Funny, despite having far fewer total systems sold and a subscription cost, Xbox Live is in nearly as many homes as the PS2 network adapter (600,000 vs. 500,000).
Tanking?
Well, you judge expected sales figures by what you read on a product box, so I guess I can't expect much outta ya. I can only imagine what else you believe from sales pitches.
Xbox Live recently turned 1 year old. Its 500,000 subscribers put it on par with the height of EverQuest's popularity, and it is maintaining a growth path that is expected to double that figure in a year.
It's not you and your siblings that were the AD(H)D kids.
It's that moron in class that always ran around doing stupid stuff, even when the "normal hyper" kids would back off.
He's the one working down at the 7-11 around the corner. You know, the one that has a Coke machine that never seems to have the ice dispenser filled...
Well, Einsturzende Neubauten has the benefit of name recognition (within the "underground" music community they exist in) and an established career.
It would be significantly harder for a new unknown artist to pull off something similar.
Which isn't to say it's a totally unworkable idea. We do have to recognize that the unestablished band faces a different situation than the established artist.
These articles seem to be about "putting a face" on MP3 traders - not devious college students, but your 12-year-old girl and the old man with grandchildren using his computer...
All that's missing is a TV commercial of people saying, "I *am* MP3 trading!"
I hope you manage to find a way. Teaching your kid that just because something is illegal doesn't mean it is morally wrong is a very important lesson. If people hadn't realized that we'd still have slavery, women wouldn't be allowed to vote, etc.
Of course, "everyone" is saying that the desicion to standarize on Win2k is wrong because it ties you to a single software vendor (Microsoft). Wouldn't the adoption of Apple tie you down to a single software *and* hardware vendor?
Fiction: Teachers will use this technology to help judge the nuts and bolts of the paper, freeing them to focus just on the quality of the intellectual content, making things easier and quicker in the grading process.
Fact: Teachers would read only the introduction and conclusion paragraphs, and rely on the grading software to account for the quality of writing of the paper, and grade that way.
Brutal Truth: Teachers already read only the introduction and conclusion paragraphs, so use of this software actually would be an improvement.
Games are $50 because the production cost of a video game is many times that of getting drunk band members into a studio to schlop out 60 minutes of guitar abuse.
Gaming doesn't interest spectators, and thus will not make for a lucrative professional "sport".
Some of the problems:
1. Game turnover is huge. Imagine if football looked and played completely different every 2 years. Nobody's playing Quake II tournaments anymore. New sports always take time to spark interest and gain acceptance, and moving from game to game essentially leaves the competition stuck in "new sport" mode.
2. Games just aren't that great to look at. As a spectator, everything just kinda looks the same. Until things get to the point where character animations are fluid and never the same twice, it will always look very mechanical to the spectator. No move ever looks truly special.
3. No athletic ability involved. Don't expect video gaming to ever get beyond the bowling/darts/pool/poker level of interest - basically, late night ESPN fodder.
By making it compulsory?? Here in the European Union measures are contemplated against Microsoft abuse of its monopoly. One is to force Microsoft to include other media players. Why not require it to include other browsers. For that matter, why not require PC manufacturers to have another partition on the PCs they sell with some Unix/Linux on it. After all, they support Microsoft's monopoly by including only that OS, so meaures against them should be considered too.
This looks good initially, but there are problems.
You can force Microsoft to include other browsers. Sure, but then MS goes, "ok, here you go, Mozilla 1.1!" Too much room for abuse.
Including Linux on an OEM machine is tricky too, and frankly, I don't know if I want Linux going head-to-head in the desktop realm with Microsoft at the moment. Linux still has a ways to go, and an arrangement like this could end up reducing Linux to the butt of a joke, when Joe Schmoes around the world find it just not nearly as polished as the Windows desktop.
Plus, what distro do you use? What desktop environment by default? Linux community politics would gnaw the legs off of this before it could have a chance to stand. And if they left the GNU off of "GNU/Linux", you could go outside, wherever in the world you are, and hear Stallman crying softly in the distance.
If a web server looks at their logs and sees that page requests from non-IE browsers are very low, percentage-wise, they will not be compelled to give anything else a second thought.
On the other hand, if *everyone* in that 3% complains when a feature on the site doesn't work on anything except IE, suddenly their support inboxes are dominated by demands, and that 3% doesn't seem so small and ignorable anymore.
If you go to a website that doesn't work right in your browser, e-mail them (without being hostile) and explain to them your displeasure with the incompatibility and implore them to support web standards and non-IE browsers. Feel free to toss in a little "we don't desire a Microsoft-only Internet" rhetoric if you so wish, but keep it brief and understated. Even if you can get into the site by using a header spoof trick or whathaveyou, please still take the time to fire a quick email their way.
You can even have a "form" email that you keep saved just for such use, which is probably a good idea. Do have a place where you can specifically mention what part of the site doesn't work correctly (assuming it's not the whole site, a la BuyMusic).
It's important to start making noise now, and let the noise grow as the non-MS browsers gain more widespread use.
This isn't a case of "Microsoft == bad". This is a case of web developers needing to think beyond "Microsoft Browser on Microsoft Platform". IE will work with standards-compliant pages just fine.
When the boss comes around and is all tellin' me what to do and stuff, makin' all these stupid requests, y'know, I tell her to SHUT HER HOLE, before I kick 'er in the nuts!
Being forced to differentiate between binaries distributed by Mozilla.org and those distributed by one's Linux distro of choice is a Bad Thing, as it's one more arcane thing to worry about for the average end user. For those running Windows, being able to simply hop onto mozilla.org and download the latest browser without having to know a thing about compilers is a Good Thing.
For Linux to have any shot at being a real desktop OS, one stuff's compatibility with other stuff simply can not break with such frequency! Those of us that get down into the guts of Linux/UNIX can deal with it, but if widespread desktop usage is considered a goal, then this cannot be allowed to happen.
... due to extreme pressure from the NFL Player's Association, EA Sports decided to no longer feature players on the cover of their sports products.
For Madden 2005, they went back to showing John Madden on the cover.
During week 5's broadcast of Monday Night Football, John Madden dropped dead, after shouting "BOOM" while watching Terrell Suggs lay into Rex Grossman. He was 68.
Slashdot Mirror
As for expectations, well.... Xbox Live Sales Double Expectations (as of January 2003).
Funny, despite having far fewer total systems sold and a subscription cost, Xbox Live is in nearly as many homes as the PS2 network adapter (600,000 vs. 500,000).
Tanking?
Well, you judge expected sales figures by what you read on a product box, so I guess I can't expect much outta ya. I can only imagine what else you believe from sales pitches.
You clearly don't know what you're talking about.
Xbox Live recently turned 1 year old. Its 500,000 subscribers put it on par with the height of EverQuest's popularity, and it is maintaining a growth path that is expected to double that figure in a year.
"Tanking". Heh.
It's that moron in class that always ran around doing stupid stuff, even when the "normal hyper" kids would back off.
He's the one working down at the 7-11 around the corner. You know, the one that has a Coke machine that never seems to have the ice dispenser filled...
It would be significantly harder for a new unknown artist to pull off something similar.
Which isn't to say it's a totally unworkable idea. We do have to recognize that the unestablished band faces a different situation than the established artist.
Windows ME
All that's missing is a TV commercial of people saying, "I *am* MP3 trading!"
Women can vote??!
But... but.... Apple, good!
Microsoft, bad!
Fact: Teachers would read only the introduction and conclusion paragraphs, and rely on the grading software to account for the quality of writing of the paper, and grade that way.
Brutal Truth: Teachers already read only the introduction and conclusion paragraphs, so use of this software actually would be an improvement.
Games are $50 because the production cost of a video game is many times that of getting drunk band members into a studio to schlop out 60 minutes of guitar abuse.
No. Tiny market share prevents/slows development of native versions of applications for Unix/Linux.
Some of the problems:
1. Game turnover is huge. Imagine if football looked and played completely different every 2 years. Nobody's playing Quake II tournaments anymore. New sports always take time to spark interest and gain acceptance, and moving from game to game essentially leaves the competition stuck in "new sport" mode.
2. Games just aren't that great to look at. As a spectator, everything just kinda looks the same. Until things get to the point where character animations are fluid and never the same twice, it will always look very mechanical to the spectator. No move ever looks truly special.
3. No athletic ability involved. Don't expect video gaming to ever get beyond the bowling/darts/pool/poker level of interest - basically, late night ESPN fodder.
I thought it was paved with discarded Lisa computers and copies of Microsoft Bob...
This looks good initially, but there are problems.
You can force Microsoft to include other browsers. Sure, but then MS goes, "ok, here you go, Mozilla 1.1!" Too much room for abuse.
Including Linux on an OEM machine is tricky too, and frankly, I don't know if I want Linux going head-to-head in the desktop realm with Microsoft at the moment. Linux still has a ways to go, and an arrangement like this could end up reducing Linux to the butt of a joke, when Joe Schmoes around the world find it just not nearly as polished as the Windows desktop.
Plus, what distro do you use? What desktop environment by default? Linux community politics would gnaw the legs off of this before it could have a chance to stand. And if they left the GNU off of "GNU/Linux", you could go outside, wherever in the world you are, and hear Stallman crying softly in the distance.
On the other hand, if *everyone* in that 3% complains when a feature on the site doesn't work on anything except IE, suddenly their support inboxes are dominated by demands, and that 3% doesn't seem so small and ignorable anymore.
If you go to a website that doesn't work right in your browser, e-mail them (without being hostile) and explain to them your displeasure with the incompatibility and implore them to support web standards and non-IE browsers. Feel free to toss in a little "we don't desire a Microsoft-only Internet" rhetoric if you so wish, but keep it brief and understated. Even if you can get into the site by using a header spoof trick or whathaveyou, please still take the time to fire a quick email their way.
You can even have a "form" email that you keep saved just for such use, which is probably a good idea. Do have a place where you can specifically mention what part of the site doesn't work correctly (assuming it's not the whole site, a la BuyMusic).
It's important to start making noise now, and let the noise grow as the non-MS browsers gain more widespread use.
This isn't a case of "Microsoft == bad". This is a case of web developers needing to think beyond "Microsoft Browser on Microsoft Platform". IE will work with standards-compliant pages just fine.
NO KITTY BAD KITTY!!!
Being forced to differentiate between binaries distributed by Mozilla.org and those distributed by one's Linux distro of choice is a Bad Thing, as it's one more arcane thing to worry about for the average end user. For those running Windows, being able to simply hop onto mozilla.org and download the latest browser without having to know a thing about compilers is a Good Thing.
For Linux to have any shot at being a real desktop OS, one stuff's compatibility with other stuff simply can not break with such frequency! Those of us that get down into the guts of Linux/UNIX can deal with it, but if widespread desktop usage is considered a goal, then this cannot be allowed to happen.
Hopefully newer versions will tighten things up.
Not to mention less hostile ones.
If there's no market for it, the market will reject it.
The only products that get bought are products that people want.
Of course, there's no accounting for tas^H^H^H stupidity.
For Madden 2005, they went back to showing John Madden on the cover.
During week 5's broadcast of Monday Night Football, John Madden dropped dead, after shouting "BOOM" while watching Terrell Suggs lay into Rex Grossman. He was 68.
John Madden, R.I.P. (1936-2004)