If you want to hurt Microsoft where it counts, a consumer boycott is meaningless. That's not where the money is. The real money is in the gigantic site-wide enterprise licenses that Microsoft shoves down corporation's throats, mainly because Microsoft's marketing engine has convinced them that they must do enterprise-wide upgrades with every new version, spending thousands and millions of dollars to remain "compliant," "supported," and "secure."
What you should do instead is start a campaign to educate whomever is in charge of making platform decisions at companies/schools/governments. Losing large swaths of volume customers at a time would get Microsoft's attention. And I can't imagine any CEO/CIO/CTO/whatever being happy if he was convinced that some 3rd party could lock him out of his critical business data at any time (even if the likelihood of it actually happening is marginal).
The only thing bigger than that are the OEMs... that's where most of the consumers buy their copies of Windows, pre-installed on their Dells and their eMachines. However, since this hardly affects the manufacturer, I don't know how you'd convince them. Maybe the danger of losing face (not to mention support costs) when Microsoft locks a consumer out of their computer and the consumer blames the manufacturer might be enough.
( and how in the hell does 50k people playing a game on free servers effect the retail's customer support and product development )
For the same reason that pirated copies of Windows affect Microsoft's support costs. You'd be amazed how many idiots out there will use a pirated copy of software and then try to get technical support for it.
Even it's just to connect to a first-ring support operator to tell you to shove off for using an illegal copy, that's still wasted time for the CSR, utilization of the incoming phone lines, recordkeeping, possible investigation, etc., etc.
That is precisely what is happening. Blizzard didn't have the capital to develop a game like WOW on their own so they basically had to strike a deal with the devil in order for it to happen.
That's a bit of a wild assumption... while it's probably true that Blizzard didn't have the money on its own to develop such a massive title, Vivendi was just an end point to a string of acquisitions that started in 1996, about 2 to 3 years before development started on World of Warcraft.
Although I do agree with assessment that Vivendi is being stingy in giving back to Blizzard... it's pretty much true of any big corporate author-publisher relationship; the publisher claims the majority of the profits (with the excuse of fronting major costs for marketing, distribution, sales, etc.) and sends back piss royalties to the person that actually created the work.
Luckily in this day and age the need for large-scale publishing houses are quickly disappearing. Online distribution and indie publishers in the world of books are really taking hold and making publishing more affordable and accessible to a wider base of authors. It makes me wonder if such a model will take hold in the software entertainment industry.
Ha! I know what you mean... I play a little WoW myself (maybe a couple hours a week), but I never have to worry about keeping up with the latest WoW trivia and news because of the two guys I sit between at work.
And that's partly why MS has >90% of the market, while Apple has 5%:)
I'll admit that Microsoft's time-to-market has been an advantage in the past, but it's not what got them a 90% market share in PC-land. Currently however, consumers appear to be "waking up" and realizing that there is stuff out there besides Microsoft that actually works better.
It will be interesting to see how it pans out with Microsoft coming from the other side, considering that in the music player market Apple has like 90% of the market share and they have 0%. I will be particularly interested to see how they leverage their market share with Windows and Windows Media Player to try and wedge themselves into the music player market. Despite anti-trust action for such things in the past, I'm not going to put it past them to continue to do such things.
That's basically what Jobs has done all along. He's shown that he's never one to completely disregard in the future what doesn't work today. He's just a perfectionist and doesn't want to throw in the latest bells and whistles until he feels it is ready for your everyday user to consume. That's one thing that Microsoft doesn't get—they want the most features possible and so they end up releasing a lot of stuff, that while it sounds cool, often doesn't work as advertised until a couple of service packs later.
I also wanted to address a point from the grandparent, which your point actually addresses (albeit a little broadly):
You know damned well that when (not if) iPod comes out with wireless, his tune on that will change in a hurry. Kind of like Intel was slow until Apple was using it.
That's a bit of a misinformed statement. Intel was slow. PowerPC was kicking Intel ass up through the early G4's. Unfortunately, IBM didn't keep up with R&D for their consumer PowerPC chips to stay competitive with Intel. So, like a good businessman, Jobs did was right for the consumer and switched his product to use the more competitive parts.
I assure you that once Steve Jobs feels the time is right for things like iPod wireless, or iPhone, or whatever else "everyone" is clamoring for, he'll do it.
http://www.planeshift.it/
I've seen a lot of so-called FOSS MMO games in the works, but this one seems to be the only one I've found that has any real dedication. Still, they've been working on it for years now and there's not much to see. But it does have a working client/server and is pretty damn good for a volunteer effort.
- Server-side Java (JSPs, servlets, etc.) is unnecessarily complicated and probably designed by Satan himself
Moderation needs a +1 QFT option.
I do a lot of web services programming, and after working with the tools that Microsoft's.NET provides, trying to do similar in Java makes me want to cry.
Very true. There are also a lot of metals besides gold that are worth more (though in smaller amounts, like platinum). I've been part of a business before where we chunked up old Macs and PCs, packed all the circuit boards up in huge wooden crates, and sent them off to a recovery mill... a couple months later, a few tons of scrap is turned into a check for $20,000. It's not bad money but it takes a lot of manual labor to separate it out (i.e. separating circuits from CRT's and plastic) or the mill will charge you to do the separation and sorting.
Also, newer computers have much lower amounts of these materials, making them almost worthless. The sweet spot are the 68020's and 486's (the heavy processors are where you get the most precious metals per oz.).
I've been in the refurb business and have some experience with these surplus sales. There's a couple reasons why you don't hear about them.
One, most of this surplus sales are auctions meant for volume buyers. They don't advertise them in consumer channels because they don't want to sell 1 computer to an individual, they want to sell 2000 computers to a guy with forklift and a truck that will haul them away. When companies/schools decommission large amounts of technology, they want to get them out of the way as quickly as possible. Being able to sell some of it to recoup their losses on the way to the dumpster is just a small bonus to them. They're not in the business of opening a flea market to the public.
Two, a lot of the auctioneers and the big buyers play "you scratch my back, I'll scratch yours" games. Pretty much to hear about the good auctions you get the information directly from the auctioneer that was hired to conduct the sale. To do that you need to be on their list to begin with, and it helps if you've been a good customer to them for a while (i.e., pay for your lots on time and get them off-site quick). Of course this creates a kind of chicken-and-egg scenario, so if you want to do this for a living it helps to make some contacts up front with other buyers and find out from them where to go. Depending on the area, once you get in good with two or three of the biggest auction houses you'll get info on most of the auctions in the area.
Auctioneers are mostly regional (there are a few national clearing houses but prices tend to be high because of the visibility), but if you're local to Texas here's a couple I suggest (that actually have web sites, a lot of them don't):
Whatever you do, do something. Don't just stand by and watch.
MMORPG addiction can be every bit as destructive as other types of addiction, like alcoholism. Unfortunately, since it's "just a game" too many people turn a blind eye and believe that this merely anti-social behavior will work it self out.
I know, because I've been there. I did the same things when EverQuest first hit the market... I played 60+ hours a week, and I often called in sick to work just to keep playing, which was how I lost my job. Luckily I wasn't married at the time, or I probably would have lost that too.
In my case, it actually wasn't the MMORPG that was the problem though. Like any addiction, it was a method to fill a void in my life. I was suffering from depression due to some undesirable situations in my personal life, and I turned to the game as a substitute for real life. It became addicting because I had much more power over my life in the game than I did in my real life. You may want to make sure your friend is doing okay in other arenas; there may be a secondary reason why he spends so much time in the game.
Well there's still one main advantage to the Power Mac over the iMac... upgradability. Once you buy an iMac, you're pretty much stuck with it aside from RAM and HDD. The Power Mac has expansion slots, a removable graphics card, upgradable processor, etc.
If you don't plan on radically upgrading your system until you buy the next one, then yes the iMac is a great deal for price/performance ratio. However if you're a person that like to tinker and upgrade your system piece by piece, you're better off getting a Power Mac.
I have to agree. I've been reading John C. Dvorak since the 80's, and I tend nowadays to look at his columns as more 'humor' than 'editorial.'
This guy has always wanted to be the Nostradamus of the computer industry, but I don't think I can count on one hand the number of his predictions that's actually been true. He's been in the ballpark a few times, but he tends to blow things ridiculously out of proportion.
I don't agree that the gaming industry is going to face a 'meltdown', but certainly it needs to continue innovating if it's going to continue growing. But that's true of any industry. I do see his point that most games have fallen into a rut of rehashing the same handful of genres, but this will hardly lead to a collapse of the market - more likely it will just mean less *new* gaming demographics. Most consumers have already seen what the majority of games have to offer, and to effectively acquire those segments of the market that have already blown off video games, you need to be able to find something new that appeals to them.
They've only been going under Tiger Direct for a few years. They used to be known as Misco.
I can't verify 'Tiger Direct' being in use since 1987, but I'm pretty sure I've been getting their mail catalogs since at least 1995 or so. I think that qualifies as more than 'a few years', especially in the computer industry.
TigerDirect.com does not own a trademark on the word tiger. A 30 second search at USPTO yields that Tiger Direct, Inc. owns seven trademarks:
Thankfully, spending a bit longer than 30 seconds reveals that Tiger Direct does not own Tiger, but their parent company Systemax does and has it assigned to Tiger Direct.
According to this page, their first use of "Tiger" was in 1987, they filed for trademark in 2000 and it was finally registered in 2002.
However, it says the category for this trademark is "Mail order catalog services featuring computers and computer related products; and Retail store services featuring computers and computer related products", so according to the registration it's not technically in the same market space as Apple's trademark on an operating system.
I'll be interested to see if that comes into play in court, though I highly doubt this case will ever actually make it to court.
The more people we convert, the more support for our projects and the better they will become sooner.
Exactly... we are the 'marketing team' of OpenSource. While Microsoft spends billions of dollars on advertising, OSS gets billions of people like us to spread it by web sites, forums, and word-of-mouth. When you're working for free, it's difficult to come up with the cash for a Super Bowl spot. Thus, OSS is reliant on its users to be its marketers and advertisers.
Slashdot Mirror
Thank you... I'm glad someone around here actually knows how copyright registration and infringement suits work. :p
If you want to hurt Microsoft where it counts, a consumer boycott is meaningless. That's not where the money is. The real money is in the gigantic site-wide enterprise licenses that Microsoft shoves down corporation's throats, mainly because Microsoft's marketing engine has convinced them that they must do enterprise-wide upgrades with every new version, spending thousands and millions of dollars to remain "compliant," "supported," and "secure."
What you should do instead is start a campaign to educate whomever is in charge of making platform decisions at companies/schools/governments. Losing large swaths of volume customers at a time would get Microsoft's attention. And I can't imagine any CEO/CIO/CTO/whatever being happy if he was convinced that some 3rd party could lock him out of his critical business data at any time (even if the likelihood of it actually happening is marginal).
The only thing bigger than that are the OEMs... that's where most of the consumers buy their copies of Windows, pre-installed on their Dells and their eMachines. However, since this hardly affects the manufacturer, I don't know how you'd convince them. Maybe the danger of losing face (not to mention support costs) when Microsoft locks a consumer out of their computer and the consumer blames the manufacturer might be enough.
For the same reason that pirated copies of Windows affect Microsoft's support costs. You'd be amazed how many idiots out there will use a pirated copy of software and then try to get technical support for it.
Even it's just to connect to a first-ring support operator to tell you to shove off for using an illegal copy, that's still wasted time for the CSR, utilization of the incoming phone lines, recordkeeping, possible investigation, etc., etc.
That's a bit of a wild assumption... while it's probably true that Blizzard didn't have the money on its own to develop such a massive title, Vivendi was just an end point to a string of acquisitions that started in 1996, about 2 to 3 years before development started on World of Warcraft.
Although I do agree with assessment that Vivendi is being stingy in giving back to Blizzard... it's pretty much true of any big corporate author-publisher relationship; the publisher claims the majority of the profits (with the excuse of fronting major costs for marketing, distribution, sales, etc.) and sends back piss royalties to the person that actually created the work.
Luckily in this day and age the need for large-scale publishing houses are quickly disappearing. Online distribution and indie publishers in the world of books are really taking hold and making publishing more affordable and accessible to a wider base of authors. It makes me wonder if such a model will take hold in the software entertainment industry.
Ha! I know what you mean... I play a little WoW myself (maybe a couple hours a week), but I never have to worry about keeping up with the latest WoW trivia and news because of the two guys I sit between at work.
Wow. Your skills at debate are astounding. Too bad there isn't a +1, Nuh uh! just for you.
Ah! This sounds exactly like the title I've been looking for. Can you tell me the name of this game?
I'll admit that Microsoft's time-to-market has been an advantage in the past, but it's not what got them a 90% market share in PC-land. Currently however, consumers appear to be "waking up" and realizing that there is stuff out there besides Microsoft that actually works better.
It will be interesting to see how it pans out with Microsoft coming from the other side, considering that in the music player market Apple has like 90% of the market share and they have 0%. I will be particularly interested to see how they leverage their market share with Windows and Windows Media Player to try and wedge themselves into the music player market. Despite anti-trust action for such things in the past, I'm not going to put it past them to continue to do such things.
That's basically what Jobs has done all along. He's shown that he's never one to completely disregard in the future what doesn't work today. He's just a perfectionist and doesn't want to throw in the latest bells and whistles until he feels it is ready for your everyday user to consume. That's one thing that Microsoft doesn't get—they want the most features possible and so they end up releasing a lot of stuff, that while it sounds cool, often doesn't work as advertised until a couple of service packs later.
I also wanted to address a point from the grandparent, which your point actually addresses (albeit a little broadly):
That's a bit of a misinformed statement. Intel was slow. PowerPC was kicking Intel ass up through the early G4's. Unfortunately, IBM didn't keep up with R&D for their consumer PowerPC chips to stay competitive with Intel. So, like a good businessman, Jobs did was right for the consumer and switched his product to use the more competitive parts.
I assure you that once Steve Jobs feels the time is right for things like iPod wireless, or iPhone, or whatever else "everyone" is clamoring for, he'll do it.
http://www.planeshift.it/ I've seen a lot of so-called FOSS MMO games in the works, but this one seems to be the only one I've found that has any real dedication. Still, they've been working on it for years now and there's not much to see. But it does have a working client/server and is pretty damn good for a volunteer effort.
Moderation needs a +1 QFT option.
I do a lot of web services programming, and after working with the tools that Microsoft's .NET provides, trying to do similar in Java makes me want to cry.
Very true. There are also a lot of metals besides gold that are worth more (though in smaller amounts, like platinum). I've been part of a business before where we chunked up old Macs and PCs, packed all the circuit boards up in huge wooden crates, and sent them off to a recovery mill... a couple months later, a few tons of scrap is turned into a check for $20,000. It's not bad money but it takes a lot of manual labor to separate it out (i.e. separating circuits from CRT's and plastic) or the mill will charge you to do the separation and sorting.
Also, newer computers have much lower amounts of these materials, making them almost worthless. The sweet spot are the 68020's and 486's (the heavy processors are where you get the most precious metals per oz.).
For some reason when I heard about this all I could think of was the inevitable product to follow... the Web hard copy!
I've been in the refurb business and have some experience with these surplus sales. There's a couple reasons why you don't hear about them.
One, most of this surplus sales are auctions meant for volume buyers. They don't advertise them in consumer channels because they don't want to sell 1 computer to an individual, they want to sell 2000 computers to a guy with forklift and a truck that will haul them away. When companies/schools decommission large amounts of technology, they want to get them out of the way as quickly as possible. Being able to sell some of it to recoup their losses on the way to the dumpster is just a small bonus to them. They're not in the business of opening a flea market to the public.
Two, a lot of the auctioneers and the big buyers play "you scratch my back, I'll scratch yours" games. Pretty much to hear about the good auctions you get the information directly from the auctioneer that was hired to conduct the sale. To do that you need to be on their list to begin with, and it helps if you've been a good customer to them for a while (i.e., pay for your lots on time and get them off-site quick). Of course this creates a kind of chicken-and-egg scenario, so if you want to do this for a living it helps to make some contacts up front with other buyers and find out from them where to go. Depending on the area, once you get in good with two or three of the biggest auction houses you'll get info on most of the auctions in the area.
Auctioneers are mostly regional (there are a few national clearing houses but prices tend to be high because of the visibility), but if you're local to Texas here's a couple I suggest (that actually have web sites, a lot of them don't):
Rene Bates Auctioneers, Inc.
Lemons Auctioneers
Whatever you do, do something. Don't just stand by and watch. MMORPG addiction can be every bit as destructive as other types of addiction, like alcoholism. Unfortunately, since it's "just a game" too many people turn a blind eye and believe that this merely anti-social behavior will work it self out. I know, because I've been there. I did the same things when EverQuest first hit the market... I played 60+ hours a week, and I often called in sick to work just to keep playing, which was how I lost my job. Luckily I wasn't married at the time, or I probably would have lost that too. In my case, it actually wasn't the MMORPG that was the problem though. Like any addiction, it was a method to fill a void in my life. I was suffering from depression due to some undesirable situations in my personal life, and I turned to the game as a substitute for real life. It became addicting because I had much more power over my life in the game than I did in my real life. You may want to make sure your friend is doing okay in other arenas; there may be a secondary reason why he spends so much time in the game.
Well there's still one main advantage to the Power Mac over the iMac... upgradability. Once you buy an iMac, you're pretty much stuck with it aside from RAM and HDD. The Power Mac has expansion slots, a removable graphics card, upgradable processor, etc.
If you don't plan on radically upgrading your system until you buy the next one, then yes the iMac is a great deal for price/performance ratio. However if you're a person that like to tinker and upgrade your system piece by piece, you're better off getting a Power Mac.
I have to agree. I've been reading John C. Dvorak since the 80's, and I tend nowadays to look at his columns as more 'humor' than 'editorial.'
This guy has always wanted to be the Nostradamus of the computer industry, but I don't think I can count on one hand the number of his predictions that's actually been true. He's been in the ballpark a few times, but he tends to blow things ridiculously out of proportion.
I don't agree that the gaming industry is going to face a 'meltdown', but certainly it needs to continue innovating if it's going to continue growing. But that's true of any industry. I do see his point that most games have fallen into a rut of rehashing the same handful of genres, but this will hardly lead to a collapse of the market - more likely it will just mean less *new* gaming demographics. Most consumers have already seen what the majority of games have to offer, and to effectively acquire those segments of the market that have already blown off video games, you need to be able to find something new that appeals to them.
They've only been going under Tiger Direct for a few years. They used to be known as Misco.
I can't verify 'Tiger Direct' being in use since 1987, but I'm pretty sure I've been getting their mail catalogs since at least 1995 or so. I think that qualifies as more than 'a few years', especially in the computer industry.
TigerDirect.com does not own a trademark on the word tiger. A 30 second search at USPTO yields that Tiger Direct, Inc. owns seven trademarks:
e ntry=75915934
Thankfully, spending a bit longer than 30 seconds reveals that Tiger Direct does not own Tiger, but their parent company Systemax does and has it assigned to Tiger Direct.
http://tarr.uspto.gov/servlet/tarr?regser=serial&
According to this page, their first use of "Tiger" was in 1987, they filed for trademark in 2000 and it was finally registered in 2002.
However, it says the category for this trademark is "Mail order catalog services featuring computers and computer related products; and Retail store services featuring computers and computer related products", so according to the registration it's not technically in the same market space as Apple's trademark on an operating system.
I'll be interested to see if that comes into play in court, though I highly doubt this case will ever actually make it to court.
The more people we convert, the more support for our projects and the better they will become sooner.
Exactly... we are the 'marketing team' of OpenSource. While Microsoft spends billions of dollars on advertising, OSS gets billions of people like us to spread it by web sites, forums, and word-of-mouth. When you're working for free, it's difficult to come up with the cash for a Super Bowl spot. Thus, OSS is reliant on its users to be its marketers and advertisers.