Whilst travelling through the departure lounges of the world, most people seem to clutch their office issued Dell/Thinkpad/HP machine. I also am a mere cog in the corporate machine, clutching my nylon Dell bag.
There is a definite type of person who pulls out the Powerbook (from the Crumpler bag), opening a screen so big it pulls small asian travellers into it's orbit.
This guy is about 50, he has a bit of stubble, ill-advised facial topiary, maybe his shirt is unbuttomed a bit too far. He looks affluent and well fed and I think he may be a partner in an ad agency, or possibly an architect. Quite often he will be accompanied by an attractive younger colleague and they'll look erm quite friendly.
The other typical user is the younger traveller/student. They'll have a nice little powerbook, or the white plastic one (I forget the name). They won't care much about computers. They needed a laptop, they got a Mac and they're happy as it does what they want.
"While the API is intended to interface with the the Google Earth service, Google Earth is nothing without the data. Yet at the same time, Google openly publishes their own API which uses the same data in the same manner."
Yes - Google Earth is nothing without the data. That's why they pay huge sums of money for that data. They intend to make a return on this investment - and I'm sure anybody with Google shares would expect them to do so.
To make a return they want people to use it. To get more people to use it they developed an API - the usage of which they intend to ultimately bring money back to Google with.
Why on earth would they want other people ripping off the data they paid to license to do other stuff with - something that doesn't return them money. More importantly, whoever is licensing them the data isn't going to be too happy that other people are copying it without paying them a license fee. If I wrote some software and sold copies to people, and one of my customers started burning copies and giving them out to everybody, I would be pissed off with that customer.
If Gaia wants to use the maps, I'm sure the OSS community will collectively reach into their pockets to pay for the licensing fee required (that would be the fee required to distribute those maps free, to anybody). Alternatively, why don't we send up an OSS satellite ourselves and take our own photos?
doesn't mean anything unless it's 10% of the genome that's actually expressed, or if it is creates a functionally different protein.
Working on the assumption that we do actually evolve, then we'd need to have sections of DNA that can alter without having an immediate effect - like a scribble pad where stuff could just be doodled.
They could just dump MS.
Every Dell machine could be sold with Ubuntu on it.
Cheaper PC for the consumer, no OEM costs from Dell to Microsoft. Hanging out on Slashdot for so long and listening to your whitterings it's suddenly so clear to me. Maybe I should sell my idea to Michael, I'm sure it's just something he's never considered...
If you think about Apple, they work in precisely the same way. They have business units. One writes OSX, the other...well they basically seem to point Mr Ive to a Taiwanese system builder and source parts. Then there's a third unit that sells the shiney boxes.
Dell's just basically those second 2 units (with their own assembly) and MS the first. The money still floats around in the same way between the units.
Does anybody ever protest that you can't buy a Mac from one of those lovely white shops without OSX installed and a cut being kicked back up to the OSX dev division? Big demand for naked Macs?
No - there isn't - mainly as a naked Mac is just the same as a naked Dell - so why not get the cheaper Dell?
The person who buys the Mac, buys the Mac as he wants OSX, so we then get back to the old favourite here - why can't I buy 'naked' OSX and install it on a naked machine I already have? Well we know why that is, because Apple wants to shift the marked up hardware.
I think to summarize my point, why complain about MS getting $20 when you buy a Dell, when you pay Apple $2000 for hardware when you want OSX?
But you can all ignore this post and the whole thread to be honest. We live in a free market. You see a hardware/software spec and a price and if you want it you buy it.
If you don't like this system, then might I suggest you buy your own hardware and write your own OS. I know, quite ridiculous, an idea like this would never take off.
and it still rates as one of my favourite consoles ever (along with the Snes).
It was great. PS2 launch killed it. I looked at the first gen PS2 stuff (lived with console magazine writer at the time so got dev kit access), looked at my DC - and the DC was better - yet the PS2 still won.
As far as I can see the PS2 won on two fronts, it had a DVD player - this was a big thing as I'd coughed up a load for one and could see why other people would want one at a low PS2 price. Also Sony had better PR. Since the DC launched there was the endless media burble about Emotion engines and the like. The press saw how the PS1 had come from nowhere and believed Sony's promises about how revolutionary the PS2 would be. It wasn't another console like all the others, it'd be a quantum leap forward.
This time the press is hostile, not the gaming press, I mean all press. I still don't think the PS3 is sunk, I've seen the demoes and they look lovely. It has a good chance.
For it to succeed, they need to get some good games out (I've still no idea what the great launch title I'm supposed to be buying the hardware to play is) and they need to get the online stuff free - I like the 360, but have f'all idea what I got for paying for my 12 month gold membership (I get to play the games I paid for online for free, and get demos??? Few things have pissed me off more than game companies trying to SELL me skins advertising their games).
*thinks more* Sony are still fucked. PSP was lovely hardware. WiFi enabled out of the box and got killed by the DS. In fact if you want to see who'll win this just look at the PSP and the DS. It's the same thing again.
who is a Cisco reseller with shiny knobs on (this is all theorectical and I've made it up - OK?).
Seemingly the factories where they make at least some of the stuff make 'extra' and if you work your way high enough up the supply chain, you'll get approached by them. Seemingly it's not 'fake' it's exactly the same, just you get 5 routers all with the same serial number.
I assume the factory tells Cisco they only made 1 router, produce 4 clones, and unless more than two of them break down simultaneously, Cisco support is never going to notice. Most customers don't seem to mind either.
because I trash laptops and have to recover data more often than I need to worry about it having been stolen.
If you do need to ensure something isn't stolen and you absolutely have to have it on your laptop without a net connection, then there are plenty of utilities that allow you to mount encrypted partitions.
I personally can't stand it - but it does help retards who buy software on a CD, shove it in the drive and sit there wondering why nothing is happening.
Seeing as I'm more capable of turning autoplay off, than my parents are to turn it on - I can see why it defaults to on.
I think I'm basically just making fun of you posting on slashdot that you can't work out how to turn it off.
and paid for 2142 via EA's downloader - and the EULA made no mention of this.
Now either the kotaku is imagining bits of paper, the online purchased version is magically pure or EA are about to get themselves a huge class-action kicking.
I loved BF2, shelled out for the hit-or-miss expansion packs and already felt slightly narked off. I think this is the final straw - wish me luck on getting a refund.
I'm with you. The DVD load speed on the 360 is very annoying and PS3 Blu-ray transfer speed is pretty much the same (so will be just as annoying).
Putting mod chips to the side for a moment, I just wish XB/360/PS3 games would allow you to run a HD cache for them. I don't even mind putting the disk in the drive (if a better protection mechanism can't be found). I very rarely seriously play more than one game at a time, so if I could just shove it on the HD it would make everything so much nicer.
Ho-hum.
It costs as much to develop a decent tech support system for OSS as it does for commercial stuff - only difference being that you have fewer customers to recoup against.
Also, it's all very well having thousands of people feeding in their little bug-fixes and patches into something to make it better, it makes it much cheaper than a commercial offering to produce fixes and allows a more rapid response to need - BUT there's a reason commercial software companies don't just churn out patches and upgrades like this - and that's because it's a complete bugger to keep track of and support.
Possibly a third reason is that people want to pay for stuff that's important to them. We've paid Oracle huge piles of cash as it's very important to us, we don't understand how it works under the hood and don't particularly want to - we DO want to make damn sure if something goes wrong with it somebody will pick up the phone when we call and give us a good answer though. Same with Linux, I'm sure some kind and intelligent chap on a random forum I hit on google will be able to provide me with an answer - but on the off-chance he doesn't reply, or gives me the wrong answer, I'd quite like to know there's a certified person somewhere who I've paid to help me (and if he doesn't I can sue his/her ass).
Merely if this issue is worrying you, get to a place where your job is safe. Just to take an example, the guy who delivers your pizza is probably not too worried about his job being outsourced - he knows he is needed outside your house in 30 minutes. Now he probably has other problems, but *waves hands to indicate 'other problems'*
If you make money entirely by having a decent brain and a PC, then you're not exactly making yourself essential - the world's full of people like you, most quite happily exisiting on a lower wage than you - somebody with a chequebook will notice this
Get a role that requires you to be onsite in your local office, something that means customers have to see you. Why not go the whole hog? If there's a hundred guys on the other side of the planet, use them yourself. If you have understanding of a particular field and are next to the guy with a problem, design him a solution and get somebody else to do the work *shrugs*
Maybe rather than thinking of suddenly competing with people able to work for less, you could look at it as a rather good opportunity to build a company under you? (just remember not to out-source yourself).
Over time jobs have continuously moved abroad.
Back in the good old days (you know, when the western world had it's colonizing hat on), we decided it was far cheaper to source raw materials abroad - so we'd say grow cotton in India and import the raw product back to the UK to be refined.
Then we twigged we might as well weave it into cloth abroad (and fired a load of mill workers). Then, realizing we might as well make something out of the cloth abroad before importing it we fired a load of the cloth workers.
Now - at the time there was lots of personal pain for some people - but the benefit was two-fold. The vast majority of people got a far cheaper product and we were forced to up-skill. Do you honestly think we'd be in a better position today if we'd spent a fortune protecting those lost industries?
Same thing is just still happening and will continue to happen - whether you like it or not. You've just got the simple choice whether you want to stand there trying to hold back the sea, or whether you should take a few steps up the beach to get out of the way.
You might get the odd law/import quota protecting your own job, but that's just at the expense of everybody else around you - The USA can't afford to buy everything 'Made in the USA' and expect to keep the same standard of living.
People don't buy sockets - they don't decide what upgrade to get based on the socket.
They choose the best performing CPU for their budget, then maybe the same for a graphics card. Once these two are selected they just chose the memory and motherboard that allows it all to fit together in a stable fashion (or overclock if that's your thing).
Currently if you're looking to upgrade you'll choose a Core based CPU. Once you've got that CPU, it's not really a huge leap of logic to conclude you won't buy an AM2 based board.
These people are coming to him as they can't fix the computer - they're walking up to him and saying 'I don't know what I'm doing and I believe you are an expert'
So you tell them to install Unbuntu and give them the hard sell, and 25% of them do. This is precisely the same tactic used by high-street PC stores to flog people shit they don't really need. The £100 HDMI cable, the extended warranty, the AV software with the high markup etc.
So assuming you do get them to switch to Ubuntu - do you honestly think they'll have a more trouble free future with their PC than they would with a repaired windows machine (with a copy of clamav/avg, ms defender and autoupdates on?).
I mean it makes great sense to do this is I repaired machines for money - in 6 months time you just know they're going to turn up with a webcam or a printer they've bought and can't get to work.
More I think about it the more sense this makes - install something on their machines they've got less chance of managing without you - you cunning bastard - you've got them for life.
so everytime somebody creates a new funky code that is used in an an AVI you'd need a new codec on that if it were to be natively decoded on that.
Transcoding (lossless) is a much better solution - you know it plays on your PC - you know it'll stream across exactly the same to any extender you have. I only want to have to install codecs in one place and I'm sure MS aren't falling over themselves to let every codec maker install their stuff on their lovely 360s.
Current problem is that all we have is Transcode360 (which I much appreciate and even donated against) - isn't perfect and is very much bolted on. If MS wrote a transcoder themselves, then it could work much much better - for example not just transcoding the whole file start to end and presenting that to the extender, it could allow you to skip about through the file just as you would do normally and just transcode the part you want to view (rather than waiting for your PC to trundle through the file from the start every time).
is to keep people locked onto the iPod hardware - where Apple make their profit.
iTunes doesn't have to make money, it just has to get enough m4p files onto iPods for the user to take a hit if they defect to a rival hardware platform.
5% doesn't sound much, but if you've filled 5% of an ipods capacity with legit tunes - say it's a 20Gb drive (or 20Gb of music) 5% is a gig, allow a generous 100Mb an album. That's 10 albums. Not a lot, but it's going to cost you £80 if you want to rebuy it when you defect to a Zune - enough to make you think twice at least.
but should hopefully mean we won't see what we did with the 360 - I can't buy one in the UK and have to look at pictures of crates unsold in Japan.
Might also avoid the UK getting shafted on hardware costs:) I think I'm going to buy myself one now.
Sooo, over to you Sony - how are you going to convince me to buy a PS3 when I've got my PC, my 360 and now a Wii?
Slashdot Mirror
Whilst travelling through the departure lounges of the world, most people seem to clutch their office issued Dell/Thinkpad/HP machine. I also am a mere cog in the corporate machine, clutching my nylon Dell bag.
There is a definite type of person who pulls out the Powerbook (from the Crumpler bag), opening a screen so big it pulls small asian travellers into it's orbit.
This guy is about 50, he has a bit of stubble, ill-advised facial topiary, maybe his shirt is unbuttomed a bit too far. He looks affluent and well fed and I think he may be a partner in an ad agency, or possibly an architect. Quite often he will be accompanied by an attractive younger colleague and they'll look erm quite friendly.
The other typical user is the younger traveller/student. They'll have a nice little powerbook, or the white plastic one (I forget the name). They won't care much about computers. They needed a laptop, they got a Mac and they're happy as it does what they want.
I just log into mailinator with random usernames - always fun to see what people signed up to without wanting to leave an email trail.
then there's no need to protect it.
Make one exception and the entire concept is forfeit.
Even as a humble European I can understand the concept - what's his excuse?
Where would I get this from?
www.mozilla.com y'say?
*experiences feeling of deja-vu*
"While the API is intended to interface with the the Google Earth service, Google Earth is nothing without the data. Yet at the same time, Google openly publishes their own API which uses the same data in the same manner."
Yes - Google Earth is nothing without the data. That's why they pay huge sums of money for that data. They intend to make a return on this investment - and I'm sure anybody with Google shares would expect them to do so.
To make a return they want people to use it. To get more people to use it they developed an API - the usage of which they intend to ultimately bring money back to Google with.
Why on earth would they want other people ripping off the data they paid to license to do other stuff with - something that doesn't return them money. More importantly, whoever is licensing them the data isn't going to be too happy that other people are copying it without paying them a license fee. If I wrote some software and sold copies to people, and one of my customers started burning copies and giving them out to everybody, I would be pissed off with that customer.
If Gaia wants to use the maps, I'm sure the OSS community will collectively reach into their pockets to pay for the licensing fee required (that would be the fee required to distribute those maps free, to anybody). Alternatively, why don't we send up an OSS satellite ourselves and take our own photos?
I fail to see how this is a story..
doesn't mean anything unless it's 10% of the genome that's actually expressed, or if it is creates a functionally different protein. Working on the assumption that we do actually evolve, then we'd need to have sections of DNA that can alter without having an immediate effect - like a scribble pad where stuff could just be doodled.
I seriously doubt Norton pays anywhere near enough to cover the cost of the XP license. (although it'll help).
They could just dump MS.
Every Dell machine could be sold with Ubuntu on it.
Cheaper PC for the consumer, no OEM costs from Dell to Microsoft. Hanging out on Slashdot for so long and listening to your whitterings it's suddenly so clear to me. Maybe I should sell my idea to Michael, I'm sure it's just something he's never considered...
If you think about Apple, they work in precisely the same way. They have business units. One writes OSX, the other...well they basically seem to point Mr Ive to a Taiwanese system builder and source parts. Then there's a third unit that sells the shiney boxes.
Dell's just basically those second 2 units (with their own assembly) and MS the first. The money still floats around in the same way between the units.
Does anybody ever protest that you can't buy a Mac from one of those lovely white shops without OSX installed and a cut being kicked back up to the OSX dev division? Big demand for naked Macs?
No - there isn't - mainly as a naked Mac is just the same as a naked Dell - so why not get the cheaper Dell?
The person who buys the Mac, buys the Mac as he wants OSX, so we then get back to the old favourite here - why can't I buy 'naked' OSX and install it on a naked machine I already have? Well we know why that is, because Apple wants to shift the marked up hardware.
I think to summarize my point, why complain about MS getting $20 when you buy a Dell, when you pay Apple $2000 for hardware when you want OSX?
But you can all ignore this post and the whole thread to be honest. We live in a free market. You see a hardware/software spec and a price and if you want it you buy it.
If you don't like this system, then might I suggest you buy your own hardware and write your own OS. I know, quite ridiculous, an idea like this would never take off.
and it still rates as one of my favourite consoles ever (along with the Snes). It was great. PS2 launch killed it. I looked at the first gen PS2 stuff (lived with console magazine writer at the time so got dev kit access), looked at my DC - and the DC was better - yet the PS2 still won. As far as I can see the PS2 won on two fronts, it had a DVD player - this was a big thing as I'd coughed up a load for one and could see why other people would want one at a low PS2 price. Also Sony had better PR. Since the DC launched there was the endless media burble about Emotion engines and the like. The press saw how the PS1 had come from nowhere and believed Sony's promises about how revolutionary the PS2 would be. It wasn't another console like all the others, it'd be a quantum leap forward. This time the press is hostile, not the gaming press, I mean all press. I still don't think the PS3 is sunk, I've seen the demoes and they look lovely. It has a good chance. For it to succeed, they need to get some good games out (I've still no idea what the great launch title I'm supposed to be buying the hardware to play is) and they need to get the online stuff free - I like the 360, but have f'all idea what I got for paying for my 12 month gold membership (I get to play the games I paid for online for free, and get demos??? Few things have pissed me off more than game companies trying to SELL me skins advertising their games). *thinks more* Sony are still fucked. PSP was lovely hardware. WiFi enabled out of the box and got killed by the DS. In fact if you want to see who'll win this just look at the PSP and the DS. It's the same thing again.
LikSang could have shifted that
Federal Thought Police.
who is a Cisco reseller with shiny knobs on (this is all theorectical and I've made it up - OK?).
Seemingly the factories where they make at least some of the stuff make 'extra' and if you work your way high enough up the supply chain, you'll get approached by them. Seemingly it's not 'fake' it's exactly the same, just you get 5 routers all with the same serial number.
I assume the factory tells Cisco they only made 1 router, produce 4 clones, and unless more than two of them break down simultaneously, Cisco support is never going to notice. Most customers don't seem to mind either.
because I trash laptops and have to recover data more often than I need to worry about it having been stolen.
If you do need to ensure something isn't stolen and you absolutely have to have it on your laptop without a net connection, then there are plenty of utilities that allow you to mount encrypted partitions.
I personally can't stand it - but it does help retards who buy software on a CD, shove it in the drive and sit there wondering why nothing is happening.
Seeing as I'm more capable of turning autoplay off, than my parents are to turn it on - I can see why it defaults to on.
I think I'm basically just making fun of you posting on slashdot that you can't work out how to turn it off.
and paid for 2142 via EA's downloader - and the EULA made no mention of this.
Now either the kotaku is imagining bits of paper, the online purchased version is magically pure or EA are about to get themselves a huge class-action kicking.
I loved BF2, shelled out for the hit-or-miss expansion packs and already felt slightly narked off. I think this is the final straw - wish me luck on getting a refund.
I'm with you. The DVD load speed on the 360 is very annoying and PS3 Blu-ray transfer speed is pretty much the same (so will be just as annoying).
Putting mod chips to the side for a moment, I just wish XB/360/PS3 games would allow you to run a HD cache for them. I don't even mind putting the disk in the drive (if a better protection mechanism can't be found). I very rarely seriously play more than one game at a time, so if I could just shove it on the HD it would make everything so much nicer.
Ho-hum.
It costs as much to develop a decent tech support system for OSS as it does for commercial stuff - only difference being that you have fewer customers to recoup against.
Also, it's all very well having thousands of people feeding in their little bug-fixes and patches into something to make it better, it makes it much cheaper than a commercial offering to produce fixes and allows a more rapid response to need - BUT there's a reason commercial software companies don't just churn out patches and upgrades like this - and that's because it's a complete bugger to keep track of and support.
Possibly a third reason is that people want to pay for stuff that's important to them. We've paid Oracle huge piles of cash as it's very important to us, we don't understand how it works under the hood and don't particularly want to - we DO want to make damn sure if something goes wrong with it somebody will pick up the phone when we call and give us a good answer though. Same with Linux, I'm sure some kind and intelligent chap on a random forum I hit on google will be able to provide me with an answer - but on the off-chance he doesn't reply, or gives me the wrong answer, I'd quite like to know there's a certified person somewhere who I've paid to help me (and if he doesn't I can sue his/her ass).
Merely if this issue is worrying you, get to a place where your job is safe. Just to take an example, the guy who delivers your pizza is probably not too worried about his job being outsourced - he knows he is needed outside your house in 30 minutes. Now he probably has other problems, but *waves hands to indicate 'other problems'*
If you make money entirely by having a decent brain and a PC, then you're not exactly making yourself essential - the world's full of people like you, most quite happily exisiting on a lower wage than you - somebody with a chequebook will notice this
Get a role that requires you to be onsite in your local office, something that means customers have to see you. Why not go the whole hog? If there's a hundred guys on the other side of the planet, use them yourself. If you have understanding of a particular field and are next to the guy with a problem, design him a solution and get somebody else to do the work *shrugs*
Maybe rather than thinking of suddenly competing with people able to work for less, you could look at it as a rather good opportunity to build a company under you? (just remember not to out-source yourself).
Over time jobs have continuously moved abroad.
Back in the good old days (you know, when the western world had it's colonizing hat on), we decided it was far cheaper to source raw materials abroad - so we'd say grow cotton in India and import the raw product back to the UK to be refined.
Then we twigged we might as well weave it into cloth abroad (and fired a load of mill workers). Then, realizing we might as well make something out of the cloth abroad before importing it we fired a load of the cloth workers.
Now - at the time there was lots of personal pain for some people - but the benefit was two-fold. The vast majority of people got a far cheaper product and we were forced to up-skill. Do you honestly think we'd be in a better position today if we'd spent a fortune protecting those lost industries?
Same thing is just still happening and will continue to happen - whether you like it or not. You've just got the simple choice whether you want to stand there trying to hold back the sea, or whether you should take a few steps up the beach to get out of the way.
You might get the odd law/import quota protecting your own job, but that's just at the expense of everybody else around you - The USA can't afford to buy everything 'Made in the USA' and expect to keep the same standard of living.
People don't buy sockets - they don't decide what upgrade to get based on the socket.
They choose the best performing CPU for their budget, then maybe the same for a graphics card. Once these two are selected they just chose the memory and motherboard that allows it all to fit together in a stable fashion (or overclock if that's your thing).
Currently if you're looking to upgrade you'll choose a Core based CPU. Once you've got that CPU, it's not really a huge leap of logic to conclude you won't buy an AM2 based board.
We locate the spam-seeder - take a screen grab of the file names - report them to the RIAA and watch them sue themselves.
These people are coming to him as they can't fix the computer - they're walking up to him and saying 'I don't know what I'm doing and I believe you are an expert'
So you tell them to install Unbuntu and give them the hard sell, and 25% of them do. This is precisely the same tactic used by high-street PC stores to flog people shit they don't really need. The £100 HDMI cable, the extended warranty, the AV software with the high markup etc.
So assuming you do get them to switch to Ubuntu - do you honestly think they'll have a more trouble free future with their PC than they would with a repaired windows machine (with a copy of clamav/avg, ms defender and autoupdates on?).
I mean it makes great sense to do this is I repaired machines for money - in 6 months time you just know they're going to turn up with a webcam or a printer they've bought and can't get to work.
More I think about it the more sense this makes - install something on their machines they've got less chance of managing without you - you cunning bastard - you've got them for life.
so everytime somebody creates a new funky code that is used in an an AVI you'd need a new codec on that if it were to be natively decoded on that.
Transcoding (lossless) is a much better solution - you know it plays on your PC - you know it'll stream across exactly the same to any extender you have. I only want to have to install codecs in one place and I'm sure MS aren't falling over themselves to let every codec maker install their stuff on their lovely 360s.
Current problem is that all we have is Transcode360 (which I much appreciate and even donated against) - isn't perfect and is very much bolted on. If MS wrote a transcoder themselves, then it could work much much better - for example not just transcoding the whole file start to end and presenting that to the extender, it could allow you to skip about through the file just as you would do normally and just transcode the part you want to view (rather than waiting for your PC to trundle through the file from the start every time).
is to keep people locked onto the iPod hardware - where Apple make their profit.
iTunes doesn't have to make money, it just has to get enough m4p files onto iPods for the user to take a hit if they defect to a rival hardware platform. 5% doesn't sound much, but if you've filled 5% of an ipods capacity with legit tunes - say it's a 20Gb drive (or 20Gb of music) 5% is a gig, allow a generous 100Mb an album. That's 10 albums. Not a lot, but it's going to cost you £80 if you want to rebuy it when you defect to a Zune - enough to make you think twice at least.
but should hopefully mean we won't see what we did with the 360 - I can't buy one in the UK and have to look at pictures of crates unsold in Japan. :) I think I'm going to buy myself one now.
Might also avoid the UK getting shafted on hardware costs
Sooo, over to you Sony - how are you going to convince me to buy a PS3 when I've got my PC, my 360 and now a Wii?