...but wasn't the original "Godfather" a book? This is not Coppola's baby, but Mario Puzo's. Even given that Puzo's dead, what is Coppola shooting his mouth off? When they do the film version of "Apocalypse Now", I'll listen.
Anybody interested in this study should wander over to Groklaw and read up on what they have collected on Laura DiDio -- she's not an unknown in the Linux and especially SCO world. Also, it is interesting that Reuters sold Yankee Group, which I don't take as a sign that some of the world's best financial journalists are too impressed with their work.
But then, maybe they're all wrong and Mrs. DiDio is right. After all, she's an analyst, right?
...is that people have gotten of my back because of television. See, before, it used to be "violence on television causes violence in the streets." But now, since people like Clinton are all concentrating on computer games, I can sit and watch the good guys torture people for information on 24 or Buffy shoving stakes into everybody and everything before she screws a vampire. With DVD, I can watch Hellraiser over and over again, and guess what? People don't care, as long as I am not playing Doom, that is.
Man, don't I love the 21. Century.
On a more serious note, I wonder if Clinton has noticed that there is this real war going on that is chewing up real U.S. soldiers by the dozen and spitting them out as real dead people and real cripples because things are going really, really bad -- the happy news for today is that our Iraqi friends (half of whom want to turn the country into a second Iran anyway) still can't agree on who gets the most basic jobs for the next few months, that is, until the real elections.
Yeah, nice of her to think about the children, but pardon me for thinking that her priorities should be elsewhere, like figuring out an exit strategy for Iraq.
One of my most major bitches about my otherwise very nice iBook: NetHack only runs in the stupid, pansy-ass QT version. The real NetHack, the ASCII NetHack, is currently not supported, and so I have to ssh into my Linux machine for the only game that really matters.
Anyway, interesting list you've got there. Once I've gotten through NetHack, I might take a look at some of those games. This Diablo, that's the NetHack rip-off, right?
After all the song and dance about how we all have to switch to IPv6 because we are running out of numbers right now, or tomorrow, or next week for sure, does this mean that we can stick with IPv4 instead?
I'm still waiting for things to fall apart with IPv4...
Remember that AFP is not really a business the way that AP or Reuters is -- so much of it belongs to the French government that it probably would be considered a "semi-offical" news agency if it were located in some African or Arab country instead of Franch.
In other words, they aren't really a business the way the other news agencies are. You don't see Reuters out there suing Google, and for good reason.
As far as a know, the best living British author Terry Pratchett occasionally auctions off names of secondary characters for good causes. Pratchett, of course, co-authored Good Omens, which you should have read because it is brilliant, so they know each other (one would hope).
After reading about all the nice, cool features of "Tiger" that are supposed to be run in video RAM, I am wondering if upgrading will even make sense for those of us who only have 32 MByte of such RAM in our iBooks. Already, Exposé noticably jerks with an external monitor. Or do I want to wait until I can get a better portable, too?
The problem is not that shows end, the problem is that they don't reach their natural end. Compare Buffy to Angel: Even if the seventh season sucked, Buffy had a natural end that made sense and was for the most part satisfying -- the issues raised in the beginning were solved. More episodes wouldn't make sense, the series rests complete. Angel, on the other hand, just stopped, leaving everybody unsatisfied. You could keep adding more episodes tomorrow.
If a series ends naturally, there is grumbling, but marching in the streets doesn't make sense. Enterprise and other shows that were pulled in mid-run make you feel cheated, and in fact, that is just what has happened.
This is one of the reasons why television sucks big time compared to books: Imagine "Lord of the Rings" without the third book, and you get an idea of why people get pissed about these aborted seasons.
To all of you who watched the first couple of seasons, it's a gotten a lot better and is hardly the same show.
Spoiler warning.
Better? You call this better? Because I live in a TV-backwater, I just got to see the last episode of season three, which I had been led to believe was one of the good ones. What I got was a cliff hanger with time travel and Nazis. Please. All we're missing now is that they introduce a little kid...
I'm sorry, they screwed around with the background story too much in the first two episodes for me to be interested. So far, it is more fun to watch Buffy reruns. No Nazis, no time travel, and when they introduced a little kid, it wasn't a little kid at all.
Somebody at Apple just wet their pants in glee when they read that -- great timing, Microsoft, making life harder for Windows users when Mac OS X "Tiger" is about to come out. Or will they just assume that Apple has these stupid activation rules?
Anyway -- all I still use Windows for is to play "Age of Kings", and since I keep getting my ass kicked on the higher levels by the Spanish, I think I just might give that up, too.
In other words, the British taxpayer. This does give me nice, warm feeling, because the charter of the BBC is up for review, if I remember correctly, and from what I have heard, there are Going To Be Changes.
Good. Maybe they can get back to serious journalism then...
...of idiot psychologists and media clowns out to get publicity by running around claming that computer games are addictive. Is reading addictive? Just look at the money and time I have spent on Terry Pratchett alone! Are movies addictive? Well, as much as I'm going to hate the next Star Wars film, I'm still going to go. Look at how obsessive people get about football, for Christ's sake. Somebody, somewhere probably killed himself after the Superbowl, too. And women! Women are unbelievably addictive...
Who funds this crap? And don't they have real science to do? And can't we please, please just have the real news on Slashdot?
It is, they claim, the 'eye' of a machine that appears capable of peering into the future
Yeah, sure. I'll believe it when I see all of the people involved sitting on a tropical island they just bought with drinks in their hands being served by half-naked beautiful members of the appropriate sex because they have predicted the lottery numbers. Until then, forgive me for being less than impressed.
I have no idea if this is actually in the list of features, but one thing that is seriously faster on my little iBook is connecting to my Linux Samba server -- like, wham! It is just there, while before it seem to take some time before OS X made up its mind if it really wanted to reach out and touch another computer.
One thing I find interesting about the article is where he talks about the way the new IBM Cell processor is very much like a PowerPC chip and that Microsoft has Windows NT that could run on PowerPCs. Maybe I'm missing something, but I thought WinNT was ancient at that there is this other company out there who only uses PowerPC chips -- Apple with OS X.
Under these circumstances, I would wonder if the Cell is not more of a threat to Microsoft than a chance -- a PowerMac with a Cell processor running OS X "Tiger" (already everything that Longhorn hopes to be, if you believe the Apple fanpersons) would seem more realistic in the short run than Longhorn on the Cell. And IBM and Apple already know how to play with each other from PowerPC days.
All in all, I can't say I'm too impressed with the article's logic. Then again, I've just had a very, very large pizza, so maybe it's me...
You do know that Microsoft made record profits last quarter don't you? They can't be underperforming that badly...
There is a difference between the profit a company makes and the performance of the stock on Wall Street. In an ideal universe, the two would be the same, but the stock market looks to future growth, not past profits. And that is exactly where Microsoft's problem is from a broker's point of view -- there is no way that the company is going to have double-digit growth again, it can't say boo without anti-trust lawyers jumping on them, and Linux and OS X are breathing down their necks (well -- for a sensitive pea-under-mattress kind of neck at least). Where is growth going to come from?
Yes, they are making lots of money. But their stock is doing worse than the Nasdaq average if (and only if) I remember correctly. If not, my apologies to Gates and friends.
Does Microsoft actually care about Mac OS X at all, whether as a competitive threat or even a comparative yardstick?
I would certainly think so, because OS X shows people what can be done with computers -- it shows them that viruses, trojans, and other malware aren't acts of God, but a preventable result of bad technology; that computers don't have to crash; that drag'n drop can do so much more; that Plug and Play can be more than an empty marketing slogan; and finally that computers can actually look cool. In short, Apple makes Windows machines look bad by comparison, and with the iPod and Mac mini actually penetrating the mainstream, this can't be good for Microsoft.
Futhermore, I think your comment
With less than 2% marketshare, Mac OS X is pretty much inconsequential in both the predominantly Windows consumer market, or Windows/Linux enterprise market.
shows a widespread but flawed view of the computer world: Market share is all that matters. In fact, look at Porsche: Pissy market share, but great cars and -- more important -- great financial performance of the company. Apple's stock is doing just fine, thank you, while Microsoft's is starting to underperform to the point where they are now paying dividend. Comparing Microsoft to Apple makes just as little sense as comparing GM to Porsche and then saying that Porsche is hopeless because they don't have a large percentage of the mass-market.
In fact, at least up to the Mac mini, that was exactly the point.
I don't know if you've sat down in front of an Apple lately, but all of the supposedly cool stuff about Longhorn you describe would seem to me to be already out there in Panther, if not Tiger at the latest. Therefore, your statement:
It's time to stop copying Windows XP, folks. It's time to start copying Longhorn. Gnome devs have already realised that.
should be modified to It's time to stop copying Windows XP, folks. It's time to start copying OS X. Unfortunately, nobody from KDE or Gnome seems to realize this.
For one thing, somebody has to figure out a way to start doing graphics on the GPU with vanilla X11 pretty soon -- Tiger is going to make everything else look like mud this year already, and when Windows figures out that trick in 2006 or 2007 or whenever, BSD and Linux will just about be the only ugly kids left on the block. This might not matter for servers etc, but on the desktop, looks count.
One thing I realize with my Windows friends when I talk to them about Apples is that they think the Mac still has a "toy" operating system -- word has not gotten out yet that the new OS X is not just a flashier version of OS 9. I think Apple might have made a marketing mistake here, maybe it would have been better to use a name that made it completely clear there is no connection.
By now, I just flatly refuse to be involved in their computer problems: My advice usually boils down to a polite version of something like "Buy a Mac mini or shut up." Even if they want to keep a Windows machine for games, at the mini's price, there is no excuse not to surf with a Mac anymore.
While people bitch and wail about short playlists, the fact is that when we exercise poor music discipline, our ratings generally decline.
Your problem is that by clinging to ratings, you are forcing yourself to try to serve as many people as possible, and that does mean the smallest common denominator, which people grow weary of very quickly. What you are going to have to do, if you want to survive in the long run, is specialize and accept that will mean there won't be as many people listening at one time. Yeah, I know that you are part of a company that only wants the highest profits and doesn't care abot the long run. Guess why you're in trouble.
At the moment, I can take radio if it is only for a few hours, but listening to the same station for even two days in a row is murder, because I don't want to hear the same song six times in two days. So what do I use instead of radio? Right. You by Airport Express and stream your iTunes over your stereo system.
Radio is just to monotonous to listen to for any length of time. On the short run, this might be fine. On the long run, it is going to kill you. And you can't tell me that makes business sense.
(...) installing new software could pose some problems for those who aren't really computer savvy
This is the most murderous aspect of Microsoft's monopoly: You don't have to install the OS, it is already on the machine. As anybody who has had to install Windows from scratch knows, if you start off with a virgin machine, and all things are equal, running SuSE off a DVD is a lot nicer and easier that juggling all those driver CDs for Windows.
But since Apple is going to take over the world, this discussion is purely academic anyway.
First, the illusion of anonymity -- an illusion because Internet use can be easily tracked -- leads to disinhibition.
Well, if it means that they can be easily tracked and show their true faces this way, than this is good, or? We can catch them more easily than when they were, say, mostly hanging around playgrounds and public swimming pools and schools.
Boy, I wonder what this professor would have thought about Gutenberg. Anybody else old enough to remember when the NYT was a real newspaper that printed real news?
Slashdot Mirror
...but wasn't the original "Godfather" a book? This is not Coppola's baby, but Mario Puzo's. Even given that Puzo's dead, what is Coppola shooting his mouth off? When they do the film version of "Apocalypse Now", I'll listen.
But then, maybe they're all wrong and Mrs. DiDio is right. After all, she's an analyst, right?
Man, don't I love the 21. Century.
On a more serious note, I wonder if Clinton has noticed that there is this real war going on that is chewing up real U.S. soldiers by the dozen and spitting them out as real dead people and real cripples because things are going really, really bad -- the happy news for today is that our Iraqi friends (half of whom want to turn the country into a second Iran anyway) still can't agree on who gets the most basic jobs for the next few months, that is, until the real elections.
Yeah, nice of her to think about the children, but pardon me for thinking that her priorities should be elsewhere, like figuring out an exit strategy for Iraq.
Anyway, interesting list you've got there. Once I've gotten through NetHack, I might take a look at some of those games. This Diablo, that's the NetHack rip-off, right?
I'm still waiting for things to fall apart with IPv4...
In other words, they aren't really a business the way the other news agencies are. You don't see Reuters out there suing Google, and for good reason.
As far as a know, the best living British author Terry Pratchett occasionally auctions off names of secondary characters for good causes. Pratchett, of course, co-authored Good Omens, which you should have read because it is brilliant, so they know each other (one would hope).
If a series ends naturally, there is grumbling, but marching in the streets doesn't make sense. Enterprise and other shows that were pulled in mid-run make you feel cheated, and in fact, that is just what has happened. This is one of the reasons why television sucks big time compared to books: Imagine "Lord of the Rings" without the third book, and you get an idea of why people get pissed about these aborted seasons.
Spoiler warning.
Better? You call this better? Because I live in a TV-backwater, I just got to see the last episode of season three, which I had been led to believe was one of the good ones. What I got was a cliff hanger with time travel and Nazis. Please. All we're missing now is that they introduce a little kid...
I'm sorry, they screwed around with the background story too much in the first two episodes for me to be interested. So far, it is more fun to watch Buffy reruns. No Nazis, no time travel, and when they introduced a little kid, it wasn't a little kid at all.
Anyway -- all I still use Windows for is to play "Age of Kings", and since I keep getting my ass kicked on the higher levels by the Spanish, I think I just might give that up, too.
In other words, the British taxpayer. This does give me nice, warm feeling, because the charter of the BBC is up for review, if I remember correctly, and from what I have heard, there are Going To Be Changes.
Good. Maybe they can get back to serious journalism then...
Who funds this crap? And don't they have real science to do? And can't we please, please just have the real news on Slashdot?
Yeah, sure. I'll believe it when I see all of the people involved sitting on a tropical island they just bought with drinks in their hands being served by half-naked beautiful members of the appropriate sex because they have predicted the lottery numbers. Until then, forgive me for being less than impressed.
So far, no (new) problems. Life is good.
Under these circumstances, I would wonder if the Cell is not more of a threat to Microsoft than a chance -- a PowerMac with a Cell processor running OS X "Tiger" (already everything that Longhorn hopes to be, if you believe the Apple fanpersons) would seem more realistic in the short run than Longhorn on the Cell. And IBM and Apple already know how to play with each other from PowerPC days.
All in all, I can't say I'm too impressed with the article's logic. Then again, I've just had a very, very large pizza, so maybe it's me...
There is a difference between the profit a company makes and the performance of the stock on Wall Street. In an ideal universe, the two would be the same, but the stock market looks to future growth, not past profits. And that is exactly where Microsoft's problem is from a broker's point of view -- there is no way that the company is going to have double-digit growth again, it can't say boo without anti-trust lawyers jumping on them, and Linux and OS X are breathing down their necks (well -- for a sensitive pea-under-mattress kind of neck at least). Where is growth going to come from?
Yes, they are making lots of money. But their stock is doing worse than the Nasdaq average if (and only if) I remember correctly. If not, my apologies to Gates and friends.
I would certainly think so, because OS X shows people what can be done with computers -- it shows them that viruses, trojans, and other malware aren't acts of God, but a preventable result of bad technology; that computers don't have to crash; that drag'n drop can do so much more; that Plug and Play can be more than an empty marketing slogan; and finally that computers can actually look cool. In short, Apple makes Windows machines look bad by comparison, and with the iPod and Mac mini actually penetrating the mainstream, this can't be good for Microsoft.
Futhermore, I think your comment
With less than 2% marketshare, Mac OS X is pretty much inconsequential in both the predominantly Windows consumer market, or Windows/Linux enterprise market.
shows a widespread but flawed view of the computer world: Market share is all that matters. In fact, look at Porsche: Pissy market share, but great cars and -- more important -- great financial performance of the company. Apple's stock is doing just fine, thank you, while Microsoft's is starting to underperform to the point where they are now paying dividend. Comparing Microsoft to Apple makes just as little sense as comparing GM to Porsche and then saying that Porsche is hopeless because they don't have a large percentage of the mass-market.
In fact, at least up to the Mac mini, that was exactly the point.
It's time to stop copying Windows XP, folks. It's time to start copying Longhorn. Gnome devs have already realised that.
should be modified to It's time to stop copying Windows XP, folks. It's time to start copying OS X. Unfortunately, nobody from KDE or Gnome seems to realize this.
For one thing, somebody has to figure out a way to start doing graphics on the GPU with vanilla X11 pretty soon -- Tiger is going to make everything else look like mud this year already, and when Windows figures out that trick in 2006 or 2007 or whenever, BSD and Linux will just about be the only ugly kids left on the block. This might not matter for servers etc, but on the desktop, looks count.
By now, I just flatly refuse to be involved in their computer problems: My advice usually boils down to a polite version of something like "Buy a Mac mini or shut up." Even if they want to keep a Windows machine for games, at the mini's price, there is no excuse not to surf with a Mac anymore.
Your problem is that by clinging to ratings, you are forcing yourself to try to serve as many people as possible, and that does mean the smallest common denominator, which people grow weary of very quickly. What you are going to have to do, if you want to survive in the long run, is specialize and accept that will mean there won't be as many people listening at one time. Yeah, I know that you are part of a company that only wants the highest profits and doesn't care abot the long run. Guess why you're in trouble.
At the moment, I can take radio if it is only for a few hours, but listening to the same station for even two days in a row is murder, because I don't want to hear the same song six times in two days. So what do I use instead of radio? Right. You by Airport Express and stream your iTunes over your stereo system.
Radio is just to monotonous to listen to for any length of time. On the short run, this might be fine. On the long run, it is going to kill you. And you can't tell me that makes business sense.
This is the most murderous aspect of Microsoft's monopoly: You don't have to install the OS, it is already on the machine. As anybody who has had to install Windows from scratch knows, if you start off with a virgin machine, and all things are equal, running SuSE off a DVD is a lot nicer and easier that juggling all those driver CDs for Windows.
But since Apple is going to take over the world, this discussion is purely academic anyway.
That sounds just like Apple and their single-mouse button...
(Ducks)
Well, if it means that they can be easily tracked and show their true faces this way, than this is good, or? We can catch them more easily than when they were, say, mostly hanging around playgrounds and public swimming pools and schools.
Boy, I wonder what this professor would have thought about Gutenberg. Anybody else old enough to remember when the NYT was a real newspaper that printed real news?
Oh well, Lexmark has better Linux support anyway...