I got the same thing from the letter. It reads like a messy made up alibi. Seems like this kid was troubled from the start but the adults were probably too screwed up to deal with it effectively and let is snowball out of control. How old was this child when the stepmother started hating him? And to top it off she was filled with more hatred of this boy because of what he did, not guilt not shame or remorse but hatred! Her response pales in comparison to the parents of Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold. The stepmother showed no profound sorrow or remorse from that letter just a sounding accusation that it was all his fault and she needn't share in any of the blame or responsibility.
The problem is the Wii is more novel than inovative.
Says you.
Both Sony and Microsoft can easily produce a competing controller which could devalue the Wii's uniqueness.,
Not if a sheaf of Nintendo patents on the Wii control systems have anything to do with it.
Patents do provide protection but if your patent is too vague and general then you are in for some expensive fights. You can't patent wireless, vector, and acceleration for a game controller that will prevent your competitors from incorporating the same capabilities in theirs. Nintendo has a very specific patent. So MS and Sony can't clone a Wii controller but they can offer the same functionality in a different controller. Who knows it might end up being a better mouse trap or it might never happen.
Let's face it everyone likes the cutting edge graphics.
Says you.
What were the most popular games at the party I went to over the weekend? Nintendo Ice Hockey and Super Mario Bros 3, played on an NES bought nearly 20 years ago.
Everyone likes fun. Only some people care about cutting edge graphics..
As an old curmudgeon it vexes me to have an argument thwarted by a party where you and your friends play NES. Why didn't I think of that? I do recall a party I went to long ago where a friend had bought an Atari 2600 off Ebay and we all took turns playing combat. It really was lots of fun. Though none of us ever bought a 2600 except the one friend. We ended up with PS1's and N64's etc.... By the way you could use your argument against the Wii also. There are many other choices that are cheaper than the Wii and many would argue more fun (erg. PS2, Xbox, NGC). So like a bucket with holes your argument does not hold water for long. When shelling out hundreds of dollars performance is important because it equals longevity and I think the Wii will have one of the shortest lifespan for a Nintendo console. Maybe Nintendo will do some type of technology refresh for it in a few years but the early adopters will still be left with a bag full of last gen performance.
I agree. I see PS3 struggling into 2007 until they can drop price or provide a compelling differentiator. I certainly don't rule out Sony pulling a hat trick. PS3=Mac is a very interesting point. I am not sure that will happen. The PS3 will either get significant market share or they will be a loser. If they can't get their shipped numbers up to at least 100,000 a week starting Jan then they have no chance of catching the 360. Sony has alot of great titles comming for the PS3 but unless 360 sales stop completely the PS3 is unlikely to catch up in any market except Japan.
Nintendo is taking a mind blowing risk. I certainly could not have concieved of them agreeing to this type of risk when conteplating their next move after the Gamecube. The problem is the Wii is more novel than inovative. Both Sony and Microsoft can easily produce a competing controller which could devalue the Wii's uniqueness. Compounding this is the fact that PS3 and 360 games will on average look spectacularly better because of the graphics power houses built into both of them. The sales for the Wii should be supported by demand in Japan which will keep it going but I don't see them dominating anywhere else. Let's face it everyone likes the cutting edge graphics when selecting games and the screen shots of Twilight princess provided the proof for me to wait for the gamecube version. The Wii will soon be looking like last gen once the novel controller wears off. When you adopt HD TV would you rather have a Wii or a PS3/Xbox360? By the way HD sets are on schedule to hit the consumer sweet spot within the next two years.
The Xbox360 got off to a rough start but it seems to be fairing much better than their competitor's launches. The 360 has struggled with the slow growth of sales which coincides with the slow release of major hits. Though Xbox Live is at the top of the hill it requires a subscription where it's competitors do not. Despite all these weaknesses it's competitors will be confounded by about an 8 million unit lead; hardware performance that should equal the PS3; difficulty in differentiating themselves from the well funded Xbox Live; and the looming possibility of a price drop in 2007.
Also Keep in mind that most of the sales of consoles happen in the last 2/3rds of it's lifespan where the Wii will certainly be viewed as long in the tooth. For me the Wii is the worst choice this gen and only the PS3 and 360 should be considered.
I don't own any next gen yet but am planning to buy an 360 at the first price drop in 2007. I can't imagine the PS3 will see a price drop anytime soon but like you said we may be surprised this spring.
Although your comparison is ridiculous I have seen worse. So could you please come up with a more assinine metaphor. I also thought that your jackassery was a bit mis-guided and lost its context in the middle of your argument, you should work on that too. I suggest adding a cup more of BS and a titilating lie or two and your horror of a post will be made perfect.
P.S.: You do get a gold star for motivating me to login and write this.
Apple has been supported by brand loyalist who after defecting in the early 90's have returned to the fold in droves with the second coming of Jobs. I personally have never considered myself a brand loyalist but I will be the first to admit that I am entrenched in the Windows world. So you can call me a pragmatic loyalist ready to leave my brand of choice as soon as something better and cheaper arrives. I have tried Linux, the price was excellent but the compatibility was not even close to windows XP. I was also alarmed at how much I had to configure just to get a desktop as compared to Windows XP. I also got VNC running on Linux but man was it a pain as compared to windows. I have also tried the latest Macs but this was at the Apple store in the mall. My impression was that the price is generally not that much higher if at all but Macs have no compelling applications that windows doesn't have and OS X did not impress me so much that I was ready to switch because of it. Considering that Mac loyalist have shown their willingness to eat rotten Apples and not complain to loudly about the stomach ache, while on the other hand mercilessly scrutinizing Windows it makes the praise of Mac ring hollow. All Apple did was realize OS 8 was stinking up the place and began the switch to OS X. The sad thing is that the Mac cult believes OS X will get people to switch in droves when in reality all Apple got was an OS that is not a liability. No compelling, exclusive applications means no Windows users switching. The telling sign that they are drinking the Koolaide is when they can give no other reason to buy Macs other than OS X and how insanely great Apple hardware is. Yes the iPod is insanely great, so some Apple hardware is awesome but what the hell happened to iTunes, it is closer to driving me crazy than revolutionary software. As a consumer I ask myself if Apple can't get iTunes right what else have they screwed up? I obviously have not been spending enough time in devoted prayer to our lord Jobs.
Now the x86 grinder will put Macs through their paces, will it be a road apple or will they achieve insanely great with Intel inside? Apple is not known for timely integration of the latest tech in the Macs. Some will blame IBM for this but Apple has done some stupid things with its tech that no one could claim as great. We shall see if Intel gets blamed as the bottleneck to market this time. Also note that Intel desktop 64bit roadmap is behind both AMD and IBM and it remains to be seen how their future chips will stack up against future releases from competitors. Apple has switched to the current looser in the 64bit desktop market and may still be playing catch up unless Intel somehow pulls ahead. I still can't understand how anyone would think that businesses or consumers would consider switching when there is still an absence of a compelling reason to do so. Apple has refused to Show anyone their product roadmap for Intel inside. I believe Jobs is worried about how the media will react to it. The roadmap is probably has some glaring risks and may not be all that well thought out. But now everyone is going to be jumping on the media event of the first x86 Macs. Apple will be compared with every PC manufacturer in the world for performance, and competitors will be jumping all over each other to prove they are better. I just don't see Apple as having the philosophy or market position to easily prevail. They may just stick with their niche buyers until they see an opportunity. Either way it will be exciting to watch what I would describe as the best tech drama yet for the 21st century.
Re:Didn't they say this ten years ago?
on
The Future of the Net
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· Score: 2, Interesting
You know they never call these people talking brains because it isn't there job to really think. They just spew off some nonsense to get as big a response as possible without causing any true controversy.
The problem with making predictions about a current market and the technology it produces today and what will be the dominant technology tomorrow is it's impossible. But most people and other talking heads end up joining in on the irrational exuberance of these predictions. Especially if they are already in the camp of the "chosen" technology.
Now I am about to do the forbidden on slashdot, I am going to explain myself and my Opinion.
First off I do not have any facts to back me up and since I nor anyone else has a time machine, this in my opinion is acceptable. Plus it is a long and honored tradition here to say whaterver you want with nothing to back it up.
Secondly this is my opinion, you don't know me and so you cannot make any accurate character judgments about the quality of my opinion. But my opinion is worth as much as any other person on slash dot and most are worth far more than the editors and pundits who get front page exposure. Apply generous amounts of salt and you should be fine unless you are new here or European or an insensitive clod or an American who does not recognize sarcasm, witty banter, witless banter, etc...
Follows is an opinion, flush twice if it doesn't go down the first time:
The computer operating systems are part of a middle aged market. This market is having a mid-life crisis because it has reached such a level of success that there isn't much hope for any more. So the market is getting restless and looking for a faster car and a flat bellied wife to relive the more exciting days of its youth. But the inevitable is written on the wall, the days of the OS as a superstar of the computer industry are over. Sure it will always have its hardcore enthusiast who care what OS they run but most people won't. Let's face it the OS has not been a celebrity for a long time. There will be no Unix or WinOS superstar in the consumer market's future, the celebrities will be the devices themselves and what they can do in the home.
The business OS market has grown incredibly large since the 80's. With that growth came market fragmentation/segmentation, these segments will be around for a long time, I wouldn't be surprised if the segments outlasted the careers of everyone reading slashdot today. So Windows, Unix, Linux and Apple will be around for a very long time. They just have too much momentum to stop anytime soon. Some would say Unix is the segment in danger of take-over but IBM, HP, and Sun would all have to switch before Unix ever becomes obsolete and there is fat chance of that happening in the next decade or two. Unix is loosing lower market share to competitor Linux but the three big Unix shops aren't really as interested in that market for their Unix offering anyways.
In conclusion we should expect for at least the next decade much of the same, with hardware taking most of the glory in the computer industry. So......
The Linux zealots will continue to rail against MS The Unix snobs will continue to be snobbish The Apple cult will continue to mock all that is not insanely great The MS admins will continue on in quiet desperation Bill and Larry will continue to be filthy rich and arrogant
I have been following the Carter Copter for almost twelve years now and finally they have achieved what they stated (back in 93?) was one of their primary goals.
Congrats to the Carter Copters team! NASA should be proud or at least pleased that this is yet more support to the feasibility of SATS.
Well I don't know Herb or if he's a liar or not but I do know that many developers left NetBSD to start OpenBSD because of Theo. So I can only conclude that either they believed in the guy enough to work with him on splintering BSD yet again or they disliked the NetBSD core team so much that they decided to leave and work with a creaton like Theo to spite them.
Mac brand advocates don't get the philosophy of people who willingly use MS Windows. Windows users are pragmatist with no brand loyalty and security be damned. If everything was equal in the PC market then the consumer would be asking who has the best OS, but its not even close because Apple spent a long decade snubbing the office worker and many other market segments leaving Wintel as the most competent and accessible vendor (go figure). So don't dilute yourself into thinking that the average consumer PC buyer thinks about OS or its security, they want their game to run or to have the same platform that they use at work. Consumers make uniformed impulse buys, which Apple has never excelled at attracting.
The Mac benefits from a dedicated group of brand loyalist who regularly ignore the rotten apples tossed at them with the marketing speal "it's easier to use and look at all the yummy colors, so what if a cheap Windows PC beats it in performance". Right now for half the price you can buy a laptop running windows that will embarrass an ibook or power book. Now the only thing Apple has going for its laptop are some wide screen versions that sell well. But Apple is about to fail in the laptop arena and Intel is just the tonic they need because of processor speed and other compatibilities. In the last ten years Apple has never dominated performance in the PC market. They had a 64bit Mac before the Intel crowd and hobbled it. Even now with the second coming of Jobs they still lag behind in performance constantly. They will have a difficult task of keeping up with performance in the constant grind of the Wintel world. I predict Macs will constantly be outclassed in performance by the latest proccessors and boards running windows. I don't think apple will be able to keep up with the changes as quickly as other vendors. Compared to X86 PPC moved at glacier speeds. The only reason Apples is selling more Macs is because more people buy computers, their market share of sales is shrinking in the desktop segment even though they are selling more Macs now then ever. IBM is going to be producing better processors than Intel in this decade and they will want to compete in the consumer PC market, I bet Apple ends up competing with a PC running the latest PPC proccessor and looses. Over the last decade Apple had a poor track record with hardware design and quite frankly is dependent on the Zealots to support their new models.
Who in their right mind would declare that processor speed/architecture is irrelevant. I guarantee you if more powerful processors are available companies will produce products that exploit it and people will buy it. IBM and Intel will always find ways to differentiate themselves from each other and guess what, architecture and speed will be the defining factors. How can you be so arrogant as to say the guts of the computer don't matter. All hail Jobs and keep drinking the Koolaide.
I am amazed at all the mindless Mac zealots raving about how OS X will be available on commodity hardware and how this will be so great for Apple. Guess what, it won't. Steve Jobs said Apple will be the only hardware OS X will officially run on. Plus the move puts Apple in the same playing field philosophically as Linux and windows. It remains to be seen if Apple's philosophy will be adopted by anyone in the buy it cheap crowd. So lets be honest cheap is not a selling point of Apple nor will it ever be. I will be very surprised and happy if some of Apple's Philosophies get adopted by the current Intel PC crowd, but I am not holding my breath. Also every pro Mac industry rag is saying how this is such a good move for Apple to use Intel because they have the better processor road map. Guess what, they don't. IBM will continue to make superior processors in the long run. Unfortunately they had to delay on some deliverables to Apple because a small market segment called the gamming industry needed a new chip and that is where IBM spent their resources. You won't see any major game console using Intel as their main processor for the next decade. Why you ask? because IBM has a better, cheaper, faster processor road map than Intel. Not a general purpose processor you say? Well it still remains to be seen if Intel will produce superior processors than IBM in the next several years except in the mobile arena.
This move is terribly risky and everyone is mindlessly coating it with a spoon full of sugar. I hope it goes well for Apple but I have to admit that it might not. This is not a slam dunk for Apples short term viability. The only significant reason Apple is moving to Intel is because they were no longer competitive in the mobile market and they could not weather any erosion of their share. So Steve did the only thing he could, he gave IBM the finger and made the phone call to Intel. Smart? yes with an exclamation but not without risks to their desktop market. I will agree completely with Apple making gains in the mobile market because of this move but their other segments will most likely suffer. To what extent I nor anyone else could predict. I will be among the rest to lift my glass and cheer Apple when they have had a successful transition but I will not mindlessly proclaim success when they have just only begun this monumental task.
It would be a deep cut indeed if it severed the esophagus. I have heard of people sucking air into their stomachs through the esophagus but not into the lungs. I think the term you were looking for is the trachia, windpipe would have worked too.
I understand that they need better debug tools but this is going to turn alot more people off from using it. This may be good news for Linux because Microsoft cannot be trusted with protecting your information.
anagram 101
alt.sysadmin.recovery = scary devil monastery
you also seem to be off on your spelling. No one is really interested in news groups that much anymore so you needn't worry about a bunch of novices crashing your all geek sausage party.
This sounds like the 80/20 scam some consultants were selling businesses in the 90's. It went like this:
Since most of your revenue comes from 20% of your customers you can discard, mistreat or ignore the other 80% and just concentrate on getting customers who behave like that top 20%.
The bad customer database is just a variation of this mind virus, It is an asinine idea that managers end up blaming something or someone else for its failure. In reality you can always identify some portion of your customer base that is undesirable even after you discard one set of so called bad customers. So I would say to retailers let your competition try this out first and see what it does to their revenue.
How about the Clipper II? Industry and government have been trying to reign in the unruly conusmers who refuse to obey the laws put in place to protect the "industry" of video entertainment. Also consider that in the early 90's independent video store owners were being arrested by the FBI for renting shows taped of off HBO. Those new to techno polotics think that manufacturers and government attempting to control how consumers use products is a recent development but they are not. Just to list a few more;
Satellite hackers fleeing america to escape prosection and holding up in the Bahammas (1980's)
Scientific Atlanta/General instruments teaming up with FBI on massive arrest and sting of cable box modders(80's, 90's). Anyone remember the Nova clones of cable boxes, the people who made it went to prison in US.
Computer User groups getting raided in the 80's for copying sessions. This was pre internet and pre cd roms.
This is nothing new and it is just TV so I personally don't care that you don't get to copy the matrix from DVD to VHS. If you are that upset about it and want to do somthing constructive then opt out of the big media's video market don't buy/pirate any more movies or better yet don't buy anything that is encumbered by macrovision. TV is not required to live a full and interesting life perhaps it prevents it. So don't expect your whish for your congressman and senator to stick thier neck out to protect your right to copy macrovision encombered movies to VHS to come true anytime soon. there is a saying "whish in one hand and piss in the other see which one gets filled first"
You still violatte copyright if you distribute or offer for distribution artistic works for which you are not the copyright holder and do not have the copyright holders permission. If you download music for which you posses a license for then you may be in the clear.
For the record you are more liable if you offer pirated songs for download than those who leach and don't share any files regardless of what format you offer the copyrighted materials. In fact I believe the RIAA would have a very difficult time catching and winning damages against a song downloader who does not share/distribute songs.
For some reason there seems to be a bunch of people on/. who are unfamilar with how p2p's work. I am not going to go into all the details but I will explain how the RIAA might be acurately identifying songs owned by a member on a student's hard drive without actually downloading anything but the shared list.
Just about every P2P uses hashes to uniquely identify files on the network. So if you rip Nirvana's smells like teen spirit from the orginal cd into mp3 and then put it into your share directory for your P2P client it gets a unique hash assigned by your P2P client. Now lets say a friend of yours does the exact same thing but his mp3 will have a different hash than yours because his P2P client creates a unique hash for his rip. Now a third person has no mp3's on thier computer and does not own any original albums but instead leaches music from P2P's. So this third person searches from the P2P client for smell's like teen spirit and gets a huge list of results. Each song in the list represents a separate rip or some modification of a previous rip. Along comes RIAA or an agent for it. They catalog a list of all the known hashes for the song smell's like teen spirit(downloading a portion of each file to verify that is does represent the original copyrighted work) and put it into thier database. Now the RIAA does not need to download the song from your machine but only needs to download the list of songs shared and the hash id's. End result is you are busted if you have a file with a hash of a known pirated song and will be paying the RIAA some money or going to court to explain to a judge why a file on your machine had a hash that had been previously identified as a pirated song. So how evil is the RIAA? Sounds pretty fair to me.
I really wonder about pieces like this. Perhaps those analysts write stuff for the literate dumb who happen to have disposable income laying around wondering what non existant console they should buy. Also a nice pot shot at Nintendo.
Well if they can make preditctions so can I.
Everyone who loves Sony will buy a PS3 (and Sony has more love than a french whore when the entire U.S. atlantic fleet docks for shore leave)
Everyone who loves Nintendo will buy a GC2 and DS
Everyone who loves Microsoft.... Just kidding we know nobody loves MS.
All kidding aside the next gen consoles will be about brand loyalty. Guess what Sony wins. Nintendo will continue to do well with thier market segments in the console and will maintain dominance in portables. Microsoft will struggle unless they reach that critical state of "killer app". Personally I am conflicted I dislike MS attitude towards the market and its customers but I secretly hope they kick everyones ass with something no one sees comming it is unlikely to happen though. Console gamming has reached a calm in the storm of competition. Some new blood has the opportunity to shake things up. One last prediction, Nintendo will continue to increase revenue on this gens console and software.
Actually the original exporer was pitched to cable companies as a game delivery device along with all the other feature sets. The companies were more interested in video on demand and services like that (94-95). So no effort was made to continue to develop that feature. I believe they did have some demo games at the time. I don't recall if they actually worked though. SA also had one of the first cable modems on the market (along with Motorala and GI). They did some trials with US west with the cable modem and the explorer and I thought at the time games were part of the test. It was a long time ago and my memory is not very clear on that. It was very clear that SA and GI wanted to enable cable companies to be able to deliver games over cable back in the mid 90's. It turned out the big cable companies could only digest one new technology at a time and so video on demand was adopted. I was working on this stuff back in 93 and it looks like this is the next technology the hardware manufacturers want to push on cable companies. If it works it will sell alot of set top boxes and head end equipment. I don't believe they were or are now interested in a stand alone set top game system that you can go down to the store and buy the latest game for. Remember SA makes money selling to Time Warner and the like not you the consumer.
Why have several of the latest articles on slash about DELL been negative and in error. Slashdot of course has no journalistic integrity and should not garner any respect but I still would like to see at least some attempt at filtering biased articles that are in error. As for DELL their customer service has always been better than everyones bar IBM's and SUN's (never had to deal with MAC support. Yes I have administered and currently own serveral MACs). I have dealt with local computer wholesalers and retailers (non chain/national brands) and have never before found such a consistent group of con artists and jack asses before. If they weren't trying to shortchange my warranty they were egotistical asses who claimed they didn't need my business because they could easily sell this crap to some rube who didn't know any better. My experience was the local computer guy preferred customers who knew nothing about computers.
Was going to implement RH9 to showcase Linux in our data center(Oracle on one and Network monitoring on another). Well EOL on RH9 was announced and my boss asks "what the hell am I doing showcasing on an OS at EOL?". After a few months of back pedaling I finally get the green light on Linux again. Do you think it will be Redhat? Hell no. You only have to burn me once. Matthew Szulik does the double speak almost as well as Darl Mcbribe. The guy has come off sleazy in his defense of the asinine decision to stop workstation support.
ass talking like a jackass
The greatest advantage about Windows/Solaris server is that admins can run the same environment on their desktop. The same process of installing apps on the server is mostly the same for the workstation. RH had this advantage before but sadly not for a very long time. The EOL on RH9 was just a post mortem. When RH separated the workstation and server lines I was so pissed I started working with SUSE and Mandrake but unfortunately my hardware was not as compatible with them as RH out of the box and it was just too time consuming to track down all drivers and dependencies so back to Redhat I crawled like the unwashed admin I was. Now though both SUSE and Mandrake are on par with Redhat's server product and workstation. So I am moving on. No Redhat on my workstations no Redhat on my servers and I feel fine. How are you feeling Matthew? Nervous I bet.
There is no need to fear this. This is just a matter of Phoenix proving a market trend. Either the proof will be true or false in the end. Which brings me to this point "who is in control?" and I say whomever has possesion of a thing controls it. We will have physical possesion of the hardware thus we will ultimately be the most powerful factor in this market. We can exersise this power or not. Those of you who have been around long enough will remember the days when you could buy your bios separtely from your motherboard or gasp program your own. This happens all the time in the embedded industry (not as much as it use to though). So if the market is unfavorable to Phoenix's new bios and unsavory locks on our hardware we can always roll our own. Nay you say?
Well I offer up these links for you to browse.
Free the biosopen the bios
Slashdot Mirror
Do you allow jackasses to post to slashdot at work?
I got the same thing from the letter. It reads like a messy made up alibi. Seems like this kid was troubled from the start but the adults were probably too screwed up to deal with it effectively and let is snowball out of control. How old was this child when the stepmother started hating him? And to top it off she was filled with more hatred of this boy because of what he did, not guilt not shame or remorse but hatred! Her response pales in comparison to the parents of Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold. The stepmother showed no profound sorrow or remorse from that letter just a sounding accusation that it was all his fault and she needn't share in any of the blame or responsibility.
Says you.
Both Sony and Microsoft can easily produce a competing controller which could devalue the Wii's uniqueness.,
Not if a sheaf of Nintendo patents on the Wii control systems have anything to do with it.
Patents do provide protection but if your patent is too vague and general then you are in for some expensive fights. You can't patent wireless, vector, and acceleration for a game controller that will prevent your competitors from incorporating the same capabilities in theirs. Nintendo has a very specific patent. So MS and Sony can't clone a Wii controller but they can offer the same functionality in a different controller. Who knows it might end up being a better mouse trap or it might never happen. Let's face it everyone likes the cutting edge graphics.
Says you.
What were the most popular games at the party I went to over the weekend? Nintendo Ice Hockey and Super Mario Bros 3, played on an NES bought nearly 20 years ago.
Everyone likes fun. Only some people care about cutting edge graphics.
As an old curmudgeon it vexes me to have an argument thwarted by a party where you and your friends play NES. Why didn't I think of that? I do recall a party I went to long ago where a friend had bought an Atari 2600 off Ebay and we all took turns playing combat. It really was lots of fun. Though none of us ever bought a 2600 except the one friend. We ended up with PS1's and N64's etc.... By the way you could use your argument against the Wii also. There are many other choices that are cheaper than the Wii and many would argue more fun (erg. PS2, Xbox, NGC). So like a bucket with holes your argument does not hold water for long. When shelling out hundreds of dollars performance is important because it equals longevity and I think the Wii will have one of the shortest lifespan for a Nintendo console. Maybe Nintendo will do some type of technology refresh for it in a few years but the early adopters will still be left with a bag full of last gen performance.
I agree. I see PS3 struggling into 2007 until they can drop price or provide a compelling differentiator. I certainly don't rule out Sony pulling a hat trick. PS3=Mac is a very interesting point. I am not sure that will happen. The PS3 will either get significant market share or they will be a loser. If they can't get their shipped numbers up to at least 100,000 a week starting Jan then they have no chance of catching the 360. Sony has alot of great titles comming for the PS3 but unless 360 sales stop completely the PS3 is unlikely to catch up in any market except Japan.
Nintendo is taking a mind blowing risk. I certainly could not have concieved of them agreeing to this type of risk when conteplating their next move after the Gamecube. The problem is the Wii is more novel than inovative. Both Sony and Microsoft can easily produce a competing controller which could devalue the Wii's uniqueness. Compounding this is the fact that PS3 and 360 games will on average look spectacularly better because of the graphics power houses built into both of them. The sales for the Wii should be supported by demand in Japan which will keep it going but I don't see them dominating anywhere else. Let's face it everyone likes the cutting edge graphics when selecting games and the screen shots of Twilight princess provided the proof for me to wait for the gamecube version. The Wii will soon be looking like last gen once the novel controller wears off. When you adopt HD TV would you rather have a Wii or a PS3/Xbox360? By the way HD sets are on schedule to hit the consumer sweet spot within the next two years.
The Xbox360 got off to a rough start but it seems to be fairing much better than their competitor's launches. The 360 has struggled with the slow growth of sales which coincides with the slow release of major hits. Though Xbox Live is at the top of the hill it requires a subscription where it's competitors do not. Despite all these weaknesses it's competitors will be confounded by about an 8 million unit lead; hardware performance that should equal the PS3; difficulty in differentiating themselves from the well funded Xbox Live; and the looming possibility of a price drop in 2007.
Also Keep in mind that most of the sales of consoles happen in the last 2/3rds of it's lifespan where the Wii will certainly be viewed as long in the tooth. For me the Wii is the worst choice this gen and only the PS3 and 360 should be considered.
I don't own any next gen yet but am planning to buy an 360 at the first price drop in 2007. I can't imagine the PS3 will see a price drop anytime soon but like you said we may be surprised this spring.
Although your comparison is ridiculous I have seen worse. So could you please come up with a more assinine metaphor. I also thought that your jackassery was a bit mis-guided and lost its context in the middle of your argument, you should work on that too. I suggest adding a cup more of BS and a titilating lie or two and your horror of a post will be made perfect.
P.S.:
You do get a gold star for motivating me to login and write this.
Apple has been supported by brand loyalist who after defecting in the early 90's have returned to the fold in droves with the second coming of Jobs. I personally have never considered myself a brand loyalist but I will be the first to admit that I am entrenched in the Windows world. So you can call me a pragmatic loyalist ready to leave my brand of choice as soon as something better and cheaper arrives. I have tried Linux, the price was excellent but the compatibility was not even close to windows XP. I was also alarmed at how much I had to configure just to get a desktop as compared to Windows XP. I also got VNC running on Linux but man was it a pain as compared to windows. I have also tried the latest Macs but this was at the Apple store in the mall. My impression was that the price is generally not that much higher if at all but Macs have no compelling applications that windows doesn't have and OS X did not impress me so much that I was ready to switch because of it. Considering that Mac loyalist have shown their willingness to eat rotten Apples and not complain to loudly about the stomach ache, while on the other hand mercilessly scrutinizing Windows it makes the praise of Mac ring hollow. All Apple did was realize OS 8 was stinking up the place and began the switch to OS X. The sad thing is that the Mac cult believes OS X will get people to switch in droves when in reality all Apple got was an OS that is not a liability. No compelling, exclusive applications means no Windows users switching. The telling sign that they are drinking the Koolaide is when they can give no other reason to buy Macs other than OS X and how insanely great Apple hardware is. Yes the iPod is insanely great, so some Apple hardware is awesome but what the hell happened to iTunes, it is closer to driving me crazy than revolutionary software. As a consumer I ask myself if Apple can't get iTunes right what else have they screwed up? I obviously have not been spending enough time in devoted prayer to our lord Jobs.
Now the x86 grinder will put Macs through their paces, will it be a road apple or will they achieve insanely great with Intel inside? Apple is not known for timely integration of the latest tech in the Macs. Some will blame IBM for this but Apple has done some stupid things with its tech that no one could claim as great. We shall see if Intel gets blamed as the bottleneck to market this time. Also note that Intel desktop 64bit roadmap is behind both AMD and IBM and it remains to be seen how their future chips will stack up against future releases from competitors. Apple has switched to the current looser in the 64bit desktop market and may still be playing catch up unless Intel somehow pulls ahead. I still can't understand how anyone would think that businesses or consumers would consider switching when there is still an absence of a compelling reason to do so. Apple has refused to Show anyone their product roadmap for Intel inside. I believe Jobs is worried about how the media will react to it. The roadmap is probably has some glaring risks and may not be all that well thought out. But now everyone is going to be jumping on the media event of the first x86 Macs. Apple will be compared with every PC manufacturer in the world for performance, and competitors will be jumping all over each other to prove they are better. I just don't see Apple as having the philosophy or market position to easily prevail. They may just stick with their niche buyers until they see an opportunity. Either way it will be exciting to watch what I would describe as the best tech drama yet for the 21st century.
You know they never call these people talking brains because it isn't there job to really think. They just spew off some nonsense to get as big a response as possible without causing any true controversy.
The problem with making predictions about a current market and the technology it produces today and what will be the dominant technology tomorrow is it's impossible. But most people and other talking heads end up joining in on the irrational exuberance of these predictions. Especially if they are already in the camp of the "chosen" technology.
Now I am about to do the forbidden on slashdot, I am going to explain myself and my Opinion.
First off I do not have any facts to back me up and since I nor anyone else has a time machine, this in my opinion is acceptable. Plus it is a long and honored tradition here to say whaterver you want with nothing to back it up.
Secondly this is my opinion, you don't know me and so you cannot make any accurate character judgments about the quality of my opinion. But my opinion is worth as much as any other person on slash dot and most are worth far more than the editors and pundits who get front page exposure. Apply generous amounts of salt and you should be fine unless you are new here or European or an insensitive clod or an American who does not recognize sarcasm, witty banter, witless banter, etc...
Follows is an opinion, flush twice if it doesn't go down the first time:
The computer operating systems are part of a middle aged market. This market is having a mid-life crisis because it has reached such a level of success that there isn't much hope for any more. So the market is getting restless and looking for a faster car and a flat bellied wife to relive the more exciting days of its youth. But the inevitable is written on the wall, the days of the OS as a superstar of the computer industry are over. Sure it will always have its hardcore enthusiast who care what OS they run but most people won't. Let's face it the OS has not been a celebrity for a long time. There will be no Unix or WinOS superstar in the consumer market's future, the celebrities will be the devices themselves and what they can do in the home.
The business OS market has grown incredibly large since the 80's. With that growth came market fragmentation/segmentation, these segments will be around for a long time, I wouldn't be surprised if the segments outlasted the careers of everyone reading slashdot today. So Windows, Unix, Linux and Apple will be around for a very long time. They just have too much momentum to stop anytime soon. Some would say Unix is the segment in danger of take-over but IBM, HP, and Sun would all have to switch before Unix ever becomes obsolete and there is fat chance of that happening in the next decade or two. Unix is loosing lower market share to competitor Linux but the three big Unix shops aren't really as interested in that market for their Unix offering anyways.
In conclusion we should expect for at least the next decade much of the same, with hardware taking most of the glory in the computer industry. So......
The Linux zealots will continue to rail against MS
The Unix snobs will continue to be snobbish
The Apple cult will continue to mock all that is not insanely great
The MS admins will continue on in quiet desperation
Bill and Larry will continue to be filthy rich and arrogant
I have been following the Carter Copter for almost twelve years now and finally they have achieved what they stated (back in 93?) was one of their primary goals.
Congrats to the Carter Copters team! NASA should be proud or at least pleased that this is yet more support to the feasibility of SATS.
Well I don't know Herb or if he's a liar or not but I do know that many developers left NetBSD to start OpenBSD because of Theo. So I can only conclude that either they believed in the guy enough to work with him on splintering BSD yet again or they disliked the NetBSD core team so much that they decided to leave and work with a creaton like Theo to spite them.
Which do you think it was?
Here is the link to Theo's archive on the matter:
Theo's side of the story
and a shorter commentary:
seems reasonable to me
Mac brand advocates don't get the philosophy of people who willingly use MS Windows. Windows users are pragmatist with no brand loyalty and security be damned. If everything was equal in the PC market then the consumer would be asking who has the best OS, but its not even close because Apple spent a long decade snubbing the office worker and many other market segments leaving Wintel as the most competent and accessible vendor (go figure). So don't dilute yourself into thinking that the average consumer PC buyer thinks about OS or its security, they want their game to run or to have the same platform that they use at work. Consumers make uniformed impulse buys, which Apple has never excelled at attracting.
The Mac benefits from a dedicated group of brand loyalist who regularly ignore the rotten apples tossed at them with the marketing speal "it's easier to use and look at all the yummy colors, so what if a cheap Windows PC beats it in performance". Right now for half the price you can buy a laptop running windows that will embarrass an ibook or power book. Now the only thing Apple has going for its laptop are some wide screen versions that sell well. But Apple is about to fail in the laptop arena and Intel is just the tonic they need because of processor speed and other compatibilities. In the last ten years Apple has never dominated performance in the PC market. They had a 64bit Mac before the Intel crowd and hobbled it. Even now with the second coming of Jobs they still lag behind in performance constantly. They will have a difficult task of keeping up with performance in the constant grind of the Wintel world. I predict Macs will constantly be outclassed in performance by the latest proccessors and boards running windows. I don't think apple will be able to keep up with the changes as quickly as other vendors. Compared to X86 PPC moved at glacier speeds. The only reason Apples is selling more Macs is because more people buy computers, their market share of sales is shrinking in the desktop segment even though they are selling more Macs now then ever. IBM is going to be producing better processors than Intel in this decade and they will want to compete in the consumer PC market, I bet Apple ends up competing with a PC running the latest PPC proccessor and looses. Over the last decade Apple had a poor track record with hardware design and quite frankly is dependent on the Zealots to support their new models.
Who in their right mind would declare that processor speed/architecture is irrelevant. I guarantee you if more powerful processors are available companies will produce products that exploit it and people will buy it. IBM and Intel will always find ways to differentiate themselves from each other and guess what, architecture and speed will be the defining factors. How can you be so arrogant as to say the guts of the computer don't matter. All hail Jobs and keep drinking the Koolaide.
Thank you Post like yours are the reason I still enjoy slashdot.
Keep drinking the coolaide Mac boy.
I am amazed at all the mindless Mac zealots raving about how OS X will be available on commodity hardware and how this will be so great for Apple. Guess what, it won't. Steve Jobs said Apple will be the only hardware OS X will officially run on. Plus the move puts Apple in the same playing field philosophically as Linux and windows. It remains to be seen if Apple's philosophy will be adopted by anyone in the buy it cheap crowd. So lets be honest cheap is not a selling point of Apple nor will it ever be. I will be very surprised and happy if some of Apple's Philosophies get adopted by the current Intel PC crowd, but I am not holding my breath. Also every pro Mac industry rag is saying how this is such a good move for Apple to use Intel because they have the better processor road map. Guess what, they don't. IBM will continue to make superior processors in the long run. Unfortunately they had to delay on some deliverables to Apple because a small market segment called the gamming industry needed a new chip and that is where IBM spent their resources. You won't see any major game console using Intel as their main processor for the next decade. Why you ask? because IBM has a better, cheaper, faster processor road map than Intel. Not a general purpose processor you say? Well it still remains to be seen if Intel will produce superior processors than IBM in the next several years except in the mobile arena.
This move is terribly risky and everyone is mindlessly coating it with a spoon full of sugar. I hope it goes well for Apple but I have to admit that it might not. This is not a slam dunk for Apples short term viability. The only significant reason Apple is moving to Intel is because they were no longer competitive in the mobile market and they could not weather any erosion of their share. So Steve did the only thing he could, he gave IBM the finger and made the phone call to Intel. Smart? yes with an exclamation but not without risks to their desktop market. I will agree completely with Apple making gains in the mobile market because of this move but their other segments will most likely suffer. To what extent I nor anyone else could predict. I will be among the rest to lift my glass and cheer Apple when they have had a successful transition but I will not mindlessly proclaim success when they have just only begun this monumental task.
It would be a deep cut indeed if it severed the esophagus. I have heard of people sucking air into their stomachs through the esophagus but not into the lungs. I think the term you were looking for is the trachia, windpipe would have worked too.
I understand that they need better debug tools but this is going to turn alot more people off from using it. This may be good news for Linux because Microsoft cannot be trusted with protecting your information.
anagram 101 alt.sysadmin.recovery = scary devil monastery you also seem to be off on your spelling. No one is really interested in news groups that much anymore so you needn't worry about a bunch of novices crashing your all geek sausage party.
This sounds like the 80/20 scam some consultants were selling businesses in the 90's. It went like this: Since most of your revenue comes from 20% of your customers you can discard, mistreat or ignore the other 80% and just concentrate on getting customers who behave like that top 20%. The bad customer database is just a variation of this mind virus, It is an asinine idea that managers end up blaming something or someone else for its failure. In reality you can always identify some portion of your customer base that is undesirable even after you discard one set of so called bad customers. So I would say to retailers let your competition try this out first and see what it does to their revenue.
How about the Clipper II? Industry and government have been trying to reign in the unruly conusmers who refuse to obey the laws put in place to protect the "industry" of video entertainment. Also consider that in the early 90's independent video store owners were being arrested by the FBI for renting shows taped of off HBO. Those new to techno polotics think that manufacturers and government attempting to control how consumers use products is a recent development but they are not. Just to list a few more;
Satellite hackers fleeing america to escape prosection and holding up in the Bahammas (1980's)
Scientific Atlanta/General instruments teaming up with FBI on massive arrest and sting of cable box modders(80's, 90's). Anyone remember the Nova clones of cable boxes, the people who made it went to prison in US.
Computer User groups getting raided in the 80's for copying sessions. This was pre internet and pre cd roms.
This is nothing new and it is just TV so I personally don't care that you don't get to copy the matrix from DVD to VHS. If you are that upset about it and want to do somthing constructive then opt out of the big media's video market don't buy/pirate any more movies or better yet don't buy anything that is encumbered by macrovision. TV is not required to live a full and interesting life perhaps it prevents it. So don't expect your whish for your congressman and senator to stick thier neck out to protect your right to copy macrovision encombered movies to VHS to come true anytime soon. there is a saying "whish in one hand and piss in the other see which one gets filled first"
You still violatte copyright if you distribute or offer for distribution artistic works for which you are not the copyright holder and do not have the copyright holders permission. If you download music for which you posses a license for then you may be in the clear.
For the record you are more liable if you offer pirated songs for download than those who leach and don't share any files regardless of what format you offer the copyrighted materials. In fact I believe the RIAA would have a very difficult time catching and winning damages against a song downloader who does not share/distribute songs.
For some reason there seems to be a bunch of people on /. who are unfamilar with how p2p's work. I am not going to go into all the details but I will explain how the RIAA might be acurately identifying songs owned by a member on a student's hard drive without actually downloading anything but the shared list.
Just about every P2P uses hashes to uniquely identify files on the network. So if you rip Nirvana's smells like teen spirit from the orginal cd into mp3 and then put it into your share directory for your P2P client it gets a unique hash assigned by your P2P client. Now lets say a friend of yours does the exact same thing but his mp3 will have a different hash than yours because his P2P client creates a unique hash for his rip. Now a third person has no mp3's on thier computer and does not own any original albums but instead leaches music from P2P's. So this third person searches from the P2P client for smell's like teen spirit and gets a huge list of results. Each song in the list represents a separate rip or some modification of a previous rip. Along comes RIAA or an agent for it. They catalog a list of all the known hashes for the song smell's like teen spirit(downloading a portion of each file to verify that is does represent the original copyrighted work) and put it into thier database. Now the RIAA does not need to download the song from your machine but only needs to download the list of songs shared and the hash id's. End result is you are busted if you have a file with a hash of a known pirated song and will be paying the RIAA some money or going to court to explain to a judge why a file on your machine had a hash that had been previously identified as a pirated song. So how evil is the RIAA? Sounds pretty fair to me.
I really wonder about pieces like this. Perhaps those analysts write stuff for the literate dumb who happen to have disposable income laying around wondering what non existant console they should buy. Also a nice pot shot at Nintendo.
Well if they can make preditctions so can I.
Everyone who loves Sony will buy a PS3 (and Sony has more love than a french whore when the entire U.S. atlantic fleet docks for shore leave)
Everyone who loves Nintendo will buy a GC2 and DS
Everyone who loves Microsoft.... Just kidding we know nobody loves MS.
All kidding aside the next gen consoles will be about brand loyalty. Guess what Sony wins. Nintendo will continue to do well with thier market segments in the console and will maintain dominance in portables. Microsoft will struggle unless they reach that critical state of "killer app". Personally I am conflicted I dislike MS attitude towards the market and its customers but I secretly hope they kick everyones ass with something no one sees comming it is unlikely to happen though. Console gamming has reached a calm in the storm of competition. Some new blood has the opportunity to shake things up. One last prediction, Nintendo will continue to increase revenue on this gens console and software.
Actually the original exporer was pitched to cable companies as a game delivery device along with all the other feature sets. The companies were more interested in video on demand and services like that (94-95). So no effort was made to continue to develop that feature. I believe they did have some demo games at the time. I don't recall if they actually worked though. SA also had one of the first cable modems on the market (along with Motorala and GI). They did some trials with US west with the cable modem and the explorer and I thought at the time games were part of the test. It was a long time ago and my memory is not very clear on that. It was very clear that SA and GI wanted to enable cable companies to be able to deliver games over cable back in the mid 90's. It turned out the big cable companies could only digest one new technology at a time and so video on demand was adopted. I was working on this stuff back in 93 and it looks like this is the next technology the hardware manufacturers want to push on cable companies. If it works it will sell alot of set top boxes and head end equipment. I don't believe they were or are now interested in a stand alone set top game system that you can go down to the store and buy the latest game for. Remember SA makes money selling to Time Warner and the like not you the consumer.
Why have several of the latest articles on slash about DELL been negative and in error. Slashdot of course has no journalistic integrity and should not garner any respect but I still would like to see at least some attempt at filtering biased articles that are in error. As for DELL their customer service has always been better than everyones bar IBM's and SUN's (never had to deal with MAC support. Yes I have administered and currently own serveral MACs). I have dealt with local computer wholesalers and retailers (non chain/national brands) and have never before found such a consistent group of con artists and jack asses before. If they weren't trying to shortchange my warranty they were egotistical asses who claimed they didn't need my business because they could easily sell this crap to some rube who didn't know any better. My experience was the local computer guy preferred customers who knew nothing about computers.
Was going to implement RH9 to showcase Linux in our data center(Oracle on one and Network monitoring on another). Well EOL on RH9 was announced and my boss asks "what the hell am I doing showcasing on an OS at EOL?". After a few months of back pedaling I finally get the green light on Linux again. Do you think it will be Redhat? Hell no. You only have to burn me once. Matthew Szulik does the double speak almost as well as Darl Mcbribe. The guy has come off sleazy in his defense of the asinine decision to stop workstation support. ass talking like a jackass
The greatest advantage about Windows/Solaris server is that admins can run the same environment on their desktop. The same process of installing apps on the server is mostly the same for the workstation. RH had this advantage before but sadly not for a very long time. The EOL on RH9 was just a post mortem. When RH separated the workstation and server lines I was so pissed I started working with SUSE and Mandrake but unfortunately my hardware was not as compatible with them as RH out of the box and it was just too time consuming to track down all drivers and dependencies so back to Redhat I crawled like the unwashed admin I was. Now though both SUSE and Mandrake are on par with Redhat's server product and workstation. So I am moving on. No Redhat on my workstations no Redhat on my servers and I feel fine. How are you feeling Matthew? Nervous I bet.
There is no need to fear this. This is just a matter of Phoenix proving a market trend. Either the proof will be true or false in the end. Which brings me to this point "who is in control?" and I say whomever has possesion of a thing controls it. We will have physical possesion of the hardware thus we will ultimately be the most powerful factor in this market. We can exersise this power or not. Those of you who have been around long enough will remember the days when you could buy your bios separtely from your motherboard or gasp program your own. This happens all the time in the embedded industry (not as much as it use to though). So if the market is unfavorable to Phoenix's new bios and unsavory locks on our hardware we can always roll our own. Nay you say? Well I offer up these links for you to browse. Free the bios open the bios