. There's all kinds of regulations that require you to do so. You might be able to sacrifice short-term profits for the sake of long-term ones, but you have to keep your stockholders, the SEC, and several government agencies happy while you do so. What else can MS do?
You don't want to make a big splash, (you're under anti-trust investigation, remember) so you don't undercut the others to start. You get people to buy your stuff. You give incentives to developers to develop for only your box and any PC versions to only work on your latest OS. (Remember, you've got $30 billion dollars in the bank.) I don't know what the exact plan is, but they could easily go to the large developers for the other boxes, and give them incentives to develop mainly (or perhaps only) for the Xbox. Without as many great games, well, you know the rest.
Look, I can't tell you how to live your life. This isn't blind MS bashing, it's common sense. We rail against the RIAA and MPAA here too. If you really want to hurt them, you have to write your congresscritters and not purchase their products. So, where you used to buy a CD a payday and see a movie a month, cut back. Send them a letter explaining why you're cutting back. Same thing with MS. "You don't want one, cool. I bet a lot of others do." Actually, I do want one. But, I think the PS2 and Gamecube are just as good in their own way and buying either one doesn't extend the reach of a monopolist. Sony and Nintendo would each probably love to be a monopoly, but they're not. They're probably no better, in an absolute sense, than MS, but neither is in control of a platform.
I have made a conscious decision to not buy any more MS products until their stranglehold is broken. That doesn't make me a zealot or a narrow-minded fascist pig or whatever corner you would like to paint me into. It just makes me a well-educated consumer exercising his right of choice.
Also, if you don't like posts with an anti-M$ slant, you're probably in the wrong forum. It's more difficult to filter out all the anti-MS posts than the Jon Katz stories some people seem to hate. :)
Chrysler invents the minivan - soon everyone else is catching up. Remember the monopolist days in auto manufacturing? "You can have your Model T in any color, just so long as it's black." - Henry Ford. I remember those heady days back before MS Office became dominant. Lotus had the best spreadsheet. Word Perfect was the best word processor. Then Quattro Pro came out and did some cool things for a whole lot less than 1-2-3. That's what we want. Now, MS is giving us XP - about which they're saying the exact same thing they've said for every version of Windows, in like ever. It's more stable. Remember when Win95 came out. Stability was the big seller. Same with 98. There's always 'interface improvements'. Task switching is better. Yeah, OK. So it's incrementally better. There's no reason for them to be really innovative, though. They have no competition. They'll make it a little better and people will upgrade because eventually all the support programs will be written for the new version and eventually you won't be able to run the latest greatest thing on Win98 or whatever you have. I know people who run old accounting software in DOS because it works and they've never needed anything more than the functionality provided by it. If there's ever anything truly innovative done in computing, it won't be done by MS.
It's not that I'm anti-MS, it's that I'm anti-monopoly. They make $1 billion dollars a month in pure profit. They have $30 billion dollars in cash in the bank. They're using that money to enter other markets. And their actions have been so predatory, so anti-competitive that it's unlikely they'll ever play nice in any market they enter. That's why my post tried to get people not to buy into the Xbox hype. Feel free to do as you wish. Just make sure your choice is an intelligent one.
As for the fact that it has a DVD player - I want a DVD player that will play MP3 CD's and VCD's. There are some out there for under $200. With the $100 price difference between Xbox and Gamecube, it ain't a far reach to buy the cube and a separate DVD player. Along with the fact that many people's main viewing TV might be different than their gaming TV.
Oh, and about my comment:
And independent review panel of my peers decided my comment was:Moderation Totals: Insightful=1, Interesting=1, Funny=1, Overrated=1, Total=4.
So there.
Wake up, people. M$ is making money off this. Don't be tempted. Stay strong. Buy a Gamecube 3 days later. The less money they have, the sooner there will be parity in the marketplace. The same goes for keyboards and mice, too. Sure, their mice are nice but Logitech and others make good ones, too. Don't be sucked in! Stay strong.
(I can't tell if this is begging, sarcasm, funny, or insightful. Probably just flogging the old dead horse. Either way, I'm not buying one.)
This would be a much better article if the headline read "IBM breaks 100 petabyte barrier." Or Maxtor. Or Western Digital. Or perhaps Quantum. See what I mean?
The development version is $399. The regular version is supposed to be in the $500+ range. Sorry, Linux or no Linux, that's too much for a PDA. I can buy a used laptop for that price. I'll stick with my Handspring Visor. PalmOS is still not an MS OS, so either way I'm supporting variety in the marketplace.. html
Go to www.linuxdevices.com - they've got pictures. Try this: http://www.linuxdevices.com/articles/AT2134869242
Add my voice to the clamor for a freakin' spell checker. (Go ahead and mark me as off-topic, moderator boy. Getting my karma knocked down to 48 will teach me! It'll probably take me at least a day or two to get back up to 50.) Feh! It's Monday. I can't be bothered to care about anything today.
It's funny when you leave to go to lunch and there's someone waiting with food, looking to see if you're the guy who'll take this food so they can go on to their next delivery. If I was the receptionist, I would have to eat early. Having all that food smell in the lobby when I was hungry would drive me nuts.
A $122 shell that you can put any size laptop hard drive into. 20GB drives sell for just a tad over $100 on PriceWatch. With shipping and handling, total of $250. Probably no Linux drivers, but it's USB instead of Firewire (which I don't have). Seems like a cheaper alternative. Especially if you have an old laptop laying around that you can cannibalize the hard drive off of. Anybody got one? What's the UI like? Thinking of getting myself one for the holidays.
It doesn't appear to be in the FAQ, either. I guess you're just supposed to know. Oh well.
Yeah, it's off-topic, sorta. Mod me down. Whoopee. It's a valid question. Who do I email? Cowboy Neal?
I have some interest in this, since I'm an ex-German. (Born in Dachau. Naturalized American in 1982.)
So we've got an old cellphone network here in the US and Europe has got a newer one. What happens 5 years from now, when the next generation hits? Will your modern network be able to upgrade easily then? Or will you be in the same boat we are?
Similar thing with HDTV - don't want to make HD programs until people have the boxes, don't want to buy the box until there's a lot of digital programming (and the cost comes way down.)
These things have a way of sorting themselves out. It might be that Africa ends up being the most wired country, 50 years from now, because when they finally get around to building their infrastructure they will be using the brand new stuff and we'll all be stuck with the old crap.
During the 80's and Reagan's Voodo Economics, Japan was top dog, financially. They used to hold meetings to try to figure out how to help out the US economically. Now look at whose economy is in the crapper.
You can still get to the conclusion you're trying to reach by dividing by zero, but you shouldn't put such obvious mistakes in along the way. Try taking some remedial math classes, Mr. Coward.
All it would really take for Luke Skywalker to be worshipped 2000 years from now is for George Lucas to martyr him in the final story. People love martyrs. "No greater love..." and all that. Dying so that others may live. It's a very powerful meme that has allowed society to flourish.
So, George, kill Luke off in the final movie - have him save a world while dying. Then, take some of your millions and hire some 'disciples' to go and spread 'His' words. It would be hilarious. One-upping L. Ron Hubbard. Let's see who can come up with the kookiest philosophy that thousands of people will follow. Come on George: "There is no try. Only do." Do it for the humor. Have yourself cryogenically frozen, then when they thaw you out 2000 years from now you can die laughing.
You could easily make a Star Trek episode out of it, too - Kirk (or Bakula) and crew go to a planet where a few hundred years ago they got ahold of all the Star Wars movies. Based their whole society around it. That would be cool. Better than basing it on Chicago gangsters from the 1920's. Probably just as violent, though.