Well, yeah. But Vista *does* introduce a lot more Group Policy settings in an Active Directory environment. Network administrators can control *a lot* more stuff via Group Policy, which is nice.
But it isn't much of a reason to upgrade. Hell, I doubt that all that many businesses plan to upgrade any time in the near future. Ever since XP came out, hardware has been "fast enough" for ALL of the typical business software that most companies run. Hell, even some of the late "pre-XP" Windows 2000 machines are fast enough that upgrading them probably isn't worth it.
Like you said, composite outputs cost next to nothing. And, more importantly, EVERYTHING works with composite. What if you need to hook up your player to a TV that doesn't have HDMI or component inputs? Or even s-video? You'd have to use the composite outputs. Hell, you can even hook up a composite source to an RF input with a cheap adapter. Yeah, it won't look as good, but it will still WORK.
It's the same kind of good marketing logic that puts a USB-to-PS2 adapter in the box with almost every mouse and keyboard you can buy.
BUT...no business should be "running the show" on something like Excel. For serious stuff, you need a dedicated (possibly custom-made) application that does all kinds of sanity checks. A properly coded Excel spreadsheet can do a lot of that for you, but it's not really meant for that.
I mean, really. "Link's hat had far too few polygons"? Listen to how ridiculous that sounds.
And as far as 480p goes, well, as has been said before...
DVDs run at 480p. Is there a game that looks as good as a DVD? Or even regular broadcast TV? No. 480p is PLENTY of resolution. It's all in how detailed the graphics are. Even the 360's graphics are a long way off from looking completely realistic.
The fact is, the Wii is good enough. Games aren't going to look TERRIBLE or anything. In fact, they'll look way better than the last generation, which already looked pretty awesome.
Look, I'm as much of a "tech-spec" geek as the next guy, but talking about how good a console is based on specs is akin to talking about how good a novel is based on the quality of the typesetting job.
It really *is* the games that count. And the Wii remote really is pretty cool. I haven't owned a Nintendo system since the NES, and I'm excited about the Wii, because it FINALLY gives us a new way to play games. Maybe it's not the "revolution" that Nintendo claims it is, but at least it's something new and different.
In Windows, even simple actions require accessing TONS of DLLs. I imagine that MS simply set up Vista to ask for "authorization" EVERY TIME a "privileged" DLL needs to be accessed. Obviously, that gets out of control.
They need to figure out a way to make it so that you authorize certain ACTIVITIES, instead of every individual executable that activity requires.
Of course, that's damn hard, because of the way Windows is designed.
Personally, I don't find the dialogs that bad, and if it can keep people from doing STUPID stuff, I'm all for it.
Well, you're right. HOWEVER, as we all know, money talks in Washington. If this company bribes the right politicians, and promises some kind of benefit to a given congressman's state, then it WILL happen.
Google is probably too secretive, but I appreciate their attitude. They have VERY LITTLE respect for the stock analysts, and Wall Street in general.
The fact of the matter is that the stock market is built on false (or at least dubious) perceptions. Google refuses to play that game. They don't tell ANYBODY what they're doing, which evens the playing field. The "big players" don't have any insider information, and so don't have a significant advantage over the "little players". I think it's great. Google basically says "We're not going to help the rich get richer."
That said, they are playing a dangerous game. Wall Street (and their ilk) essentially controls the U.S. economy. A given business pisses them off at their own peril. But at least Google is making the effort. And so far it has worked.
There seems to be a common misconception that since cable/DSL customers are only paying ~$10/megabit for bandwidth, that that's what the ISPs are paying. That's simply not true.
For ISPs, overselling bandwidth is the ONLY way they can sell it to end-users cheaply. I know there are some people who are paying $50/month for 8Mbps cablemodems. Do you realize that 8Mbps of bandwidth is costing your ISP THOUSANDS (maybe hundreds, if they're in a big city) of dollars?
Bandwidth just isn't as cheap as everyone seems to think it is. So yeah, there is NO WAY an ISP can afford to supply every one of their users the gobs of non-bursty bandwidth necessary to make HDTV downloads on a massive scale work.
It's not that small businesses are *bad*, it's that, truly, they do all the same evil things that BIG businesses do, just on a smaller scale.
I've worked for quite a few small businesses, and they all paid their employees poorly, didn't offer any health insurance, and overworked everyone instead of hiring more employees. Why? Because the owners were keeping all the money to themselves so they could be wealthy. And, being a small business, there just wasn't enough money to go around to pay the employees any kind of decent wage, or provide any benefits.
Don't even get me started on small businesses that are nothing but retail shops. Why should I pay more for a product at some "mom and pop" store just so "mom and pop" don't have to get real jobs? Screw them.
Building your own PCs isn't any great skill. Anyone can do it. But there's really no REASON to do it. It's *cheaper* to buy the pre-built machine from Dell. Building your own PC almost never saves you any money, and hasn't for years. Seriously, can YOU build a complete PC, with a monitor and a legit copy of Windows, for $400?
Now, once you start spendig BIG BUCKS on a PC, then it can be cheaper to build your own. Sometimes.
"... are self-selected because they tend to know more about technology than your average PC buyer..."
You've got to be kidding. Mac users are even MORE clueless than the average PC buyer, in my experience. They buy Macs specifically to *avoid* having to know anything about technology.
How, exactly, do you build "competitive internets"?
The really big players in the telecom industry own most of the actual pipes. It's taken them 100 years and untold billions of dollars to build. How could that possibly be duplicated?
Yes, they own it, and they should be allowed to make money from it. But they HAVE and DO make money from it. They just want MORE, at the expense of essentially everyone else. Would it even be possible to completely bypass AT&T/SBC's network without some major "reconstruction" of the internet?
Letting them charge for the mere *privilege* of using their lines (because they already charge for bandwidth, you see) is ridiculous. Imagine if every street in the entire U.S. had a toll booth, even though you ALREADY paid for the street with taxes.
Older cards from ATI and Nvidia *don't* get that much cheaper. Not fast enough to matter, anyway. By the time a given card is "cheap", it's so slow that it's almost useless in modern games.
And the cheap cards aren't subsidized by the more expensive cards. In fact, the "high-end" cards aren't what keep ATI and Nvidia in business. The real money is in "integrated" video in cheap systems. That's especially true for ATI, who until fairly recently was the king of integrated graphics chips. Intel has stolen a lot of their market, there, and it's hurting them. Nvidia is *desperately* trying to get into that market, with their new motherboards that have 6100-level graphics.
I have a feeling that it's not going to last. In Japan, maybe "Wii" doesn't sound ridiculous, but in English-speaking countries, it sounds stupid. I'm sure Nintendo of America is having a nice long talk with Nintendo of Japan right now.
I agree. We should use science to figure out where the bones come from, rather than relying on supernatural explanations.
Also, if during the course of the scientific investigations, the researches should become hungry, they should eat food rather than praying for their hunger to end. Similarly, if their mode of transportation should run out of fuel, they probably would be better served by buying a tank full of gas, versus merely "wishing real hard" that they could get where they were going.
And, of course, if they post on Slashdot, they shouldn't Karma-whore by posting the BLEEDING OBVIOUS.
Anyone that has ever tried to setup a WiFi network to cover a large municipal area knows that it's essentially IMPOSSIBLE to make it work well. WiFi is just to sensitive to interference. Trees and building stop WiFi in it's tracks. The only solution is to flood the area with access points, which is so expensive to do that it's not practical.
Supposedly WiMax has better coverage, but honestly, until the FCC opens up some of the lower UHF/VHF frequencies, wireless internet access "for the masses" is never gonna work right. 2.4Ghz is just too high a frequency to push through stuff.
She's in it for the money. Everyone knows this. She'd charge $1000/ticket if she thought people would pay it.
And Bowie? Madonna learned a lot of *her* moves from *him*. He was one of the first of the "image is everything" rock musicians. Though he at least used to be talented.
What I find amusing is that the vast majority of "artists" that bitch about illegal downloading and falling CD sales are artist that fucking suck, or are has-beens. Used to be that if you were hugely popular at some point, you could live off that FOREVER thanks to album sales. Not anymore.
"Catch up"? What other operating system in widespread use has an SQL-based filesystem?
Yeah, WinFS would and *will* be nice, but it's not a deal-breaker.
I'm more concerned that Vista is yet-another-version-of-Windows NT. I honestly would like MS to risk it all and make a brand-new version of Windows, written from scratch, that only runs "old" stuff under emulation. Just start over. It'll never happen, of course.
Wait. It's *Microsoft's* fault that the public library chose Microsoft's format for their downloadable media? Microsoft *forced* them to not use some other format, like plain-old MPEG? Or Quicktime? Or RealMedia? Or was it that those other formats aren't as *good*? Because they aren't. And, let's not forget that DRM is usually mandated by content creators, which means that so-called "open" formats are out of the question. Never mind that BOTH Quicktime and Real format were available LONG before Microsoft had anything similar. But they both fucked up, and Microsoft came out with a better product.
You're being ridiculous. You're using the same logic that is leading people to say that Apple has a "monopoly" with the iTunes music store and it's DRM scheme. No.
Does Windows Media Player prevent you from using a *different* media player, with *different* codecs, that *can* be read by other players? No.
Seriously. The whole "Microsoft is a monopoly" thing is retarded. Yes, they did abuse their power with OEMs. Yes, the U.S. courts did basically declare them a "coercive monopoly".
But the fact remains that there is really nothing stopping anyone from NOT using Microsoft products. Everyone is free to choose whatever OS they want. Of course, most of the "good" applications only run on Windows. Is that MS's fault? No.
I think that the REAL motivation behind most of the lawsuits against MS that imply they abuse their "power" is sour grapes. Apple, Sun, IBM, even Be(!) all fucked up. They didn't do as good a job as MS in promoting their OSs and hardware. Especially Apple, who should've OWNED the entire market. They had ELEVEN YEARS (1984 - 1995) where their OS was superiour in every way to MSs. And they blew it. The same can be said for all the other OS vendors.
I don't know. I'm not saying MS isn't a little bit evil, but they are dominant because they did a better job than the other OS/application companies. Period.
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Well, yeah. But Vista *does* introduce a lot more Group Policy settings in an Active Directory environment. Network administrators can control *a lot* more stuff via Group Policy, which is nice.
But it isn't much of a reason to upgrade. Hell, I doubt that all that many businesses plan to upgrade any time in the near future. Ever since XP came out, hardware has been "fast enough" for ALL of the typical business software that most companies run. Hell, even some of the late "pre-XP" Windows 2000 machines are fast enough that upgrading them probably isn't worth it.
Like you said, composite outputs cost next to nothing. And, more importantly, EVERYTHING works with composite. What if you need to hook up your player to a TV that doesn't have HDMI or component inputs? Or even s-video? You'd have to use the composite outputs. Hell, you can even hook up a composite source to an RF input with a cheap adapter. Yeah, it won't look as good, but it will still WORK.
It's the same kind of good marketing logic that puts a USB-to-PS2 adapter in the box with almost every mouse and keyboard you can buy.
Unless they need to use the CDROM drive, floppy drive, USB devices, or memory cards to DO THEIR JOB, then they SHOULD be disabled.
The fact is, in a business setting, the machines should be completely locked down so that users can do ONLY what they need to do, and nothing else.
Of course, politics tend to prevent that from happening. But it is proper "procedure".
Don't get me wrong, Excel is pretty damn great.
BUT...no business should be "running the show" on something like Excel. For serious stuff, you need a dedicated (possibly custom-made) application that does all kinds of sanity checks. A properly coded Excel spreadsheet can do a lot of that for you, but it's not really meant for that.
You are what we used to call a "graphics whore".
I mean, really. "Link's hat had far too few polygons"? Listen to how ridiculous that sounds.
And as far as 480p goes, well, as has been said before...
DVDs run at 480p. Is there a game that looks as good as a DVD? Or even regular broadcast TV? No. 480p is PLENTY of resolution. It's all in how detailed the graphics are. Even the 360's graphics are a long way off from looking completely realistic.
The fact is, the Wii is good enough. Games aren't going to look TERRIBLE or anything. In fact, they'll look way better than the last generation, which already looked pretty awesome.
Look, I'm as much of a "tech-spec" geek as the next guy, but talking about how good a console is based on specs is akin to talking about how good a novel is based on the quality of the typesetting job.
It really *is* the games that count. And the Wii remote really is pretty cool. I haven't owned a Nintendo system since the NES, and I'm excited about the Wii, because it FINALLY gives us a new way to play games. Maybe it's not the "revolution" that Nintendo claims it is, but at least it's something new and different.
In Windows, even simple actions require accessing TONS of DLLs. I imagine that MS simply set up Vista to ask for "authorization" EVERY TIME a "privileged" DLL needs to be accessed. Obviously, that gets out of control.
They need to figure out a way to make it so that you authorize certain ACTIVITIES, instead of every individual executable that activity requires.
Of course, that's damn hard, because of the way Windows is designed.
Personally, I don't find the dialogs that bad, and if it can keep people from doing STUPID stuff, I'm all for it.
Well, you're right. HOWEVER, as we all know, money talks in Washington. If this company bribes the right politicians, and promises some kind of benefit to a given congressman's state, then it WILL happen.
Google is probably too secretive, but I appreciate their attitude. They have VERY LITTLE respect for the stock analysts, and Wall Street in general.
The fact of the matter is that the stock market is built on false (or at least dubious) perceptions. Google refuses to play that game. They don't tell ANYBODY what they're doing, which evens the playing field. The "big players" don't have any insider information, and so don't have a significant advantage over the "little players". I think it's great. Google basically says "We're not going to help the rich get richer."
That said, they are playing a dangerous game. Wall Street (and their ilk) essentially controls the U.S. economy. A given business pisses them off at their own peril. But at least Google is making the effort. And so far it has worked.
Exactly.
There seems to be a common misconception that since cable/DSL customers are only paying ~$10/megabit for bandwidth, that that's what the ISPs are paying. That's simply not true.
For ISPs, overselling bandwidth is the ONLY way they can sell it to end-users cheaply. I know there are some people who are paying $50/month for 8Mbps cablemodems. Do you realize that 8Mbps of bandwidth is costing your ISP THOUSANDS (maybe hundreds, if they're in a big city) of dollars?
Bandwidth just isn't as cheap as everyone seems to think it is. So yeah, there is NO WAY an ISP can afford to supply every one of their users the gobs of non-bursty bandwidth necessary to make HDTV downloads on a massive scale work.
I agree.
It's not that small businesses are *bad*, it's that, truly, they do all the same evil things that BIG businesses do, just on a smaller scale.
I've worked for quite a few small businesses, and they all paid their employees poorly, didn't offer any health insurance, and overworked everyone instead of hiring more employees. Why? Because the owners were keeping all the money to themselves so they could be wealthy. And, being a small business, there just wasn't enough money to go around to pay the employees any kind of decent wage, or provide any benefits.
Don't even get me started on small businesses that are nothing but retail shops. Why should I pay more for a product at some "mom and pop" store just so "mom and pop" don't have to get real jobs? Screw them.
Blah blah blah.
Building your own PCs isn't any great skill. Anyone can do it. But there's really no REASON to do it. It's *cheaper* to buy the pre-built machine from Dell. Building your own PC almost never saves you any money, and hasn't for years. Seriously, can YOU build a complete PC, with a monitor and a legit copy of Windows, for $400?
Now, once you start spendig BIG BUCKS on a PC, then it can be cheaper to build your own. Sometimes.
"... are self-selected because they tend to know more about technology than your average PC buyer..."
You've got to be kidding. Mac users are even MORE clueless than the average PC buyer, in my experience. They buy Macs specifically to *avoid* having to know anything about technology.
How, exactly, do you build "competitive internets"?
The really big players in the telecom industry own most of the actual pipes. It's taken them 100 years and untold billions of dollars to build. How could that possibly be duplicated?
Yes, they own it, and they should be allowed to make money from it. But they HAVE and DO make money from it. They just want MORE, at the expense of essentially everyone else. Would it even be possible to completely bypass AT&T/SBC's network without some major "reconstruction" of the internet?
Letting them charge for the mere *privilege* of using their lines (because they already charge for bandwidth, you see) is ridiculous. Imagine if every street in the entire U.S. had a toll booth, even though you ALREADY paid for the street with taxes.
Oh, so the 360 is Microsoft's attempt to ensure that most computers run Windows.
Yeah, like that'll ever happen!
p.s.- You're an idiot.
Older cards from ATI and Nvidia *don't* get that much cheaper. Not fast enough to matter, anyway. By the time a given card is "cheap", it's so slow that it's almost useless in modern games.
And the cheap cards aren't subsidized by the more expensive cards. In fact, the "high-end" cards aren't what keep ATI and Nvidia in business. The real money is in "integrated" video in cheap systems. That's especially true for ATI, who until fairly recently was the king of integrated graphics chips. Intel has stolen a lot of their market, there, and it's hurting them. Nvidia is *desperately* trying to get into that market, with their new motherboards that have 6100-level graphics.
Have you ever looked at Harry Knowles' website, aintitcoolnews.com?
He's one of the biggest (and fattest) nerds on the internet. He's totally obnoxious. I'm positive he DOES spend 7 hours a day sending e-mail.
Seriously, that's the dumbest product name EVER.
I have a feeling that it's not going to last. In Japan, maybe "Wii" doesn't sound ridiculous, but in English-speaking countries, it sounds stupid. I'm sure Nintendo of America is having a nice long talk with Nintendo of Japan right now.
I agree. We should use science to figure out where the bones come from, rather than relying on supernatural explanations.
Also, if during the course of the scientific investigations, the researches should become hungry, they should eat food rather than praying for their hunger to end. Similarly, if their mode of transportation should run out of fuel, they probably would be better served by buying a tank full of gas, versus merely "wishing real hard" that they could get where they were going.
And, of course, if they post on Slashdot, they shouldn't Karma-whore by posting the BLEEDING OBVIOUS.
Anyone that has ever tried to setup a WiFi network to cover a large municipal area knows that it's essentially IMPOSSIBLE to make it work well. WiFi is just to sensitive to interference. Trees and building stop WiFi in it's tracks. The only solution is to flood the area with access points, which is so expensive to do that it's not practical.
Supposedly WiMax has better coverage, but honestly, until the FCC opens up some of the lower UHF/VHF frequencies, wireless internet access "for the masses" is never gonna work right. 2.4Ghz is just too high a frequency to push through stuff.
She's in it for the money. Everyone knows this. She'd charge $1000/ticket if she thought people would pay it.
And Bowie? Madonna learned a lot of *her* moves from *him*. He was one of the first of the "image is everything" rock musicians. Though he at least used to be talented.
What I find amusing is that the vast majority of "artists" that bitch about illegal downloading and falling CD sales are artist that fucking suck, or are has-beens. Used to be that if you were hugely popular at some point, you could live off that FOREVER thanks to album sales. Not anymore.
"Catch up"? What other operating system in widespread use has an SQL-based filesystem?
Yeah, WinFS would and *will* be nice, but it's not a deal-breaker.
I'm more concerned that Vista is yet-another-version-of-Windows NT. I honestly would like MS to risk it all and make a brand-new version of Windows, written from scratch, that only runs "old" stuff under emulation. Just start over. It'll never happen, of course.
Wait. It's *Microsoft's* fault that the public library chose Microsoft's format for their downloadable media? Microsoft *forced* them to not use some other format, like plain-old MPEG? Or Quicktime? Or RealMedia? Or was it that those other formats aren't as *good*? Because they aren't. And, let's not forget that DRM is usually mandated by content creators, which means that so-called "open" formats are out of the question. Never mind that BOTH Quicktime and Real format were available LONG before Microsoft had anything similar. But they both fucked up, and Microsoft came out with a better product.
You're being ridiculous. You're using the same logic that is leading people to say that Apple has a "monopoly" with the iTunes music store and it's DRM scheme. No.
Does Windows Media Player prevent you from using a *different* media player, with *different* codecs, that *can* be read by other players? No.
Seriously. The whole "Microsoft is a monopoly" thing is retarded. Yes, they did abuse their power with OEMs. Yes, the U.S. courts did basically declare them a "coercive monopoly".
But the fact remains that there is really nothing stopping anyone from NOT using Microsoft products. Everyone is free to choose whatever OS they want. Of course, most of the "good" applications only run on Windows. Is that MS's fault? No.
I think that the REAL motivation behind most of the lawsuits against MS that imply they abuse their "power" is sour grapes. Apple, Sun, IBM, even Be(!) all fucked up. They didn't do as good a job as MS in promoting their OSs and hardware. Especially Apple, who should've OWNED the entire market. They had ELEVEN YEARS (1984 - 1995) where their OS was superiour in every way to MSs. And they blew it. The same can be said for all the other OS vendors.
I don't know. I'm not saying MS isn't a little bit evil, but they are dominant because they did a better job than the other OS/application companies. Period.
Oh, come on.
Your argument boils down to "People will start buying more Macs because now they can run Windows!".
Right.